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I got hold of this little gem of a series again recently, some ten years after I'd first watched it (gotta love bittorrent). It's a shame that it never got a DVD release, it certainly has the quality to deserve one.
The first season, encompassing twenty episodes is truly excellent. We get an introduction into the world of the Phantom. We touch a variety of topics - environmentalism, the power of big corporations, artificial intelligence, a massively connected society etc etc. I'm a sucker for sci-fi, so a lot of this is immediately appealing. Environmentalism, especially pollution is central to the larger theme of the series, which is something that I really enjoy as well. So the series isn't just another action cartoon for teenagers. It's a solid sci-fi series with it's intelligent story lines and breadth of topics.
The second season goes off the rails a little bit. It's only fifteen episodes, and the first two are recaps of the first season, which are basically throwaway episodes. The next six episodes continue the excellent story line from the first season (till the double episode 'The Sins of out Fathers'), and then all hell breaks loose. It almost feels like the last few episodes were written by a different set of writers. The waste a lot of time next six episodes and then hastily wrap things in the final episode.
This is an excellent sci-fi series, one of the few times an American animated series actually goes toe-to-toe with the best sci-fi Anime out there. At a total of just thirty-five episodes, it manages to keep the quality high for most of it's run, despite the middling run of episodes at the end. I wish someone would do a DVD release, so I can watch it with better quality than the TV captures I have right now.
9/10
