Well last year around this time I looked at the first season
of the Legend of Korra. While the second season of that show certainly
has lots to be discussed it’s still airing and will have to wait. So instead I’m jumping in the way back
machine and going all the way back to 1997 to talk about the one and only
season of Mummies Alive. And hey mummies are a scary monster staple
and totally appropriate for Halloween.
For anyone who doesn’t remember this show, or has never
heard of it before, it’s about a 12 year old boy named Presley Carnovan who
holds the spirit of Prince Rapses from Ancient Egypt and his four mummy
guardians, Rath, Armon, Nefer-tina, and Ja-Kal, are awakened in modern day San
Francisco to protect Presley from the evil villain Scarab, who wants to take
the prince’s spirit so that he can achieve immorality and eternal youth. Now while this show only had one season it
was a big season with forty two half hour episodes. With such a larger amount of work there are
definitely some hit and miss episodes and things that don’t quite make sense
even within this clearly ridiculous context.
Starting right from the first episode where I still can’t figure out why
Scarab is stealing his own truck. The moving
truck with the mummies’ sarcophagus in it clearly says Stone of the side, and
Harris Stone is his alter ego, so why he doesn’t just have his shabti take the
truck right from the museum and drive it into the bay instead of stealing his
own property I have no idea.
Even with things like that though I found the show has
actually held up really well for me.
Sure the animation isn’t as great as I remember it being, except the transformation
sequences which are still awesome and why they appeared at least once an
episode. You can definitely tell where
the budget went there. Still the
character designs are great even with the limited animation. The colour palette is good. There’s a lot of range with day and night
situations and some nice use of locations.
The voice acting is also quite good.
Everyone is distinct and with the exception of a few crummy lines here
and there parts are well acted. The
strongest reason why I think the show still works though is because it has a
nice balance of humour and darker elements.
That dark undertone actually starts right up front in the
second episode that gives us the full backstory of what happened back in Ancient
Egypt, and we learn about how Prince Rapses and the mummies died. Keeping in mind that Rapses like Presley was
12 years old. This show has a child
death in its second episode, damn. The
dark themes pop up again with Ja-Kal and his brother in later episodes where we
learn that Arakh hates Ja-Kal and worked with Scarab to help kill Rapses and
probably murdered Ja-Kal during that final confrontation because of his
jealousy towards his brother. It’s also
heartbreaking in the idea that Ja-Kal can’t fix that relationship. When Arakh and his son are brought back to
life Ja-Kal tries to keep Kimas from following in his father’s footsteps and he
does eventually succeed, but in doing so Kimas makes the ultimate sacrifice in
taking both himself and his father back beyond the western gate. So again Ja-Kal loses his family in his duty
to protect the prince. Nerfer-tina is
also showing dealing with the isolation of their duty in the episode ‘True
Believer’. She makes a friend and sort
of romantic interest in Bix Bingsley and that relationship threatens expose her
and the others to the public. In the end
she realizes she can’t see him ever again because it would put everyone in
danger. She also has a doomed romance
with Apep, but I never liked that because I don’t think the relationship is
built up well enough for me to really care about her loss.
The four main characters themselves are standard, but also
have some depth to them in a way. Ja-Kal is the serious leader type, but is
also the one who had a wife and a family, and truly mourns that loss. Armon is
the dumb hungry brawn over brains guy.
But even he gets his moments to shine because he is a good fighter and
does teach Presley some good moves. Rath
is the logical smart guy but he is also a good fighter has a lot of wit and
sarcasm and is my personal favorite. Rath
also flips the trope of the lonely nerd by being the guy who deals with his ex
Chontra all through the show. Also in a
nice twist Nefertina is both the tomboy who drives fast and likes to fight and
still likes to wear dresses and go out dancing and really immerse herself in
the modern world. One other really good
thing to note is that the entire main cast are shown as people of colour
something I never realized as a kid, but I'm very happy to see as an adult.
Scarab is also a good villain. His design has a creepy quality to it. His sidekick Heka is a great deadpan snarker,
and he actually does try several different ways to obtain the prince’s spirit
and even tries to get youth and immortality through other means like draining
people’s life energy in the episode ‘Dead Man Walking.’
Looking at the show as a whole I have to say that having so many
episodes in one season does lead to problems in continuity. Like teamwork being important in ‘Sleight of
Hand’ and then the very next episode is the mummies learning to work together
again. Also when exactly Presley learns
epygt-su is an open question as it
changes throughout the show. And ‘True Believer’
episode 35 opens with the mummies buying clothes and saying how it’s to blend
in with the modern world and yet they have been shown to already know how to do
this multiple times in earlier episodes.
Even with all that said there are some good nods to continuity too. For example Rath mentioning an old student of
his in ‘High Nuhn’ and then seeing Chontra, that same student, as a villain two
episodes later in ‘Goodbye Mr. Cheops’. Nuhn
and Chontra also make reappearances in later episodes after too. Also the episodes themselves range from those
dark concepts that I talked about before to really light hearted stuff like ‘Honey,
I Shrunk the Mummies’ and every encounter the cast has with Bes is great for a
laugh. I think my favourite episode is ‘The
Curse of Sekhmet’ because Scarab the black hearted villain spends half the
episode sick and dressed in a housecoat and fuzzy bunny slippers.
So over all I have to say that I still really like this
show. The characters are distinct and
get a decent amount of fleshing out.
While the animation is limited the designs are great and the use of
colours and locations is good. The voice
acting is good and the content of the episodes is diverse and quite thoughtful
at times. For every bad pun and dated
one liner there are moments of serious, heart, and humour that works. This is a series that I really do recommend
people check out for themselves, probably only on the internet though since the
only official DVDs have three episodes on them.
Someone on the marketing team needs to be fired for that decision. There are apparently some full season DVDs
around but I can’t confirm whether they are legitimate or bootlegs. The show is also available on YouTube though
with varying degrees of quality, so if you're interested check it out and judge for yourself.
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