The series begins as a child's superhero fantasy romp with strong scifi elements, and while in never loses that fantasy charm, eventually Ben comes to realize that, for lack of a better cliché, with great power comes great responsibility. With the power of the Omnitrix comes great danger to himself and those he loves, something that would scare most would-be heroes off, but Ben proves himself a true hero by shouldering the burden, and proving himself worthy more than once of the power which he stumbled upon. As the series progresses, Ben learns secrets about his family, and makes new enemies, including the brilliant and criminally insane Dr. Animo, Ben's most obvious foil, eleven-year-old super-powered thug Kevin Levin, who, through his absorption power, is able to duplicate Ben's powers, and, Ben's ultimate enemy, Vilgax, a ridiculously powerful, brilliant, and devious alien conqueror with a commanding presence and impressive stature who understands the workings of the Omnitrix better than Ben himself could ever hope. Vilgax even has a history with Ben's family, as Ben's Grandpa Max used to be a member of a group of space police, the Plumbers, and Vilgax was his nemesis.
When this show first aired, I was seventeen, and so I was very clearly outside of the shows primary demographic of boys ages eight to thirteen, but well within its periphery demographic of teenage boys. As an animation enthusiast and a scifi nerd, I was pretty much guaranteed to love this show, but I couldn't have guessed just how much I loved it. While the show would have certainly held my attention on its own merits, it attracted me peripherally because it actually reminded me of a fictional property that I talked about a couple weeks ago on this sight that never got a good TV adaptation; Animorphs. Both involved young people, transformation, and an enemy from space, however Ben 10 never got so dark, and never dealt with the paranoia-inducing idea of body snatching and living in a world where no one can be trusted...
...Until the sequel series, Ben 10: Alien Force. The second Ben 10 series, which began in late '08, featured a fifteen-year-old Ben who had matured with his audience. This version of Ben, while still fun-loving and a bit childish, is much more serious, reserved, thoughtful, and responsible. He has even, at some point between series, given up his powers, and so, when a new alien threat emerges, must make the difficult choice to put the watch back on and step right into the center of a secret alien invasion by the Hibreed and their army of body-snatched humans, the DNAliens, who want to purge all "inferior life" from the galaxy. The DNAliens can change their appearance, so Ben, Gwen, and reformed Kevin Levin, must, without the aid of absent and presumed dead Max, fight a reactive campaign in secret against the Hibreed and their subjects. Over time they find allies, including the diminutive but staggeringly brilliant alien creator of the Omnitrix, Asmuth, and the half alien children of the last generation of Plumbers. He makes new enemies as well, including Albedo, a member of Asmuth's species who built his own, flawed Omnitrix, accidentally trapping himself in the default form of Ben himself, which Albedo finds repulsive. Eventually their reactive tactics are not enough and all-out warfare ensues, and against all odds Ben and his allies win, repelling the alien threat for good. This series still never gets as dark as Animorphs, but that's okay, because it was never meant to, and, as I said above, I love this series due to its parallels to Animorphs, and on its own merits. That's why, when the series began to leave behind those parallels, I still watched, and actually loved it just as much, and sometimes more, as we head into the third (yes, I said third) series, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Albedo, trying once again to retrieve Ben's original Omnitrix, builds a "superior" Ultimatrix, which can artificially evolve its alien forms. He teams up with Vilgax to defeat Ben, but Ben defeats them both, taking the Ultimatrix for himself, as the Omnitrix was destroyed in the conflict.
Ultimate Alien was, in many ways, a superior series to Alien Force, building upon its own mythos, developing characters, and introducing some pretty strong moral dilemmas, including a storyline which could very easily have lead to a fatal confrontation between Ben and Kevin who had, to protect his friends, allowed himself to be returned to his old mindset of a selfish, criminally insane villain. Kevin, you see, is an Osmosian. His race can absorb materials into their skin to gain strength and skills dependent upon the material absorbed. They can also absorb and discharge energy, including the transformation energy of Ben's Ultimatrix, but absorbing energy makes them selfish and addicted to acquiring power and possessions. To save his friends from another Osmosian, Kevin absorbs the energy of the Ultimatrix, transforming into an amalgamation of Ben's alien forms. He retains his faculties long enough to save his friends, but becomes an even greater threat than the one he repelled. Eventually everything works out for the best, and the heroic Kevin is restored, but it was touch and go for quite a while. The series ends with Asmuth returning to Earth to take the Ultimatrix from Ben, as it is unstable, replacing it with the Omnitrix Touch, the latest version of the Omnitrix, which is more advanced than past devices, but has a new control interface. For the first time since he was ten, Ben doesn't know how to work the Omnitrix properly, setting up for the fourth series in the Ben 10 continuity, Ben 10: Omniverse.
Omniverse was a return to form for the series. Some fans of the original didn't enjoy the sequels due to their shift in tone, as minimal as it was. Omniverse puts more emphasis on Ben's immature side, as the original series did, while retaining the serious undertones of the franchise overall. Gwen and Kevin move away, downgraded for the first time in the franchise since the start of Alien Force (and earlier in Gwen's case), to the status of minor characters, replacing them with a humanoid feline alien, Rook Blanco, Ben's partner in the Plumbers, of which sixteen-year-old Ben is now a junior member. Their friendship and its development is very well orchestrated, if slow to get going, and I can (almost) forgive the show for butting Gwen and Kevin away to make room for it. Also, the gimmick of the show's first season, tying current events back to the actions of ten-year-old Ben between the end of the original series and the day that Ben removed the Omnitrix the first time, is way less gimmicky than I originally thought it would be, and leads up to a really cool payoff, and the reveal of a new alien form which has quickly become my favorite. This series is still ongoing, and the episodes, which are admittedly far more episodic than any episodes of the show since '08, with a heavy lean on comic relief, remain consistently pretty good. I was skeptical about this show, as it uses the same animation studio as the semi-recent Transformers: Animated. Their studio has a very unconventional animation style, and despite the fact that I enjoyed Animated, I was skeptical that they would be able to handle Ben 10. The animation is fine, and I'm finally getting used to it, and the series has been good enough overall that it certainly made up for it, no problem.
Ben 10, as a whole, is a great franchise, with several animated and live action movies and a feature-length crossover with another pretty decent show made by the same group, Man of Action, under its belt. There are so many characters and elements which I haven't brought up here because they simply have to be experienced to be fully appreciated, like Paradox, a time-traveling British hero in the tradition of Dr. Who, who helps Ben from time to time. The story is great, developed for a peripheral audience broad enough that anyone with an interest in action, scifi, or animation will find something to like about it. Some series are better than others, but all range between better than average and great, and I highly recommend them all. The first couple of seasons of all but Omniverse are on Netflix. Check them out, and come back later for another Something Awesome.
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