TV Shows That Fell Through the Cracks: Flint the Time Detective

Hello. As my first few posts, I've decided to put up the first posts of various post series. Starting out is "TV Shows That Fell Through the Cracks". This is to highlight campy 80's-90's shows that were lost to time, primarily focusing on tween or early teen shows, since I am in that age bracket. Our special for today? Flint the Time Detective!

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Flint the Time Detective was a 38-episode 1998-99 anime that was best described as "so bad it's good". The plot centered on three kids. Two of them are from our future, Sarah and Tony Goodman. The third is a caveboy named Flint. Sarah and Tony are the niece and nephew of a scientist who works with the Bereau of Time & Space to capture time-travelling criminals (Remember, this is the future. A permit is all that's needed to go stepping on prehistoric butterflies).

Flint, being the eponymous hero, is given a backstory involving the villains. Specifically, Petra Fina, servant and fangirl of the Dark Lord, plus two henchmen, Dino and Mite, turned him and his father into a rock to get at a small bird-like creature near them (also turned to stone). Petra then inadvertantly led Sarah and Tony to the rocks in her day job as a history teacher.

Thanks to future technology, Flint and the bird-thing are restored. Flint's dad, however, becomes a talking hammer. It is then revealed that the creature is a Time Shifter, one of several helpers to Father Time, each with an individual power. However, each one was trapped in a different time period. Why they didn't end up in the present through waiting escapes me. Anyhow, this one is Getalong, able to make people love each other and stop fighting.

Petra eventually flies in with a giant cat-transformer called the Catamaran and tries to kidnap Getalong. Needless to say, she's trounced. What follows is a systematic plot. A Time Shifter is found in a time period, possibly helping some historical figure. The heroes come and meet the Shifter. Petra comes in with her magic stamp, stamps the Shifter to control it, and makes it turn into its larger, evil form. The heroes either defeat it themselves or have a previously befriended Shifter come and help. The plot, however, slowly thickens.

As you may have noticed, I mentioned alternate forms for Shifters. As someone who likes complex systems of Mons' transformations, such as in Pokemon and Digimon, this is where the early episodes shine. Each Shifter has four forms. An inanimate egg form, a small, often cute normal form, and two forms for fighting, one for when they're good and one for when they're evil. The evil forms tend to be animalistic whilst the heroic forms look like Super Sentai heroes.

















In closing, this is better than it sounds. It starts off being amusingly bizarre, gets weirder and weirder, but eventually puts down roots and becomes interesting. It's one of those shows that's better when you're a toddler, but it shouldn't be overlooked. If you like camp, you can get the first few episodes on DVD off Amazon. If you like it, and want more, I should tell you that the company making the DVDs doesn't plan to make any more. Sorry.