Martin Mystery Reveiw

Summer.

I hate summer.

Sure, you get alot of freedom, but i don't have enough brainpower to come up with my own activities to entertain myself. and when I'm bored i do some very, very bad stuff to myself.

No, nothing like that. I just start watching cartoons on youtube.
and what did i find this summer, well, Martin Mystery, a TV show produced by Marathon Productions, and was aired from 2003 to 2006, although I have no idea why it aired for so long.

Yeah, i hate this show, and yet i spent three days watching it, and if i had to go through that, I'm giving it a righteous kicking.

Martin Mystery was based off the Italian comic Martin Mystère. I have no idea if the show is a faithful adaption or not, but I don't care either.

The idea behind the show is that a mysterious organization called the Center, which responds to supernatural and extraterrestrial threats. I don't get this idea that to protect people from the supernatural, is to hide it from the public, so that when it attacks, they won't know how to protect themselves!

Anyway, the series focuses on three agents working for the Center. The three of them attend(or work in Javas case) at Torrington Academy.

Java the caveman is what you would expect, a caveman. He serves as comedic relief, via his interactions with modern things, and his Neanderthal ways. No, I have no idea where they got him. There is a episode dedicated to Javas origins, but it claims that he was cloned by an evil paleontologist for the purpose of...of...making the first Starbucks/Geico joke? However, every other episode implies that he was found frozen in ice.

The next agent is Diana Lombard, who is a goody two shoes. Despite the fact she can fight off a possessed agent with ease, in almost every episode, gets captured and needs to be rescued. However, most of these are caused by Martin being a moron.

Ah, Martin, how I loathe thee. This guy is a complete asshole. Lets see, he attempts to make out with any girl who he sees(I'm not kidding), does the worst pranks, like putting bugs in peoples food, tripping people, covering them in slime, and all the while proclaiming himself as the best agent in the world. Oh, and he blames everyone else for his screw-ups. To tell you the truth, i think the devolpers of Final fantasy 8 saw Martin and screamed, "Yes! Yes! This is the annoying character we need! And we shall call him Zell!"

There are two other characters who work for the center, Billy, a small green alien in a hover chair, and M.O.M., the head of the Center. I should mention that whenever Martin enters M.O.M.s office, he destroys a important experiment she's working on, not by accident, but on purpose. Billy stays at the Center, but he acts as the groups scientist, and for someone who has only two of three appearances, he has alot of dialogue. Wait...his name is Billy... and he talks alot... he pops up when they least expect it... Holy crap! it's Billy Mays!

So those are the characters who run around and stop supernatural and alien threats. Might as well as tell you how most episodes play out.

For season one and two, all episodes started with a short scene from the location the team will be in, right before or during the first attack of the villain, and then would show the title in classic B-horror movie style. Yeah, i love the opening. What can I say, I'm a sucker for B-movies.

The episode then shows the team at Torrington, doing something "funny", and then the Center calling, and they enter a portal to get it.

This is the first problem i have with the series. Okay, so the Center can open portals anywhere. Okay, i can buy that. And yet they have multiple bases, and helicopters. If you can teleport your agents anywhere from the world, you only need one base, and why do you need helicopters and jets? Cars and boats, yes, because they'll be needed for chasing and short ranged travel, but the why do you need vehicles to transport supplies to the Center? You can just open a portal near it and push.

Anyway, the team investigates the area, they consult the poke-, i mean, legend-dex, learn what creature there fighting(despite the fact they should have researched what legends and myths are in the area before hand), Diana gets captured, Martin comes up with a plan which some how works, the Center comes and takes the monster away, and boom, end of episode.

The third season was shark jumping time. The Center was almost never mentioned or seen, and Martian suddenly turned his dorm into a crime lab, and Torrington turned into supernatural central. Billy was given a human form, and he turned from a ok character into a incredible overused comedy relief, basically replacing Java.

Now for something that really annoys me: nothing dies. I'm serious, only in the second season do monsters die, and even then, they just dissolve, and it's implied that they could get better. How someone gets better from death, I have no idea.

