To steal a two word paraphrased review from the movie This is Spinal Tap, Turd Jam.
Story - 2/10
The show actually has a very interesting plot, A space-time agent named Valerian goes on his first mission, and of course the first thing he does is break the first rule of time travel, “Don’t Alter Anything!” After returning from his mission, along with a girl he saved, he learns that the Earth is now gone, so the two of them must set off to find the planet, believing it’s not completely gone, just misplaced.
Sadly instead of running with this plot they add the sub story that the two are out of money and can’t repair the now damaged time machine, so now every episode is instead about them running errands in order to earn a little cash, or rather blutoks (or however it’s spelled.) This goes on and on, with each episode being mildly entertaining but also completely worthless to the overall plot. Most of the stories come straight out of bad serialized cartoons, where they’ll be stranded on an island, get amnesia, and are fooled by people left and right. Even in the world of anime, where bad serialized plots are prevalent, Time Jam out garbaged them all.
They try to tie in an evil overlord who wants to take over the galaxy, but even he just acts as a goofy side plot and not a major player in our events.
Eventually they circle back around to trying to figure out what happened to the Earth, but by then everything seems rushed and generally awful. There was no building up an ending, or great moments of suspense to really bring things home, it was just nonsense that contradicts other parts of the show and tries to make things a bit too convenient, while also being a bad reasoning for what turns out to be the real enemy. In the end they decided to go as cliche as possible, creating a fittingly garbage ending for such a garbage show.
Animation - 2/10
Now I’m not even sure where to start with the train wreck they call animation. This is one series where I can say almost every element of “art” is just awful.
I guess the worst part should come first, and thats the integration of CGI graphics into the show. Now I’ve always hated this, but it’s mostly been relegated to a moving car here or there, or maybe a fight, but this show just decided to use it everywhere. There are the moving space ships, the backgrounds and at times complete characters all just looking as out of place as possible. I can’t imagine what director or animation chief would look at the test scene and think “That looks great, lets plaster it over as many scenes as possible,” unless the series was an attempt to be the animation version of The Producer’s play, where they were just using the show as a way to embezzle money.
Things are just as bad when it comes to the traditional animation used in the series. The characters, both human-ish and otherwise, as amazingly uninspired and all appear as if the series was created in the early eighties. Along with the look of the characters, the quality often sways from basic, to drawn by someone who’s had way too much coffee.
Like everything in this show, there was a time when this series might have been amazing and groundbreaking, but that time was forty years before it was actually made, as opposed to now when animation in anime is all at a spectacular level.
Sound - 2/10
The opening/closing theme of the show, which doesn’t even last long enough to really enjoy, grew on me over time. It was created by a French musician and you can see other influences from fellow electronica artists like Daft Punk and The Prodigy. Even though it is a bit goofy, as the lyrics are basically going over the plot, I wish it was longer as it could have been a very good song.
The same can’t be said for the voices chosen for the English adaptation of the series, which just weren’t any good. All the characters have English accents, which would be okay if not for the fact the whole story surrounding our female lead is that she is from medieval France. Though maybe it’s not so bad, considering all the voice overs sound horrible and are acted with no emotion what so ever, as I can only imagine how bad it would have sounded if these rubbish artist had to do a different accent.
Minor characters aren’t much better, as they went a little too goofy on most of them, to the point they all became extremely annoying.
The music that plays throughout the series is good, only in that it appears to be stolen from old G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons. It’s pretty much the same song playing over every suspenseful moment, which doesn’t hold the same weight here, as before it was over Duke saving his soldiers and here it played when Valerian has to figure out how to tie his shoes so he can run away from a jello monster.
Characters - 1/10
The last two Earthlings in existence, the example of our kind for the whole world to see, and it ends up being these two imbeciles? I have to say the writers must really have a negative view of mankind, because Valerian and Laureline are two of the most vapid, annoying, self centered and unlikable “heroes” in anime.
Our first hero, Valerian, is initially shown as a young guy who we’re warned will screw up the world all for a pretty lady, and while sure saving Laureline was the right thing to do for someone in her time, for Valerian to risk the future over it proves his impulsive stupidity. Things don’t change that much throughout the series, as he’s prone to somewhat irrational actions that end up making things worse. He has little growth throughout the series and besides us being told “He’s the leading man,” he does little to actually prove it as each task is generally accomplished thanks to the help, or screw up, of someone else.
His partner for the next few thousand years is Laureline, a French acrobat who is written more like a teenage girl from Southern California. They made her encompass some of the worst stereotypical traits of a female. For one she’s shopping obsessed and spends all their money on clothing, and due to her being from the Eleventh century it would mean the creators believe that women are just naturally inclined to shop all day for expensive baubles. Secondly, much like imbecilic cohort, she pretends to hate the person she apparently likes and decides the best way to show affection is to bad mouth and demean that person. Just as with Valerian, there is nothing beyond the surface of her character and that doesn’t change from the start to the ending of the series.
As a pair the writers tried to make them appear to be an old married couple who bicker over everything, which was funny the first time but became annoying after the fortieth rehash of the same joke. The same can be said about how they hide their love for each other, but then keep blurting it out when it looks as if it’s the end, which happened about every other episode.
They’re not surrounded by much better, good or bad.
Their allies include the Shingouz, little creatures that start off as cute, but quickly shift to annoying, though we’re stuck with them, as they are the primary source of our duo’s jobs. They add the telepathic race of Aldebarans, who’s Princes and princess act as allies in the fight against Gork Yodol and his evil Vlagos empire, though as a whole they are again rather useless and only serve as a reason for Valarian and Laureline to travel to fancy gatherings. The final group of friends, and ones that actually play a major role in our show, and who should be the heroes if you ask me, are the members of the resistance, who do most of the work to actually disrupt the Vlagos’ attempted takeover of the universe, and who figure out how to get our two putzes time traveling again. They also added Mr. Albert, the man who invented time travel and has been essentially playing with Valerian and Laureline, under the guise of X has to happen at a certain time in order to disrupt the plans of those trying to obtain total control, though it often seems like he’s just kind of gets off on being a puppet master.
Those who want to kill our duo, and take over the world, don’t stray far from your average super villain who repeatedly fails at their singular task. Even if you know your heroes are going to succeed, you want at least that bit of doubt, where just maybe they’ll end up dead, but with such bumbling fools as adversaries it never gets there. When they change things up at the very end the villain becomes you’re cliche evil western military leader who wants to control the world, though he seems to do it in the most overly complicated way possible, especially for someone who has access to great technology.
From top to bottom this is one of the worst groupings of characters I can remember in anime, as they are almost all hopeless, annoying, have no growth and barely any redeeming qualities.
Overall - 2/10
If someone had told me this series was created around the same time as some Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Jonny Quest I would probably think a little higher of it. Same as if they said it was from the eighties along with the Transformers and G.I. Joe. But being a show from the new millennium it just doesn’t hold up. The animation isn’t good enough, the characters are cliche and unlikable and the story lines are simplistic and childish. I know these are adapted from comics that first came out in the sixties, and continued up until very recently, but those stories can’t just be copied, as they should be updated so they don’t just seem like they are repeating plots of thousands of shows before them.
They also didn’t do themselves many favors by ending the show as if it was one of a thousand Law & Order episodes, where all along it was the rich architect, military leader or politician who is the bad guy, and everyone else is just a victim of theirs.
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