The Ben 10 Topic

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 didn’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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…?

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

They were also introduced before the “ripoff era” I described. I don’t exactly care for them myself, but I certainly don’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 I’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 wasn’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. I’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 weren’t unlocked until the crappy Ben 10,000 did it for… some reason).

I was tired of these insults to the characters, I was tired of the “muh drama” 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, or… Bloxx… 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 don’t know what they were thinking with this one)

But regardless of some of their designs being… 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 didn’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, he’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 wasn’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 series’ 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 it’s a shame that we didn’t see more of it).

I loved it, to begin with, it felt like Ben 10 was back. However… 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 felt… eh… The big story arcs weren’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 doesn’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 hadn’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 doesn’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 “hey look here’s Ken from the future and now he has to make sure Ben and Kai get together so he doesn’t stop existing” 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 should’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 don’t hate it (I hate aspects of it, but I don’t hate it as a whole), but it could’ve been much better, all things considered.

Now for the reboot.

It’s just… 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 he’s wearing now. I don’t care for the artstyle but it’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 could’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 doesn’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 couldn’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 “Wait what?” and then I decided to watch it because of morbid curiosity.

There are some decent ideas in there, Michael Morningstar’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. It’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 isn’t an idea with any real merit anyway.

The multi-part episodes is where the show really shines. It’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 I’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 was… weird. It just kind of happens and they don’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 there’s Kevin with an evil Omnitrix now though, so that’s… a thing.

Eh.

Again, I don’t hate it, I just feel like a lot of its potential just can’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 don’t care for the artstyle, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. It actually looks like it’s trying some different stuff too from what I’ve seen, which is nice.

I probably won’t get back to watching anytime soon, but at least the IP is still alive and well I guess. It’s been going strong for 3 seasons now and there’s even a spinoff with Kevin that’s apparently in the works. Who knows? Maybe it’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

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Solid write-up man.

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

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For me at least, it’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 weren’t horrible, but…

They had a different thing going on. When they were humanoid, it was usually a bit more typical. There was less detailing and greebling and… weird stuff. At least comparatively. It’s probably just nostalgia talking, but a lot of them just look… 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 Chromastone’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 don’t really have anything against Goop, but eh. Spidermonkey and Humungousaur I like as ideas, but I feel like the execution could’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 don’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 don’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 NRG’s concept designs to the final product:

It’s literally the blandest design you could’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 it’s fiction, but it’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 I’m honestly a bit spoiled when it comes to water aliens:

The other ones, however…

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 doesn’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 Wyatt’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=“TheMightyObsidianDude, post:25, topic:15747”]
What is this thing and why does it exist, it looks unfinished.
[/quote]

What about it is unfinished? It’s got pretty well-defined musculature and facial features.

That mouth is very odd.

Overall, I see some of that you’re saying. But I think I just don’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 you’re coming from.

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It’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 can’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 didn’t like the artstyle, although I got used to it, and I find it awesome now, one of my favourites. Ben was not looking… 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 doesn’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 “It’s cool” or “It’s fine”, that is because I don’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.
I… had mixed feelings about it. It’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 like… 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 Izzy’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 can’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 (I’m… I’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 it’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 a… stinky fly for me.

Why? Isn’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 don’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, it’s extremely subjective. I personally like a lot of them.

Yeah but it’s…
That’s not Ben 10.

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Obviously a Pyronite is fireproof, they’re made of fire. I fail to understand how this makes their theoretical human partner fireproof as well. People as a rule aren’t fireproof.

It was certainly the better part of the series, but as far as I’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 I’ve already listed in this topic. It’s probably a perfectly presentable artstyle by any decent standards, but by how much I’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. I’m sick of seeing it, I’m sick of talking about it, and so that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. If you want an artstyle in that vein done well IMO: go watch Generator Rex, it’s absolutely gorgeous at times.

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

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

We don’t talk about Bloxx :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh yeah, forgot they did Charmcaster too, man… 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, I’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 more… 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 didn’t look how he’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 it’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 there’s a fair amount of that nonsense here too:


shudders

There’s also a much better use of the fandom’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 don’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 he’s taken them down from his deviantart account himself so many have been lost to the aether. Here’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 that’s barely scratching the surface. There’s so much out there to explore, and it’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, they’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 wouldn’t melt.

These alphas…
Again, I was in primary when I got into the original, and I found those parts when tentacles forced themselves out of Ben’s head extremely cool to watch.

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

“Heatblast 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.”

He’s technically not made of fire, he’s made of magma, but it’s the same principle.

I think we’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 Plumber’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 wouldn’t be but let’s entertain the idea because this is fiction and that’s fine, copulation, as it were, would not be possible given the Pyronite’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. They’re beautifully shot, beautifully animated, and really capture the idea that Ben is physically morphing into something else. The only issue is that they’re so difficult to do that they only ever did one per alien, so once you’d seen it once, you’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 doesn’t get boring to watch.

Like I said, it’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?

Uhm… My favourite alien changed a lot over the years, and then it kinda died out when I lost interest into the franchise.
Heatblast and Swampfire were always somewhere in the top, as I always liked fire users.
Spidermonkey was also cool, it was extremely creative.
I also liked a few of the Omniverse originals, like Grasshopper.
There were also some that I liked just because they were very welly voice acted, like Diamondhead and Four Arms.
I dunno, I don’t have one.

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Oh yeah, definitely plenty to choose from :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve always been a fan of some of the weirder aliens: Wildmutt, Stinkfly, Ripjaws and so on.

