Totally Spies!

Totally Spies! is an animated television series created by Vincent Chalvon-Demersay and David Michel and mainly produced by French company Marathon Media and co-produced with Canadian company Image Entertainment Corporation for seasons 3 to 5. The show was made to resemble anime in artwork and was originally based on the concept of a girl group. It focuses on three teenage girls in Beverly Hills, California, United States, who work as undercover super agents.
Totally Spies! first aired on November 3, 2001, on ABC Family (now Freeform) in the United States before moving to Cartoon Network less than two years later. It premiered on TF1in France on 3 April 2002, and on Teletoon in Canada on September 2, 2002. Since the series debut, 156 episodes were broadcast, comprising six seasons and several specials.
Several products tied to the series have been released, which include a series of comic books, novels and video games. A prequel theatrical movie production named Totally Spies! The Movie, made and released between the fifth and sixth seasons and co-produced with Italy, was released in 2009 in France.
== Premise[edit] ==
The series centers around the adventures of three teenage girls from Beverly Hills—Sam, Alex, and Clover—who live a double life as spies working for the World Organization of Human Protection (WOOHP). The girls are recruited by the organization's leader, Jerry, to solve worsening crime conditions that arise across the globe. Their primary missions involve dealing with disgruntled and vengeful criminals who have been wronged in some form during their past. Other missions have the same villains plotting revenge on the spies by ruining their personal lives. Framing each episode is a subplot that focuses on the girls' daytime lives as high school (and later university) students, dealing with relationships and their longtime high school rival Mandy. Each of the three girls has a spy suit with a heart-shaped silver belt and spy suit with different colours (red, yellow and green) and high-heeled shoes.
== Characters[edit] ==
Main article: List of Totally Spies! characters
=== Main[edit] ===
* Sam is the intellectual of the group; she acts as a rational logical thinker in getting through the problems they encounter on their missions. She has waist-length red hair, green eyes and wears a green catsuit.
* Alex is the best friend character and the tomboy[citation needed] of the group, serving as the glue that holds their friendship together. She is affectionate and likes to express her feelings. She likes animals, and sometimes acts childish compared to the other two. She has chin-length black hair, brown eyes, and wears a yellow catsuit.
* Clover enjoys shopping, fashion, and good-looking guys. She is not only athletic and strong, but also impulsive and spontaneous. She has shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes and wears a red catsuit.
=== Recurring[edit] ===
* Jerry is the girls' British boss at WOOHP (he's the founder and head of the organization), appearing as a middle-aged balding man in a black suit. He is very protective of the girls, often invading their privacy to ensure that they are safe. Despite having a sedentary role in WOOHP's affairs, Jerry has displayed some martial arts skills when occasionally assisting on the girls' missions. He provides the various gadgets that the spies use on each mission.
* Mandy is a classmate/rival to the girls in their lives outside of WOOHP. Mandy's rich, beautiful and popular, but also very mean, rude, snobby, spoiled and self-centered. While she does serve as a rival to all three girls (to each of them as individuals as well as to all three of them as a group), Mandy's typically portrayed as being more of a rival to Clover than she is to Sam or Alex. Mandy has long black hair, violet eyes and a high-pitched nasally voice and is often seen wearing purple.
* G.L.A.D.I.S. (Gadget Lending And Distribution Interactive System), a computer system with robotic arms that assists in gadget handling during the third and fourth seasons. GLADIS ultimately proved to be unpopular with fans of the show and was written out of the series early in the fifth season almost entirely due to fan complaints.
