The Prince of Atlantis was a short-lived BBC cartoon that mixed CGI and traditional animation. It told the story of an Atlantean prince named Akata who, along with his friends of both the sea creature and human variety, defended the oceans and his Atlantean secrets from the evil B.I.G. corporation.
It ran in 1997 and these days it's almost impossible to find anything about it online, bar a few limited episode guides and a stub article on The Other Wiki.
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- Acrofatic: Uncle Momo was pretty heavy-set but could move as well as any of the other characters.
- Action Girl: Dorothy regularly charges into dangerous situations and has taken down plenty of baddies despite being a normal human.
- Aerith and Bob: Dorothy, Eva, Orkov and Momo.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Akata and the other Atlanteans come in all colours and are patterned like tropical fish.
- Ambiguously Brown: Dorothy had a darker skintone than the other members of the Platon crew.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Oracalc was used for power sources and bombs and the pure energy of it was the power behind Akata's blue ray.
- Bad Boss: Eva Medal to Alfred and Luke and the B.I.G. executives to all their employees. They'll leave their staff to go down with their subs more often than not if they screw up.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: All the Atlanteans have this since they don't wear clothes. Which raises some, ahem, interesting questions about how they continue their species...
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Akata saves Jaurice's life which lead to him doing a Heel–Face Turn and siding with him against B.I.G and, later on, Jaurice saves Alfred after he's caught by Dagon, which ends with Alfred saving Jaurice and Jim when Eva tries to blast their submarine.
- Big Bad: Eva Medal, the Corrupt Corporate Executive/evil military leader of B.I.G.
- The Big Guy: Jaurice is by far the strongest member of Team Akata.
- Bloodless Carnage: Most of the time. Subverted once when the B.I.G board members feed their sharks a very bloody dead fish.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Happened to Akata after Eva caught him in one of her traps and took control of his mind with one of B.I.G's gadgets.
- Bullying a Dragon: B.I.G try to attack Dagon and destroy him after he gets too close to their mining operation. Dagon is a gigantic, underwater Kaiju. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
- The Bus Came Back: Captain Baha first appears in "The Leviathan" and was taken into space at the end of the episode. He returned later on he returned in, appropriately enough, "The Return of Captain Baha".
- But Now I Must Go: The final episode ends with Agata's parents coming to pick him up and bring him to the Atlanteans new home planet, which of course means he has to say goodbye to his friends on Earth.
- Butt-Monkey: Luke, thanks mostly to being a Bumbling Sidekick and the dumber one of the Bazooka brothers. If something's going to go wrong for their team, odds are it will happen to him.
- CGI: Half of the show was done like this and the rest was traditionally animated.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: After screwing up royally, Luke is demoted to...a hamburger cook. Something he finds beyond humiliating.
- Cool Old Guy: Jim's Uncle Momo and Shum, Akata's holographic mentor. Momo was a total badass that could drive a jeep like an F1 race car and almost singlehandedly saved his island home from a murderous billionaire corporation that wanted to destroy it with a bomb test.
- Cool Ship: There was the Poseidon, Akata's futuristic Atlantean sub, the Platon, a gigantic ocean liner-cum-state of the art laboratory and the Requiem, another futuristic sub belonging to B.I.G. this time, that took on an Eldritch Abomination and actually held its own for a while.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The B.I.G board members cared about money and nothing else. In one episode they tried to sell a Fantastic Nuke to terrorists, in another they tried to use an inhabited island to test said nukes.
- Cruella to Animals: From B.I.G. and a few other one shot villains. If there was money to be made under the sea, don't expect them to give two hoots about the sea life surrounding it.
- Damsel in Distress: Oya. She got captured and held for ransom more than anyone over the course of the show.
- Disappeared Dad: King Oceanis is gone before the series begins. We do see him in flashback, though.
- Distressed Dude: Most of the males held the Distress Ball at one point or another. Notable incidences were Akata being captured by B.I.G at least twice and Alfred Bazooka being caught by Dagon.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Alfred and Luke are shown to care about each other. Subverted with Eve and her brother Matt, who loathe each other and want the other to get the axe from B.I.G.
