Omiverse Oversight: Julie Yamamoto

Introduced in Alien Force Julie was the new love interest for Ben. Where she was competitive Ben was laid back. Where Ben was rash and pron to bumbling she was calm and understanding. Their relationship felt real. They fought yes, but they still really cared about each other. That bond was one of the reasons Ben was able to walk away from ultimate power. I understand not everyone likes Julie, but I really liked her. Not just as a love interest but as a person. And then Omiverse fucked it all up.


So ya.  Julie, a character that had been a reacquiring character for two series, only showed up in two episodes(1 of which she didn't say anything). Talk about an insult to not just the character, but the previous series. So encase you didn't know in Omniverse Julie and Ben have broken up. Yep. The main relationship of Alien Force and Ultimate Alien(aside from Gwen and Kevin) ends OFF SCREEN! What's more we see a flashback to the actual scene. They break up over a misunderstanding that Julie hears when Ben is playing video games. Talk about a slap in the fucking face. As you can plainly see I have a lot of anger at this. I had wanted the Omniverse Oversight series to be about how Ben 10: Omniverse could have used what they had better. I still intend to do that with later posts, but that's not what the rest of the post will be talking about. Instead I'll be talking about why the show runners may have wanted to remove Julie from the show.

Two very good episodes of the original Ben 10 are "Ben 10,000" and "Ken 10". These episodes take place in the future and show how Ben could become consumed by his job as a hero and him dealing with a child respectively. In "Ken 10" we learn that Ben got together with Kai to have their children. Alien Force and Ultimate Alien(UAF) deviated from that path and explained that future away with their take on the multiverse. Omniverse likes to ignore UAF so the show makes "Ben 10,000" and "Ken 10" into the end goal for the series. That just seems very limiting when a show could just do it's own thing. But that only seems to be an after thought when you keep in mind that Kai was introduced late in the series. No the reason they removed Julie from the show was so Ben could be single.

Let me direct you to an early episode of Omniverse "Hot Stretch". As a whole I like the episode, and I may talk about it more in the future. In the episode we are introduced to Ester a young women who has a thing for Ben. I actually really like Ester and won't have minded seeing a relationship between her and Ben develop trough out the series, but they don't. And it's not because of Ben's relationship with Julie as seen in his reaction at the end of the episode. This is actually a problem I have with superhero fiction in general, a lack of stable relationships. It doesn't even come from a character stand point most of the time, but from a writer not wanting the characters in a relationship. "One More Day" being a great example of this.

It's a common theme with Omiverse, Ben becoming immature. That is really why I'm so annoyed about Julie being written way from the show. It had nothing to do with her. It was all about how the writers didn't want Ben to deal with the responsibility of a relationship.  But I really I think these summarizes it best by robertmacquarrie1.