Annoying – I find yet ANOTHER great animated series, only to determine that it’s already been CANCELLED – argh! So just finished watching the last episode of Sym-Bionic Titan, made by one of my fave animators – Genndy Tartakovsky, you may know him for Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory or even one of the early Clone Wars animated series.

So apparently this series came out a few years ago but was ultimately cancelled after its first year of 20 episodes in part because there were no TOYS associated with it? Sometimes I really think Cartoon Network has its head up its collective TV set on this stuff?!?

This series is really well-done – it has the always incredible art and design by Scott Wills (also of Samurai Jack fame among others); it has engaging stories that while in some cases a wee bit repetitive (they do generally fight one monster a show) still move a multistory plot along in the background and have the characters actually *develop* along the way. Astute viewers will notice sly visual pop culture references hidden in most episodes or in some cases, dialogue, but ths show doesn’t go out of its way to be ‘hip’ in that respect, which is nice.

One thing that’s very different about this show vs. say, Samurai Jack, is that the violence is definitely more pronounced, definitely more anime-inspired. While in watching some extras about Samurai Jack, they talked about how they could never actually kill a ‘person’ onscreen in that show – so they slice and dice robots and robot kaiju all over the place instead – here, they definitely left that rule behind, sometimes in a big way (the large battles of the ‘Escape from Galaluna’ episode especially).

But like happened to TRON:Uprising – I guess hollywood can’t appreciate (and RENEW for another season!) quality when they see it. Hopefully Mr. Tartakovsky will keep up the great work and using the same animators and art team – amazing stuff, this was…..

Other voices:
Metacritic

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