Skyland (full French title: Skyland, le nouveau monde, i.e. Skyland, the new world) is a Franco-Canadian CGI animated television series produced between 9 Story Media Group in Canada and Method Films in France. The series lasted from November, 2005 to April, 2007. A total of 26 episodes in two seasons. It aired on Teletoon in Canada and Nicktoons Network in the US.
It is the 23rd century; the Earth has shattered into billions of pieces which orbit around a central core. In this new world named Skyland, an evolved form of humans has appeared: Seijins, who are able to absorb energy from sunlight and use it to fuel special abilities such as telekinesis, telepathy, mental control, astral projection, energy balls/blasts and little electricity rays.
The Skyland is ruled by the Sphere, an organisation which controls the fragmented world's water supplies and maintains its power thanks to Guardians, promising Seijin children who have been taken away from their families and given a special training. This dictatorship is fought by pirates.
2451: After the capture of their mother by the Sphere, Mahad and Lena (a young Seijin still learning to control her powers) are rescued by a group of pirates. They join the pirate rebellion, determined to free their mother and help bring the Sphere down.
Don't confuse it for the unrelated Skylanders series of toys-to-life games, or the animated Netflix series loosely based on those games.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Lena singlehandedly melts an iceberg bigger than the one that took out the titanic.
- After the End: The world is "shattered into billions of pieces" after all, even if the pieces are inhabitable. A case of Shattered World.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Mogura is a Spider Tank that was created for a glacier-mining station. It was programmed to seek out and collect water. The human body is 70% water. Whoops!
- Almost Kiss: Mahad and Dahlia in "Eye of the Storm", thinking that they were likely both going to die.
- Bald of Evil:
- Almost everyone on the Monolith does this, so it could just be a dresscode. Many of them have barcodes tatooed on their foreheads.
- Diwan has a massive orange patch that could either be hair or a tattoo, so she's a maybe example.
- The Chosen One: It's not clear who the chosen ones are, since A, there are two of them, and B, there are several possible combinations.
- Cool Ship: The Hyperion. It's stated to be a one of a kind prototype, and is treated as a symbol of hope.
- Crying Wolf: Deciding that Mahad needs a lesson in responsibility, Cortes leaves him in charge for the day, then fakes an attack by a fleet of Sphere ships. Unfortunately, this means Mahad refuses to believe him when a Sphere patroller really is on the way.
- Dark Action Girl: Diwan is the female face of the Sphere most of the time.
- Deus ex Machina: Invoked multiple times, by destroying a massive fleet, melting an iceberg, saving the villain, and a number of other cases.
- Disappeared Dad: Marcus Farrell. Nobody has seen him in a long time. Even the resistance doesn't know what happened to him.
- Evil Twin: Oslo is Darius's (though it would be more accurate to say that Darius is Oslo's good twin, considering that he appears only in one episode)
- Failure Is the Only Option: The unchanging premise of the show is that the kids are trying to get their mother out of prison. Thus they cannot actually succeed at this task until the end of the series.
- The Future: The show is set some time in the 23rd century, though the novels are more spread out, some of which happen in the mid 21st century, and some of which happen between.
- Giant Spider: The Mogura's body is about the size of a Volkswagon beetle, and it has 8 robotic legs.
- Heroic Willpower: Dahlia in "Manipulations", to the point of violating the established rules about her powers not working without sunlight.
- High-Altitude Battle. A zigzaged approach, since most fights take place in the sky but altitude is hard to calculate when the planet itself is shattered.
- Idiot Hero: Mahad Leeroy Jenkins in "Mogura". Lena insults a brigadeer in the pilot, causing the plot.
- Just in Time: "Eye of the Storm", "Manipulations". In Eye of the storm, they fly the Hyperion into a rapidly closing hole in some turbulent clouds around Paris.
- La Résistance Oddly enough, they're called pirates, even by themselves. They're one of the few factions that fight against the sphere, and their population took a massive decline sometime before the series began.
- Mecha-Mooks: the brigadeers. There's not enough Saijins to keep the sphere operating, so they supplement with robots.
- Missing Mom: Mila. She was captured in the pilot, and the characters try to find her for the rest of the series.
- One-Word Title: Skyland
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Cortes.
- Rotoscoping: This is how the facial animations were done.
- Scenery Porn: This is a really good-looking cartoon.
- Shout-Out: The Mogura's name is a reference to a robot in the Godzilla films.
- Single-Biome Planet: The Earth has become a sky planet consisting only of open air and floating chunks of rock, all in a temperate climate.
- World in the Sky: There is no solid ground anywhere. What holds the floating rocks up is never explained.
