The Ben 10 Topic

I used to watch that show a lot when I was a kid and enjoyed it loads. I liked the Alien Swarm movie because it was pretty dark for Ben 10. My favourite alien has got to be Ben mummy.

That was one of my faveorite shows when I was younger-mainly because it was one of the only shows on Cartoon Network my parents would actually let me watch :stuck_out_tongue:

I loved the original one, Alien Force and Ultimate alien. I have never seen Omniverse, to be honest, but I do like the art style. And since someone who worked on Teen Titans and Transformers animated worked on this one, so I ant to check it out.

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I recently finished Omniverse, actually

I can confirm itā€™s good, but makes some questionable choices.

my biggest issue is that I think they made Ben too like he was in the original series, like none of the growth mattered. I think they couldā€™ve toned it down is all

additionally, the Omnitrix was even buggier and lasted less time than it did in the original series, which was bothersome IMO.

On the other hand, though, I really liked just about everything else, like all the new characters

Rook was good, I actually liked Blukic and Driba, and Ester was cool while she was around

I was disappointed that they forced in the relationship with Kai though, since she really only showed up in one episode of the original series, and seems like a pointless throwback.

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I loved the first 3 when I was younger but when Omniverse came (even when I was younger) ā€¦

I donā€™t even need to say it.

The Final series should have been the end of the ruinationā€¦at least do Ben 10 000 while you did so many Ben versions at this point.

As you wish :stuck_out_tongue:

DING-DING!

Watch as I bring this topic back from the dead to answer the age old question: did everything past the original series suck?

In this corner you have some idiot on the internet who canā€™t let go of his childhood, and in the other corner you have the man, the myth, and legend, the TTV community member with the most character development in my humble opinion seriously respect to you man: TOA VLADIN!

And, because Iā€™m a good sport, I will also let you take the first swing :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ben 10 is extremely nostalgic for me, as at one point the first three serieses were broadcasted in the same time.
A lot of time has passed since I last watched it, but this is my opinion:
Original: Fabulous
Second one: boring, but charming
Third one: awesome, captivating, especially the Agregor arc.
Omniverse: Love it
Reboot: Countless galons of wasted potential from what I saw so far

Wait that is meā€¦
Reads the rest
Oh.
That description really fits me tho.

Awww thanks man.
Also character development? Did I had a plot arc?:stuck_out_tongue:

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We all did man, we all did :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway

An accurate assessment. In my humble opinion. Ben 10 is one of the greatest cartoons Iā€™ve ever watched, up there with the likes of Avatar: the Last Airbender, Teen Titans, and Gravity Falls. Itā€™s a gloriously original property thatā€™s bursting at the seams with creative ideas (Man of Action is fantastic with this stuff, the same can be said for Generator Rex, another show they helped create, and while Iā€™ve never watched the Secret Saturdays, what Iā€™ve seen indicates that itā€™s in much the same boat), to the point where it never really feels stale. There are definitely some bizarre episodes, but there are very few episodes that fail to make an impact one way or the other.
The tone is also the most solid in the whole franchise, in my opinion. It isnā€™t afraid to be silly, but itā€™s mature exactly when it needs to be, it pushes the boundaries a little. Not to mention the moral lessons woven into many of the episodes. There are some genuinely terrifying moments too: freaky clowns is whatever, but the Limax? Yeesh :stuck_out_tongue:
Ben grows so much throughout the show. He can be selfish, he can be childish, but itā€™s never malicious, and you can tell that heā€™s a hero at heart. Seeing him become that hero is honestly inspiring, and it wouldnā€™t be the same without those bumps in the road.
Not only do you have aliens, but also magic, monsters and metahumans alike - whatā€™s not to love? That air of mystery it gave off is honestly amazing.
Not to mention, it also was responsible for one of the best movies that the franchise got: the secret of the omnitrix. It just felt like an extended episode of the show, with the scope broadened, the stakes heightened, and the mythos deepened. Absolutely incredible.

this era also gave us race against time but we donā€™t talk about that

Alien Forceā€¦ I have mixed feelings on Alien Force. The premise is fantastic. You have an older cast no longer on summer vacation. You have the redemption of Kevin, whoā€™s really quite a tragic character, and an alien invasion which is up to these kids to stop. Youā€™ve got a new look, a new roster, everything. The concept is fun, and fresh.

The execution however, wasā€¦ lacking.

Most of the aliens in the lineup are pretty awful, either ripping elements wholesale from their predecessors or just not feeling anywhere near as inspired, especially in regards to their designs. Also Alien X is stupidly OP and I hate it. The writing is pretty weak, barring a few standout episodes like Paradox and Alone Together. Season 3 just gives up the status quo completely and awkwardly meanders from story to story before finally wrapping up with a half-baked conclusion.

But thatā€™s not the worst of it. No, letā€™s look at our main cast.

