#fpb tcr

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Mumm-Ra The Ever Living”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Lesley Tsina

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

Yup, that’s the name of the villain, alright.

Our adventure begins with a look at the daily life of Mumm-Ra, who manages to find various magical artifacts that give him his full strength. Every time he does this, the ThunderCats barge in, destroy it, turn Mumm-Ra The Ever Living back into his skeleton form, and finish him off by mocking him. One day, it's an evil orb. Another day, it's an evil stick. Another day, it's a evil Burger King crown. Okay, maybe it's just a regular crown, but that's the first thing to come to my mind.

This builds up to one day, where he just wants to relax and listen to his tape player, and, all because he was in his giant form, the ThunderCats come in and just smash everything in the room, including said tape player, until they find the jar that was making him big. One may almost feel kind of sorry for Mumm-Ra, even if he is a known jerk. As Mumm-Ra vows to take revenge from the ThunderCats inaccurate portrayals of him in their mocking tones, he finds a plug that wasn't connected to anything.

That was the plug for the Ancient Spirits of Evil, making this episode the first time these statues actually did anything except make his lair look cool. They celebrate finally being plugged in after "like, a million years" is to mock Mumm-Ra for not being able to defeat the ThunderCats. How would they know who the ThunderCats are if they weren't plugged in? It could be argued that these statues could be all-knowing, but this episode will disprove that.

The Ancient Spirits do have something else that could actually help Mumm-Ra and not just remind him of his constant failure: they can also give him the power to become Mumm-Ra the Ever Living, as long as they know the incantation. Thankfully for Mumm-Ra, they just write it out in his cauldron so he can recite it.

Getting powered up this way gives him a couple more bonus powers along with his strength and transformation abilities: the ability to control people's dreams, the ability to capture souls, and mind control. He doesn't seem to do the last two in this episode, but he does think of another ability he has that could counter the non-Tygra ThunderCats' great ability to mock him, as he laughs evilly.

In a masterful transition, Mumm-Ra's laughter fades right into the ThunderCats laughing at even more wacky impressions of that evil oafish goof. Both times, Tygra tries to butt in with his own not-so-impressive impression, much to the derision of his teammates. One may almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't...poor Tygra.

As they go to sleep, the night becomes a dark and stormy one, and the ThunderCats each receive their very own nightmare, courtesy of the master of impressions.

I'm not going to lie, this does lead to some interesting scenes. He could have just kidnapped them while they were asleep, but Mumm-Ra decides to use his newfound ability to alter dreams to give us some really cool scenes. Panthro has to experience his Thundertank turning into a giant mechanical cat monster, and Cheetara has to race through an endless corridor. With each of these scenes, Mumm-Ra, who usually turns himself into an imitation has his own witty counter-comebacks to fit in with the episode's theme of impressions.

However, the creativity isn't consistent, as Lion-O just gets covered with burritoes and Wilykit and Wilykat end up getting trapped in their Game and Watches, and those scenes last as long as Mumm-Ra's funny impressions of them. Tygra's is a little bit better, as they do reference the running gag of him not doing well with impressions with Mumm-Ra's impression not being very good either. He just puts him in a bag, and Snarf just walks in. I guess they couldn't think of a Snarf nightmare scene.

They end up getting locked in small cages, and Lion-O does a monologue about how Mumm-Ra "cheated." No, not because he used ancient spirits, but because impressions are supposed to be just for fun, not to be evil. He may as well just say, "Mumm-Ra's impressions are wrong because he's a bad guy and we're the good guys." Cheetara demonstrates this "fun" Lion-O is talking about by doing another "funny" Mumm-Ra impression, which is just her saying "I'm Mumm-Ra the ever living" in a mocking voice. One may notice I haven't quoted any of those supposedly witty impressions, and that's because that's pretty much most of them. At least Mumm-Ra's impressions from earlier at least reference some insecurity with each of them.

Confusing the mocking for the genuine article, the Ancient Spirits of Evil suddenly start talking. There is one snag: they can't know what incantation they have to say to turn themselves into Mumm-Ra The Ever Living. Thankfully, the spirits just tell them exactly what to say, because they buy Wilykat's excuse that he has "mummy-brain". They only had 3 more minutes left, I can't blame them.

