Strikers

Strikers is an American action-drama animated series created by Chris Prynoski(known for creating Motorcity) and Bryan Andrews(known for creating Sym Bionic Titan), for Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, Adult Swim. It's produced by Titmouse Inc. The show first premiered on June 16 2018 on Adult Swim with the show airing with a TV-14-LV rating for its violence, crude humor and language. The show has went on and received universal acclaim for its storytelling, animation and its characters. It went on to receive numerous rewards and became a massive ratings success.

Plot
Strikers, mysteriously powerful spirits that offer humans special abilities arrived on earth as a way for the gods to test humanity and discuss whether or not humans should be destroyed to solve the issue of overpopulation or be kept alive. Humans who are lost souls(flawed, facing depression, identity crisis) can achieve these powers. The series is about how humans interact with these strikers and how their ideology form around these strikers.

Main
Regina King as Huey - Huey is the main character of the show and is 15 years old. Huey is seen as a delinquent to many people, while also being a total jerk. The truth is that he is a guy who struggles to understand himself and what he really wants and feels like it's a must to form a delinquent image, so people will take him seriously and not a joke. His flaw is him trying to cope with his missing parents and keeps on wishing he would have been a better son. He is the user of Fire Striker.

Yuri Lowenthal as Cameron - Huey's best friend and is the user of Bullet Striker. He is usually quiet and wants to learn more about strikers. Due to him believing, they have a connection to his "lifeless" brother.

Auli'i Cravalho as Katie - Huey's childhood friend. She is the user of Air Striker. While she is shown to have a very likable and inviting personality, she has shown to be very strong and is more experienced with her striker than Huey and Cameron. She is training to help get revenge on the person who killed her father.

Utopian Strikers
Kevin T. Collins as Chavez - Chavez is the leader of a fearsome and respected group of strikers whose goal is to make a utopia. He has good manners and is known for being one of the strongest strikers in the entire show. He wants to make a utopia due to his girlfriend dying and his girlfriend's dying wish was for a perfect world. This utopia he is building is the only thing that keeps him going forward in life. He is the user of Utopia Striker.

Marc Diraison as Zorro - Hot-headed and powerful swordsman. He is the user of Guts Striker. Used to be a leader of a popular street gang, However, due to Chavez killing everybody in his gang and himself being overpowered by Chavez, he was forced to join Chavez. As a guy who cares about his pride, he always ask Chavez for a duel and always falls flat.

TBD as Oscar - A former celebrity as he used to be a live streamer for a website called Youtube. Having a very lonely upbringing, he decided to stream his life on Youtube and grew a very large but toxic fanbase who he grows attached to, due to them being the only people in his life and him not having much of a life outside the internet. Until he had a breaking point and decided to leave his online persona. He is the user of Avian Striker. The ability is slowing down any objects in a 3-10 meter radius

Tony's Family
TBD as Tony - Leader of a mafia group and is the godfather of the Truman family, family containing some of the most powerful strikers the world have ever seen before. As the most powerful striker alive, he is a wealthy man who has already made it and accomplished all the things he wanted to do in his lifetime. Having a 'you only live once' mentality. He is the user of Dolos Striker. Its ability is that it can create rooms and inside of these rooms it can manipulate just about anything in the rooms it creates. Whether its the objects, the gravity or the air and he can also use his own life energy to create living organisms.

What is a Striker?
Strikers are hard to explain tbh but like the basic idea is that they are these spirits and humans cannot see them. However, humans who are struggling with their identity or dealing with feelings of frustration of being wronged or taken advantage of can see them. Now here’s the thing when humans see a striker, the striker will approach them and they will ask you to form this special contract and bond that cant be broken. If you sign this contract you will get access to the abilities of the strikers if you don' t accept the contract then you will have no memory of seeing these strikers again and you will never be able to see strikers in their spirit form. Now strikers are pretty much the power system in Strikers like how stands are power systems in jojo and nen is a power system in hunter x hunter.

When humans accept the bond with the striker they will get a watch on their wrist with the striker spirit inside of it. If they want to activate the striker, they can call upon the striker and use their ability.

Humans and strikers can become 1 with each other, if they want to use more of their power to the maximum potential, with this they will look like just look like their striker but with a more human form.