Ben, barring a few wobbles and some really cheesy lines early on ā€œtHe OmNiTRiX mAdE mE fEeL sPeCiALā€, is pretty great. Yuri Lowenthal works perfectly as a teen Ben voice.

The other two are the problem.

Gwen was utterly butchered as a character. Gone is the firey, smartmouthed redhead who was always the brains to Benā€™s brawn, because they wanted to make the cast a power trio and Kevin would obviously be the lancer. Gwen does not work as the heart, itā€™s a complete 180 of her character which wasnā€™t given time to play out. Obviously they wouldnā€™t fight as much anymore, but this character just isnā€™t Gwen. Her magic being retconned as alien ancestry is also total bull and undermines one of her greater achievements in the previous show.

But if weā€™re talking about retcons, I havenā€™t even started on Kevin.

Kevin, hoooo boy, where do I even start? I mean, obviously his powers come from alien ancestry, because of course they do, but thatā€™s not my main problem. No longer is he a kid who was essentially made unwelcome in his home and maybe even abused for something he had no control over, made angry and bitter at the world, and driven to use his powers for personal gain - a twisted mirror of what Ben mightā€™ve become if he didnā€™t have strong role models in his life like Grandpa Max. No, now heā€™s just a half-alien who absorbed too much electricity, went mad, accidentally destroyed his house, and ran away because he thought his parents hated him. And this is the more mature show, yeah? Give me a break.

Kevinā€™s redemption arc is so rushed it isnā€™t even funny - they pretty much just let him join the crew at first for mutual benefit and then just because, and heā€™s kind of a jerk but Gwen also suddenly has a crush on him for some reason. Yeah, isnā€™t this the same guy that has attacked you over and over again out of spite? No bad blood at all? Okay, cool.

Also, nitpicky sidenote: one of the half aliens is a pyronite. Yā€™know, those guys that are constantly on fire? How does that even- how did they- wouldnā€™t the human in that situation just get irreparably burned?

Bah, whatever.

Ignoring that nonsense, the show is harmless. Well, excluding Season 3, that was a disaster no matter how you look at it.

Deep breath.

Okay, now weā€™re in for the long haul bois.

Take everything I already said about the previous one. Now make it 10 times worse lol geddit - thatā€™s Ultimate Alien.

I cannot describe to you how much I despise this show. I donā€™t hate the reboot, the reboot makes me mildly depressed. THIS makes me angry. This show is what made me realise the franchise had hit rock bottom.

Let me sell it to you this way, Iā€™m going to describe an alien to you:
Heā€™s blue and black in coloration, with the omnitrix located on his chest. He isnā€™t particularly strong, but he is very fast, so fast that heā€™s a blur, with fantastic reflexes and agility to boot.

No, Iā€™m not talking about XLR8.

Meet Fasttrack.

I donā€™t like Fasttrack, in fact, Fasttrack is probably the worst alien in the entire franchise and believe me, Omniverse has some good contenders too. He signifies the beginning of what I like to call ā€œthe ripoff eraā€. Sure, Swampfire is basically Wildvine and Heatblast together, and Echo Echo ironically copied Dittoā€™s ability to clone but more OP because one clone dying doesnā€™t kill them all, allowing an endless clone army equipped with sonic screams, good job guys, but this was a time of such creative bankruptcy that it utterly dwarfed these petty attempts.
The aliens produced in this era have nothing of merit, they add nothing to roster other than the simple fact that the roster now has more horribly designed aliens.

Who seriously asked for any of these? Eatle?

Oh wow, he eats stuff, and then he can shoot lasers! I wonder where they got that crazy idea from.
(Iā€™m also convinced that they ripped the idea for the design from one of the NRG concepts, all of which were better than the design we got by the way, but that may just be a coincidence)

The only exception to this was Clockwork, who only exists because their crappy Ben 10,000 needed an alien with time powers to fight Eon and believe me Iā€™ll get to Ultimate Ben in a minute

The worst part is that the first half of ultimate alien was a step in the right direction: the andromeda five were all pretty solid. A fairly unique set of powers (excluding AmpFibian because of course we need another electric alien - cool design though), with fairly decent designs across the board? We were getting somewhere. And then justā€¦ sigh.

I also have nothing to say in regards to the Ultimate Forms, theyā€™re largely lazy OC repaints excluding like 3 of the grand total 8 designs over the entire show (Echo Echo is literally the only one I can stand). They have next to no bearing on the overarching plot (making the distinction between it and Alien Force essentially arbitrary) and aside from selling more toys I start to wonder why they bothered in the first place.

Speaking of, that overarching plot is hardly much to ride home about either. The setup is decent, each episode revolving around a member of the andromeda five was pretty good, and their utter terror in the face of Aggregor leads them to various different extremes, butā€¦ when we actually meet him, heā€™sā€¦ bland. Bland as wet cardboard. Heā€™s about as cookie cutter a villain as you can get. Mustache-twirling, has no real discernible motivation or engaging personality beyond ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU (translatorā€™s note: keikaku means plan), and justā€¦ sucks. He really isnā€™t that intimidating before or after his super megazord powerup - he was only really scary in any way because of the Jaws effect.

