Cartoon: Roswell Conspiracies- Aliens, Myths and Legends.

He's a Badass Bounty Hunter. She's a Banshee. They fight evil.

  Back in about 1999 I stumbled across a cartoon called Roswell Conspiracies and was very impressed. After a few episodes it got bumped from the schedules and I never managed to catch up with it again.

  Until this week.

  Thank you Youtube.

  The first episode sees Bounty Hunter Nick Logan getting the shock of his life when a fugitive suddenly turns into this wolf...thing. Luckily the martial-arts lessons his father had given him included "What to do if your opponent suddenly morphs into a big ass werewolf." and a short fracas later Nick is handing over his catch to a team of agents. Who fly away in their jet-truck.

 At this point Nick can't help thinking something a little odd is going on.

 Never mind. He's got another job lined up. A cute Irish girl by the name of Sh'lainn.

 As it turns out. Sh'lainn is actually a Banshee and the rest of the clan want her back, not necessarily intact.

Caught between pissed-off Banshees and  heavily armed mystery men with industrial-sized laser guns, Nick and Sh'lainn hurriedly agree to a  truce and set about finding some answers.

The central premise is very simple. What if all the things that went bump in the night were real? Vampires, werewolves, Banshees and a dozen or so others, all real and all actually aliens who've been living alongside us for centuries.


 So wouldn't there be a Government department devoted to quietly hunting them down?

  I suspect that somebody had been watching a lot of X-Files and a wee bit of Anime and thought "Let's see if we can get a cartoon out of this." and the result is a cartoon that really needs more love.
   Quite early on it becomes clear that this is a bit more in-depth than "We good guys. Them bad guys. Kick ass." Yes, there's the usual heroics and quipping but every one of the major characters has their own agenda and can find themselves on different sides depending on the circumstances. The good guys are not always so good and the bad guys have their own good reasons for their actions. (Although the vampires seem to like being dicks for the hell of it.)  The mayhem level is high throughout and isn't always casualty-free.

 One of the big strengths is the relationship between Nick and Sh'lainn. Like most cartoon heroes he has his fair share of dick moments but has his heart in the right place and remains likeable. And Sh'lainn...

 The animators like Sh'lainn.

 All the blokes are given character designs best described as "Angular". Or possibly "Boxhead" but there's a bit of effort put into making Sh'lainn and the other girls look good.

 And it helps that the girl has a nice line in dry humour and gets in some genuine kick-ass moments. 

The chemistry between human and Banshee is always fun to watch and gets stronger as time goes by.  The supporting cast is fleshed out with a a collection of interesting, well-developed allies, enemies and bystanders and this has to be one of the few US cartoons before the DCAU that had anything resembling an arc plot.

 All 40 episodes can be found on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/EndaSrb21/videos

See what I mean?