I am going to give this show the benefit of a doubt and say that it came out in a time where cartoons were the best they ever were on CN. It's really undebatable that shows like: Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Cow and Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog and may other reruns of older shows ate up most of the CN's audience.
This show would have been perfect for a channel or streaming service like Adult Swim with a PG15 rating because while it captures a lot of the original show's ideas, it should have gone further and shown more blood and been less censored.
Don't get me wrong! There is some of that here! But it's mostly just off screen or implied.
One thing that sets it apart from the original is that the original was a mix of mystery, horror and suspense. This show has a lot of action and some mystery but no suspense, no horror aspect to it. The animation style is more suited for an action cartoon. Which is not bad but what made the other one stand apart is that it kept a serious dark note, while this one is a very teenager cartoon.
Another thing is that while the original focused more on Benton Quest and Race Bannon doing the heavy lifting with the kids being passengers and tricksters of the group outsmarting the bad guys every once in an episode. This version is heavily lean on the kids doing the most lifting while Benton and Race are just hamsels in distress. Noting wrong with that but, well let me just put it this way: if you take a shot every time an adult says : "let us, adults, handle this problem..." then you're going to be as dry as a cactus in the Sahara.
This way of doing the show, by focusing all of the attention on the kids and turning the adults into hamsels is what might have killed the show if I think about it because: if the (capable) adults are hamsels in almost every episode, and the kids are doing the heavy lifting in most of the episodes then it basically means that they have heavy plot armor. It becomes a little too obvious when a seemingly incompetent bad guy or lacky was just competent two minutes ago and now he suddenly can't remember he has a gun.
I'm did not see this lack of consistency on every single episode but it happens often enough to notice. You basically know that Jonny, Jessie and Hadje are going to save the day. I understand this was a time of cartoons were Kids wore mega Plot Armor but this is was not the show to put that kind of plot armor on, not when you're trying to be serious.
One more thing that I loved and I was surprised I never knew until I found out: Race Bannon is voiced by Robert Patrick, yup, the T-1000 himself. He did a wonderful job on this role and honestly outperformed everyone in the show, and I mean everyone! This should could have been called the Race Banon Adventures and I wouldn't have minded. So yeah, Race Bannon and Hadje Singh are my favorite character in season 1.
Besides the writing style of the show, which I said hurt it a lot because it was pro-action and pro-kids, I would give this show three big faults in production: One, the animation is very inconsistent. It makes a lot of mistakes. One shot a character loses a hat, the very next shot it magically appears again on his head. It does this a lot. And the animation is everywhere. There are some episodes that are absolutely beautiful and some that are so dark and gritty that you can't see anything, it doesn't even have background characters. Second the background music and the score are not memorable. There is only one score that I remember for sure that is the score for the world map which you see usually at the start of the episode. That is pretty nice theme. But the third thing and I would challenge everyone on it: the character animation for the first season is terrible! It is so bad! Just try to think of Jessie Bannon, every single episode she looks like a different character! So many useless lines! She looks very bad as the only female character in the show in the first season. If you search pictures of Jessie Bannon in the collective Internet right now, you will find 95% images of her only from season 2 because that was a better animated character style for the show.
And I am not done with it, despite Jessie being the only female main character on the show and being very smart and resourceful, she has almost no memorable presence in the group. You forget that she is a girl in the show, she could be another one of the guys, just with long red hair and you wouldn't know if you never heard her voice. Season 2 did a bit of improvement on that by giving her more clothes and earrings... I understand that the show came out in another era of female empowerment and by all accounts she is a smart and resourceful, but it doesn't help if your character has no memorable presence.
So that is why I give it an 8. I would bring this show back but on Adult Swim or a streaming service and I would change it from an action oriented show back to a mystery/thriller/horror show.
This show would have been perfect for a channel or streaming service like Adult Swim with a PG15 rating because while it captures a lot of the original show's ideas, it should have gone further and shown more blood and been less censored.
Don't get me wrong! There is some of that here! But it's mostly just off screen or implied.
One thing that sets it apart from the original is that the original was a mix of mystery, horror and suspense. This show has a lot of action and some mystery but no suspense, no horror aspect to it. The animation style is more suited for an action cartoon. Which is not bad but what made the other one stand apart is that it kept a serious dark note, while this one is a very teenager cartoon.
Another thing is that while the original focused more on Benton Quest and Race Bannon doing the heavy lifting with the kids being passengers and tricksters of the group outsmarting the bad guys every once in an episode. This version is heavily lean on the kids doing the most lifting while Benton and Race are just hamsels in distress. Noting wrong with that but, well let me just put it this way: if you take a shot every time an adult says : "let us, adults, handle this problem..." then you're going to be as dry as a cactus in the Sahara.
This way of doing the show, by focusing all of the attention on the kids and turning the adults into hamsels is what might have killed the show if I think about it because: if the (capable) adults are hamsels in almost every episode, and the kids are doing the heavy lifting in most of the episodes then it basically means that they have heavy plot armor. It becomes a little too obvious when a seemingly incompetent bad guy or lacky was just competent two minutes ago and now he suddenly can't remember he has a gun.
I'm did not see this lack of consistency on every single episode but it happens often enough to notice. You basically know that Jonny, Jessie and Hadje are going to save the day. I understand this was a time of cartoons were Kids wore mega Plot Armor but this is was not the show to put that kind of plot armor on, not when you're trying to be serious.
One more thing that I loved and I was surprised I never knew until I found out: Race Bannon is voiced by Robert Patrick, yup, the T-1000 himself. He did a wonderful job on this role and honestly outperformed everyone in the show, and I mean everyone! This should could have been called the Race Banon Adventures and I wouldn't have minded. So yeah, Race Bannon and Hadje Singh are my favorite character in season 1.
Besides the writing style of the show, which I said hurt it a lot because it was pro-action and pro-kids, I would give this show three big faults in production: One, the animation is very inconsistent. It makes a lot of mistakes. One shot a character loses a hat, the very next shot it magically appears again on his head. It does this a lot. And the animation is everywhere. There are some episodes that are absolutely beautiful and some that are so dark and gritty that you can't see anything, it doesn't even have background characters. Second the background music and the score are not memorable. There is only one score that I remember for sure that is the score for the world map which you see usually at the start of the episode. That is pretty nice theme. But the third thing and I would challenge everyone on it: the character animation for the first season is terrible! It is so bad! Just try to think of Jessie Bannon, every single episode she looks like a different character! So many useless lines! She looks very bad as the only female character in the show in the first season. If you search pictures of Jessie Bannon in the collective Internet right now, you will find 95% images of her only from season 2 because that was a better animated character style for the show.
And I am not done with it, despite Jessie being the only female main character on the show and being very smart and resourceful, she has almost no memorable presence in the group. You forget that she is a girl in the show, she could be another one of the guys, just with long red hair and you wouldn't know if you never heard her voice. Season 2 did a bit of improvement on that by giving her more clothes and earrings... I understand that the show came out in another era of female empowerment and by all accounts she is a smart and resourceful, but it doesn't help if your character has no memorable presence.
So that is why I give it an 8. I would bring this show back but on Adult Swim or a streaming service and I would change it from an action oriented show back to a mystery/thriller/horror show.