Rayman: The Animated Series

As a child, Rayman was the "must-play" game. My brother and I would play the first game on the original Playstation and Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc on the original XBox. Hoodlum Havoc will always be my favourite game to date.

I have only recently found out about the animated series and became curious to watch it. I managed to find all four episodes on YouTube.

According to Wikipedia, the show was originally going to have up to twenty episodes but it got cancelled due to poor writing and lack of funds. When I watched Episode One: LacMac Napping, I could imagine why it was the case.

Rayman was the only character I knew (I was hoping that Globox or Murfy would make an appearance but this wasn't the case, I believe they were originally going to be in the show until the cancellation) and I was unsure about the others. I believe that the characters who were unfamiliar to me were not fleshed out enough.

The animation is what you would expect from a cutscene in any Rayman game. Some scenes are dimly lit similar to some gameplay levels Rayman traverses through.

Billy West provides the voice for Rayman. West has provided voices for many famous characters such as Fry, Zoidberg and Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. He also voiced Murfy in Rayman 3. I was hoping for the best but unfortunately, I think West was having problems with which accent to give Rayman. At first, it sounded similar to Sonic The Hedgehog. Then it became a slur of American, hints of New York-Italian and Bostonian.

This Rayman was the cheeky, witty, sarcastic and boisterous type. Although I prefer the mature, determined and serious Rayman from Hoodlum Havoc.

This show was obviously catered to young children (from the "Rayman era") who would less likely care about the "poor" writing, animation or Rayman's cluster of accents. Nowadays, children are mostly familiar with the Raving Rabbids series. This is also a good watch for most Rayman fans. But sadly for me, this was not up to my expectations.

I was really into Rayman in the 90's. I owned the original 2D game and persevered through its brutal difficulty, and when a fully 3D Rayman 2 was announced, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. To me, Ubisoft could do no wrong with this guy. They must have felt the same way because they commissioned an animated series that debuted a few months after Rayman 2. I would have pushed an old lady into moving traffic just to watch this - had I known about it. You see, Rayman: The Animated Series had notorious production issues that resulted in its cancellation after a meager 4 episodes with a 5th one floating around half-finished. It aired in a sparse amount of European countries and got a stealth VHS release here in America. Even ignoring the production issues (Betina's English voice changes three times between four episodes - how does that happen?), the simple truth is that what little we did get falls into the dead center of mediocrity.

Rayman TAS commits several of what I consider cardinal adaptation sins, the most egregious being retaining very little of the source material's DNA. Calling this a Rayman cartoon is misleading - there's Rayman himself and a quick appearance by Razorbeard, and that's it. Four of the five protagonists are completely original characters with no ties to the games. The plot has nothing to do with the games, and even the setting is decidedly different. Had the new material exceeded the games, this wouldn't be so much of a problem. It's just incredibly dull.

Intended breakout character Lacmac and his friends Betina, Flips and Cookie are amazing performers in the space circus, but behind closed doors they are enslaved and abused by the ringmaster Rigatoni. Rayman, as a limbless wonder, comes into the picture after he's picked up and displayed by the circus because of his unique anatomy and abilities. Rayman realizes what's going on and helps bust his new friends out of the circus. Rigatoni hires the blundering, dimwitted detective Grub to track them down. They spend the rest of the short series trying to avoid him.

If you're looking for Ly, Globox or Murfy, you won't find them here. The new characters range from boring to annoying. Lacmac is a big dumb sad sack that you're supposed to want to hug. Betina and Flips are completely unremarkable. Cookie is increasingly annoying as he whines about everything all the time. Surprisingy, they actually nailed what I expected from Rayman himself as a cheeky hero. Considering that Rayman didn't actually start talking (beyond Raymanese gibberish in Rayman 2) in the games until Hoodlum Havoc, it's impressive that this show actually translated him in this capacity first. Oddly enough, Razorbeard is a Rigatoni flunky. The vibrant and zany world of the first Rayman game or the darker, alluring atmosphere of its sequel seem to have eluded this effort; what we got was far more generic, like the episode where Rayman and friends decide to secretly help Grub with his disastrous date. This would be like making a Super Mario cartoon and dedicating an entire episode to Mario literally fixing someone's toilet. It's a shame, or a feat, that they took a character/franchise with so much personality and wrapped it in the equivalent of vanilla ice cream on a white paper plate - bland and flavorless. If there's one pro I can list, it's that due to the show's age, there are no rabbids.

That show ran only 4 episodes?!?!?!?!? How short that was! Even the 5th episode is in the works and left unfinished!

The animation is so horrible!

I HATED IT! JUST HATED IT!

Do not watch! It sucks so bad!