you ever just look back at the year 2007 and go wow that year was definitely a year from iconic
movies like the game plan featuring the rock as well as all of these amazing video games
especially you but also an underrated year for animation specifically in the tv category
and some of them we will be covering in the near future but one of those shows
captured my interests originally when it aired and it felt as if it faded into obscurity or i took
interest in other things at the time regardless of what that answer is yeah we're talking about
el tigre the adventures of manny rivera or just el tigre for short but not shorter than that e.t
is that thing over there so join me on our special series the fault in our nicktoons
as we look back at the show what happened to it and find out why i and maybe by extension you
barely remember lt gray wow that's like two of my series in one you're welcome
or i'm sorry you pick which answer works best for you
el tigre the adventures of manny rivera was a flash animated series on nickelodeon in fact
it was also the first flash animated series on nickelodeon set in the fictional crime-ridden
mexican-american metropolis of miracle city ltgre follows manny rivera a 13-year-old with
the superpower alter-ego lt gray as he tries to decide whether he should be a superhero
or a super villain lt grey aired on february 19 2007 to september 13 2008 for a total of 26
episodes manny with his signature scar across his left eye is an outgoing yet mischievous adolescent
dealing clearly with more on his plate that he may have signed up for manny's father rodolfo rivera
is a superhero known as white pantera who wants manny to grow up and fight evil like he does when
the series starts rodolfo is a semi-retired hero who still occasionally fights crime across the
city not being able to give up his superheroing ways quite yet rodolfo is heroic and noble but
is easily excited occasionally childlike and still in love with his ex-wife maria who yeah he still
flirts with whenever she's around rodolfo's powers come from his bronze boots of truth which give him
superhero speed strength and forces everyone who touches the boots to tell the truth so if
rodolfo is the angel on manny's shoulder then his grandfather grandpappy rivera is the devil on the
other side grandpappy rivera is a super villain known as pumaloko who thinks manny is better
suited for the dark side despite being retired grandpappy rivera much like his son can't quite
seem to shake off his past he is seen occasionally still dipping his toes into supervillainy every
once in a while by committing less severe acts of crime across the city grandpappy rivera's life
of villainy though doesn't stop him from being a dedicated father and grandfather with the retired
villain having a personal honor code where family comes before everything even evil this code leads
to grandpappy occasionally jumping in to help his son or grandson even when helping them clashes
with his own personal vendettas grandpappy's powers come from his golden sombrero of chaos
which can transform into a robotic suit that can produce several different gadgets and weapons at
will both men try to get manny to come to their side of good or evil leading to manny having
many anti-hero tendencies not quite good not quite bad but always entertaining now that's a
tagline el tigre is up next in espanol el tigre au regreso we hope you've been practicing your moves
now back to l.t gray manny is the second hero in the el tigre universe to operate under the name el
tigre the first being his great great great great great grandfather a man who much like manny could
not decide whether he was a hero or a villain this indecision eventually drove the original lt grey
crazy causing him to develop split personalities one good and one evil manny's family fears that
one day the same thing will happen to manny and that is the main reason both the grandfather
and the father push manny so hard to choose one side or the other manny's best friend in el tigre
is frida suarez a tomboyish outgoing punk goth engineering prodigy 12 year old girl who despite
having no powers of her own is always willing to get into mischief with manny a true ride or die
manny's mother maria rivera appears occasionally in the series she is caring and kind and dislikes
the fact that manny and rodolfo are superheroes of course fearing for his safety this fear was
the main cause of her and rodolfo split years before maria moves back to miracle city halfway
through the series to be closer to manny and become a school librarian which is definitely an
interesting angle to see how they were taking the parental figures in a nickelodeon show and it's
also strongly implied that maria might also still be in love with rodolfo part of maria's distaste
for superheroing comes from her own time in college as the super heroine plata pelagrosa the
magic power gauntlet that gave maria her powers often sent her into overdrive to the point that
her life was in danger manny superhero persona or fursona or both el tigre is tiger-themed after its
name with sharp retractable claws super strength and super jumping abilities his power comes from
the belt buckle he spins to access his superhero persona episode 14 of el tigre the grave escape
was the first single segmented episode in the series with most of every episode being two 11
minute segments in this episode the rivera family is preparing for dia de los muertos
manny who thinks dia de los muertos is a joke eats the sacred offerings left for his ancestors when
the rest of his family is not paying attention meanwhile in the underworld sartana of the dead
has just found the seventh and final string to her guitar needed to resurrect the forgotten dead
to destroy miracle city sartana summons her undead army from their graves and forms them into one big
giant monster as manny's father and grandfather confront manny after eating the sacred offerings
they are attacked by sartana's monster the three fight the creature to little effect until
manny and frida are swatted into a dark hole and rodolfo and grandpappy rivera are captured by the
creature manny and frida travel down the dark cavern until they find a town of dead people
the pair realize that they are actually in the land of the dead when manny spies how poorly the
fight on the surface is going through a portal he decides to rally all of the dead riveras of
the underworld to go off and fight with him at first the dead rivera's refused to help manny
still bitter about him you know disrespectfully eating all their offerings and also because the
dead can't just interfere with the living when frida informs the dead riveras that no one would
remember them if miracle city is destroyed they decide to help out at least as much as they can
but before they can go through with that they have to get the original el tigre as he is the
only rivera with the power to travel to the land of the living guess we're just breaking rules now
