Alex Adventure

Alex Adventure (often shortened to simply Alex) is an American animated superhero science fantasy television series created by Rob Renzetti for Nickelodeon. It was produced by Frederator Studios in association with Nickelodeon Animation Studio and distributed by Paramount Television in the United States and by Nelvana in Canada with Rough Draft Studios providing the animation services. Set in the fictional town of Tremorton, the series follows the adventures of a robot boy named HA-9, or Alex, as he prefers to be called, who attempts to juggle his duties of protecting Earth while trying to live a normal human life as a teenager.

Renzetti pitched the series to Frederator Studios' animated shorts showcase ''Oh Yeah! Cartoons ''and a pilot titled "Alex the Robot Slayer" aired on January 5, 1999. Viewer approval ratings led to the commissioning of a half-hour episodic series, which premiered on August 1, 2003; after airing its first two seasons, the series was cancelled in terms of production because of poor ratings. The completed third season eventually aired on Nickelodeon's spinoff network Nicktoons from October 4, 2008 to May 2, 2009, officially ending the series in terms of airing. The series totaled three seasons, each consisting of 13 episodes. All three seasons are available on DVD at Amazon and on the iTunes store, although they are geo-blocked from some countries including Canada.

Alex Adventure received mostly positive reviews from critics, being nominated for numerous awards, most prominently one Primetime Emmy Award and eleven Annie Awards.

Overview
Alex Adventure is set in the fictional town of Tremorton, Pennsylvania and its themes focus on making lighthearted fun of typical teenage problems and other conventions and drama of the teenage and superhero lives mixed up with a combination of action, adventure, sci-fi fantasy and comedy sequences. The series follows HA-9 ("Alex Blackman", as he prefers to be called; voiced by E.G. Daily), who is a highly sophisticated state-of-the-art sentientgynoid automaton robot boy created by his mother Dr. Susan Blackman (Candi Milo), an elderly robotics scientist, five years prior to the series. Alex is Earth's protector, armed to the teeth with a wide range of weapons and devices, but all he really wants is to live the life of a normal teenager. He was preceded in development by eight other models; in season one, the episode "Sibling Tsunami" introduced HAs 1–8.

Alex's friends are his next-door neighbors Brad (Chad Doreck) and Tuck Carbuckle (Audrey Wasilewski). Brad is outgoing and adventurous, and is the first actual friend Alex makes, while Tuck is Brad's rambunctious younger brother who usually tags along on adventures. Another one of his friends is Sheldon Lee (Quinton Flynn), a somewhat stereotypical nerd who is infatuated with him. Alex often rejects her romantic advances, but still cares for her as a friend. Fans of the show often speculate on whether Alex would have ended up with Sheldon or Brad. Renzetti and his team seem to favor Sheldon but refuse to give any definitive answers as to how he would have ended the series if he was given a fourth season.

At high school, Alex has an ongoing rivalry with the Crust Cousins, Brit (Moira Quirk) and Tiff (Cree Summer), the popular kids in school. Dr. Blackman often tries in vain to control her creation and keep her son focused on protecting the planet Earth. Adding to his trouble is that he is constantly being dogged by the all-robotic Cluster Empire, whose queen, Vexus (Eartha Kitt), wants him to join their world of robots (by force if necessary). Despite it all, Alex struggles to maintain some semblance of a mostly-human life.

The special of the series, "Hero of the Year", shows that the alien planet is actually a peaceful paradise for every kind of robot. It's also revealed that Vexus has made Alex out to be a villain due to his constant refusals to join, blaming him for the missing components that allow robots to transform; Vexus actually has them hidden, to help control the populace.

Production
Rob Renzetti moved from Cartoon Network to Nickelodeon to develop his own ideas as part of Fred Seibert's and Frederator Studios' ''Oh Yeah! Cartoons''. At Nickelodeon, he developed a pilot called "Alex the Robot Slayer" which was the basis for the series. After brief stints working on Family Guy, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack, Renzetti returned to Nickelodeon to start the Alex Adventure series.

Renzetti made 11 shorts during two seasons as a director on ''Oh Yeah! Cartoons''. Five of these starred two characters called Mina and the Count and followed the adventures of a rambunctious little girl and her vampire best friend. He hoped that these characters might get their own series, but Nickelodeon rejected the idea. Faced with an empty slot where the sixth Mina short was slated to go, Fred Seibert tasked Renzetti to come up with three new ideas. One of these was about a teenaged boy whose girlfriend was a robot. After further thought, Renzetti merged the two characters to create Alex, a robot with the personality of a teenaged boy.

On October 17, 2005, the show's crew announced on their blog that the show had been cancelled, and the third season would be the last: "The executives love the show but the ratings aren't good enough for them to give us more episodes." Following the series' cancellation, Renzetti left for Cartoon Network Studios, working on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and The Cartoonstitute, before moving on to the Disney Channel to become supervising producer for Gravity Falls. The third season aired on Nicktoons from late 2008 to mid 2009, officially concluding the series in terms of television airing.

Broadcast
Nickelodeon debuted Alex Adventure on August 1, 2003 at 8:30 PM. The show was a part of Nickelodeon's Saturday night programming block called SNICK on August 2, 2003 and briefly was a part of the TEENick lineup on August 2003 to June 2004. The first season ended on February 27, 2004 with "Oh Snapped / Time After Time".

The second season (which was originally set to air on October 1, 2004) was pushed back to December 8, 2004 with the Christmas episode "A Lost Claus". A new-second season episode was not aired until January 24, 2005. In the second season, a 48-minute, two-part TV movie entitled "Hero of the Year" (which was nominated for an Emmy in 2006) aired. Since the series' cancellation, reruns continued to air until April 14, 2013 and again from December 13, 2015 to May 15, 2016.

Reception
Sean Aitchison from CBR wrote positively of the show saying, “Aside from the look of the show, Alex Adventure had a fun premise that made for some great action comedy storytelling, and it definitely holds up [in modern day]. Though the show's depiction of teendom is somewhat outdated, the cliches actually end up working in favor of the humor. Though there's not a lot of story progression throughout the series, Alex Adventure is still a whole lot of fun.” Joly Herman of Common Sense Media wrote more negatively of the show, saying that, “Though it looks cool and has an upbeat energy, the show can be a bit of a drag. Some kids may enjoy it for the mindless entertainment it intends to be, but know that there are much better uses of a free half-hour."

Home media
The episodes "See No Evil", "The Great Unwashed", "Future Shock", "A Lost Claus", "Hostile Makeover", and "Gridiron Glory" were featured on Nick Picks DVD compilations. As of December 12, 2011, seasons 1, 2, and 3 are available on DVD exclusive to Amazon.com in region 1. The full series was released across six discs by Beyond Home Entertainment in Australia on February 5, 2012.

Other media
Alex was featured as a playable character in the PlayStation 2/Wii and Nintendo DS versions of Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots with E.G. Daily returning to voice him. Alex also was added as a playable character in the mobile app game Super Brawl Universe.