Anyway after he powers up by absorbing and killing the andromeda five (which doesnā€™t last of course because this is the dark and mature show and we canā€™t have permanent character death in our dark and mature show whatā€™re you talking about) it just devolves into a massive fetch quest for an alien x baby because they are literal gods and what the hell is this show anymore. So anyway he doesnā€™t succeed obviously because Kevin sacrifices himself kinda by going kevin e monster again like the old show except he might as well have sacrificed himself for real because this looks absolutely awful:

Ben for some reason thinks the only solution is to kill him, his best friend at this point, despite the fact that he has fricken alien x and all he needs to do is get the other key for the ultimatrix from kevin by knocking him out, turn alien x and make those stupid floating heads fix his friend - this is why you donā€™t introduce somebody like alien x into your plot, once it gets past a certain point the annoying hangups become irrelevant because the literal universe is at stake, or one of your best friends, or whatever. Itā€™s fricken stupid.

Gwen obviously doesnā€™t agree, and when she stands in his way and says ā€œno, donā€™t kill my boyfriendā€, he curbstomps her with way big and proceeds to go after him anyway

Which rolls quite nicely into my next point: Ben is a jerk now. Well, he seesaws back and forth, but on this occasion and many others he is. You could empathise with his situation here a bit if you forget alien x exists, but Iā€™ve got another one for you. Itā€™s one of the earliest episodes in the show, like two or three or something.

Julie is playing at this big tennis match and she wants Ben to be there for her because heā€™s her boyfriend and he wants to support her, right? Well, thereā€™s some forever knight stuff with a museum kevinā€™s dealing with which is important. But also, a new sumo slammers movie is coming out that Ben really wants to see. What is Ben to do? Go help with the most important thing and apologise to Julie in advance? Love drama naturally spews from that?

No, donā€™t be ridiculous, that would imply Ben is a good person anymore. No, instead he abuses his powers. He turns into Echo Echo, splits into three, and then switches those clones back to Ben again. For some reason they have different aspects of his personality because tropes: the jerky one, the kind/pacifist one, and theā€¦ just sorta normal one, okay. As you can imagine, the jerky one goes to Julieā€™s game and ruins it for her, the pacifist goes to help kevin and is no help at all, and the normal one gets to enjoy the sumo slammers movie with no idea that his selfish antics have just screwed up everything.

In the aftermath, Julie is obviously furious with him, and Iā€™m kind of surprised she didnā€™t just break up with him on the spot. No matter how horrid Ben behaved in the original show at times, it was under the assumption that he was a young child saddled with abilities and responsibilities far beyond what most children his age should be expected to cope with. This is not the behaviour of a 16 year old whoā€™s supposed to have his act the tiniest bit together. Itā€™s downright repulsive.

It genuinely boggles my mind how a characterā€™s development can regress to such a degree. People attribute it to Omniverse, but it was already pretty bad before. At least Ben was the tiniest bit likeable in that show, Ultimate Alien just made me want to bash his head in.

I barely remember most of the show beyond the first season, I was basically sleeping through it at that point. Thereā€™s a few moments I remember like Ben almost committing a not-so-good when the prototype to the Omnitrix, the Unitrix, scanned Gwenā€™s DNA on arrival and switched its appearance to match going by Eunice. Thatā€¦ we donā€™t talk about that.

Most of it was really filler though, including one episode that was literally about garbage. Iā€™m not joking.

Anyway, Ultimate Ben. This was justā€¦ Ben being a jerk, the horribly uninspired designs, Fasttrack, the dull plot - the Ultimate Ben episode was the straw that broke the camelā€™s back. It reintroduced Eon, the villain from the direct to dvd flop Race Against Time. Itā€™s an objectively terrible movie: the CGI is horrendous, the acting is poor, the script is pretty weak and the villain is generic - but itā€™s nostalgic. I used to watch this stupid thing all the time, and even now itā€™s kind of fun to just watch it ironically and laugh at how stupid it is at times. Certainly was more entertaining than Alien Swarm, which sucked all the charm out of a show that already had less charm than its predecessor.

They retconned Race Against Time out of the canon, and instead had it take place in a similar but different alternate timeline, despite it causing basically no harm to canon. The only things I can really think of are maybe the Plumbers background stuff (which is the fault of Alien Force for retconning it, by the way (you sensing a pattern here?), the original series explicitly established it as an earth-based organisation, probably set up by the government, that also forayed into space at times), the eccentricity of Benā€™s parents, and Eon being in the watch. Ghostfreak in his true form was also in the watch again as of the end of his story arc and it was never brought up again either, so that last one hardly matters. And then I guess Alien Swarm gets to stay because nanomech carried over (though because whoever wrote that movie didnā€™t know what he was doing nanomech is actually half human and half nanochip). But oh well I guess.

