So I've talked about Tubi before, it's another streaming service, but this one specializing in... well let's call it what it is, crap. Tubi is full of stuff that would most likely be pretty cheap to acquire the rights to, and as I have said before, ease of access and quality tend not to go hand-in-hand. That being said, Tubi isn't all full of bad stuff, sure it's where I watched The Misty Green Sky, but I also watched The Point on the service, as well as two shows that have been partially forgotten, and those two shows were quite frankly, not bad at all.
A large part of my interest in media history is wondering why things turned out the way they did, and in this case, why these shows didn't become more popular. So, I wanted to give these shows a sort of review and talk about why I feel they didn't take off, and hopefully give them some more attention. These two cartoons are 1997's The Legend of Calamity Jane, and 1999's Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century.
The Legend of Calamity Jane
I'll start with The Legend of Calamity Jane because I watched that one first. I remember ages ago looking at videos from what used to be Channel Awesome, which used to be That Guy With The Glasses. I was fond of many of the creators on that platform, Todd in the Shadows, Linkara, and Suede, formerly That Dude in the Suede. I remember Suede did a video about the Top 11 American Anime Shows, or American cartoons that were heavily anime inspired, and while you had some expected entrees, Samurai Jack, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Ben 10, there were some more obscure stuff on the list. Number eleven specifically was The Legend of Calamity Jane, and I remember looking up the show on YouTube, this was back when I believe there was a limit on how long your videos could be, and so the available episodes had to be split into parts. Good times... no they weren't.
The series was actually considered Lost Media for a longtime, but in March 2023, yes it was that recent, the entire series has been available on Tubi, all thirteen episodes, and I was excited to finally finish the series that I had started all those years ago, and I'll be honest, I had a really good time.
The show is a heavily fictionalized take on the real like Calamity Jane, and I'm just gonna say this now, if you really don't like the mythologization of the Wild West, y'know stuff like Tombstone, that kind of mythologization, this may not be the show for you, but I think it is pretty upfront with the idea that this is a fictional version, I mean I'm certain that the real Calamity Jane didn't have this long, blood red hair. Basically it's kind of your typical "villain of the week" kind of show, there's a crime Jane needs to solve, she fights the crooks, Jane wins. It's not entirely a wholly unique show, but that isn't a bad thing, especially if you're not wholly unique in the best dang decade for animation prior to the 2010s.
The Legend of Calamity Jane clearly took a lot of influence from the DC superhero shows at the time, Batman especially. That is also very much in tone, though it never got as dark as Batman did, it wasn't afraid to go into heavier places. The first episode begins with a lynching and the final episode has Jane actually coming close to death. Again, it doesn't really get as dark as Batman: The Animated Series did, but I feel a lot of that is more that they didn't have the chance to, rather than they didn't want to. However, there is something else that they took from Batman for this show, the inherent silliness of it. Batman is a silly concept, but we take it seriously because the people who work on it take it seriously, and this show also gets a little silly. Episode two has the villain literally being a Napoleon cosplayer, and the big reveal of episode four is that the villains are triplets.
That all being said, it is a much more serious show than one would anticipate, there are moments, and an entire episode, that do deal with racism, a popular topic of the 90s. Jane often corrects people on using umbrella terms for the native peoples, and episode seven has Jane try to break up a feud between the Blackfoot and a settler who is openly racist.
I feel that one of the other big influences this show took from is very clearly the anime that was starting to become more prominent in the west. I'm not the only one who thinks that the opening sequence of this show is kind of similar to Cowboy Bebop, which wouldn't reach America until a few years after. You can see this in the animation, which looks great, despite the drab colour pallet. The characters all stand-out from each other, and they're all wonderful. The voice cast is surprisingly good for this show, Barbara Scaff is probably the only "unknown" here, Frank Welker, Michael Horse, Tim Matheson and Clancy Brown are all main actors and they all give great performances. I wonder if Frank Welker has any memory of this show.
