Much like with The CW’s Superman & Lois, the title My Adventures with Superman should give you an idea of how it differs from lots of previous depictions of the Man of Steel. Like the live-action show, this animated series considers Lois Lane as important as Clark Kent, and Clark Kent as important as Superman. Three episodes in, we’re seeing a pretty unique take on Superman that still adheres to the core tenets of the character. Beware spoilers for My Adventures with Superman episodes 1-3
Western Shounen
Inspiration in media is circular. Western animation inspires Japanese animation, Japanese animation inspires Western animation, and the circle continues. Adventures is a fusion of the two styles, and stands alongside shows like Voltron: Legendary Defender and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power in terms of overall look and feel. Character designs are clean and bright, with big, expressive eyes and well-defined lines. Clark is often dressed in a cream-colored sweater vest, with Lois and Jimmy on either side in green and blue jackets respectively. It has an overall look that reminds me of light shounen and shoujo anime (anime aimed at adolescent boys and girls, respectively), making it very easy on the eyes.
That means it comes with a lot of the visual hallmarks of these kinds of shows: when characters are embarrassed, they blush, and there’s plenty of room for slapstick humor. Even Superman’s costume has an element that feels taken from anime. While the outfit itself is very much standard, classic Superman–right down to the red undies–the costume isn’t something his mom made him.
The show takes advantage of the saturation of nanotechnology in modern science fiction to imagine a ship that evolves, growing beneath the Kent farm. When Clark steps into the beam of light for the first time, the costume is painted onto him. It feels like nanotech-meets-magical-girl. That, of course, is going to rub classic fans as feeling weird, but later Clark dumps the suit into a trunk under his bed. The suit may have literally been painted on by a science ray, but he’s still zipping off-screen and putting his suit on one leg at a time like the rest of us superheroes.
Gentle Kent, Young Superman
Adventures is set at the origin of Superman–that moment when Clark Kent goes from being a young man with powers to being Earth’s symbol of peace and justice. When we meet him, he’s already figured out that he’s fast and can fly, but the idea of putting on a costume and making a hobby of it hasn’t yet occurred to him. He’s graduated college and moved to Metropolis to become a reporter, and he’s maybe 21 or 22 years old.
This Clark Kent is more sensitive than a lot of the previous Clarks we’ve seen–he’s very much on the gentle side, calling to mind a slightly younger version of Christopher Reeves’ take on the character. He has a strong moral compass already, but the confidence we see in a fully-grown Superman, like those played by Henry Cavill or Tyler Hoechlin, has not yet developed. When he bumbles awkwardly to Lois or Perry, he’s not acting.
We flashback to child Clark a few times in these first episodes, and in particular to a scene where his father reveals his ship to him. Here the ship is massive, and a hologram of Jor-El jumps out of it, talking quickly in Kryptonian; to the eight-year-old boy, the whole thing is terrifying, and he buries the ship and decides to just ignore its existence for the next decade or so.
It feels like a version of Superman that we haven’t seen before. He’s still figuring out his powers, and it’s a surprise to him more than us when the red beams blast forth from his pupils. We’re on this journey with him as he learns where he’s from, what he can do, and what that’s going to mean to him. His gentleness is a feature, not a flaw–this is a retro take on the character, and the anime-styled lens is only giving it some color.
Super Friends
Growing along with Clark are Lois and Jimmy. Jimmy is Clark’s roommate, and while he’s still a photographer, the show reframes him as a streamer trying to generate an audience by talking about alien conspiracy theories. Lois is a plucky young reporter, just a couple of years older than Clark. While she has shorter hair here, she’s otherwise very much the Lois we’re familiar with, to the point where she’s able to walk all over Clark in the early days of their blossoming friendship and romance.
It’s interesting, though, that these new versions of Lois and Clark haven’t gotten a modern-day reimagining. Even as newspapers die out here in the real world, as reporters are often recording audio with their smartphones instead of recorders, Clark is walking around with a handheld notepad and pen, and the Daily Planet bullpen feels like something from another age. There’s going to be a point in the near future where this origin isn’t even in the cultural memory of Superman viewers before too long.
While Lois and Clark very much feel familiar but fresh, the way the trio interacts definitely feels informed by anime. There’s Awkward Clark, Outspoken Lois, and Crazy Jimmy, and they all bounce off each other in different ways to add comedy and levity to the story.
The character designs and the group dynamic of the above trio are going to put some people off the show from the start, but it’s worth giving it a chance. One of the benefits of animating Superman is that animation is animation–you don’t have to build or model anything. They can do whatever they want, have Superman face off against whatever they want. And I hope they take advantage of that and do some interesting stuff. As it is right now, Adventures leans a little bit heavily on the Clark side of things, and I’d like to see just a bit more Superman, but that also makes sense for this point in the story that Clark needs a lot of screen time. It’s always tough to tell if a strong start like this will result in a strong finish, but My Adventures with Superman deserves a chance.