Then Ben 10,000 is there and fighting him and stuff, amazing, except he has the actual worst form I have ever had explained to me: Ultimate Ben.

He can stay as Ben, and look pretty much normal aside from some potential changes to size and inconsistently his shape depending on the form, and switch between and access the powers of any alien at will. He can be any alien he wants, by becoming none of them.

I canā€™t even begin to imagine how one so drastically fails to understand the entire appeal of the show theyā€™re writing for, but they did, and it was terrible. So, so terrible. Slow clap.

Anything elseā€¦ oh yeah, the final storyline. This one was justā€¦ so they tried to do PG lovecraft. It didnā€™t work. It was contrived and stupid and the writers obviously didnā€™t understand the sheer potential they were wasting when they started throwing around terms like ā€œreality warpingā€ - just please stop. Please.

And then the show ended and Ben got the new watch.

I canā€™t be bothered to write the Omniverse one yet after spending literally two hours writing this, so Iā€™ll get back to you later on that front, but this should be enough to chew on for now :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah, I was loving it, even if I was too young for it.

I loved almost all of them.

Maybe the other half was fireproof.

I must disagree, at least for tge first half.

This waa when I trurly got invested into the franchise.

Yeah, I didnā€™t like him either.
he looks like a furry

The turtle, the electric ray, tge yellow armadillo, tge red one with water, tge furnace.
Tgey are cool.

Yes, this angeredme. Tgat two parter before tge show mademe so hyped it compared to Endgame.

This.

Not to mention that Way Big X waa looking like his normal self with pijamas.

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ā€¦?

Can you come back to me when you find a fireproof human? Okay thanks :stuck_out_tongue:

They were also introduced before the ā€œripoff eraā€ I described. I donā€™t exactly care for them myself, but I certainly donā€™t hate them.

Have you got anything to refute the reasons I listed? Or is this just going to have to be an agree to disagree situation?

Right, with those out of the way Iā€™d like to present my reviews of Omniverse, and also the reboot show. But I want to give a little context to my thoughts on Omniverse and how they changed over time, because they were largely shaped by what we were putting up with beforehand.

After the end of Ultimate Alien I had pretty much given up on Ben 10 as a whole. It crushed me that a franchise that used to be full of such potential, creativity and charm had just been watered down into this bland, unappealing mess of a show that wasnā€™t even awful (though it definitely was awful at points) as it was painfully bland and uninteresting to me. A show that time and again disrespected its roots by trampling on the continuity that preceded it and making it a moment of excitement to even catch a glimpse of one of the original aliens that started the whole series off in the first place - and even then their designs were usually simplified because of this godawful artstyle:

But believe it or not, Wildmutt was one of the lucky ones. Not only did he have a prominent role in one of the episodes, he actually got an Ultimate Form, one of eight in the entire show! Why they gave it to Wildmutt of all people is still a mystery to me to this day.

Meanwhile, aliens like XLR8 (he appeared once, in the Generator Rex crossover, for five seconds. Iā€™m not joking.) and Grey Matter were forgotten about in favour of idiots like Fasttrack and Jury Rigg. The only reason they were even acknowledged to exist, is because they were ironically a part of the long line of alien forms featured in the series intro (though apparently they werenā€™t unlocked until the crappy Ben 10,000 did it forā€¦ some reason).

I was tired of these insults to the characters, I was tired of the ā€œmuh dramaā€ that was horribly written and boring to watch, and I was tired of this bloody artstyle.

Then Omniverse was announced. I was a bit confused at first, especially with the 11-year-old Ben stuff, but then I was excited. So excited, because this seemed like a new direction, something that would bring the franchise back to its roots and forget that UAF ever happened. We had brand new aliens that actually looked inspired again. I mean we got another electric one, but he looked cool, he looked like a classic alien! Probably because he was. And then there were completely new ones like Crashhopper, or Gravattack, orā€¦ Bloxxā€¦ yeah most of the new ones were kind of bad to be perfectly honest with you, but they started okay at least.

We had pretty much every alien completely overhauled in this new artstyle, making them feel fresh and vibrant and inspired again:

(they even brought Way Big back to his classic design!):

Were there some horrid designs? Oh yeah, there were some bad ones:

(genuinely donā€™t know what they were thinking with this one)

But regardless of some of their designs beingā€¦ weak, everyone was here, everyone got a fair share of the limelight. Old favourites were brought back after years of just being ignored. The only four aliens from the older shows that never appeared in Omniverse were Jetray, Spitter, Chamalien (probably because they just didnā€™t get around to them: they had over 50 aliens at that point), and Fasttrack: because Derrick hates him just as much as I do:

I actually like Rook as a foil for Ben, too, heā€™s a fun character, and their friendship over the course of the series feels genuine. All the nods and references to previous continuity are great, even stuff that wasnā€™t in the shows, like this:

These beasts of burden on Khoros, the home planet of Four Arms, are a reference to a mount Four Arms was given in the original seriesā€™ toyline. This stuff was great.