- Evil Redhead: Eva, the Big Bad military leader/Corrupt Corporate Executive had bright scarlet hair.
- Evil Versus Evil: "Ghost Ship" briefly had B.I.G take on Nathaniel the Cruel and his crew.
- Fantastic Nuke: B.I.G want to dig up Oracalc to make incredibly destructive bombs.
- Find the Cure!: The episode "A Friend's Life" was about Akata trying to get a sample of poison from a giant stingray so Dorothy could make a cure for its poison.
- Fish People: The Atlanteans are all human/fish-hybrids that can swim as fast as fish, are patterned like them and could breath underwater but not above water.
- For the Evulz: Why does the sentry of the well want to trap Jaurice and Jim in the Mirror of Souls? Just because.
- Friend to All Living Things: Oya Speaks Fluent Animal and they were usually happy to follow her orders.
- Gonk: The member of the board of B.I.G we saw most often was an old, obese man with greyish toned skin who looked like his face was starting to melt.
- Green Aesop: Many of the episodes skewed towards one. A notable example was when Akata and co. had to deal with a ship full of toxic waste that had been dumped in the artic by its Jerkass captain.
- Half-Human Hybrid: An interesting variation; Jaurice starts the show as fully human, but after he dies on the ocean floor and Agata brings him back to life, Agata also attempts to transforms Jaurice into an Atlantean so he can survive underwater. The end result is that Jaurice becomes a human-Atlantean hybrid that can tranform back and forth between a human form and an Atlantean form; above water he looks like his human self, but under water he becomes Atlantean. In the series finale, Agata does the same to Jim.
- Heel–Face Turn: Jaurice used to work for B.I.G but made the turn when Akata saved his life.
- Heroic Build: Everyone was pretty ripped except Akata and Jim, which was justified since they were adolescents among a cast of adults.
- Hidden Depths: In one episode, Alfred Bazooka, who up until then hadn't seemed much deeper than a standard goon, stops Eva killing Jaurice and Jim because earlier they'd saved his life.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Dr. Droog ended up blasted with his own life draining laser, then later on he was sucked into his own machine.
- Hollywood Cyborg: Luke Bazooka. He was an ordinary man who had been upgraded to have metal limbs that contained all sorts of weapons and gadgets.
- Humans Are Bastards: Pleasantly averted for a show with such a prominent Green Aesop. Yes, B.I.G was made up of humans, but most of the heroes were human too and any non-B.I.G people that showed up tended to vary rather than all being greedy and evil. It just seemed to come down to personality. Even some of the B.I.G members got Pet the Dog moments sometimes.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Jim really wanted to be an Atlantean. He gets his wish in the series finale.
- Informed Attribute: The rest of the cast keep commenting on how big and physically menacing Ogen is in his debut episode...except he looks no different from any of the other male characters since they lived in a world of Heroic Build.
- Insult to Rocks: In "Ghost Ship" Momo has this to say about first mate Ratface:Momo: He was called "Ratface" but to say he looked like a rat is an insult to rats.
- Ironic Name: Dr. Droog, which is "friend" is Russian. He's anything but.
- Kaiju: Dagon, the Eldritch Abomination that attacked B.I.G HQ in "Dagon's Anger".
- Karma Houdini: Dr. Droog is never arrested and doesn't suffer any real punishment save for being sucked into the sea with his own giant vacuum.
- Kick the Dog: In "Countdown to Doomsday" B.I.G stage a Fantastic Nuke test on an inhabited island. Why? Just because they can. No one even bothers to suggest trying to find an uninhabited island.
- Last of His Kind: Played with; there are other Atlanteans, but they left the Earth long ago, leaving Agata as the last Atlantean on Earth.
- Magic Mirror: One of the Lotus-Eater Machine variety. Akata had to rescue his friends after they went through it and were trapped in its dreamworlds.
- Magic Pants: Jaurice's clothes transform with him when he switches between his human and Atlantean forms.
