Richard Aldana is a deadbeat amateur boxer with little better to do with his time besides the occasional job here and there. He gets by with the help of his mentor Dave and others, but without any particular direction of his own. This all changes when his life is inverted and sent down the rabbit hole by events related to people and things he didn't know existed.
The series aired on France 4 on France and was available for streaming on Mondo Media's VRV channel in the U.S, but the latter has fallen into limbo VRV's closing. The second season was crowdfunded
and is now available in France on France TV's website.
Tropes Used In The Show:
- Affectionate Parody: The Samurai episode is a non-stop poking fun at anime in general.
- Anti-Hero: Richard Aldana. He's mostly self-centered, only really caring about Siri.
- Arrested for Heroism: You may be killing demons because they're dangerous and you’re taking their hearts out to cure a possessed little girl, but as long as the police is concerned, you’re a serial killer and you need to go down.
- Artistic Licence – Biology: I'm sorry but vitamin K does not inhibit the effects of strychnine, you got your rodenticides all mixed up.
- Asshole Victim: Zenkova gets beaten up and humiliated quite often, but it's very hard to feel bad for him since he is so completely despicable that even his father, a crimelord, thinks he is a piece of trash.
- Bad Ass And Child Duo: Richard (a boxer in his 20's to 30's) and Siri (a child or so it seems).
- Badass Bookworm: Howard might not do fisticuffs, but he is a damn good shot. His main contribution to the team, however, is his knowledge. Him being a nerd lead to ostracism and researching the real reality, leading to the events of the series.
- Bad Boss: Holy shit, does Harry Zenkova abuse the poor strippers in his club.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The entire series has been Howard McKenzie's complex plan about escaping to another world.
- Body Horror: The Wrens, beings from another dimmension masquerading as humans. Once they decide to reveal their true forms, expect anatomy to warp hideously and blood to splatter everywhere.
- Bond Creatures: The wolverine in Siri's mind first seems to be a kind of Spirit Animal.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Richard is very good at fighting but can't be arsed to properly take up boxing until he really, really has to.
- Butt-Monkey: Harry Zenkova gets beat up and/or humiliated in nearly every single episode he appears in.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Richard may bone any consenting lady and deeply regrets when he cheats on his girlfriend (but only in the cartoon; in the comics after a time skip he Took A Level In Jerk Ass and dropped the chivalry).
- Dark and Troubled Past: Implied with Richard during the episode "Get Outta My Mom" where his younger self mentions that Dave sounds just his social worker.
- Depraved Bisexual: Kaiser Stark acts as a stereotypical flamboyant gay and openly flirts with Richard, but also paints big boobs, seduces a female journalist and uses as many men as women in his big chef d'oeuvre.
- Don't Try This at Home: Seriously, don't eat rat poison to beat an opponent! (It Makes Sense in Context.)
- Drugs Are Bad
- The new drug "Sector" and its increasing use in Paxtown are one of the background scene threads.
- In episodes "Action!" and "Restez avec nous sur Pax News", two half crazy sector's addicts take the main characters hostage in a mall.
- Establishing Character Moment: After landing a job as a bouncer at Harry Zenkova's strip club and being told to "punch the shit out of any douchebags", Richard runs over and decks Harry in the face after he slaps one of the dancers.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Richard Aldana gets the attentions of many females, and of Kaiser Stark—and doesn’t seem to mind at first!
- Exact Words: At the beginning of the series, Richard is told by Harry Zenkova to "punch the shit out of any douchebags". This comes moments after Harry yells at and slaps one of his strippers. Richard naturally punches Harry out.
- In one episode, Richard is forced to protect Harry from a Japanese hitman after Harry literally pissed on the hitman's boss. Richard is told by Harry's dad that if Harry gets a single scratch on him, Richard's life is forfeit. When Harry gets cornered in an alley by the hitman, Richard comes up with a plan to talk to hitman down from killing Richard while getting revenge for his boss's humiliation. Namely, he gets the hitman to piss on Harry. Harry is furious, but as Richard reminds him, he didn't receive a single scratch.
- Faceless Goons:
- Played straight with minions of the Order of the Lion...
