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#cartoon #nickelodeon #review #scorecard #eltigre
Published: 2017-11-02 21:57:51 +0000 UTC; Views: 9661; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 5
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¡Hola amigos! Today is Día de los Muertos, and what not to celebrate Mexican culture with El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. So, what's up with my history with this show? Technically, I've never watched the show before in my life, but I did remember Manny Rivera from one of my childhood games, Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots. It wouldn't be around July 2017 when I began watching the show. I was supposed to release it on May 5, 2017 in time for Cinco de Mayo, then July 13, 2017 up until the date for it is unknown. Because no date was specified for El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera at the time, production for this scorecard was halted until October 31 where I began watching the show in time for the scorecard's release on Día de los Muertos.After all the troubles I had with El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, I completed the show and OH MY FREAKING GOD THIS FOREIGN-LIKE CARTOON IS ABSOLUTE lukewarmness. Judging by the pie chart, there are some fantastic and horrible things about it; The worst episode of the show (Stinking Badges!) in my opinion is just meh, which is actually pretty impressive for a cartoon, ESPECIALLY something just okay. Unfortunately, the best episode is just good, but pretty close to divine in my eyes. You see, that is how lukewarm and forgettable (get ready to hear this a lot) this show is because the majority of the good episodes aren't necessarily golden gems and I don't even care about 86% of the series. I'm aware that a few of you guys knew that I call El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera somewhere around the okay section. I'm astonished that this show has no bad episodes like Courage the Cowardly Dog (this show's worst episode is better BTW), but disappointing that I found nothing higher than good. This show pretty much have every common rating I faced with.
I disagree with people calling this show "underrated", so I'll prove my points with the writing:
The premise alone does have some promise (more than shows like Danny Phantom and My Life as a Teenage Robot). While the concept of a superhero isn't anything special, what made me optimistic about this show is its Mexican atmosphere. I was expecting Mexican culture to be the heart of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, hence the name. But then we got the episodes writing and...they're just okay. Nothing blew my mind, it's pretty generic compared to said shows I mentioned compared to El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera's potential. My complaints about the writing is that the show often utilizes cliches to tell its stories. While all of them can do something worth watching to these cliches, they're executed like nothing is affected, resulting in predictable writing galore. The "prove himself/herself" cliche is possibly the most repetitive and overdone cliche the show has used. Also, a bunch of scenes from half of the episodes serve random because they weren't foreshadowed by something or anything like that. What makes the writing more sour, though, is that the status quo takes effect in half of the episodes (thank you predictability for screwing up the writing some more). And what about Mexican culture I mentioned? Well, the show didn't pay a whole lot of tribute to that very well because the writing doesn't taste anything like Mexican culture, but we at least got some episodes that have something to do with that (including the Mexican atmosphere the show uses). As the writing is generic, not everything about the writing is weak; El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera succeeds at telling its joke pretty well. Not hilarious, but they're fun and can keep me engaged throughout the episode. Not only that, but as predictable as most of the episodes show themselves, they can have some good twists and suspense. Even if that's a rare exception, it was keeps those 7 good episodes up to prove that El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera isn't just generic. Plus, to combat with the cliches, I can relate to half of the episodes of the show. Even if this show has trouble being original, it can still be something relatable, which you see why a lot of episodes are okay. My favorite aspect about the writing is that this show knows when to be fast paced. Few shows have problems with pacing, but with the action scenes, this show puts its fast pacing into the climax while not making the pacing fast all the time like where the structure starts moving. The only problem I have with the pacing is that the characters often talk too fast, but I think that's intended. As solid as the pros are, the writing is seriously nothing worth mentioning about.
Our first aspect of the series is forgettable. Don't worry because it's not bad or anything, but it's rather forgettable. The animation will spiffy some things up:
Many shows' quality is better than the writing and characters themselves, including here. The character designs successfully captures the atmosphere of Mexico and are designed to look as interesting and Mexican as possible where I can even be surprised about the show's Mexican atmosphere being half the heart of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. While there are some designs that look pretty cartoony (for example those with small eyes and elephant-like noses) that it kind of bugs me for a reason, the others look fine in their own unique way. I gotta say it here; The animation captures Mexican culture better than the writing. A fun fact I have to mention here is that The Book of Life has the same feeling as El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera with its character designs (it's because that the producer of this show, Jorge Gutierrez, worked on both projects). The colors for this show aren't that colorful, but it again goes along with the spirit of Mexico with rapid use of red, yellow and green to capture the world that is Mexico. Also, the effects in this show are also solid as well. There isn't a lot to talk about the effects, but they stand good as they are while not looking cheap. However, the quality for El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera is just ample because I can notice some problems with it; the character animation looks like the show was animated in Adobe Flash or feels like a Nickelodeon ident from 2005. I mean, the characters don't move like puppets like in Rick and Morty yet I can see that the show's trying to develop its own character animation field, but with all the panning, I think I notice something flashy about the character animation. It doesn't look bad, but more of a mix. Plus, a few of the characters voice acting can be a bit off like for example, the voice actor attempts to speak in a Latino accent like the main protagonists but it sounds more American than Mexican. So it's safe to say that the animation is pretty good while also experiencing some problems on the way like Flash-like character animation.