The scope was expanded to a ridiculous degree: we actually got to explore this universe we kept getting told about, and not just as a pit-stop on a massive fetch-quest glares at Ultimate Alien. We even started to show off alternate universes and crazy crap like that. Sure, most of them were kind of generic, but it was pretty cool as an idea. It actually felt like the same show again, sometimes. Not to mention expanding on the Omnitrix concept with the Nemetrix (I only think itā€™s a shame that we didnā€™t see more of it).

I loved it, to begin with, it felt like Ben 10 was back. Howeverā€¦ cracks started to show. The first major warning signs were Blukic and Driba. These guys were extremely annoying. It only got worse when they got their own dedicated episode. Apparently the showrunner loved it so much that he asked for more, and so they got even more focus, and were annoying as hell.

Sometimes the show was pretty funny, but other times it was obnoxious, especially in the filler episodes and a lot of the new characters they introduced, and the show really struggled when it came to doing anything serious. It just feltā€¦ ehā€¦ The big story arcs werenā€™t that entertaining beyond the first one with Khyber. And while a lot of the ideas were cool (and others were really dumb: okay Alien X just doesnā€™t have any limitation now, okay there goes all dramatic tension), a lot of the potential went untapped.

The continuity lockout was pretty bad at points too, because it was drawing from everything (even the Incurseans, which appeared in like two episodes beforehand, and here got a whole story-arc to themselves), people who hadnā€™t necessarily kept up with everything Ben 10 could likely get confused at times.

Also: they ruined Toepick and Atomix.

Toepick is a walking one-trick pony who doesnā€™t even fit his original description in Ken 10, and Atomix?

What is this. What the hell is this.

This is the only Atomix for me.

They did manage to make the Ultimate Aliens cool though, by some miracle :stuck_out_tongue:

But yeah, the formulas got old very fast, and this show went on for 80 episodes. By the time we got to stuff like ā€œhey look hereā€™s Ken from the future and now he has to make sure Ben and Kai get together so he doesnā€™t stop existingā€ I was just done. It also tried to patch up continuity with retcons of the retcons, but it just became even more convoluted than it already was and they shouldā€™ve just left it alone. I appreciate the attempt, but it was the equivalent of trying to fix a broken clock with a sledgehammer.

I donā€™t hate it (I hate aspects of it, but I donā€™t hate it as a whole), but it couldā€™ve been much better, all things considered.

Now for the reboot.

Itā€™s justā€¦ meh. The designs are all passable, though I still wonder why on earth they did away with the visual cohesion of having the clothing of every alien be black and white, or black and lime green or whatever the hell heā€™s wearing now. I donā€™t care for the artstyle but itā€™s inoffensive: the colours pop and the shapes are easy on the eyes and more importantly are easy to animate. They butchered Stinkfly so as to be unrecognisable but I understand why. I wish they couldā€™ve just picked Upchuck or somebody instead and gone for Heatblast as the main flying alien.

Overflow can go die though, especially for getting my hopes up.

This is Overflow:

This is Waterhazard with a new coat of paint which continues to add weirdly tech-like elements into aliens where it doesnā€™t belong and it continuously annoys me:

Back when it came out I watched the first two episodes and gave up partway through because it was so obnoxious that I couldnā€™t stand it. I forgot about it for like a year and a half, and then randomly browsing the internet made me stumble on some Ben 10 wiki pages that made me go ā€œWait what?ā€ and then I decided to watch it because of morbid curiosity.

There are some decent ideas in there, Michael Morningstarā€™s rebooted version could be really interesting in a better-written show. But most of it is squandered by the fact that they only have 11 minute episodes. You cannot get anything decent out of 11 minutes. Itā€™s just rushed and stupid, you can barely get a concept off the ground before you have to put it to bed again. And even if it is wrapped up decently by the end, it usually isnā€™t an idea with any real merit anyway.

The multi-part episodes is where the show really shines. Itā€™s where it actually feels like a TV show, because they have time to establish anything. I might just be biased because at that point Iā€™d largely been stuck with pretty much nothing for a whole season, but it was still worth it IMO. Finally having Ben turn into Vilgax, even if it was only briefly, was cool. Also Upgrade sacrificing himself to update the watch wasā€¦ weird. It just kind of happens and they donā€™t really address it in the actual story. It sounded a lot better on the wiki page :stuck_out_tongue:

They also brought back Humungousaur and Rath because of course they did, and apparently you can only have 10 aliens at a time in the watch now? Oof. I was watching around the time season 2 had just started and got to when Shock Rock (ANOTHER electric alien by the way) shows up, and I never really cared to continue tbh. Apparently thereā€™s Kevin with an evil Omnitrix now though, so thatā€™sā€¦ a thing.

Eh.