- Subverted in "The Passenger": we do see the face of one of them and he has a minor part as he is thrown under the bus as a scapegoat to take the fall for one of the Order's scheme...)
- Fan Disservice: The Wren who mindcontrols his victims into boning to death.
- Foregone Conclusion: As the series is a prequel to the comic, you know a few things going in. Such as Richard will become champion of the FFFC with Duke, but will be kicked out in disgrace for killing Duke in the ring (though really Duke died of an overdose, and Richard was yelling at him in anger for falling back into his addiction.) You also know that Tomie eventually becomes a very famous singer and later mayor of Paxton.
- Gaydar: In the episode where Richard is forced to take Tracy Zenkova, a lesbian, to an arranged date with a man, she mentions that gay people can just tell if someone is gay by looking at them. When she finally meets her date, his gaydar goes off with a single arrow pointing at her, and her's goes off with a ton of arrows pointing at him.
- Gayngster: Tracy Zenkova—not shown to take part in her family’s illegal activities but still part of the family, behaves like a deliquant, and forced to hide her girlfriend lest she wants to be “cured” by a bullet through the head.
- Genre Shift: The Samurai episode.
- The series as a whole is one. The original comic was mostly set in an alternate fantasy world where Aldana is completely out of place, but the animation takes place entirely in the real world. Justified as it takes place before he even ends up there.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Victor Elfman, AKA that Evil Blobfish AKA the mindcontroling rape Wren, certainly thinks so, but he’ll also do with Guy on Girl.
- The Lost Lenore: Siri had to become this in order to break young Richard and make him the jaded man he is in the main comics series.
- Mêlée à Trois: The last episode features Richard, Rizel and Chorum the Devourer fighting against each other.
- Monster of the Week: The Wrens. A few of them are used as monster of the week and killed off at a rate of one per episode... But some of them (Rizel, the Passenger, Eric Rose...) are longer lasting antagonists. However even one-time Wrens are used to move the plot along and can do lasting damages, even killing one of the secondary characters.
- One-Word Title
- Origin Story: For Richard Aldana, ten years before the main comic books series.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Tracy Zenkova wants nothing to do with the man she is being forced to go on a date with to perhaps be married with by her father since she is a lesbian with a girlfriend. When she finally meets the man, she realizes perhaps things will work out as he is gay too.
- Posthumous Character: Not hard considering he dies at the end of the first episode, but we learn more about Dave Machenzie after he dies than before. We learn that he has a daughter, we learn why he is important to Richard, we learn that he secretly hunts monsters that kill humans with his brother. We learn that he has a brother. Etc etc.
- Precision F-Strike: Howard, in the dub only—in the original French, he never ever swears.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Lieutenant Ashe doesn’t bat an eye at corpses lacking their heart, but loses his shit when confronted with a serial rapist.
- Satire:
- Pax News is an obvious satire of Fox News (same logo), but also a very biting call-out to the way French news outlets covered the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, giving live information on police movements during assaults; and especially BFMTV, who in January 2015 during the hostage situation at the Hyper Cacher supermarket announced there were people hiding in the basement of the supermarket, but also had direct phone communications with one of the terrorists.
- Also making jabs bordering on Take That! to Murikah's gun culture.
- The Holy-Father is an Affectionate Parody of the Godfather and the mobsters tropes.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Dave Mckenzie was pretty influential in both Richard and Siri's lives, but he dies at the end of the first episode.
- Sequel Hook: the post credits scene with the Kahlo Warriors—done really dirty cause you'll have to wait until book #9 to have it tied up!!
- Shout-Out: Many of the characters names are slight reworkings of different Porn Star names.
- Might be a coincidence, but those masked goons, wearing white, red and black look much like those in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
- The Chronicles of Amber: The Valley is the one true world of which all others, including our Earth, are mere shadows.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Averted (Richard had appointments with a social worker as a teen) but also played with—when Siri’s removed from Richard’s custody, Lieutenant Mendoza does a background check on the foster family and they seem competent—too bad it didn’t reveal that their daughter hates it because she fears fostered children will steal her parents, already drove at least one of them out before, and proceeds to harass Siri.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Richard, Duke; well, they're boxers!
