El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera is an American animated television series created by Jorge R. Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua for Nickelodeon. The first screening of the show was on January 19, 2007, in the first ever Nickelodeon Creative Summit held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as a special treat for the 60 exclusive attendees (The Summit was led by 4 of the main branches of Nickelodeon). Later sneak peeks aired on February 19, with the series television debut on March 3, 2007, for both networks. The series finished its original run on September 13, 2008.

Premise
Set in the fictional crime-ridden Mexican 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 Grandpapi is a supervillain known as Puma Loco who thinks Manny should go to the dark side.

Production
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 in 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.

El Tigre's Decision of Destiny
On January 25, 2008, Nickelodeon allowed viewers to vote on an ending deciding El Tigre's fate on a brand-new episode that premiered on the same day. The ending chosen was hero, in which he defeated Django and Sartana. If had evil been chosen, he would have helped Django and Sartana conquer the world, but turned against them to take the empire for himself and Frida, and ruled over the world into old age.

Critical
Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media gave the series 3 out of 5 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.”

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."