Mona the Vampire was a Canadian/French animated series adapted from a series of British children's books written by Sonia Holleyman and Hiawyn Oram. Produced by Canada's Cinar and France's Alphanim for YTV, the show ran from 1999 to 2003 with 65 episodes over 4 seasons.
The show is about Mona Parker, an average girl living in an average small town. Not that she's content with it. Obsessed with the supernatural and the unexplained, Mona's overactive imagination leads her to believe that all kinds of paranormal creeps and occurrences are drawn to her town. To stop these baddies and solve these mysteries, Mona dons a wig, fangs, and a cape that could give Dracula a run for his money to assume the identity of the heroic Mona the Vampire. Assisting her are her faithful pet cat Fang, along with her two best friends, Charley Bones and Lily Duncan, who join her in thwarting the scary monsters and freaky phenomenon they are convinced occurs around town under their own special alter egos, Zapman and Princess Giant.
Show us your tropes! HEY MONA!!:
- Adults Are Useless: Subverted. It's not that they aren't helpful, it's just that—to Mona, anyway—they have no clear understanding of what's going on when supernatural forces are at work. Occasionally, her father will play along often by giving her the thing that will help her defeat the monsters knowing her imagination will do the rest.
- Adaptational Nationality: Mona and the rest of the characters were British in the original books, but Canadian in the adaptation.
- Alpha Bitch: Angela, a snobbish, rich classmate who hates Mona and her friends. A subversion in that, while she acts like an Alpha Bitch, she's not very popular.
- Baby Sitting Episode: "Robot Baby Sitter", which features the introduction of the babysitter, Belinda, who was responsible for Angela before Mona. There are some other episodes revolving around this as well.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Whether it's slime, computers or the like, Mona will believe that something's wrong when people are obsessed with something/not acting themselves.
- Cats Are Magic: In Mona's eyes, this is what Fang is. This actually was a plot point in an episode involving a mummy.
- Cats Are Mean: Averted with Mona's pet cat Fang.
- Closer to Earth: Charley has the most common sense out of the main three and will often be the first to question Mona's logic, but he's still somehow convinced to go along with it.
- Combat Stilettos: Princess Giant wears a pair of red high heels.
- Company Cross References: In "The Bogeyman Cometh", an Arthur plush can be seen in Charley's room in a flashback. Both Arthur and Mona the Vampire were produced by Cinar.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: "Tighten his laces!"
- Crazy-Prepared: In "Vampire Hunter", Angela destroys the tape records Charlie and Lily use to prove that she had something to do with Nicole being mean to them and Mona. What she didn't expect was that there actually was a back-up tape recorder—taped to Fang!
- Crop Circles: One episode had Mona dealing with aliens making crop circles. In reality, it was two people advertising a cornfield maze.
- Cute Little Fangs: Mona, though they are fake.
- Cut the Juice: In one episode, the gang face off against a malfunctioning robot that proves to be immune to all their attacks. It's eventually defeated by Mona simply yanking the batteries out, rendering it inoperable.
- Dressed in Layers: One episode had Mona taking off a short-sleeved dress, revealing her long-sleeved vampire outfit underneath.
- Drugs Are Bad: In one episode, Mona is pulled through a mirror into a Negaverse. In that universe, the normally nice Charley and Lily are bullies. This is shown by having Lily replace the flower she normally wears in her hair with a marijuana leaf.
- Expository Theme Tune: "Here's a nice, normal girl in an ordinary world / Show us your fangs / YAY, MONA!"
- The Faceless: The face of Angela's mom is always out of view.
- Felony Misdemeanor: In There's No Place Like Gnome, the town gets riled up when their gnomes start getting picked off like flies.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Mona imagines herself being one of these to protect the neighborhood.
- Fun with Acronyms: In The Men In Dark Suits, Mona states that UN means "Uranus Nerexene" although Charlie states it as "United Nations". Mona lampshades that those two were always mixed up.
- Ghost Story: If it's not vampires, mummies, bigfoot, dolls, etc., there's always a ghost involved.
- Harmless Electrocution: In "Robot Baby Sitter", Belinda is jolted out of her seat and in mid-air momentarily after Mona shuffles her feet across the carpet, and gives a static shock.
- Here We Go Again!: After Mona 'frees' her mother from the influence of an old band she likes, her dad finds out about a Sci-fi convention based on a show he watched. Mona then states this.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Angela is an Alpha Bitch, but she isn't wrong about Mona being delusional.
- Kiddie Kid: Mona and her friends are supposed to be 10, but with their imaginations they act more like 6-year-olds.
- Klaatu Barada Nikto: Mona uses this as an incantation in "Witch Watch".
- Lack of Imagination: In "Spirit Of The Woods", when trying to get inside of Angela's mind, Mona, Charlie, and Lily join hands and start chanting "Think like Angela" over and over, until they imagine they're in Angela's dream. Said dream is a large vacant field, which they decide is indicative of just how unimaginative Angela is.
