Totally Spies!
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| Totally Spies! | |
|---|---|
 Title card; left to right: Sam, Clover, Alex | |
| Genre | |
| Created by |
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| Voices of |
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| Opening theme | "Here We Go", by Moonbaby |
| Country of origin | |
| Original language(s) | |
| No. of seasons | 10 |
| No. of episodes | 51 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 20 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
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| Release | |
| Original network | Delkora Teletoon |
| Original release | 3 November 2001 – 25 December 2011 |
Totally Spies! is a Delkoran–Venetian animated series which aired on Teletoon in 2001–2011. It was an international co-production between Tegneforening and Marathon Media, with additional animation provided by the Gylian National Film Institute. It is an action comedy aimed at a young audience, with an anime-influenced visual style, following the adventures of three initially teenaged girls who work as undercover spies.
It is one of the most successful Delkoran animated series, experiencing a wave of popularity dubbed "Spymania", and has been influential on Delkoran and foreign pop culture.
Plot
The series follows the adventures of three initially teenaged girls from Eldenvard, Cybria, who live a double life as secret agents for the World Protection Organisation (WPO). While on duty, they wear colourful latex jumpsuits and use a variety of gadgets to carry out their investigations.
Consistent subplots include the girls' everyday lives as, progressively, high school students, university students, and young adults; the incompetence of the WPO, viewed with contempt by law enforcement and regularly investigated for occupational safety and health reasons; and the spies' exploration of the everyday applications of their gadgets.
Characters
- Sam
- Voiced by: (Jennifer Hale)
- Sam is the unofficial leader of the trio. She is something of an elder sister to the group, being the most mature, intelligent, and composed. She is serious during missions, and in her free time, enjoys hanging out with her friends and shopping together. She is the glue that holds the group together, and is often sought after for advice due to her sensible and thoughtful nature.
- In the epilogue, she is shown to be married with Alex.
- Alex
- Voiced by: (Katie Leigh)
- Alex is the sensitive and modest member of the trio. She is viewed by the others as a sort of younger sister, because she is honest about her feelings and affectionate. She is the most naïve of the group, sometimes interpreting figures of speech literally, and believes that Ēostre's bunny lives in Schottia. She is something of a tomboy, enjoying sports and video games. She greatly admires Sam and Clover and values their friendship above all else, willing to do anything to keep the group united and happy.
- In the epilogue, she is shown to be married with Sam.
- Clover
- Voiced by: (Andrea Baker)
- Clover is the fashionable member of the trio. She is impulsive and spontaneous, rarely thinking before jumping into action, and being the most eager to go up against the villains regardless of her chances of success. She is athletic and agile, and the quickest to try to flirt with a good-looking boy.
- Much of her time in high school is spent in a complex relationship with Mandy, which evolves from friendly rivalry to close friendship and eventually romance. In the epilogue, the two are shown to be married.
- Mandy
- Voiced by: (Jennifer Hale)
- Beautiful, wealthy, and charismatic, Mandy is the popular girl of the high school. She is cocky and witty, shown to entertain her classmates with her bon mots. Mandy regularly interacts with the spies, and while she gets along well with Sam and Alex, she enjoys teasing Clover due to Clover's short temper and tendency to get riled easily.
- Much of her time in high school is spent in a complex relationship with Clover, which evolves from friendly rivalry to close friendship and eventually romance. Mandy herself notes in one episode that she and Clover have much in common, and other times, she's shown to envy the close friendship between the spies, which she lacks with her own crony friends.
- In later seasons, the spies and Mandy attend the same university, and have become friends. Mandy even joins the WPO and becomes a spy herself, making the group a quartet. In the epilogue, she is shown to be married with Clover.
- Geri
- Voiced by: (?)
- Geri is the girls' supervisor at the WPO. She is in charge of assigning them missions, handles briefings, and provides their gadgets, most of which are disguised as fashion accessories. She has a rather maternal relationship with the spies, and is very affectionate and protective towards them. In turn, she enjoys the complete trust of the spies, who carry out her orders without question.
- The oldest character in the show, Geri has an unflappable and elegant personality. She is very organised in her life, but also shows an understated sense of humour towards the spies. She uses a special phone to announce that they are required at headquarters, allowing them to use one secret portal located on their high school or university campus. Outside of the missions, she is shown to be exasperated with the WPO's incompetence, regularly arguing with her superiors and reprimanding them for recklessness and ignoring their agents' well-being. She is charismatic and very attention-grabbing in social situations.
Production
The idea for the series was devised by Vincent Chalvon-Demersay and Didier Milhaud, who took note of the popularity of girl groups in the late 1990s–early 2000s. They conceived the idea of a cartoon that would have a fictional girl group moonlighting as secret agents. The musical angle was later dropped.
Finding difficulty attracting interest in their native Avallon, they shopped the idea around the Delkoran animation industry, with greater success. The project became an international co-production between Avallon's Marathon Media and Delkora's Tegneforening. Due to the anime-influenced visual style, the Gylian National Film Institute and Akashian film studios were regularly used for overseas animation.
The writing team was mainly Delkoran, and adhered to several rules for its screenplays. Some of these included:
- Strictly forbidding any "brainwashing" or hypnosis plots, considering them a ridiculous cliché.
- Strictly forbidding episodes based on team conflict, instead maintaining a consistent emphasis on the spies' friendship.
- Strictly forbidding portraying Mandy negatively. As one writer said, "We want the audience to envy Mandy, not hate her."
- Every episode must include at least one scene of Sam, Alex, and Clover hugging each other. (Later extended to include Mandy in later seasons.)
