Review: Victor and Valentino “Villainy In Monte Macabre”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a crossover with a Cartoon Network Latin America series “Villainous”, characters from that show arrive on in Monte Macabre looking for a monster and work with Victor and Valentino to find it.

OUR TAKE

Week three of the Victor and Valen-tober Marathon begins with a peek at a more American show that was made outside of America! I remember some buzz being made about “Villainous” when it first came out, though that’s pretty much evaporated in the years since. It did always seem odd to me that something with such a strong fan following was only being shown on the Latin America offshoot of Cartoon Network. Like The Amazing World of Gumball, this series was produced in another country first, but I figured with the connectivity of the Internet being able to show how popular it could be globally that it would have made more appearances on the American channel. Perhaps this crossover was a way of setting up that potential extension of exposure, though it remains to be seen how well that does. But putting that aside, the idea of a series following a group of unapologetic villains, while not the most original, is used to pretty good effect here, with this episode giving people like me who have never seen the show what seems to be a good representation of the series in case we’re interested in seeing more.

Even though the premise involves a villain called Black Hat doing evil stuff, he is mostly absent from this episode, which makes sense because I imagine he probably wouldn’t mesh well with the tone of this show. Instead, his two henchmen, Dr. Flug and Demencia get to guest star and match up with the main duo. This was probably the right call, as Flug’s intelligence and consciousness matches up with Valentino as much as Demencia’s mischievousness works with Victors. So even if these two pairs of characters have wildly clashing character designs, their interactions don’t feel super forced or contrived in order to make the crossover work. Also of note is that these characters are guests in Victor and Valentino’s show, not the other way around, which helps to keep things in line for people who are just watching one show like me AND still keeps things interesting enough that maybe I’ll check out this other show too. I have no idea if I’ll actually do that, but I’m certainly more interested in it now than I was before. An important component to a crossover is knowing how to balance the strengths of the two casts in order to make sure fans of both get to see both of them be great, though one can very easily overpower the other. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to be the case here, hopefully laying the groundwork for future crossover appearances to come.