Flashback Friday: Totally Spies!
Have you ever been through that lame period in your life where you think you’re too old for excellent cartoons but still too young for crap you think is cool? It’s that time I’d like to call the “experimental phase” where you’d just check out whatever Fox Kids, WB Kids, or Cartoon Network would put out because you haven’t yet developed standards. They could be good shows or bad shows, but you would never know the difference. That is just about summed up in Totally Spies!.
Granted, I could have also spent this moment talking about Code Lyoko, Martin Mystery, or any other animated show that had French origins while airing in America. But there are some things about Totally Spies! that covers just about every range of emotion someone can feel about this period. Love it or hate it, this was a show that not only happened but lasted for a few years and then brought back for kicks. It just goes to show how weird shows can get outside of anime.
Totally Spies! has a basic plot: three teenage girls are actually spies for a secret organization known as WOOHP (World Organization Of Human Protection) that helps to save the world from evil criminals all in the midst of balancing out their high school lives. There’s the brainy Sam, the sporty but dim Alex, and the blonde Clover as the stereotypical high school girls who take on villains with the help of their mentor, the WOOHP head spy named Jerry. With the plot as simple as it is, it’s surprising how they stretched it out to six seasons and one movie of material. What’s probably more surprising is how the show’s background makes it even shallower.
If you feel old remembering this show, you’ll feel even older when you realize it was based off girl bands and pop singers like the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. That’s right, Totally Spies! was originally pitched as a show about a girl group with the hopes of capitalizing on a brand name with all the album and merchandising to go with it. When that didn’t pan out (I wonder why), they moved to the next step of the marketing channel and thought…spies. After the popularity of the Charlie’s Angels movie, the company Marathon Media (now known as Zodiak Kids Studio France) finally felt it was acceptable to put girls in an action setting and set the series into motion. If there is not at least one thing in that development that didn’t make you raise an eyebrow, you’ve at least have a higher tolerance than I do.
Really, because it is hard to escape the sense of the show being a cheap knock-off of…well a lot of things to get an audience. A show with the Charlie’s Angels vibe mixed with an anime-but-not-anime animation around a James Bond audience. And something to do with The Powerpuff Girls. I can’t be the only one who put teams of three different girls fighting evil together in my brain as a ten-year-old girl. Or a ten-year-old boy for that matter.
But that’s just the cynic in me talking about the show. It wouldn’t have garnered five seasons and a movie plus an added season years later if there wasn’t something fun in watching. The characters, though not deep, are different enough to enjoy watching them onscreen together combing Clover’s valley-girl speak with Alex’s clumsiness and Sam’s sensibility. Plus, it’s one of the few places where you can get a cross between villains that want revenge on secret organizations or just want to brainwash girls into liking a pop star. Great range, that show. Not to mention it enjoys a better level of continuity and time passing by than normal cartoons with the girls going through high school, living on their own in a villa (those lucky Beverly Hills girls), and going to college as well as reoccurring villains popping in later episodes. There’s nothing like going above and beyond the bare minimum here sometimes.
On paper, the show didn’t have too big of an impact aside from a brief spinoff and a crossover with Martin Mystery, and there’s no real reason why it should. However, when we’re talking about childhood shows, it’s not so much about how big of an impact on the world so much as an impact on yourself, despite how cheesy that sounds. It’s a show that actually crossed over male and female viewers who would both watch a show about girl spies. It gave us shows to appreciate outside the United States and Japan. Who knew that existed? It may not be as fondly remembered or as deep as Code Lyoko, which was produced by another company anyway, but it demonstrates the ridiculousness and questionable aspect of the early 2000’s.
Despite that whole marketing fiasco, the show is fun. How can you not like a show about three girls being spies with cool gadgets and bright spandex outfits? It’s The Powerpuff Girls for a slightly older audience. It’s Charlie’s Angels for a much younger audience. It was watched by boys and girls with nary a band brand in sight. It's that other show that was still not an anime no matter how you remember it. It;s up to you whether or not you'll remember it fondly or with shame.