The setting of Eldenvard provided additional opportunities for comedy, by contrasting Cybria's reputation as "the red state" with the fact that the spies live in one of Eldenvard's richest districts, and are thus implied to be well-off.
Mandy's personality and status as "most charitable teen" in high school was inspired by the personality of Keiko Nakayama, then a cabinet minister and future President of Akashi, as well as Asuka. Geri's personality was modeled after Susan Shelley, and her dynamic with the spies reflects Susan Shelley's relationship with the Beaties.
The series' success caused a rift between Marathon Media and Tegneforening. As one of the animators recalled:
"We felt that we were doing the bulk of the work, animating and writing the whole thing and all that, so we deserved the greater say in how things would evolve. Marathon wanted something that could be watched in any order, more formula, and we argued with them, the girls should grow as people. For example, we got pretty sick of the whole Clover–Mandy rivalry early on, and decided it would be more interesting if they realised how much they had in common. We started ignoring notes from Marathon – 'losing' faxes and emails, you name it. Marathon didn't have anything else doing near as well, so I think they were terrified of losing what they saw as their cash cow.
The conflict came to a head in season 4, when Tegneforening fought to have the spies graduate from high school and move on to university. Chalvon-Demersay and Milhaud were pushed out of production, and in subsequent seasons were only credited as "executive producers". The creative battle was reflected in one episode, which featured notably vicious caricatures of Chalvon-Demersay and Milhaud as "brainless corporate sociopaths". Beginning in season 5, Tegneforening redesigned the end credits and pointedly listed all of Marathon Media's personnel last, after Tegneforening and the overseas animation studios.
Fashion
One of Tegneforening's notable decisions was hiring fashion designer Karsten Sørensen as a fashion consultant. He designed 1.000 outfits for the show, and was paid ⊻100.000 in exchange.
He greatly enjoyed the assignment, telling one interviewer: "You have no idea how fun it was, making these teenaged girls be the coolest and most stylish teenaged girls on television."
Sørensen's designs, characterised by strong use of primary colours and simple yet stylish shapes, drew particular acclaim. His work on Totally Spies! helped kickstart his fashion design career. Many of his fictional outfits would be reproduced in real life to notable popularity.
Tegneforening was similarly pleased with the results, and placed him prominently in the series' credits, with the humorous credit "Styling and wardrobes by Karsten Sørensen".
Release
Totally Spies! premiered on Teletoon on 3 November 2001. It lasted 10 seasons of 5 episodes each. The first 4 seasons showed the trio in high school, the next 4 in university, and the last 2 showed them as young adults and recent graduates.
It quickly became one of Teletoon's most popular cartoons, and achieved great success in international syndication as well. It attracted large followings in Gylias (thus achieving the Gylian breakthrough), Akashi, and Megelan.
Although the show was an international co-production, even in Avallon and Venetia, the English dub achieved primacy over the French dub. The voice performances of (Jennifer Hale), (Katie Leigh), and (Andrea Baker) were considered iconic, and the French dub was compared unfavourably to them.
While the final season ended in 2010, the producers created a special episode to serve as an epilogue, which aired on 25 December 2011. Set 10 years in the future, it shows the characters now in their thirties, retired from espionage, and living together in a mansion in Eldenvard. Sam and Alex are married, as are Clover and Mandy. The four have jointly co-authored a memoir of their adventures, which is a bestseller and has been adapted into a cartoon, but also caused WPO's permanent dissolution due to investigations for violating workplace safety laws. Clover and Mandy run a small clothes shop selling their own designs; Sam is a university professor and successful model; and Alex is a football team coach. Geri now works for the Ministry of Social Affairs, and has remained a close friend to the now-married couples.
It was later released on DVD as a box set of all seasons, and was uploaded to Proton, where it became one of the site's most popular foreign series.
In an interview after the tenth season, Milhaud expressed pride in the show's broad appeal across ages and genders. He noted that when it premiered, it was expected to mainly appeal to a female audience, but it had maintained an equal male and female viewership.
Reception
Totally Spies! was a critical and commercial success on broadcast. Critics praised the show's lighthearted tone, strong characterisation, character-based humour, and the close friendship and dynamic between the central characters.
Skærmland praised the show as "an entertaining action romp for kids that's well-written enough for their parents to like as well". Animonthly noted that in Gylias, Mandy became an unexpected audience favourite character because she was seen as entertainingly "wicked".
The show's popularity became a phenomenon dubbed "Spymania". While aimed at a young audience, it attracted a significant adult following, attributed to the quality of its writing, the appealing central characters, and the effective action sequences.
Chalvon-Demersay later reflected that "Spymania" was a great moment for all involved but the sheer extent of the show's success caused Marathon Media and Tegneforening to argue over which deserved the greater credit for it. He expressed regret for the conflict that marred season 4's production. Chalvon-Demersay and Milhaud later made amends with the Tegneforening team, and conceded that the Delkoran staff had been right to fight against attempts to keep the show formulaic.
Legacy
Totally Spies! is considered one of the best Delkoran animated series, and one of Teletoon's most beloved programs.
Radix commented on the show in 2021:
"One admirable thing about Totally Spies! is the way it defies a cultural tendency to look down on teenaged girls and disdain entertainment aimed at them. Totally Spies! instead makes being a teenage girl look like the greatest thing in the world — of course, the characters being rich and handsome helps a bit. Sam, Alex, and Clover are truly best friends forever, the show treats their shopping and pastimes with respect, and there's no insipid backstabbing. Even Mandy embodies vanity in a delightfully catty way, and it's clear she doesn't really hate anyone — there's admirable depth of character beyond the queen bee surface."