So, I really did enjoy my time watching this show, but I do have to admit, I can kind of see why it didn't take off. It really does feel like one of those shows that got lost in the shuffle, I mean why watch this show when you could watch Batman? It kind of sucks, but that's how it be sometimes. Some shows really aren't unique enough to get the attention, but don't confuse that for a lack of quality, this show is well written, well designed and all around just a quality show, I can definitely give it a High Recommendation from myself.
Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century
I had a similar introduction to this show like I did with Calamity Jane, I watched a video online about "Cartoons that shouldn't be given movies", and this was on that list. Intriguing concept, I must admit, Sherlock Holmes being resurrected into the 22nd Century is a fun idea. I was never really that curious about this show, or maybe it was just that by the time I heard of this show I had learned it was more trouble than it was worth to try and watch forgotten cartoons on YouTube. Like I said, those were not good times.
While I believe that it was simply the fact that it was like other shows at the time is the reason The Legend of Calamity Jane didn't really have the chance to get popular, I think the main reason this show didn't really become popular is because, well... It isn't bad, but I don't really think it's that great, it really did feel like one of those shows you would watch because nothing else you liked was on. It kind of, doesn't really have much of an identity to itself, it's just Sherlock Holmes, except in the 2100s, and that's is kind of the biggest problem with the show.
Each episode is predominantly based on an existing Sherlock Holmes story, and I'm not against that on principle, this show would be someone's entry point into the franchise so I could understand the episodes being adapted from existing stories. The problem is that, not one episode is a truly original mystery, and that does kind of mean that there really isn't much to truly take advantage of the setting. It's just, here's flying cars and robots, and the Hounds of the Baskervilles is now taking place on the Moon, it's not really taking advantage of the entire premise. I could imagine a cyberpunk style Sherlock Holmes, which I guess this was trying to be, but it's not very good cyberpunk.
And speaking of robots, Watson this time around is a robot with a mask, and it is uncanny and frankly kind of gross. It's tolerable when Watson has a coat on, but whenever he is coatless, it's a human head on a robot body and it just looks wrong. Futurama got away with it because their human heads are in jars, so when Nixon is on a robot body, it still looks robotic enough to not be entirely wrong. That being said, he isn't a bad character, I don't think any of the characters here are bad, though Sherlock himself is a bit of an arrogant prick, but he has the abilities to back it up, so whatever. We also have a new Lestrade, Inspector Beth Lestrade, she's hot-headed and often frustrated with Holmes, but there is mutual respect between the two, and I really only mean respect, I did not pick up any chemistry between Holmes and Lestrade beyond work-partners. I guess that is a limitation of the premise though, that we can't really see what everyone gets up to when they aren't solving mysteries.
The animation also isn't that spectacular. It doesn't look bad, most of the time, the 2D animation looks nice, but the 3D integration is pretty rough. It looks okay on the buildings and vehicles, but in other places it is really dated. Which is to be expected from a series that lasted from 1999 until... 2001? Wait, how can that be? This series lasted thirteen episodes right? Actually it lasted twenty-six, it's just that thirteen are what is available on Tubi.
So a lot of my complaints with this show do seem the stem from the limited availability of the remaining episodes, it does appear that full DVD releases of the series do exist, but I can't imagine they'd be easy to find, or cheap. The other question is if they are worth looking for and honestly, yeah, I can kind say they are. This show does have flaws, but I did really get into the mystery elements of the show, I was eager to see how all the clues and deductions would fit together, and I do think that is really the key to any great mystery. I think the main problem was that above all else, the show does have some wasted potential, but for what we do have, I can't say I disliked it. I'm gonna give this a Recommendation.
Honestly, I am kind of glad that these shows are being given the chance to earn a larger audience, even if it is on a service nobody uses. The Legend of Calamity Jane is especially one I'm glad is available to watch because I could really see it garnering the reputation of an underappreciated gem. Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is an interesting premise that I would love to see taken advantage of more than the show did. Overall, I think both shows are worth checking out, and hopefully I'll have someone else to talk about Calamity Jane with.
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