Jade Armor

Jade Armor is a French animated television series produced by TeamTO that premiered on 7 September 2022. It follows Lan Jun, a teenage girl who fights supervillains as the legendary superhero Jade Armor.

The series was renewed for second season.^[1]

Lan Jun, a teenager, inherits the mantle of the mystical superhero Jade Armor. She must battle an array of supervillains, including the Crimson Lord, while dealing with the challenges of teenage life. She is aided by four Beasticons, magical animals of legend.

• Lan Jun Ya/Jade Armor (voiced by Elle Hallock)^[2] is the main character of the series. She lives with her father, grandmother, and great-grandmother and has recently become the new Jade Armor.
• Alisha (voiced by Justine Putmon)^[2] is one of Lan Jun's best friends.^[3]
• Theo Khan, Alisha's brother and another of Lan Jun's best friends.^[3]
• The Crimson Lord is the primary antagonist.^[4]

The show is inspired by Chinese mythology.^[5] It was created by Chloe Miller and executive producer Corinne Kouper based on a concept by M. Pongo Kuo. It was co-developed by Mary Bredin, with M.J. Offen as head writer and Ghislaine Pujol as story editor.^[6] French animation studio TeamTO began developing the series in 2011, with the pitch bible and scripts being rewritten several times during development.^[7]

The original concept for the show was an action series with a male protagonist.^[7] After Chloe Miller joined the show,^[7] Lan Jun, who was originally created as the male protagonist's best friend, became the main character. When creating Lan Jun, the showrunners wanted her to be an "ordinary girl" who was both feminine and strong, without relying on either gender stereotypes or a "tomboy" archetype.^[8] Miller and Kouper also sought to add more comedic elements to the story, and focus more on family and heritage.^[7]

The series's inspirations include kung fu movies, magical girl anime, and superhero comics.^[7] The series is set in a fictional city inspired by Taiwan and a Chinese cultural consultant was hired to advise the showrunners on the representation of cultural elements like kung fu.^[9] Offen commented that the creative team had "gone deep" on the characterization of side characters and villains.^[10] The show is intended for viewers in the 3- to 12-year old age demographic.^[11]

The art style of Jade Armor was intended to have a "graphic and minimalist look". It is animated using 2D computer graphics, with sharp-edged linework designed by the series's artistic director Pierre Croco.^[7]

The series was co-directed by Denis Do, a Wushu martial arts practitioner.^[9] To help the storyboard artists visualize the show's action and fight scenes, the showrunners hired a stunt coordinator to film the action scenes on camera.^[8] Some stunts were performed by French Kung Fu martial artists.^[9] Miller said that the storyboard artists had to use their imagination to translate the stuntmen's work into the show's magical, "bigger than life" action sequences. The series's choreography was inspired by films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.^[8]

The show's producers had difficulty finding Asian voice actors, and voice actors who could dub the French series into other languages. As a result of the difficulty in finding voice actors with dubbing skills, TeamTO's École Cartoucherie Animation Solidaire partnered with Frog Box and Titrafilm to create a dubbing course.^[12]

TeamTO released a pitch bible and trailer at Kidscreen Summit in 2016.^[13]

The series's second season began development in June 2023.^[4]

The series is distributed by HBO Max and Cartoon Network in Latin America,^[8] Europe, the Middle East and Africa, France Télévisions, Super RTL in Germany, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Family Channel, Ici TOU.TV, Télé-Québec and Télémagino in Canada. APC Kids distributes the series worldwide with the exception of China and the United States.^[14]

• Jade Armor at IMDb