I think the characters sum up of how forgettable the show is:
Yeah...after a few months after watching this show, I wouldn't remember the characters in the future. I'll try to point out some positives because the negatives is what makes them forgettable; The way they're characterized adds up to the fun and charm El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera has and heck, some of them can be funny sometimes. With personalities like the characters from El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, they look like charming characters, am I right? Well, technically the characters, especially some of the villains, are one-dimensional and they lack a certain goal in mind. The writers probably forgot to write their goals. Another problem I have with the characters is that their development is stale. I mean, there are a few episodes that develops them nicely, but most of the time it comes out as stale and predictable. Same thing goes with the backstories, the aspect that gives depth and likability to the characters. I have to admit it here, the backstories El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera tell act more cliched that pretty much every single backstory that this show brings up is just predictable and makes some of the characters' characterization deteriorate and feel more generic than usual. They have charming personalities, but not when the backstories are pretty cliched. Even worse is that I can have trouble rooting for the characters or not because I thought that some of them were the good/bad guys. You want me to root for the bad guys and throw tomatoes at the good guys for what they've done. Take El Tigre for example. Yes, he does have a role-mix. Sometimes, he can be heroic like White Pantera or he can be villainous like Puma Loco. I mean, his parents are indifferent over one another, fighting each other to decide if El Tigre should be a superhero or a supervillain, but according to the premise and intro, I think El Tigre is leaning towards the good side in a majority of the episodes and this show didn't clarify enough points for him if he's part of the good side or the bad side. Another example is when Frida betrays Manny especially for fame, which is part of the "friendship deteriorates but struggles to stay strong" scenario that I see in shows like Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I don't know why she would do that, but it feels kind of wrong to ditch your friend for fame. However, unlike the 2 shows I mentioned, this show executes it better because in some episodes, Manny breaks his relationship with Frida, which actually makes sense here and more clarified than in the 2 Gumball syndrome shows. This is another reason why I may forget this show in the future due to how underwhelming these characters are.
Even though there's nothing horrible or fantastic about El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, there isn't much to remember this show for. Its underwhelming appearance with cliched and predictable writing and forgettable characters is what made this NickToon so obscure, but at least we have the Mexican atmosphere that's worth remembering about. In all, you can still watch this show as I still recommend it since it's alright (66%), but you'll probably won't find a lot special while watching this show. The typical rating a Nicktoon would get is alright, which kind of annoys me because I'm running out of space in my cartoon ruler. But even with a forgettable show like this, it is unfortunately a worse action cartoon than The X's.
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Comments: 10
GhostWriter434 [2017-11-03 05:31:20 +0000 UTC]
I still believe the show had some potential to improve if nothing else. I'm one of the people that say it's underrated but I do believe that there are certain changes that could have been made in order to make it better.
👍: 1 ⏩: 0
TheReviewer20 [2017-11-02 22:03:57 +0000 UTC]
Three things.
1. What took you so long?
2. Called it, .
3. Feeling pretty scared for The X’s rating.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
DTH-Incorproductions In reply to TheReviewer20 [2017-11-02 22:05:28 +0000 UTC]
I didn't call it! I thought he would rate it fair.......but I was close.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
TheReviewer20 In reply to DTH-Incorproductions [2017-11-03 00:04:09 +0000 UTC]
I mean I called it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
shadowgamer20 In reply to DTH-Incorproductions [2017-11-02 22:36:08 +0000 UTC]
i thought hed have rated it meh
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
DTH-Incorproductions In reply to shadowgamer20 [2017-11-02 22:40:41 +0000 UTC]
Eh..........for a show that looks like this, NAH!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
shadowgamer20 In reply to DTH-Incorproductions [2017-11-02 22:45:30 +0000 UTC]
i do like el tigre though
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
DTH-Incorproductions In reply to shadowgamer20 [2017-11-02 22:46:52 +0000 UTC]
I only watched a single episode.
I thought it was okay.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0