Spring is right around the corner, so let's celebrate by talking about a series that I never wanted to return to, but hey, there is a lot for me to talk about, albeit not in the right places.
History
If you grew up watching certain networks, heck if you grew up watching Canadian television, or if you've done your homework on the principal companies behind it, it's hard to ignore the legacy of the latter. Whether you like it or not, it's best I explain the company, and by extension the show for consistency.
Cinar (later Cookie Jar Entertainment) was the principal company behind the following show. After dabbling in some live action productions, the company, for the time, branched out to adaptations based on various children's books. You may recognize them for Arthur, Are You Afraid of the Dark and more infamously Caillou, which interestingly enough is the first original Teletoon series.
What was Cinar's undoing? Well prior to getting rebranded as Cookie Jar, they were caught in an investment scandal where they used and abused funds from numerous banks they were in business with, they lost the company to Nelvana's founders, Micheline Charest, one of the founders, actually died the same year the company toppled over and last I saw, Ronald A. Weinberg, the other founder, is actually serving time in prison.
Essentially Cinar behind the scenes is a very fucked up experience.
The Show (history)
Mona the Vampire began in 1999 and lasted through to 2003, with 65 episodes to fall back on. Interestingly, while this is one of many shows to follow the thirteen episode season quota, the first season has double the amount.
Unlike Pet Alien, where the merchandising behind it and the books its based on is up to speculation, I can confirm that this was in fact based on a book, and that the author of it co-created the show (the other creator worked on other Mona the Vampire books FYI). There's one book I want to focus on though.
It wouldn't be fair to talk about the series without talking about the book first. The book came out in 1990 and frankly, it's more interesting than the show.
Spoiler Warning
The book centers on Mona, a girl who becomes obsessed with vampires after being read a bedtime story about one. Her obsession takes a toll on her personal life, and it comes full circle when the world she built around herself crumbles, and she can't take no more.
Essentially, Mona was wrong and she learned that the hard way. It makes sense because if you let your obsessions get the better of you you lose sight of who you are, at worst reality. You're probably thinking I brought this up because this show defies that moral, right? How many times...
The Show
The continuity of the books seems to be separate from the show, unless the others established her relapse into sheer insanity. This extends to far more than overthinking most things or encountering issues that are metaphoric to what's happening to them now or real world issues, and I wouldn't mind if it wasn't any of those, which it isn't, believe me.
One thing that this series has to its advantage is that Mona isn't the sole force behind every episode. Mona is aided by her friends, Charley, essentially a socially-awkward boy who would just barely fit in with anyone else and Lily, a timid girl who'd side with Mona because she's too frail for the other groups. Like Mona who dresses as a vampire when the time calls for it, Charley and Lily have their own costumes as well, a generic full body costume for the former (complete with a laser gun) and a princess for the latter (she's referred to as Princess Giant, but that hardly went anywhere). I would complain about how it wouldn't affect the plot regardless if they were in costume, but I'll get to that later.
Basically, for many episodes, Mona misconstrues something, imagines that something supernatural is behind it, tries to investigate it with her friends in tow and either directly stops it or the issue resolves itself, and Mona's non the wiser over how little of a supernatural impact it had or she left. Once you find this pattern in every episode, that's it, no reason to have any investment in any of the episodes. Mona does stop legitimate issues, granted, but it's typically fueled by the same principal. There is the in-betweens in the first, most of the middle and third acts, but it's pretty vanilla.
If you know me, you know I tend to side with the more cynical characters, and fortunately, there're plenty here. We have Mona's mother who's the strict foil to her husband who does little to keep Mona in check. We also have Ms. Gotto, Mona's teacher though she's honestly the most patient of the two, even though deep down she's close to becoming the first teacher to carry out a school shooting (beware the nice ones), there's the obligatory no nonsense principal, but I hardly saw much of him, and to round things out, we have the pretentious rich girl Angela and the bully George. They're honestly pretty bearable, Angela isn't annoying like most girls within her archetype and George is really just a typical kid who has his priorities straight, straight as in focusing more on Charley.
Animation
The animation was produced by Alphanim, now Gaumont animation, who I recognize for Robotboy, and who many would recognize nowadays for F is for Family. Although the animation was outsourced to China, done by the ever so cleverly titled Animation Services. Ever heard of them?
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| Das Nosferatu Mona |
Admittedly, the animation isn't too bad. It seems like they were putting more effort into the art style - keeping it as close to the art in the books as possible - and it works. In spite of being a supernatural-oriented show, the animation only captures this in small spouts, and even most of them just look mediocre at best, but whatever, the animation is serviceable, I give it a pass.
Acting
I ooze over Canadian actors, so of course I'd give this its own section. This exists for trivia purposes and you have every right to skip it.
A majority of the actors present on the show hail from Ontario and Quebec. The actors I'm familiar with are mostly from the former or Vancouver, so I'm not entirely familiar with all of them. Emma Taylor-Isherwood stars as Mona, and she has a sparse yet decent acting resume. She appeared in The Never-ending Story and Are You Afraid of the Dark? and is strangely credited as a character on The Kids from Room 402 (Tara Strong voiced the character in question, but I would prefer Isherwood for the sake of not listening to the former). As for her performance as Mona, it's fine. I like it for not making the character annoying, her actions are annoying but her portrayal and voice are the opposite. Kudos.
Since this is a Cinar production, we have actors from their flagship series Arthur. We not only have Justin Bradley as Charley (voice of Buster), but we have the first voice of Arthur, Michael Yarmush. For the former, it's also a fitting role. Heck, all of the voices on the show are good, not one character annoys me and even the intentionally annoying characters are bearable.
Sonja Ball is also a familiar name, and I bring her up because she's also credited for a role in The Kids from Room 402, and this one is also a fluke. Oh, and she voices Arthur's mom. You can't talk about Arthur actors without bringing up their more notable roles.
Overall
Months ago, I would've said I outright hated this show, but looking back at it now... I'm honestly more disappointed. This could've worked as a series, the ingredients are there, I love supernatural shows and the characters are likable enough. It's just that they not only ignored a book that had all loose ends tied, but they had an obvious formula. I wouldn't mind if this just lasted for twenty six episodes, but remember, sixty-five episodes spanning four seasons.
This could've been done a bit better. Maybe mix it up a little bit where Mona's imagination gets her into trouble and she decides to focus more on a finding a realistic solution, maybe have her grow up a bit? Or you could just give all three actual powers and have them face legitimate supernatural foes, foes that are clever enough to remain dark long enough to make Mona and co. look nuts to those unaware.
The characters are decent, the animation's more of the same and there is an interesting premise, but the execution undoes all of that. I don't hate it, but I wouldn't return to it.
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