Eye Guy is also freaky cool, and was quite obscure before Omniverse so I always liked him too.

Hell, I even liked Arctiguana and Ditto because I’m a weirdo like that :stuck_out_tongue:

Probably the only two aliens in the original series I don’t like as much were Benvicktor (or Frankenstrike, depending on your preferences) and Spitter. Benvicktor was fine, of course, he had a cool design.

But it was the first alien that didn’t really have a unique powerset, and the tech elements in alien design kind of started here (the megawatts are more of a weird case because they were apparently generated from a quasar - did I tell you how much I love this series yet? :stuck_out_tongue:). He was strong and such, and also had electricity powers.

Ben hadn’t unlocked him at this time, but Buzzshock had already been introduced as one of Ben 10,000’s aliens at this time and did all this and more as indicated by the Megawatt episode:

I don’t hate Benvicktor, I like his aesthetic despite the weirdness, and he only ever appeared in one episode of the original series anyway. However, he did sort of set some of the trends that began the franchise’s decline as a whole, imo.

And then there’s Spitter.

Spitter, like Arctiguana and a few other future-related designs, was actually taken from one of the concept designs for Upchuck before they decided on the final product:

You may recognise a couple of these other designs as the future villains “Sploot” and “Mot Snikrep” (Tom Perkins backwards, the name of the designer of this batch of goodness, who seemingly took over after Dave left the project fairly early on - respect).

Anyway, Spitter was only ever seen in use by people who had access to master control and could instantly switch forms at will, meaning they were usually only Spitter for a few moments at a time, and used his one discernible ability: spit, to chain into other attacks with other aliens. Because of this, we don’t really know his full capabilities, but if this is the only trick he has, it makes him pretty useless on his own merits.

Moving on to later series…

I kinda liked the whole winged and cloaked thing Big Chill had going on, even if it was difficult to replicate in toy form :stuck_out_tongue:

And Echo Echo, despite having powers already previously in use which are easily abused in the form we’re presented, has a really neat name and a fairly solid design to match (Echo, sound, obviously, but also one that is a copy of an original source, which is repeated to show that copy too). The sound design (fittingly) is also the best for him out of pretty much any alien from his era. His sound effects are as iconic and memorable to me as those from the original series.

Brainstorm (great name by the way) is… a strange one. As far as I saw when I was younger and could only see a few of the episodes, Brainstorm was basically smart, and could shoot electricity from his brain, and that was it. That was what the name indicated, what profiles about him I read stated, what he could do in the Ben 10 game creator (remember that?), and what the episodes I happened to see when I was just catching what I could on TV showed.

Taking it all in as a whole, it’s much more complicated.

Sometimes, apparently, he has telekinetic abilities, either by zapping stuff with his brain lightning or whatever, or even making himself fly by proxy. It baffles me that I completely missed this when I was younger to the point where I wonder if they just sort of threw this stuff in occasionally and just never mentioned it to anyone. Very odd.

If he does actually have telekinetic abilities, great, but… would’ve been nice to see it some more, ey?

Anyway, then there was Spidermonkey (again, these names are a treasure):

A very cool, weird, unique concept, even if I feel the execution could’ve been better in his design. This is still an admirable attempt however, you can clearly see both animals in him, even if one is more pronounced.

Humungousaur, as discussed, missed potential. Bit more tapped into when he grows, but even still, eh.

The others I don’t have much opinion on one way or another.

Lodestar was a cool powerset with a really weak design. Rath was funny.

Already discussed the Andromeda 5, definitely discussed the ripoff era.

Okay, Omniverse.

In the alien department it had, without a doubt, a lot of garbage.

Atomix, I’ve discussed. Astrodactyl is just what? Where does the jetpack come from? Whampire… what about Whampire. He was a waste of a decent concept, the only thing he has going for him is the mind control spittles. The four joke aliens were given actual powers and it was dumb, moving on. Ball Weevil meh, Bullfrag meh, Bloxx meh, Kickin’ Hawk was so meh that apparently whoever made this picture forgot to include him. Gutrot I like the idea behind, gas powers are sorta cool, but eh.

The real big boys are Feedback, Crashhopper, and Gravattack. These were the three aliens that gave me the hope that they knew what they were doing now. It was misplaced, sure, but I’m still thankful for these at least.

Feedback was yet another electric-themed alien, but given his design was by Dave Johnson he had a really solid design that reflected that of the original series.

Crashhopper has a power that doesn’t seem very entertaining on paper: jumping around, but is very fun to watch :stuck_out_tongue:

And Gravattack, who has easily one of the coolest powers of any of Ben 10’s canon aliens ever: gravity manipulation, given that he’s a living planet. It’s to the point where I’ve considered replacing my current favourite with Gravattack. He’s that cool.

However, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go very traditional, and stick with my old favourite: XLR8.

He’s one of the first aliens I ever set eyes on, back before I even understood the premise of the show, from some stupid little ball with his image printed on it. When I eventually started watching the show, I was already attached to another blue hero with access to insane speeds, you might know him. :stuck_out_tongue:

So it was no contest really. Plus, he’s a friction-manipulating raptor with a retracting faceplate - what’s not to love? :stuck_out_tongue:

Apologies for taking so long to reply by the way, I got a bit caught up :stuck_out_tongue:

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I have my weaknesses for vampires

Okay Bella Swan :stuck_out_tongue:

It was more about Transylvania but whatever

Ah yes, Transylvania can into Hungary :gregf:

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I… I think I’ll hunt you down now.

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Understandable :stuck_out_tongue:

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