Thanks to them saying the incantation that was spoon-fed to them, the Spirits gives them the power of the Ever Living, turning them giant and, in the case of Wilykit, Wilykat, and Cheetara, muscular. Except for Tygra, who, despite all of his training in thespian arts, can't seem to say the incantation in any voice that doesn't sound like a Berbil. To add insult to Tygra's near constant injuries in this episode and throughout this whole series, even Snarf was able to convince them to make him grow big, even though Snarf can't even talk.

With their new abilities, we get a fight scene showing their now equal strength and word-play. Lion-O, at one point, makes him eat dirt. Yes, because imitations are supposed to be fun and not evil, and nothing is less evil than shoving dirt in people's mouths. Again, he is an evil guy who locks people in cages, so his role as the punching bag is still justified.

Don't feel too sad for the other punching bag of the episode, though, as, even with just his relatively tiny body, he's able to deal the last blow with his bola whip. He still wishes anyone would be impressed by his impressions, though.

In the end, we do get some closure on the Tygra running gag, and the other ThunderCats celebrate by using their Ever Living abilities, which, outside of the strength, they really only used in this ending scene, to fly back home, leaving Tygra behind. I am still not convinced that this whole series is going to be Tygra's villain origin. We can also only make the assumption that the powers eventually wear off, as this episode just suddenly ends with a "The End" title card...

...complete with a fart sound. Because of course.

How does it stack up?

The nightmare scenes are pretty creative, but other than that, it's pretty adequate.

Next, pirates.

← Study Time 🐈 Berserkers →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Study Time”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Bryan Condon

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Yes, they drew a toot there. They just couldn't resist.

The episode starts with a flashback to Tygra in his younger years, doing a training montage with the help of Jaga, who throws various books at him for him to catch and study. Not only does he teach him all of his famous bola whip moves as well, Jaga teaches him to do a cool pose while doing it. There's still some jokes here and there, but the main point still stands: Tygra was serious about his training, and in the end, a teenage Jaga promises his master that he will never let him down.

We cut to years later on Third Earth, where Tygra plans to do the same type of training with the Lord of the ThunderCats. Will Tygra attempt to teach Lion-O using the same techniques, and be hindered by Lion-O's stupidity? Does Teenage Tygra have braces?

He tries to repeat the same book throwing, even starting with the same book on "Thunder Lore" that started the first montage, only for Lion-O to react to anything thrown at him: slash it up with his sword. Tygra tells him he was supposed to read it, only for Lion-O to run off screaming.

Needless to say, Lion-O is not exactly enthralled by Tygra's lessons and villain flashcards, and says he wants to take a break to play Panthro's new VR video game he just created, which he exclaims, in a high tone very common in this show, "awe-soooome!" And why wouldn't it be? The game is going to feature the toughest heroes in the universe!

The joke is that all of the characters look like Panthro. Never really saw Panthro as the one that's stuck up about himself to the point where he's the sole "toughest heroes of the universe", wrong use of plural intentional, I saw Cheetara as that. I get that Cheetara wouldn't be the one to program a video game, but I'm sure there's some way to make that work.

Speaking of video games, Tygra's next teaching tries to teach him a basic "warm breath attack" move with the Sword of Omens, which is apparently input just like a special move in Mortal Kombat. No, really, he just has to point the sword up, down, right, and left. Unfortunately, Lion-O just can't help but dance a different dance with a different set of directions. No, it's not "up up down down left right left right", because that joke would be too obvious.

Inadvertently, the code Lion-O does use happens to be the code to unlock a new character: the Netherwitch! This is an interesting turn of events when it comes to classic villains returning from the original, because the Netherwitch technically is not one of them. Sure, there was a Netherwitch in the episode "The Astral Plane", but she was merely just Mumm-Ra Disguise #235723. Here, she's an actual villain with an actual motivation to just steal things and put them in her empty home plane.

No, not an airplane, but the Astral Plane, just like that episode, and one of those things she throws in one of her portals are our funny man and straight man duo, apparently treating them like kitschy objects for some reason. Is it really self-deprecation if it's characters from a show these writers didn't create?

As the portal closes, seemingly dooming them to wander in a realm filled with scary monsters and increasing amounts of clutter from the Netherwitch's kleptomania, Lion-O attempts to do some more smooth moves. Lion-O at least knows that it was his fault they got in this mess, and he's trying to find a way to get him out. Tygra stops him before he can do that, and just tells him to try to do the ThunderCats Roar instead. One might think this would be the one time it wouldn't work, as they're in a completely different plane from the Cat's Lair, and even Tygra wonders if it could work.