Again, I donā€™t hate it, I just feel like a lot of its potential just canā€™t be realised because of the stupid constraints placed on it, mainly the runtime. The cast is solid, the plot can be engaging at times and the aliens are still pretty fun all things considered. Not all the jokes land, and again, really donā€™t care for the artstyle, but itā€™s not the worst thing in the world. It actually looks like itā€™s trying some different stuff too from what Iā€™ve seen, which is nice.

I probably wonā€™t get back to watching anytime soon, but at least the IP is still alive and well I guess. Itā€™s been going strong for 3 seasons now and thereā€™s even a spinoff with Kevin thatā€™s apparently in the works. Who knows? Maybe itā€™ll reboot again someday and become a long-lasting franchise?

Closing thoughts:

Original Series: Fantastic
Alien Force: Stupid retcons, but an okay show on its own merits
Ultimate Alien: Actual pondscum
Omniverse: Means well, but kind of gets old
Reboot: Has potential, but a lot of stuff is holding it back

2 Likes

Solid write-up man.

One thing that Iā€™ve always wondered: why do some fans have a problem with certain alien designs? Iā€™m a graphic design major with an interest in character design and Iā€™m not seeing what everyone gets worked up about. Care to enlighten me?

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For me at least, itā€™s largely a matter of comparison.

The original series set a very distinct aesthetic for its aliens:

Slimy, freaky, fast and strong, and every shape and size. They were all very visually distinct from each other, and had a wide array of powers to match.

The alien force lot, in the way of design, certainly werenā€™t horrible, butā€¦

They had a different thing going on. When they were humanoid, it was usually a bit more typical. There was less detailing and greebling andā€¦ weird stuff. At least comparatively. Itā€™s probably just nostalgia talking, but a lot of them just lookā€¦ simpler to me. It was also a tad annoying as starting with these guys, they started to tread old ground a fair amount, what with Chromastoneā€™s look borrowing from Diamondhead, and the powersets of aliens like Swampfire (heatblast + wildvine), Big Chill (Ghostfreak + Arctiguana) and Echo Echo (Ditto + Blitzwolfer- aka his actual name Benwolf, ree).

I like the idea with Brainstorm though, and Echo Echo looks pretty cool. I donā€™t really have anything against Goop, but eh. Spidermonkey and Humungousaur I like as ideas, but I feel like the execution couldā€™ve been much cooler. Spidermonkey has much more monkey than spider, and Humungousaur missed a great opportunity to just be a massive amalgamation of a bunch of different cool dinosaurs.

Also Jetray looks fricken stupid donā€™t @ me. I never cared for that weird crest on his face and the wide mouth, and the wing/fin flaps under his arms have always bothered me for some reason.

I have nothing against these five really.

Armodrillo is okay, though the weird tech additions kind of donā€™t make sense to me, same with NRG and his containment suit - what decides what clothing and equipment gets stored in the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix? It starts raising weird questions like surely by that same logic Ripjaws should have a water suit so he can go around on land.

I also prefer a lot of NRGā€™s concept designs to the final product:

Itā€™s literally the blandest design you couldā€™ve chosen from the lot.

Terraspin is also fine, though I personally find the spinning wind thing he can do with his arms pretty odd. Where does that third one come from? How can they spin 180 degrees over and over? I know itā€™s fiction, but itā€™s a little distracting :stuck_out_tongue:

AmpFibian is cool, I love the design and the colour scheme, I was just sick to death of aliens with electricity powers at this point. We already had three by then, and they kept making more after that too.

Water Hazard is great too, though Iā€™m honestly a bit spoiled when it comes to water aliens:

The other ones, howeverā€¦

What is this thing and why does it exist, it looks unfinished.

When I first saw this toy I genuinely thought it was a chinese knockoff. It just doesnā€™t look right. You see what I mean, right?

Ugh.

You get the idea.

When it came to Omniverse, it was usually a case of getting sick of the quirks of Derrick J Wyattā€™s style: big chins and big chests. It got grating for me after a while, particularly with the likes of Atomix.

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The Alien Force guys were actually my introduction to Ben 10 (through the LEGO sets) so they have a degree of nostalgia for me. I quite like Swampfire and Big Chill. Totally agree about them being derivative though.

The white/black is certainly a really strong unifying design element. Helps to sell the transformation power a bit more too. [quote=ā€œTheMightyObsidianDude, post:25, topic:15747ā€]
What is this thing and why does it exist, it looks unfinished.
[/quote]

What about it is unfinished? Itā€™s got pretty well-defined musculature and facial features.

That mouth is very odd.

Overall, I see some of that youā€™re saying. But I think I just donā€™t yet have the emotional investment in these guys to formulate complex opinions. That being said, I have very similar polarized feelings about armor permutations in the Halo games, so I totally get where youā€™re coming from.

