tek's rating:

Totally Spies!, TF1 (France) / Teletoon (Canada) // ABC Family (s1, USA) / Cartoon Network (s2-6, USA)
BCDB; Cartoon Network Wiki; IMDb; TV Tango; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon Prime; iTunes
For more links see cartoon links.

A French cartoon that aired in the U.S. on ABC Family Channel at first, but later got picked up by Cartoon Network. This show is very anime-ish, but also very American. Well, it's sort of a French perspective of American, I guess. Anyway, it's a funny and cute show, just basically kind of silly and fun. It's about these three high school girls who live in Beverly Hills: Clover, Sam, and Alex. They have normal lives and interests, though these things are constantly being abruptly interrupted by their secret job as international spies for WOOHP (the World Organization Of Human Protection). The head of WOOHP is a guy named Jerry, who always gives the girls gadgets when he assigns them their missions.

Sam's the smartest and most sensible, responsible one. Alex is athletic, and the sweet, naive one. Clover's the most stereotypically Valley Girl one, totally into shopping and boys and whatever. (Though they're all into such things, somewhat.) And Clover has this Betty and Veronica type rivalry going on with a totally snobby girl at school named Mandy. I think she eventually becomes a spy too, but I haven't seen a lot of the later episodes. Not sure what else to say, but I enjoyed the show well enough. Also I kinda like the theme song, though I pretty rarely hear it actually played; more often they seem to just play the music without any lyrics, for some reason.

Oh, I did want to mention the show is made by Marathon, which also makes Martin Mystery, which has a similar, if more out-there, concept, and extremely similar animation. I was already fairly familiar with Totally Spies long before I ever saw Martin Mystery, so at first I liked TS better, but now I think maybe I prefer MM a bit. I should also say that after the Totally Spies series ended, there was a movie (IMDb; Wikipedia), which serves as a prequel to the series. I don't even feel like it's worth giving it its own review; it's basically a fairly standard mission, like any other in the series, except a bit longer. The important thing is that it shows how the girls first met and got recruited to WOOHP.


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