El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera (sometimes shortened to El Tigre) is an American animated television series created by Jorge R. Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua that premiered on Nickelodeon on February 19, 2007.[1] The series centers on a 13-year-old boy named Manny Rivera who is trying his best to choose between being good or evil while dealing with bizarre enemies, aiming to gain his belt's buckle to become a tiger-themed superhero known as "El Tigre". There are two paths Manny must choose between in the show, either to become the son of a legendary hero known as "White Pantera" and the grandson of an evil super villain known as "Puma Loco". The show is set in Miracle City, a fictional city based on and located at Tijuana, where Jorge grew up. The series was produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio and was animated using Adobe Flash. A total of 26 episodes were produced before it was cancelled.
Set in the fictional crime-ridden Mexican-American metropolis of Miracle City, El Tigre follows the adventures of Manny Rivera, a 13-year-old boy with superpowers trying to choose between being good or evil. Manny's father is a superhero known as White Pantera and wants Manny to grow up to be good and fight evil. Manny's grandfather is a supervillain known as Puma Loco who thinks Manny should go to the dark side.
El Tigre was created by a husband-and-wife team named Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua along with others who were employed to make the show. The couple made the project from experiences they had when they were younger. Manny Rivera is based on Jorge's young self. Many things known in the show were based on actual events or parts of Jorge's life. His father was an architect (which was viewed as good) and his grandfather was a general in the military (which was viewed as evil). That idea was exaggerated to the idea of superheroes and supervillains. The city Miracle City is likely based on Tijuana, where Jorge grew up.
This was the first Nicktoon to be fully animated in Adobe Flash after O'Grady, which was exclusive to The N. The animation of the series was a split between Boulder Media in Ireland and 6 Point Harness in the United States.
On January 25, 2008, Nickelodeon allowed viewers to vote on the ending of an episode, deciding whether El Tigre would choose the path of heroism or villainy.[2] "The Good, the Bad, and the Tigre" premiered later that same day with the ending chosen by the voters. Voters ultimately chose the heroic ending, in which El Tigre defeated Django and Sartana. If the villainous ending had been chosen, he would have helped Django and Sartana conquer the world, but turned against them by launching them through space to take the empire for himself and Frida, and ruled over the world into old age. After they remembered to free the now elderly White Pantera and Puma Loco from all their tyrannical fun, their reunion was interrupted when Sartana and Django recruited an army of aliens to retake her throne, in which the Rivera men (along with Frida who rides a mech) leap into action to battle Sartana, which cuts with the title "The End?".
El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera had its first screening on January 19, 2007, at the first-ever Nickelodeon Creative Summit held in San Juan, Puerto Rico as a special treat for the 60 exclusive attendees. Later sneak peeks of the series premiered on February 19, 2007. The series then premiered regularly on March 3, 2007 and it has aired for both networks. Each half-hour episode consists of two 11-minute segments, with the two exceptions being "The Grave Escape" and "The Good, The Bad, and the Tigre", which are double-length episodes. The series had its Canadian debut on YTV on May 4, 2007.
Nickelodeon would continue to air the series up until June 20, 2008, shortly after an airing of the episodes "Love and War" and "Wrong and Dance". The show would later move to Nicktoons Network starting on August 7, 2008, with the episodes "Oso Solo Mio" and "Silver Wolf". The series finished its original run on September 13, 2008 after a total of 26 episodes. Since the series ended, reruns continued to air on Nicktoons until February 10, 2018, before making a surprise comeback on May 5, 2021 to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Four episodes of the series were aired on TeenNick's NickRewind block for a very short time from March 20 to April 17, 2021.
The series is currently available to purchase on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video digitally. It was also available on the PlayStation Network Store. A few clips of the series were available for viewing on the Nickelodeon website. Since July 26, 2023, the entire series was added to Paramount+.
A videogame based on the series, also titled El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, was released for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2 in 2007. The series also had several internet browser-based games on Nickelodeon's official website, including a fighting game that could be downloaded through the Nick Arcade website, titled Festival De Las Piñatas. El Tigre was also a playable character in several Nickelodeon-crossover browser games, including Nick Arcade's Nicktoons HoverZone.
El Tigre is a playable character in the Nintendo DS version of Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots, and he also makes a non-playable cameo appearance in Nicktoons MLB. El Tigre appears as a playable character in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, along with a stage based on the Miracle City volcano arena.[3]
McDonald's Happy Meal featured El Tigre toys for a limited time in January 2008. They include El Tigre, White Pantera, Puma Loco, and Señor Sinestro.
The second segment of the first episode titled "Night of the Living Guacamole" was to be featured on the Nick Picks Vol. 6 DVD, with a release date for August 7, 2007. However, the DVD was cancelled for unknown reasons.[4] The episode "The Grave Escape" was included on a downloadable digital DVD available on iTunes called Nickelodeon Shocktober! Vol. 1, along with select episodes of Zoey 101, The Naked Brothers Band, and iCarly. The complete series DVD was released as Season 1 on a six-disc set on November 23, 2011, as a manufacture on demand Amazon exclusive.[5] An international version of the Season 1 DVD, titled Día De Los Malos (or O Día Dos Maus in Brazil), was released on the same day. Unlike the season 1 manufacture on demand DVD, this one was sold in Mexico and Brazil. However, not all episodes from Season 1 were released in this DVD.
Nickelodeon featured comics for El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera in Nickelodeon Magazine. Its first-ever comic, "Puma's Paw", was featured in the March 2007 issue.
An art book titled "The Art of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera" was released on July 9, 2024.
The characters Manny, Frida, and Grandpapi/Puma Loco make an appearance during a 2D animated scene in The Book of Life which is Jorge R. Gutierrez' first feature-length film. A wallpaper with El Tigre's design can be seen in a later scene as well as White Pantera in another scene.
El Oso (renamed as Bear Killah) appeared as a recurring character in Maya and the Three (also created by Jorge R. Gutierrez).
Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media gave the series three out of five stars; saying that, “Tweens will enjoy the zany characters and exaggerated stories, but parents might take issue with the young characters' penchant for troublemaking, the absence of a strong role model for Manny, and the overall lack of repercussions for his questionable behavior.”[6] The first season received an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on six reviews.[7]
Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew wrote that "El Tigre offers hands down the most dynamic implementation of Flash I’ve ever seen in an animated TV series, seamlessly combining the cinematic possibilities more commonly associated with 3D CGI alongside the organic appeal of drawn animation," while also stating that the series has an "annoying tendency to stage too many scenes on slants and diagonals, voice acting performances that I couldn’t understand."[8]
