Dic?s Darkstalkers animated series

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littlem1sssunshine

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Let?s remember the American version of Darktstalkers. One of the cheesest shows I?ve ever seen, even more than SF and MK cartoons....

Funny how Dic approved a scantly clad catgirl to be the guardian of a little kid.

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The boy in the series (who had no game counterpart--he was strictly made up for the show) was a budding young wizard named Harry Grimore. A reference to another more famous Harry, perhaps?
 
That's true. I wasn't positive when Darkstalkers: TAS originally aired, but both Harrys are boy wizards who wear glasses, so you have to admit, it's an interesting coincidence.
 
It was decent, but extremely shortlived. I just remember them making 13 episodes, then repeating them over two or three seasons.
 
The Harry Potter similarity is largely coincidental. However, giving a young magician the name Harry may have actually been a nod to a famous Harry if you think about it. Perhaps a Mr. Houdini? :p

Basically, they took the Darkstalkers video game in which every character has some motivation of their own and simplified it into a very basic good vs evil situation. They also cast Felicia as the main character and gave her a boy wizard sidekick to ask questions for the audience. Placing Felicia in the main role probably made a lot of sense considering she's 1) American and 2) far less evil or self-interested than a lot of the other characters. (Kind of like how casting Guile as the main character in the SF cartoon made sense because he was both American and had a story that could be boiled down to good vs evil).

It's a rather cheesy show, but I think I would have probably eaten it up when I was about 9 or 10, because I was just crazy for monsters at that age (actually, I'm still kind of crazy for monsters).

One thing I actually liked was how Anakaris was a complete loon.
 
Problems with this show...where the heck do I begin?

1. Felicia was way hotter in the anime.

2. Dumb wizard kid.

3. The animation is horrible.

4. The plot is horrible.

5. Donovan, the main hero of the game/anime, is reduced to a random paperweight.
 
Saw this show years ago and it sucked. The kid was pretty annoying. The badguys were cheesy and so were the stories. Felicia was probably the only thing I actually did like about it. It reminded me of a lot of the bad '90s Saturday morning shows that were produced as tie-ins with videogames and other pre-existing merchandise.

The anime version of Darkstalkers (released as "Night Warriors" in the US) was a little bit better but not by much.
 
Well, as I understand it, Demitri was the main character of the first game, Donovan was the star of the second and Morrigan was the main character of the third one.

Personally though, I don't consider a lack of Donovan to be a weakness. I just don't like the character. The whole brooding holier-than-thou Dhampir monster killer thing just doesn't do anything for me. The strength of the franchise always seemed to me to be the idea of monsters fighting monsters. Better to keep the monster hunters out, in my opinion.

One thing I found curious was how they managed to adapt the concept of a succubus for kids' TV. From what I've seen, their take was for Morrigan to be sort of a demonic version of Rogue or Sauron from X-Men. She hypnotizes men and then drains their life energy by kissing them.
 
But Morrigan's characterization in everything else as the anti-heroine/free spirit was infinitely more likeable and less annoying, much like her character design.

In fact, that's the main problem with this show. Everyone is in the right somehow (except Demiti and Pyron) and they're all likeable characters with varying traits (except Pyron). The TV show boils it down to a basic Saturday morning good vs. evil concept and ruins it.
 
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