Lets look at the Center, and what they do. And how much they suck at it.

The Center is supposed to capture creatures, and usually rehabilitate them, considering some are sentient or protecting their territory, and in the first season, they throw that away by showing the monsters the Center have captured in cages that just barely give them enough room to tun around. Two monsters are supposed to be trapped in a book and a box, but in one episode, there shown in a cell. Which one breaks out of. Oh yeah, the only employees shown in the Center are field agents and...people typing on computers. No guards, no one with a gun, and no one actually watching the monster cells. Guess it's no surprise that there's so many escapees.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Martin, Diana, and Java? There the Centers top agents. Yeah, a person who costs the Center millions every time he walks into M.O.M.s office, a girl who keeps on getting captured, and...well, the comedic relief.

As if this wasn't bad enough, instead of giving their agents, you know, guns, they give them watches. well, they call them U-Watches, but come on! The U-watch stores objects digitally, including a laser knife, the legend-dex, a force field generator, and a Scanner. I fail to see why the Center couldn't have given them the devices instead of the U-watch, i mean, what, pockets don't exist in Canada? Oh, right. They needed a toy to sell.

Yeah, the Center contradicts itself constantly. And if that wasn't bad enough, they treat us like we're morons, quite often telling us what the characters are doing while we can plainly see them doing it. And...the "science" behind the monsters.

First, lets talk about the monster design. It's hit and miss, mostly miss. The first episode features the boogieman, and the picture on his book looked really cool, a tall, menacing creature who was made of shadows. and what did we get? A tree monster that liked to monologue, and turned it's body into a tube of maggots, leaving it's head so it can fly. The Djini had this really squeaky female voice, and looked like a black rat that was surrounded by green smoke. they also defeat these monsters in stupid ways. the boogieman trys to tackle them, and Diana holds up the book and he falls in. The Djini forces Martin to make a wish, and his wish is that he could capture the Djini. Some were okay, like the scarecrow, who didn't look menacing, but he didn't look stupid either.

My favorite monster is also my favorite method of defeating it, The Sandman. The Center sends Martin and his team to investigate a university where people are in a coma like state. They find out that the monster behind the comas is the Sandman, a villain who forever sends people to sleep and feeds off their fears. Okay, he was kinda lame, but in the context of the series, he was badass. He was the only monster who talked that had a good voice actor. It was deep, and kinda threatening. They go into the Sandmans world to get his victims out, and when he trys to follow them when they escape through a portal, they close it on him. This is a surprisingly good idea coming from this show, putting the sandman in purgatory. This is ruined by the fact that the Sandmans arm is still alive and flailing around the room.

The "science" behind the monsters can be downright insulting. In one episode, a bacteria that devours oxygen is released in the amazon, and near the end, a giant octopus bursts out of the ground, and apparently this is the bacteria, which mutated. Yeah, bacteria and viruses do change faster then normal animals because of there ability to swap genetic code, but a giant monster? No, just...no.
This isn't even the most idiotic one. One monster, which is a giant tribble with tentacles, injects liquid nitrogen into people, which puts them into a state of suspended animation. liquid nitrogen doesn't do that, it kills people. But the worst explanation is this: Java gets his DNA manipulated to be a super caveman, and is mind controlled by...shining a laser in his eyes. Martin reverses it by shining a laser in his eyes again, but here's the best part: this reverses the genetic manipulation and makes so it can never happen again.

Almost forgot, the animation. As you can see from the pictures, this has a anime style to it, and I personally dislike it, but what i really hate about it is the change between normal style to chibi style. Whenever a charchther is doing something that is meant to be cute, or Diana and Martin fight, they turn into chibis. I...don't know. but, I want the style to remain constant.

Basically, this show sucks. If this was for kids in elementary school, then I would say this is a ok show, but this is meant for middle schoolers or high schoolers. A good show would be entertaining to both adults and kids, but noooo, kids are too stupid to know the difference between reality and TV. Look people, i was playing Doom when I was five, and grew up watching johnny quest, where people were shot on screen, and I only murder two people a year.