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Itā€™s largely the fact that almost the whole of its body aside from the eyes, Omnitrix, and the lines that break it up are one colour, with its corresponding shade colour. It just looks bare and weird to me. It also somehow looks even more disconcertingly naked but without genitalia than pretty much any other alien I can think of and I canā€™t pinpoint exactly why.

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I am sure a Pyronite is fireproof himself. Maybe the other half shared this ability.

Again, years passed since I last saw any episode of the show. I will talk without basis a lot.
Well, unless you consider nostalgia a basis.
I just remember really liking the Agregor line, till the point in which Agregor actually absorbs those dudes. Aster that I remember my hype slowly cooling off, but I was still up for the show.

Personally, at that time I was too young to think critiquely.

Hey, slow down.
I agree that the original one is superior, but the new one was also pretty good, or maybe at least OK, but certainly not godawful.

I remember being outraged. Here I didnā€™t like the artstyle, although I got used to it, and I find it awesome now, one of my favourites. Ben was not lookingā€¦ Ben to me. I was detesting Rook not only because he looked just weird to me, but also because of the name. He seemed to be an 80s punk (it doesnā€™t help that at that time I was barely knowing any English and instead of Rook I was reading something like Rock or Ro-ohk). And then there was the lego dude.

Ooooh! Loved those two.

At first I was confused by this -like how does it work?- but then I realised how much I like it.

Now here is my take. You might have observed that for the other three I only said things like ā€œItā€™s coolā€ or ā€œItā€™s fineā€, that is because I donā€™t really have any truly fond memories with them. The very first Ben 10 episode I have ever seen was the one of the second series when the which chick turned Kevin into her slave boyfriend.
Iā€¦ had mixed feelings about it. Itā€™s also worth to point out that I saw it for the first time while I was at the end of the kindergarten.
However, all the little boys around me seemed to love Ben 10, and so a while later I decided to give it a shot. I really liked those three serieses, but that something that would make me admit that I trurly love the franchise was missing. Sure, I was watching it as often as possible, and I was begging my parents (I was still in primary school, OK?) to buy me as many toys as possible. However my collection was a joke compared to my other collections likeā€¦ Hero Factory, Gormiti, Bakugan and watever else was trending for kids my age at that time.
And then Omniverse came in. I was older at that point, and I was kinda able to separate Samurai Jack tiers of Izzyā€™s Way Home tiers. I instantly loved this series, I just did. It was too awesome (this is how Romanian pre-teens were talking back then). I enjoyed every single episode and for a while I dared to call it my favourite show ever (obviously that changed when I found masterpieces as Bionicle, Regular Show, Adventure Time (till the halfway point) and, of course, my favourite two shows ever: Beast Wars and Gravity Falls; Omniverse canā€™t even compare to them). Obviously my hype slowly died out as the series progressed, and as a certain show that must not be named started to eclipse everysingle other show that was at that time on CN (Iā€™mā€¦ Iā€™m really dissapointed of that version of me).
Looking back, maybe I am not old enough to feel as nostalgic for Omniverse as I feel for other things. However, I will never deny what big of a role it had on me. It was the first real show that started shaping me into what I am now, and I will be forever grateful for that.

Uuuuugggggghhhhh
When I saw the first episode a few years back, I was really trying to lie myself into thinking that itā€™s good.
This is exactly why I completely abandoned it.

Yes, this I admit: modern shows are so much easier to animate, but they are laaaaaazeeeeeeyyyy.

Why? I am OK with it, but Stinkfly will forever be aā€¦ stinky fly for me.

Why? Isnā€™t he supposed to be the reboot version of that guy from the Andromeda Five?

Oh, wait no.
Where do you get these art designs? I never saw them before.

Exactly! Are they aliens? Are they robots? Are they Bionicles?

I had the exact same moment.
The only difference is that I still donā€™t watch it.

By the way, in Romania, in the original series, Upgrade was a she.
His voice was pretty feminine.
Just a fun fact.

I mean, itā€™s extremely subjective. I personally like a lot of them.

Yeah but itā€™sā€¦
Thatā€™s not Ben 10.

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Obviously a Pyronite is fireproof, theyā€™re made of fire. I fail to understand how this makes their theoretical human partner fireproof as well. People as a rule arenā€™t fireproof.

It was certainly the better part of the series, but as far as Iā€™m concerned it rapidly dropped in quality from there.

It just became offensively bland in comparison to me, especially with what they did to preexisting aliens:



(Like we needed any further indication where they nicked the idea from)

As well as numerous other examples Iā€™ve already listed in this topic. Itā€™s probably a perfectly presentable artstyle by any decent standards, but by how much Iā€™ve seen them cut corners:

And avoid having to draw more complicated shading and backgrounds by keeping it at night most of the time, simplify or butcher previous designs and produce (especially in the later stages) horrid excuses for designs of their own, among other things, I am just done with this artstyle. Iā€™m sick of seeing it, Iā€™m sick of talking about it, and so thatā€™s all Iā€™m going to say on the matter. If you want an artstyle in that vein done well IMO: go watch Generator Rex, itā€™s absolutely gorgeous at times.