- LEGO Genetics: Mona uses dinosaur D.N.A. ordered from a comic book to make her own T-Rex and it works.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Lily (whose Secret Identity is a blonde princess) and Mona (whose Secret Identity is a black-haired vampire).
- Little Known Facts: Mona will often just make facts up.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- Through Mona's eyes—and also her friends'—there's always supernatural stuff going along. However, many of the episodes can be figured out through the evidence placed in the show. For example, an episode where lots of snakes are seen around town and a woman dressing up as Medusa is based on the warm weather and the fact that the woman is playing Medusa in a production.
- However, similar to Calvin and Hobbes, some episodes have premises that cannot work without the presence of a real supernatural element, making which situations are Mona's imagination and which are genuine supernatural incidents an Ambiguous Situation.
- The Men in Black—er, Dark Suits.
- Ms. Imagination: Mona.
- Murderous Mannequin: "Night of the Living Mannequin" What Mona believes are mannequins being used to take over the town are really just mannequins being remade and modeling a new fashion line.
- New Kid Stigma: In the episode "Bird Boy", a new student named Robin comes to Mona's school. He's made fun of by George and Angela for his very bird-like appearance, and no one stands up for him. When flocks of birds start attacking people who've been mean to Robin, Mona starts seeing Robin as turning into a large bird creature and sending them after people.
- Ninja: The subject of The Ninja's Curse involved Charlie obtaining a pair of cursed nunchucks from his Aunt Cassandra.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
- In their time, Mona and her friends have battled Ghosts, nature spirits, aliens, monsters, robots and even a sentient computer virus.
- One episode involved Mona building a model "Frankensteinasaurus".
- No Mere Windmill: While all the things Mona believes she's taking on aren't real, on some occasions, they ARE up to no good. For instance, in the episode "Would You Like Fries With That?", Mona believes that the new fast food restaurant that opened up in town, Bin Burgers, is actually a front for an Alien Invasion, and that the "special sauce" for their burgers is special Mind Control sauce. None of these assumptions are real, of course. However, it later turns out that Bin Burgers stole the recipe for their special sauce from a rival company that hadn't established itself in town yet.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Mona's trump card is lightning bolts she can shoot from her fingertips. In reality, she's just not a vampire at all. Pretty misleading to monster fans if you think about it.
- Perverse Sexual Lust: A G-Rated example, combined with Trapped in TV Land and Refugee from TV Land. In the episode "Terror in Toon Town", Lily falls in love with the cartoon character Stretch Junior, who takes her inside his world and then escapes into Lily's school.
- Police Are Useless: Subverted. The police is good at handling their job. The thing is that Mona usually somehow defeats the 'supernatural threats' all by herself and the sheriff knows about their exploits. He doesn't do anything about it because he only sees it as make-believe.
- I Reject Your Reality: Mona always insists her explanation for what happened is correct.
- Scary Scarecrows: One in the pilot episode Night of the Living Scarecrow. Played with and subverted for these reasons: One, what one was the scarecrow was really the caretaker of the church...but then we find out there's a second hat, so there might really be a living sacrecrow.
- The episode "Limo to Loserville" involved a big black car that attacked people, or more specifically called them names to make them feel like "losers".
- And there was the episode with a vampire slayer trying to put Mona out of business...(Don't worry, they became bestest friends in the end)
- When her teacher asks her who Homer was, Mona replies "Isn't he that funny cartoon dad?"
- Theme Naming: There's a whole list of episodes with the word Ghoul in them.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mona's adventurous personality is a stark contrast to Lily's shy, quiet demeanor.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Mona's Diary, the Book of the Slimy. Apparently it has some seriously nasty things locked away in its pages.
- Unreliable Narrator (Through The Eyes Of A Child): It is suggested in the series that all the adventures are in fact only Mona's imagination, and she and her friends are just playing super heroes.
- Vampire Hunter: The title of one episode, and the titular character Nicole. Apparently she's also the same as Mona and her friends (what with her wild imagination) and was like that because Angela spread nasty rumors about Mona and the others to her. Fortunately, Vampire and Vampire Hunter reconciled and became friends.
- Wendigo: Subject of one episode.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: In Red Moon Monsters, Lily wants the power to be big despite Mona giving her way more awesome ideas for powers.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Red Moon Monsters consists mainly of Mona and Lily recalling how they met, and how Lily came up with her Princess Giant persona.
- Why Did It Have To Be Bugs?: Lily has a terrifying fear of bugs in The Dreaded Human Spider but gets rid of it just in time to save her friends.
- Why We Need Garbagemen: "Monster Trash" takes place amidst a sanitation workers strike, hence the neighbourhood being covered in garbage.
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: A bunyip shows up in one episode after an Australian guy opens a new gym, which features a spa using imported billabong mud.
