I was surfing through the comics and cartoons, or /co/, section of FoolzFuuka, when I found this theory: In the premiere movie (“The Beginning”, ep 101-103) of Samurai Jack, the titular hero wanders briefly through an Aku-controlled city, eventually making contact with a race of intelligent dogs who lead him back to the ruins of an ancient city which they are excavating. Jack helps the dogs fend off an army of robots sent by Aku, the heroes celebrate, all is well. In the establishing shots of this ruinous city, we see that the bombed out skyline resembles that of another city, the once-prosperous cosmopolis of Townsville. There is also an ancient, faded billboard (“Talking Dog Says” advertising dog food), which appears in the Powerpuff Girls. The PPG were created in a lab accident, when Professor Utonium accidentally added Chemical X (a pure black substance of unknown origin) to the other ingredients for perfect little girls. X is shown to grant strange powers, enhanced intelligence, or other side effects. X is, I believe, a fragment of Aku, similar to the small shard we see crash into earth in the SJ episode “Birth of Evil” (ep 311-312). The reason the PPG are not forces of evil themselves is that they are imbued with “everything nice”, which must necessarily include the kind of raw human decency we know can defy the evil Aku. The truth of Townsville’s fate, the path that leads it to ruin, is not for me to speculate here, but I do not believe the PPG are responsible for the city’s state in the time of SJ. In their own right, they manage to defeat Aku. In multiple episodes of PPG (for example, ep 47 “Nano of the North”) we see Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory appear as a background character. The fact that nothing is made of these appearances suggests that it is not uncommon for Dexter to be in Townsville. His average, suburban neighborhood could be logically placed on the outskirts of the city. Aku has touched his life, as well, in the form of his nemesis, Mandark. Mandark’s lab is conspicuously, ominously black and green, the same black and green that marks the more chaotic consequences of Chemical X/Aku’s presence (Buttercup, for example, is the most aggressive and violent of the PPG; Mojo Jojo’s fur and skin; the many guises Aku assumes over the course of SJ). Mandark himself is a young prodigy infected with the dark energies of Aku, hence his ongoing need to do ill, both to Dexter and to the world at large. In the made-for-TV movie “Ego Trip” we witness Mandark decisively defeated, though it is not the arrogant, self-serving Dexter who strikes the final blow. No, it is the innocent, kind (if often stupid) Dee Dee, reinforcing the notion that only pure humanity that can overcome Aku. Dexter’s Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls shared their universes not just with Samurai Jack, but with a multitude of Cartoon Network properties (shown in the many crossover bumps, wherein we see many characters from many series going about their business around one another), including Johnny Bravo. Here, a by now weakened Aku could find only a safe haven, with few opportunities to cause more than incidental inconvenience for the characters. In Johnny Bravo’s crossover with the characters from Scooby Doo (Ep 102 “Bravo Dooby Doo”), Aku found a universe ripe for his influence. He traversed time, infecting the Scooby Gang, warping reality around them to induce chaos and misfortune. It is his influence that shrouds the green Mystery Machine in a constant unnatural black shadow, that leads them always into unlikely scenes of criminal doings. Or, more accurately, it is his influence that causes those criminal doings. Aku warped the universe around the Mystery Machine, bending both space and time to his malice. When the Scooby Gang arrived in some podunk farmtown, Aku could reach back in time, retroactively turning farmers, bankers, regular decent folk, to lives of avarice. For a time, Aku was sated, allowed to destroy lives at a whim around the world, following these hip teenagers. Maybe Dexter’s Odyssey, which is my planned multi-part big screen big budget live action/animated dinosaur-infused epic blockbuster reboot of the 90s cartoon series, Dexter’s Laboratory, should be redone and branched off as a stand-alone multi-part epic story and franchise (it’ll still contain some or many of the same characters as those from Genndy Tartakovsky’s Cartoon Network properties such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, but set in a secondary world where dinosaurs and other Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous prehistoric animals never go extinct, and hand-drawn cartoon characters are real beings who lived in the same societies and share the same cultures, etc., as flesh-and-blood humans, and will also has very little ties to the actual main story lines for Genndy Tartakovsky’s Cartoon Network properties like Dexter’s Lab). But, along with the James Cameron connection and the James Cameron’s AVATAR connection, the Genndy Tartakovsky and Cartoon Network connections will be so obvious that it would be nearly impossible, even for me, to not think of Dexter’s Odyssey film one through film twelve as a multi-part big screen big budget live action/animated dinosaur-infused epic blockbuster reboot of Dexter’s Lab with hand-drawn cartoon characters, CGI dinosaurs and live action locations as well as live actors. But nonetheless, besides and in addition to changing the nature and personality traits of Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee and Lee Lee and Mandark, there will still be some DNA of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Cartoon Network properties (like some DNA of Dexter’s Lab and some DNA of Samurai Jack)—along with some DNA of James Cameron’s AVATAR—and fans of such properties will notice some things from such—especially during the more action-packed moments and some of the more comedic moments.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:54:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015