Posted in: Adult Swim, Anime, Cartoon Network, TV | Tagged: Adult Swim, anime, manga, my adventures with superman, pokemon, shonen, superman

My Adventures with Superman Wears Its Anime Heart on Its Super Sleeve

My Adventures with Superman is designed to reimagine Superman as an anime series for a new generation of fans interested in such an approach.

My Adventures with Superman is a new Superman animated series for twenty-three years. Trends and tastes have changed in that time. The art style and tropes of anime have been getting increasingly dominant in the world of animation in those decades, and most kids and teens have grown up accustomed to them. If a new Superman animated series is going to attract new fans, it's going to have to appeal to kids who may not be interested in Marvel or DC Comics but are open to a good story and characters they can love. This means keeping the core elements of Superman and feeding through an anime lens.

My Adventures with Superman: Made by People Who Know Anime & The Man of Steel

My Adventures with Superman was produced by the Korea-based Studio Mir, which has produced DOTA: Dragon's Blood and the webtoon adaptation Lookism for Netflix, using freelance artists and animators from South Korea and Taiwan who have worked on the rebooted She-Ra, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Spy x Family and the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Invincible shows. All these artists are acutely aware of every anime visual trope since they'd been working on shows for years, including hybrid series that combined Western cartoons with Asian anime conventions. Their art style has been familiar to viewers who have seen Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.

Superman as a Shonen Hero

My Adventures with Superman is designed with not just an art style that apes the look of anime, but visual and storytelling conventions are baked into the story and characters from the start. Thus, Clark Kent as a child, already has a look that reminds anime fans of the hero of Detective Conan and Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. The series deliberately turns Clark Kent and Superman into a Shonen Beat hero.

Instead of a brooding, macho, and stoical hero, the Clark of My Adventures with Superman is a self-effacing, socially awkward but kind-hearted guy who's the norm of many anime and manga series these days. His softness and emotional vulnerability, in contrast to his super strength and invulnerability, make him identifiable to many viewers and also appealing romantically if the "babygirl Clark" meme, complete with mountains of fan art, that's been sweeping through social media is any indication. He even gets a Magical Girl transformation when he gets his costume for the first time – that's a deliberate reference to Sailor Moon's transformations. His earnest desire to help and protect people is a Shonen hero trope, and he even gets Dragon Ball Z-style level-ups when he pushes himself to his limits and goes past that to become more powerful. It ties his powers to his altruism, which is also a very Shonen hero trope.

The younger friendship dynamic between Clark, Lois, and Jimmy is also closer to those of Shonen anime and manga. The giant killer robots in the pilot episode are designed to remind you of the giant mechs in Metal Gear Solid and Neon Genesis Evangelion. There's a young Slade Wilson, who's morally grey and looks and acts like Mobile Suit Gundam's Char Aznable, a force for Chaos. Clark, Lois, and Jimmy Olsen's facial expressions go from wide-eyed to chibi. Superman's fights with the giant robots and Livewire are cinematically closer to anime. All this is just the first two episodes. The series is not 100% anime, but it's definitely anime-adjacent.

We're ready to call this show Magical Girl Superman, especially if it makes the nerd gatekeepers' heads explode.

My Adventures with Superman is streaming on MAX.

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