Strikers operate on their host mental state. If their host are calm and composed strikers abilities will be precise, strong and fast. If their host mental state is all fucked up, strikers abilities will be all over the place and very weak. They also operate on these energy system which is pretty much how much juice they got left. At first the energy is 100%, but whenever you use a striker’s ability /power their energy will constantly drop and if your energy is 0%  your striker will stop working and will need time to rest and you will also be hurt if your energy is 0% and will be on the verge of dying.

Scripts
List of Strikers scripts

Broadcast
In the United States, the show premiered on Adult swim on June 18 2018, however the first episode was available for free on the Adult Swim website since May. The show was also streaming on Netflix starting January 1st 2019. The show later moved from streaming on Netflix to HBO Max on May 27 2020.

Kid bringing lighter to school
In November 2019, an elementary school in Florida had an incident with 3 kids bringing a lighter to school and lighting it up in the restroom which caused the fire alarm to go off and had the entire school in a panic. The kids were caught and when asked why they did it, they said they wanted to become a striker. This obviously caused lots of trouble for adult swim, with multiple parents pinning them for it.

Chris Prynoski, the creator of Strikers responded to the controversy on Twitter by simply tweeting "Oh."

Cancellation Rumors
In August 2022, during the Warner Bros and Discovery merge. There were a lot of rumors going around of Strikers being cancelled due to people being worried about the state of animation at Warners Bros and with speculation that Bryan Andrews isn't working on Strikers anymore because he was too busy with Marvel. These rumors spread wide enough that a hashtag called #SaveStrikers started trending on Twitter. These rumors were later confirmed to be false though when the co-creator, Chris Prynoski went on his Twitter and confirmed that Strikers is safe and even said Bryan Andrews is still working on the series with him.

TV Rating
Striker is rated TV-14-LV for

Violence - There's lots of intense fight scenes in the show with blood, multiple characters deaths.

Language - There is some strong language in the show such as hell, damn, pissed, shit, bitch, ass, etc.

Episodes
List of Strikers episodes

Trailers/Promos
List of Strikers Trailers/Promos

Critical Response
Strikers reached universal level of acclaim as it was loved by critics and audience alike who praised the series for its animation, relatable characters that resonated with and influenced lots of people, while also praising the exploration of themes such as free will, self-love, acceptance and the flaws of a utopian society. The show is one of Adult Swim's most watched and popular shows. It's often regarded as not just one of the best animated series of all time, but one of the greatest shows of all time. The show has an 8.9/10 on IMDB and has a 5 out of 5 stars on Common Sense Media.

Ratings
Strikers has shown to been a ratings hit ever since the first episode premiering to 1,458,000 viewers, being the highest rated premiere on Adult Swim of the year. This was due to the big promotional push Adult Swim gave the series as well as the show garnering huge attention with the official trailer for the series reaching over 5 million views before the first episode premiered.

Becoming the #1 show on the Adult Swim's block, Toonami beating shows like Dragon Ball Super and later becoming the #1 show on all of Adult Swim in its 3rd season beating the smash hit, Rick and Morty. Despite the show being on Adult Swim, the show proved to be popular with teens, tweens and even kids, which had led to some controversies...

Streaming
The show has also been successful on streaming. Being a consistent top-performer on the streaming service Netflix, before being moved to HBO Max. The show was the 2nd most streamed cartoon of 2020 after Avatar the Last Airbender.

Trivia

 * The show was originally suppose to be a kids show and Chris pitched it to Disney XD, however he felt like Disney were way too controlling on the show and he felt like the show wouldn't reach its full potential.
 * This is one of Adult Swim's most expensive show due to the highly detail backgrounds and the action scenes.
 * Huey's name and design is inspired by the Boondocks protagonist, Huey Freeman.
 * A few episodes of the series are actually rated TV-MA due to some scenes having excessive gore. Despite the fact the show is airing on Adult Swim, these TV-MA episodes are edited down to TV-14 for the TV broadcast.
 * When asked about this, Chris Prynoski responded with "I really wish that Adult Swim aired these episodes in their uncensored glory, however the reason for this is because Adult Swim wants Strikers to be more of a primetime show and want to catch more of an audience, so sometimes they have to cut down on the gore of the series so the casual viewer won't be turned off by it. It sorta makes sense, although still disappointing..."
 * Luckily, these episodes can be streamed uncensored on Netflix, HBO Max and on the DVDs and Blu-rays.