I can see that, it definitely took me aback at first for sure :stuck_out_tongue:

I still think itā€™s a bit crude now, especially in the background department, but it does have its merits.

We donā€™t talk about Bloxx :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh yeah, forgot they did Charmcaster too, manā€¦ Nope! Nope, not talking about the artstyle anymore, moving on.

Hey man, no shame, I was doing the exact same with the original series toys (and the alien force ones too, for that matter) :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey man, respect :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh yeah, Iā€™m with you on that front too :stuck_out_tongue:

The original Stinkfly design was famously a nightmare for both the designer himself (Dave Johnson, the holy father of most of the original series designs you would know and love), and the animators. Stinkfly was supposed to be much moreā€¦ insectoid:

But obviously this would never fly (hah!) because it would scare the everliving crap out of the kids watching it, only the bad aliens are allowed to give them nightmares! :stuck_out_tongue:

This eventually lead to a design that Johnson hated because it didnā€™t look how heā€™d planned it to, and the animators hated because it had so many annoying-to-draw moving parts. With the reboot they had the opportunity to nuke this cumbersome design completely and go full humanoid because itā€™s the easiest to do, lazy as it is.

Ohohohoho boy, today is your lucky day my dude. Allow me to introduce you to the weird and wonderful world of fanmade aliens! :stuck_out_tongue:

Fandoms are rather notorious for their original character donut steals, and while thereā€™s a fair amount of that nonsense here too:


shudders

Thereā€™s also a much better use of the fandomā€™s time, because Ben 10 has a very simple way of adding new characters without making them cringey self-insert Mary Sues which already have a precedent for original powers and designs: new Omnitrix aliens.

One of the artists I knew the most as a kid for these designs was kjmarch (who also used to go by firststartman apparently, though I donā€™t know when or why he changed it, the pictures are still up on his deviantart):

Though he was far from the only one. Many of his works were actually commissions from the other, original creators who were artists in their own right, the community was pretty chill like that.

Another artist I also vaguely followed was Illuminate01, though the versions of his works I remember are much older and heā€™s taken them down from his deviantart account himself so many have been lost to the aether. Hereā€™s some stuff anyway though:

As you can see, alien designs do pass around a bit.

Another notable one for some really cool aliens is this dude called 4elementGURU:

But even thatā€™s barely scratching the surface. Thereā€™s so much out there to explore, and itā€™s quite possibly the thing I love about this franchise the most: the sheer creativity it fostered. Even if none of these aliens are canon, theyā€™re as much an integral part of Ben 10 to me as XLR8 or Humungousaur.

So, yeah.

Huh. Today I learned.

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No. They are just on fire.

You said that the guy is half human, right? In this case he might have the abilities of completely being on fire and being fireproof. My point is that maybe he has tgem both, so he wouldnā€™t melt.

These alphasā€¦
Again, I was in primary when I got into the original, and I found those parts when tentacles forced themselves out of Benā€™s head extremely cool to watch.

But those looked like oficial designs.
Sees the designs
Oi so cool!

ā€œHeatblast is a magma-based lifeform whose body is composed of a bright yellow inner magma body covered by a dark red or brown rocks. As a fire-based entity, his body radiates high amounts of heat.ā€

Heā€™s technically not made of fire, heā€™s made of magma, but itā€™s the same principle.

I think weā€™ve just had a slight communication error. Let me explain:

This is Alan Albright, better known by his pyronite form (which was probably given a Plumberā€™s badge to trick people buying the toy that it was actually an alien force version of heatblast, but I digress):

He is half human, and half pyronite. As of the time of Alien Force, we are led to believe that Alan is the product of one Pyronite, and one full-blooded human. My argument is that this would be impossible, given the fact that even if their genetics were compatible which they wouldnā€™t be but letā€™s entertain the idea because this is fiction and thatā€™s fine, copulation, as it were, would not be possible given the Pyroniteā€™s physiology (AKA being covered in fire). Regardless of whether they were male or female (though as far as I recall the inference was that the Pyronite was the father and the human was the mother), the human partner would be irreparably burned from the entire encounter.

For sure. Personally my favourite transformation sequences in the entire franchise are the original series ones. Theyā€™re beautifully shot, beautifully animated, and really capture the idea that Ben is physically morphing into something else. The only issue is that theyā€™re so difficult to do that they only ever did one per alien, so once youā€™d seen it once, youā€™d seen it every time. The reboot, despite having simpler transformations, also affords to change it up each time, so even if you do see him transform into a particular alien multiple times in an episode, it doesnā€™t get boring to watch.

Like I said, itā€™s not without its upsides :stuck_out_tongue:

Exactly :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh.
Oh.
Ouch.

Exactly :stuck_out_tongue:

On a different note, who actually is your favourite alien?