Kids shows I consider good: Avatar: the Last Airbender, Owl House, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, Steven Universe.
Common thread: Narrative run shows that focus on character driven arcs and plot driven seasons. Fantasy Action Comedy genre with sub-themes of romance and drama. A cast of characters between 12 and 16. Big bad evil characters supported by menacing and complex underlings.
Template: 12 year old protagonist becomes privy to deep magical powers in the universe, uses them for shenanigans while preparing to defeat a great evil in the world. See Aang vs Ozai, Adora vs Hordak, Finn vs The Lich, Dipper vs Bill Cipher.
These great evils are not confronted until the hero has greatly advanced in their learning, and their conflicts are instead against the front-line lackeys of the big bad. See Aang vs Zuko, Adora vs Catra, Finn vs The Ice King, Dipper vs Gideon.
These characters are the ones that get the most depth, and should be a focus of the B-plots in the stories, and we should see their growth in power just as much as our hero grows. I don’t think they should be someone the hero has pre-existing baggage with, though the friends to enemies plotline is neat. More Ice King and Marceline, less Adora and Catra.
That’ll be my first rule in crafting a kids animation narrative, no betrayals. The good guys in the end all want the same thing, and any internal conflict should be focused on means, not motive. See Jet and the Freedom Fighters.
Though that too has its own baggage, in that there’s a common idea that the easiest foil for our heroes is to give them an extremist who takes their motives too far. Or worse, a villain who holds a more moral position than the heroes, but also does terrorism. See Amon vs Katara.
Let’s put together a short pitch to assemble the basic narrative we want to see. Obviously I’m stealing a lot, as all great artists do, but I want this to still feel unique.
Our protagonist is a twelve year old boy with an older sister who just turned sixteen, two parents who love each other very much, and a deep and terrifying secret. Uhhhh… god I’m not sure. I’m pulling quite the blank to be honest.
Okay, bare bones. Who is the villain, what do they want, why can’t this kid leave it to his parents, and who can help him?
In Danny Phantom, Danny can’t go to his parents because he is a ghost and they are ghost hunters. In Avatar, Adventure Time, and She-Ra, the parents are gone. In Steven Universe and Gravity Falls, the parents are separated from the kids and the adults in charge are a combination of negligent and encouraging of reckless behaviour.
I want the parents alive and together, so I’ll go with a combination of negligent and distant. Like the parents in Fairly Odd Parents, but toned down a good few notches. They’re overworked Millennials with a lot of income and therapy, but not a lot of time left over and a sense that kids should be able to manage their own lives. Add in a slight conflict of interest and we have enough reason for the kids to keep this from the parents.
Lets take a character from the public domain and make them our villain. It’s a quick and easy way to get a recognizable name into the synopsis. Victor von Frankenstein, Swiss college dropout and father of alchemical life. He has some pretty straightforward goals in his story, he both fears and detests his creation and wants it dead.
If Victor wants the creature dead, then our protagonist (lets call him William, after the murdered child in Shelley’s novel,) wants the creature to be safe and happy. Why?
I’m getting vibes of Boy and Creature storylines, see ET and all of the spin-offs along those lines. A basic structure is coming together, as I formulate more elements to Victor’s character as a modern villain.
Will and Frankenstein’s Monster is a story about a young boy who while visiting his mother’s workplace at a science laboratory for the mad scientist and wealthy celebrity Victor Frankenstein accidentally wakes the latest experiment from a coma, a superhuman specimen titled ADAM. ADAM escapes the facility with the help of Will, and the two bond.
Mr. Frankenstein is furious, and conflict comes most often in the form of him sending his beloved private muscle Detective Lavenza for any sign of ADAM. We can tie her further into the character dynamics by having her be ADAM’s beloved too, seeing in her all the parts of himself that make him so different from everyone else (i.e. being built like an albino brick shithouse).
Now we have a rough outline for our A-plot, we can focus on our protagonist for the B-plot (yes this works, see Phineas and Ferb.) I imagine this would be more in line with your typical childish antics that get resolved by the end of the episode. A small problem faces Will, he gets help to overcome it from ADAM, with the new problem of hiding the eight-foot tall man-child’s assistance from suspicious eyes.
Plot wise, I see the complexities coming with various levels of secrets being revealed to characters and the audience, such as the truth behind the creation of ADAM, Will learning to perform alchemy to repair ADAM, and Lavenza finding the kid who’s been slipping ADAM out from her fingers.
Character development would be centred on the growth of ADAM from something like an overactive puppy into an incredibly smart young man, and the growth of Will from a kid getting help with bullies into a child alchemist making new life out of the earth himself.
It’s not the most creative pitch, nor the first one I would make to a studio if given the chance, but it’s what I think would fit the mold of kids animated TV nowadays.
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