Nuristar

Nuristar is a Flarlandian fantasy-black comedy animated series that aired on Channel 14 from 2008 to 2015. First broadcast as a one-episode preview on August 17, 2007 and again previewed on September 28, 2007, the series officially premiered on February 1, 2008 on Channel 14, running until June 12, 2015. The program follows the complicated life of Nuri Evenstar, who feels depressed at first and wishes to become a merman. The series also has a complex subplot that involves an evil corporation called Dead Atlantis.

Following its cancellation, the show gained new life and achieved a second youth mostly due to the following of dedicated fans.

Plot

The series is set in Warley (known to be an important center for merculture in real life) and tells the life of Nuri Evenstar, a troubled child of mixed (Flarlandian and Sierran) parents who seemed to freeze his aging process when he became 13 years of age. Nuri is in a complex situation: he cannot attend school, is more aligned to the merpeople and is being irritated by his step-brother Michael (at least in the first season). Nuri has developed strong links with other people who normally don't suffer from his health issue.

Episodes

See List of Nuristar episodes.

Characters

Primary

• Nuri: Nuri is the main character. He stopped aging at the age of 13 and identifies himself as a "human merman" (yet becomes an actual merman while underwater). Initially Nuri was depressed, but halfway towards season 1, he became a "normal" character. Nuri's interests include painting, listening to "dope tracks" and hallucinating.
• Michael: Michael is Nuri's step-brother who is of mixed backgrounds, his parent is a Flarlandian Sierran who was purged following the Chapman trials when he was a baby and one of his ancestors is an Ashtalaic Michillian. He is known to be a "he of few words" because he rarely feels like talking. He rarely gets more than one line per episode. He speaks in a regular, neutral Sierran accent with influences of the Hopelandian accent (as his VA is half-Hopelandian). He too is revealed to have the same unaging problem as Nuri and Priscilla, as revealed in the third season.
• Joanna: Nuri's sister (and Michael's step-sister) who is critical of Nuri's activities.
• Priscilla: A Flarlandian-Huascan girl who has the same problem as Nuri: stopped aging at age 13 and is a "human mermaid". She is a famous singer and has sold four platinum albums without even living in a luxurious house. As evidenced in the last episode, the kiss between Nuri and Priscilla triggers an effect that turns the two into merpeople forever, so as to justify their immortality.
• Nuri's hamster (name TBA)
• Dr. Frath Welker: An evil scientist appearing in all but some episode's B-Plots. He is the father to teenage Vanessa Welker and is the head of his own company, Dead Atlantis (see company backstory below). Depending on the episode, Dr. Welker's main goal is to either destroy or rule Warley, which was suggested to him as a teenager on a failed date with Nuri's mom as a starting point before taking over the world. Routinely bumbling, incompetent, and forgetful, almost all of Welker's plans-always involving various gadgets and/or inventions-have been thwarted by Nuri's hamster. However, a few of his schemes were quite successful, such as in the 2014 special Nuri Evenstar and the Dead Atlantis Files.

Secondary

• Mr. Lowry
• Wallace Stampers
• Shaffard: an organization absorbed by Kraventhorn

Places

• Dead Atlantis: Founded in 1996 by two Wembley University students, Dead Atlantis was created as a search engine on the internet that, taking advantage of the internet connections used, brought a list of sites by their level of importance, only the other way around. The idea of ​​the page was that the most obscure results were found first, data that other engines wouldn't even show.

In 1999, when the students left the university in search of better work, Dead Atlantis went along with them. A large amount of financing from private companies was registered for the then-Dead Atlantis website, but in March 2000 the site was taken down. In 2001 Michael Kraventhorn wrote an article, "coining" the term Deadlantis, but no reference to Dead Atlantis was made. At that time, the Flarlandian-Hopelandian internet scholar Wallace Stampers tried to prove that Kraventhorn was paid by Flarlandian institutions to hide Dead Atlantis from his studies, which was understood by Stampers as "a crime of anonymity on the internet", considering that the use of Dead Atlantis engine would allow search of sites including on the Deadlantis platform.

With the departure of the website, the government disacknowledged the existence of the "obscure engine". In 2004, as soon as Stampers offered its shares at an auction (Initial Public Offering), Mr. Farth Welker, an obscure businessman who owns an evil, hidden corporation, bought the DeadAtlantis brand for $15 million, using a clause saying that the company was to build a "cutting-art, state-of-the-edge" building in Warley. In 2006, the company was reformulated and Mediacorp was created.

In 2008, Wallace Stampers accused Mediacorp of using the Dead Atlantis engine in "obscure" industrial espionage and arms and drug trafficking operations, including the use of smaller companies, such as BIG (Business Ingram Group ~ or Bail Infection Group according to Stampers) and XCorp (group with political interests that might have existed for 200 years, according to Stampers). However, Stampers was silenced in the courts after a $1 million settlement between the parties.

In 2009, Dead Atlantis was again sold to a group of investors who already owned some information technology, technological products and toy retail companies. These investors then created the Dead Atlantis Inc conglomerate, and then bought BIG and XCorp, and have been planning to enter the Flarlandian market since 2010.

In 2010, Wallace Stampers created a dossier called "THE TRUTH OF DEAD ATLANTIS". This document had about 1000 pages and focused on explaining how DeadAtlantis was responsible for 90% of the industrial espionage that occurred in the world, as well as large conglomerates like Mediacorp (and other companies like Shogakukan, also mentioned in the document) benefitted from being the only ones to have direct access to an rngine that, in theory, would lead to the search of material, including the so-called "Deadlantis", and would be being used by the United States government for war espionage. Stampers died in January 2011, thus leaving his dossier "lost". Nuri found the dossier in an investigation made in 2013.

Music

Nuristar features more alternative genres, particularly the genres explored by merculture.

Production

When the series was being pitched again, the concept title was The Thirteenth Year of Nuri Evenstar, out of desperation for not racking a second season. The title was later compacted to Nuristar.

The series ended production in 2015. The reason why was, despite having reached a certain level of popularity, episodes were getting more and more complex and the gaps between episodes were getting longer.

A planned live-action feature film was set to be released in 2013, but Cinema Service later delayed it, initially putting it on hold before oficially abandoning the idea. This was due to "numerous logistical issues regarding the storyline". The supposed feature film's concept divided the fan base.

A separate film will be made (similar to an extended episode) where Priscilla is kidnapped by Kraventhorn. The film takes place during the events of the first season. The film will be called Nuristar: Priscilla and Joanna Against All Odds: Girl Power.

Broadcast

The series ran on Channel 14 throughout its run. Abroad, it was seen worldwide on Flarland TV's youth network Flarland U and sold to a handful of broadcasters.

Flarland U was also infamous for leaking a few episodes of the series before Channel 14 did.