Carmen Sandiego (Netflix Series)

The new Carmen Sandiego series came out on Netflix last weekend and once again our Agents at Anime Feet were on the case. After another spectacular chase through France, Australia, India, The Netherlands, Ecuador, the United States and Indonesia... we managed to once again capture the elusive thief during some rare barefoot moments. :-)

An animation of the above scene. ^_^

In contrast with her "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" incarnation who wore pumps... Carmen's default footwear in the new series are a pair of thigh high black boots. We do get to see her wearing other types of shoes in the series though as she tends to dress accordingly for what a specific heist would require. 

The above cap is from an episode where Carmen wears an elegant dress and high heeled pumps to blend in at an auction. When ACME Investigator Chase Devineax attempts to catch her, she disappears into the fog outside. Chase makes the mistake of pointing out that the sound of her heels give her away causing her to ditch them and him to take a shoe to the face. He fails to catch up with Carmen but obtaining one of her pumps doesn't seem like a bad consolation. (Animated Gif ) 

We also get Carmen wear casual clothing a few times. During those situations she opts for a more sensible pair of red sneakers.

In the final episode of the season (Episode 9) viewers are treated to seeing Carmen in a Swimsuit.

It is definitely a nice reward for following Carmen's adventures. ^_^

We also get a brief glimpse of her accomplice Ivy barefoot in that episode. ^_^

(These are from Netflix's Carmen Sandiego series episodes 8 "The Lucky Cat Caper"  and 9 "The French Connection Caper". It should probably be mentioned that Carmen has some foot scenes in episodes 1 "Becoming Carmen Sandiego"  as well but they are from a time period when she was younger and had yet to adopt her Carmen Sandiego identity.)

Some Bonus Content involving Carmen's voice actress.

Gina Rodriguez

More of Carmen's feet can be found in this earlier anime feet tribute here:

http://animefeet.blogspot.com/2009/01/carmen-sandiego-feet-bonus.html

I'm going full scale review this post. 😀

The new series is pretty fun. I felt like it had a Kim Possible feel to it. There is a lot of action blended with comedy along a touch of educational value to the show. One of the interviews with the cast about the show described the series as "Robin Hood meets Inspector Gadget" which is a very good analogy.

I grew up playing the "Carmen Sandiego" computer games and watching the trivia gameshows and animated cartoon series that were developed from them so there is a strong amount of nostalgia that I have for this character. It makes some of the adaptations that Netflix chose to make for this series and title character difficult to accept. For example the newer version of Carmen is much more heroic actively working to thwart criminals during her adventures. She is still a thief but only steals from other villains returning what she steals to the proper authorities or donating the money she makes to charity. There's a little bit of a Pink Panther/Inspector Closeau situation where the law enforcement agent pursuing her makes a lot of mistakes leading her to seem like more of a criminal than she is. The Carmen Sandiego I grew  up with was the leader of V.I.L.E. (Villains International League of Evil). She was the ultimate criminal mastermind stealing landmarks and important object across the planet and throughout time. She even made it onto Game Pro magazine and Game Spots top villains lists. I love the "bad girl" types and that aspect of her personality was part of what lead to develop a crush on the character during my childhood originally so it is a bit jarring to see that side to her removed. 

That said the Netflix's Carmen is still a really cool version of that character. Her thieving skills are top notch, she's very intelligent and she has a lot impressive acrobatic and stealth moves which she displays. Gina Rodriguez is perfect casting for the role and she voices the character really well conveying the character's wit and charm along with a certain amount of confidence that you would expect for a character with Carmen's skills. On the opposite end, she also gives the character vulnerability that is not typically associated with this character. It works well with the backstory that this series develops for her. 

Speaking of backstory, the storyline of this series is actually really good. The first two episodes of the series go into Carmen's background. To sum it up, she was mysteriously found as a baby in Argentina and raised by the V.I.L.E. organization. She aspired to become a thief but balked at V.I.L.E.'s willingness to use murder to achieve their goals and turned against the organization. The series is divided up into capers which Carmen get involved in to stop V.I.L.E.'s criminal activities. They are fun to watch because the various criminals Carmen goes up against are all pretty zany and have unique characteristics. (One of the enemies she goes up against is a mime for example 😂) The plot of the series get gradually more exciting especially in the final episode of the season where Carmen faces off with two of V.I.L.E.'s five leader exciting finish.

Acknowledging the character's educational origins, the Netflix series works to expand its audience's geographic knowledge.  The information the series provides is not quite on the level of the PBS Trivia Game Show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" or even its animated predecessor "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" (at least at the time of this post). It is limited to conversations that Carmen has with her friends about the locations she visits. This is a more subtle approach in favor of keeping the action on the show fast paced. The strategy works while at the same time providing some nice trivia facts. 

The visuals in the series has its pros and cons. One the one hand I love what the show does with Carmen's character design. The artists working on the series designed a variety of looks for her and we get to see the master thief in multiple outfits besides her trademark red trench coat and fedora. (Two of which are shown in this post.) She looks good in all of them so I do have to give some props to her artist and animators for that. The action sequences are also animated beautifully as well and it is impressive that the artists are able to capture the chaos of some of Carmen's capers in such a nice fashion. On the downside I find myself missing the more detailed animated style of "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?". Take Carmen's feet for example when you compare this post to the one I did for "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" the amount of detail that the earlier animators put into drawing their characters put this cartoon's animation to shame. In addition to that while the new cartoon's design for Carmen and some of the villains she goes up against i.e. (Tigress, Paper Star and Shadowsan) look very cool. Other characters (Zack and Ivy) are a bit too plain and don't really pop visually.

The new cartoon does have a couple of great easter eggs that long term fans can appreciate. There are a lot of recognizable character names from the games and other Carmen television shows in this though the roles of said characters vary quite a bit from their original versions. Among the familiar names are Zack, Ivy, Sara Bellum, The Contessa, Chase Devineaux, The Acme Chief (who looks remarkable like her "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" Actress Lynne Thigpen) and Julia Argent. The actress who voiced Carmen in "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" Rita Moreno also has a cameo appearance in this. We even got to hear both the classic "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" and "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" themes playing in the background at certain moments during the earlier episodes. All of which are great things to look out for while watching this.

Ok everyone I know that I talked quite a bit in this tribute. If you made it this far thanks very much for reading this. I know that I haven't posted much recently and I'm sorry about that. It has just been a busy few months. I do have some good plans for 2019 and I'll do a post laying out some of the upcoming projects soon. Just special shout outs to Noah, Jturner, Adrian, Match and Juancho... I've been working on some long awaited tributes recommended by you guys. They are almost ready to post.^_^ Anyway as always more to come soon. 

All right... To close this post out Carmen Sandiego style... There's just one thing left to do and you guys know what that is...

Do It Rockapella!

-KSC