- Meaningful Name:
- The B.I.G Corporation. It wasn't a very subtle show.
- Eva Medal could refer to her being part of the military or to her "meddling" in the lives of the heroes.
- Medium Blending: Half traditional animation, half CGI. Traditional for the characters, CG for the backgrounds and machines.
- Mooks: B.I.G. had plenty. Notably, Jaurice used to be one before his Heel–Face Turn.
- Names To Run Away From Very Fast:
- Luke Bazooka.
- Nathaniel the Cruel.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Blue Ray was this, so much. At least half the episodes involved Akata learning to use it in some new way which then proved essential to solving the problem of the day.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning:
- Alfred Bazooka had red eyes. Though they were behind a mask, so maybe they weren't natural.
- Nathaniel the Cruel had glowing red eyes in his ghost form. He was even more murderous after he died, so this applied.
- Royal Brat: Akata in his worst moments could be pretty bratty. He usually got over it pretty quickly.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Akata is very hands-on in the defense of his kingdom, frequently taking to the battlefield himself to confront whichever villains is threatening Atlantis.
- Save the Villain: Jaurice and Jim rescue Alfred after he's caught by Dagon. Lampshaded by Jaurice:Jaurice: I can't believe I'm rescuing this thug...
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Ogen was sealed away in a statue by Agata's father after he tried to overthrow him. Agata ends up inadvertently freeing him.
- Sibling Rivalry: Between Eva and her brother Matt. Apparently, since they were kids, all he ever wanted was what Eva had and he was never happy until he got it.
- The Smart Guy: Dorothy was a brilliant scientist who saved the day with her smarts on a regular basis.
- The Smurfette Principle: Eva was the only regularly appearing female member of B.I.G. Her two sidekicks and the board of directors were all male.
- Sunken City: The titular Atlantis. B.I.G is so huge it may count as well seeing as a lot of employees actually seem to live down there.
- Swallowed Whole: Happens to Akata, Dorothy and Oya in "The Fountain of Life" when they are all sucked into a huge clam. Subverted in that it was just a giant vacuum built to look like a clam to harvest sea creatures and drain them of their life force.
- Team Dad: Jaurice is definitely the dad figure in Akata's life, which is justified since his own is missing.
- Team Mom: Dorothy. Just the same as Jaurice, she fills in a parental role for Akata since his own mom is gone.
- Taken for Granite: Ogen was turned to stone for rebelling against his king.
- Threatening Shark: Generally subverted: Akata and Oya got along with the sharks around at Atlantis just like any other sea creature. The only exceptions tended to be when the sharks weren't real (like in "Mirror of Dreams") or being controlled ("Heavy Metal").
- Too Dumb to Live: Almost happens literally when Luke gives Alfred 0.5g instead of 0.05g of a highly dangerous substance when they were trying to make a bomb. It almost blows them both to kingdom come.
- Two Girls to a Team: Dorothy and Oya for the heroes.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Eva Medal, several times. Most notably when Akata and co. save her and her team from Dagon and she immediately tries to blast them with her super sub.Eva: Gratitude is a luxury of the weak, my friend.
- Unobtainium: Oracalc, a glowing, undersea crystal that can be used as an incredible source of power beyond anything on Earth. B.I.G spend most of their time trying to dig it up.
- Villainous Valour: Eva was as nasty as they came but she was very brave and rarely backed down from a challenge unless it was completely hopeless.
- Water-Triggered Change: In the first episode, after Jaurice dies in a submarine incident, Agata uses his magic to bring him back to life and in the process attempts to turn him into an Atlantean, like him. Instead, Jaurice becomes a hybrid who will transform into an Atlantean any time he comes in contact with water, but returns to fully human if he dries up, enabling him to live both on land and under water.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Akata can barely survive any time at all out of water.
- Given a perspective flip: because most of the series took place at the bottom of the sea, the humans tended to be the ones with the weakness. Damage their submarines or their diving suits and watch their Super Drowning Skills.
- Would Hurt a Child: Eva and the rest of B.I.G. have no qualms going after Akata or Jim whenever they try to cross them.
