Ben 10 And The Evolution Of Action Cartoons

The action cartoon genre has had a long and difficult journey over the past couple of decades. From the halcyon days of the 80s toy commercial series to the early 2000s anime boom, to the late 2010s death and return of the genre, there’s one show that can teach a lot about the genre’s journey.

Ben 10 has been a staple of Cartoon Network’s venerable stable of animated series for almost twenty years in some form or another. After five separate series, four films, countless video games, and multiple attempts at live-action adaptation, the iconic franchise informs a ton of fans’ memories of action cartoons.

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Action cartoons had their own little death and return arc recently, after a distressingly long period of bloodletting and frustrating reworks of established brands. Most people who pay attention to cartoons remember the period often best exemplified by Teen Titans Go or Thundercats Roar. A period that was marked by beloved action cartoons being canceled, then often completely broken down into a goofy comedy.

Some brands could survive. Something as big as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Spider-Man could still get a straightforward action series onto TV, but the smaller brands were forced to either end or become something else. The reasons for this change were multifaceted, from network reticence to embrace anything serialized to the ease of access to anime making the competition too strong. The modern era isn’t as friendly to the genre as the 80s or even the 90s, but it does have its standouts. Ben 10 and the journey the franchise underwent between 2005 and the modern-day maps cleanly onto the change by the genre as a whole.

In 2005, the DC Animated Universe was reaching the end of its thirteen years of producing animated series. This brand included some of the best the genre had to offer, including the still beloved Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, and Justice League: Unlimited. DC Animated series ruled over the genre, less in competition than in mutual immortality with its few peers.

Amid Justice League: Unlimited’s final season, Ben 10 was introduced to Cartoon Network’s lineup. Comic books are inextricable from Ben 10. The series was created by Man of Action, a team of four comic book writers and artists. The series feels very much like a comic book adaptation, with a monster of the week format broken up by occasional recurring villains and storylines. It ran for four seasons over three years, won an Emmy, and became a certified hit.

Ben 10’s four-season run led immediately into a follow-up series. Ben 10: Alien Force came to the same network via the same creator, but with a new art style and tone. The year of the series’ release was a very dark time for the genre. 2008 was the year that Toonami was canceled due to low ratings. Toonami was the way most people of a certain age discovered anime and that medium was the single biggest force inspiring action cartoons of the era. Almost every hit series was either anime or anime-inspired, from Dragon Ball Z to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Ben 10: Alien Force took a slightly different direction than its peers.

Ben 10: Alien Force, and its very similar follow-up Ben 10: Ultimate Alien shift from their predecessor by becoming darker in tone and more regularly embracing long-running narratives. Characters die, allies and enemies reappear regularly, the characters have had a chance to grow up with the show’s audience. These two series ran from 2008 to 2012, a sort of transitionary period for the genre. New brands were free to emerge, play with inspiration from older shows and anime, and gain new fanbases for their brief lifespans. So, Alien Force and Ultimate Alien were hugely popular despite the controversial changes to the format. What followed, unfortunately, was the beginning of the end for the medium

Ben 10: Omniverse was the first tentative step into dragging the franchise back towards a younger demographic. The series split its runtime into two parts, half a continuation of the Alien Force storyline and half a reimagining of the character at age eleven. This show began its proper run in the same year as Teen Titans Go, the series seen as the harbinger of all the bad things that happened to action cartoons. The beloved early 2000s Teen Titans series was stripped of much of what people loved about it and transformed into a comedy aimed at an even younger audience. Much like Teen Titans Go, Omniverse weakened its writing and did away with most of its serialized storytelling. Rather than try to continue the near-decade-long continuity of the franchise, by 2016, the safer bet was to reboot it all away.

The 2016 reboot, simply entitled Ben 10, ditched the character growth, writing, narrative, and art style of its predecessors. Instead, it started anew with less action and more slapstick comedy. This was the style at the time and was seen by critics as another battle lost in the fans’ desire for smartly written action animation.

For a while, this was the end of the story, and action animation seemed to be dead, save for the massive brands. But, thanks to the continuing influence of anime and the slow consumption of entertainment by streaming services, it isn’t over yet. Streaming services like Netflix create new action franchises with wild abandon, allowing the medium to hold some level of fame it once had. Even Ben 10 isn’t through yet, with an anime spin-off called Gwen 10 on its way sometime next year.

Ben 10 had a rise and fall which seemed to have little to do with the show’s quality but instead mirrored the trends and forces of the medium. All five Ben 10 series have their merits and are worth seeking out, and fans are still awaiting what else this franchise has to offer.

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