manny and frieda find the original el tigre suffering from his multiple personalities
but are able to get through to him long enough for him to transport frida manny and the dead riveras
to the surface to then go and fight the monster the rivera's inability to work together as heroes
and villains keeps them from defeating the monster until manny is able to rally them making a speech
about family and coming up with a plan to use the rivera super macho blitz a move no rivera
has ever survived the family is against using it but as they all realize that this is the only way
to save miracle city they all agree to the plan working together hiro and villain rivera's alike
perform the super macho blitz manny is barely able to hold himself together when suddenly he is able
to access the lt grey tiger spirit using its power and the encouragement of his family manny defeats
sartana and her undead beast the rivera's party and the rest return to the land of the dead with
manny having learned the lesson of why it's important to honor and respect your ancestors
i thoroughly enjoyed it and for a matter of fact i enjoyed a lot of this show and through this
re-watch it was kind of like experiencing it all for the first time the characters and the main
premise of the show stuck in my brain but a lot of these episodes i could barely recall any of
it and while i don't think it offers much in the sense of something new we haven't seen before i
think the premise of following a young character trying to find himself whether being a good or
evil super-powered person puts a unique spin on things as well as the personality and culture
poured in by the creators we'll be right back with more lt grey stick around or you'll miss it
now back to lt gray it's gonna be el awesome jorge gutierrez is an animator director painter writer
voice actor and production designer basically a multi-talented animation threat who is best
known for directing and co-writing the book of life and maya and the three gutierrez signature
art style is apparent across all three works in both the character and set design gutierrez was
born in mexico city and raised in tijuana his love for mexican pop and folk culture
serves as the inspiration for many of his works sandra equiha is an animator painter sculptor
voice actor illustrator and character designer raised in tijuana as well who has worked with
netflix google sony pictures disney nickelodeon and various other esteemed companies over her
career fun fact jorge and sandra are actually married and a duo working together with el tigre
the animation here was fast and colorful making every frame the show had on its runtime count
for some this may just be too much happening at once on screen and some may love that it never
leaves you with a dull moment while none of my top favorite nicktoons i truly appreciate the
heart in this show from the creators behind it and i have a soft spot for the visuals because
they kind of remind me of the freeform look of foster's home for imaginary friends they even did
something pretty cool with the show almost along the lines of choosing to save or kill carmine in
gears of war 3 yeah you remember getting those avatar shirts on your xbox to help choose and
support your decision now that's fan service or just lazy decision making from the creators
either way el tigre did the same concept with the episode ltgraze the good the bad and the tigre the
second singular segment episode of the show now featuring manny's decision of destiny nickelodeon
for an episode premiering that same day gave fans the chance to vote on el tigre's fate as
either a superhero or a super villain i wonder if the voting ever mattered and they would just
decide for themselves under the illusion of fan interaction because if not it would mean that they
had two versions of this episode ready to swap out for air which could have been the case and
they could have had that ready but you know who knows but as is the case with many of nicktoons
it seems nickelodeon didn't have the faith in it after an odd way to release the episodes nearly
rushing out everything they had left shortly after a several month break it felt like they were just
dumping out the rest of the show as to move on to other projects in fact for the last handful
of episodes nickelodeon tossed the rest of them onto nicktoons as within a little over a month
all that they had left had premiered there and thus the end of the series another sad cruel
fate especially since the final few episodes had been given the unusual airing times with little
advertisement behind them these last episodes would have been part of an overall season 2 of the
show but thanks to low viewership at 6 30 am that opportunity was taken away the show's ratings fell
and the show was ultimately canned before the show was cancelled plans for an el grey movie special
were in the works unfortunately though after the cancellation became finalized those plans were
scrapped to make up for the lack of a movie the cast and crew of el tigre put their all into the
final episode no boots no belt nobrero i mean the show was nominated for and won several awards both
annie awards and daytime emmys so at least in some aspects they were recognized and later in 2011
all of the first season plus the few season two episodes that came out were put onto a dvd for a
print on demand service through amazon at least jorge and sandra got to keep the lt grey spirit
alive through a brief cameo blanken you miss it moment from their feature film they made
2014's book of life also with maya in the 3 there is references to both el tigre and book of life so
it's really cool to see the property somewhat live on to the creator's work but before el tigre was
gone for good you just knew there had to be some milking going on in the form of a video game aptly
titled lt grey the adventures of manny rivera very original a nintendo ds and playstation 2 version
were released to pretty mixed reviews with the ps2 version scoring some higher reviews than its ds
counterpart a wii version of the game was planned but thanks to the show being cancelled suddenly
the already short budget-cut ridden development cycle was axed as well ltgrade does appear on the
ds version of nicktoons attack of the toybots as well as a non-playable cameo in nicktoons mlb but
oh boy why is manny rivera el tigre himself not in nicktoons all-star brawl someone care to explain
that that just seems like a no-brainer hopefully that can be rectified at some point with dlc
lt grey was in my opinion a fun show that wards personality on its sleeve i can see why i barely
remembered a lot of it but in rediscovering it i have found such a nice pleasant place holder
in my brain to remember it more fondly now so let me know your thoughts on the show love it or not
favorite moments episodes all of the above in the comments i appreciate you all hanging out with me
for a bit today make sure to hit the like button and subscribe for more content like this follow
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you