== Voice cast[edit] ==
=== English-language version[edit] ===
* Jennifer Hale as Sam and Mandy
* Andrea Baker as Clover
* Katie Leigh (Seasons 1 and 2) and Katie Griffin (Seasons 3–6) as Alex
* Jess Harnell (Seasons 1 and 2) and Adrian Truss (Seasons 3–6) as Jerry Lewis
* Stevie Vallance as G.L.A.D.I.S. (Seasons 3 and 4)
=== French-language version[edit] ===
* Claire Guyot as Sam
* Fily Keita as Clover
* Céline Mauge as Alex and Mandy
* Jean-Claude Donda as Jerry
* Laura Préjean as G.L.A.D.I.S. (Seasons 3 and 4)
== Development and production[edit] ==
The show's conception came from the rise of girl band and female singers in the music industry. Wanting to capitalize on the niche, David Michel and Vincent Chalvon-Demersay put their idea into development, which later shifted into production within a year. According to Michel, the series' animation style was intended to incorporate anime influences. The production company, Marathon Media, intended on building on the series brand by forming a three-piece girl band, utilizing German talk show Arabella to create it. Using a panel of judges, 20 demo videos were selected and the winners were selected based on the strength of their performance and the show's viewers. The band was selected and released a single in the spring of 2002, through EMI. According to managing director Dirk Fabarius, "The plan is to eventually create an entire album and establish and promote Totally Spies as a real band."While the idea did not materialize, the series was promoted through other merchandising. It was announced in the spring of 2001 that the series would air in the autumn on ABC Family, and would be distributed to the European countries in the following year.
In an interview with WorldScreen.com, Michel said that prior to his show, there were a lot of boy action-adventure shows and practically nothing for girls, yet in pop culture, there was Britney Spears and Spice Girls. He said that the characters are heavily inspired by the movie Clueless and wanted to mix that with a James Bond format. When they first pitched the show, it had a moderate response, but when the first season was broadcast, the Charlie's Angels film came out, and suddenly the market was full of girl show properties.
According to an article "Achieving a Global Reach on Children's Cultural Markets" by Valerie-Ines de la Ville and Laurent Durup, the series was originally designed to reach an American audience, but has garnered appeal from its humor "based on a stereotypical European vision of American references" while "appearing to be original and innovative to the U.S. audience". Producer and artistic director Stephane Berry said that the style "is a melting between the American style, which associates action and comedy, and Japanese design for the aesthetic environment and the emotions expressed through the large eyes of the characters." Some of the common references have included Charlie's Angels, Beverly Hills, The Avengers, James Bond and its gadgets, anime, and Cat's Eye.
The head writers for the show were Robert and Michelle Lamoreaux who were based in Los Angeles, and who had worked on Nickelodeon shows. Demersay and Stephane Berry had both previously worked with Saban entertainment in Europe. In a GeoCitiesinterview, Kate Griffin, who voices Alex, mentioned that the typical session for the three girls is that they would record as an ensemble, but through a phone patch, with Hale and Baker calling from Los Angeles, and herself in Toronto.
Following the end of the fifth season, the series's movie, Totally Spies! The Movie, was produced and released to theatres in France on 22 July 2009. The movie received a television release in the United States, on April 25 the following year, coinciding with the airing of the series' fifth season there.
In August 2011, Marathon Media confirmed that production for the sixth season was underway and set to premiere in 2013. The sixth series would be produced solely by Marathon in association with TF1 and The Walt Disney Company France. It was later confirmed that 26 episodes would be produced and that the show would be licensed in Spain and Latin America, with European territories following suit. To coincide with the sixth season's premiere, Zodiak Kids CP Paris, in association with Château de Versailles Spectacles (CVS) and TF1, organized an event at the Palace of Versailles, taking place during the summer of 2013. The event would be preceded with activities including a screening of a special featuring the spies on a mission in the palace gardens.
== Episodes[edit] ==
Main article: List of Totally Spies! episodes
In 2013, the show was revived for a sixth season, premiering at an event at the Palace of Versailles. Twenty-six episodes were broadcast on French television and networks across Europe starting in September 4, 2013. In Canada, the sixth season premiered on September 7, 2014 on Teletoon, and on September 6 on sister station Télétoon. The show has been broadcast worldwide on various networks, including TF1 in France, Teletoon in Canada, Cartoon Network in the US and Latin America, Rede Globo in Brazil, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in Asia, Africa, and Europe (formerly Fox Kids and Jetix).
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