The sword does its best, though, and it manages to shine brighter than it ever has, even knocking Lion-O to a nearby rock. It even does the same "tear through the walls" action it did in Boggy Ben, tearing a hole in space and projecting that logo right in the room where the other ThunderCats are. There's only one force more powerful than that.

Unfortunately, it's the power of VR. For the first time in Roar, the other ThunderCats are just too distracted to be affected by the call, as they're trying to defeat some hideous monsters. At least, that's what Panthro calls them, as they mysteriously look a lot like the ThunderCats that aren't the almighty Panthro. They never really continue with this; it's really just an excuse for the Roar to be impressive and not work at the same time.

Lion-O tries to ask someone else he thinks his friendly for help, but the huge fanged monster he's talking to is apparently not a nice monster. I've seen this joke done far worse; at least he doesn't call him a "nice friendly evil monster" and just get beaten up about five times. Someone else does save them before even the first beating, though.

Jaga's spirit finally shows up in this series after his small little appearance in Exodus, distracting the monster with his booty scooty. Not sure if I ever wanted to see Jaga twerk, but that's Roar for you. Even the monster kind of agrees with that, as it slowly moves away from the scene, sweating uncomfortably.

Once he reveals his face, Tygra can't believe it's the master he promised to never let down, and he's glad to see that there's another person who can teach Lion-O the ways of the Sword of Omens. After all, Jaga is essentially a tutorial ghost in the original, and he's going to do the same thing here. Jaga agrees after having to be reminded what his name was supposed to be, as he misheard it as "Jillian." It took me a couple times to figure out what the joke was supposed to be, and I still don't know. In any case, it does set up another training montage in the same style as the first one.

There are a few differences, of course. While Tygra's was mostly variations of serious training with a few jokes here and there, Lion-O's training consists mainly of wacky antics while Tygra frowns. He has Lion-O bounce on a bouncy floating rock, tickle a giant ferocious beast, rest on a dragon's tongue, and break a pinata.

Tygra laments that this is not the Jaga he once knew, and also wonders where they could have gotten a pinata. On the former, it's not too hard to predict Jaga's sudden nuttiness. As for the latter, it appears that's just one of those "oh, look at how wacky we are by acknowledging plot holes" jokes, but that's actually because the Netherwitch is still stealing things and putting them in portals to this Astral Plane, filling it up with clutter. I guess they really needed to find some way to add some tension, I guess.

This tension does lead to Jaga explaining that this is indeed the time for rules.

(having a disco dance at a nearby cave, Tygra still frowning at his master's apparent fall from his past self)

Lion-O: You're right, Jaga, this rules!

Okay, that was forced, I'm not going to lie.

Tygra finally has enough with his master's seemingly out of character silliness and tells him that this nothing like his lessons, only for Jaga to shush him in a silly way. He then gets serious, and, in a twist I saw this coming a mile away but I'm not exactly against it, he reveals that the differences are intentional, as not every student is alike. It's not a bad lesson.

Tygra doesn't exactly agree, as he feels that studying should be what's important, and that should work for everyone. Jaga almost looks like he's going to agree, but he ends up doing a pretty good joke that made me chuckle. I'm not going to spoil it here, but it's one that would have had some decent potential as a response image if this show was more popular. Finally getting the point so they can get to the point where they returned, Tygra tells Lion-O to do his dance moves, and sure enough, he makes a portal.

To extend the episode a little, and as an excuse for ThunderCats Roar's trademark "better animated than usual" action sequences, the portal is spawned way further than they wanted it to. After patting Lion-O on the cheeks, and because this is Roar I should add that I'm referring to the ones on his face, he asks Jaga if he can come with him, only to tell him that this is his home now, and that they should go to that portal before it collapses. Yeah, it's complicated.

And yes, this does lead to that aforementioned action sequence, as Lion-O and Tygra do have to leap across floating rocks with the help of their Claw Shield and bola whip, respectively. They eventually hitch a ride on a giant monster space whale, and eventually make it to the Netherwitch, who was busy fitting even more stuff she took in her portals.

To make a long story short, they end up winning with the power of Lion-O's dance-powered portals. We may not get a Konami Code reference, but we do get a reference to the endless falling everyone did in Portal.

Lion-O decides to let her go, because as the Lord of the ThunderCats, he should show her the wonders of Third Earth like a tour guide! At first, this just looks like yet another way for Lion-O to look like an idiot, but this does end in a pretty nice way. Not only was it unexpected, it actually gives more of a point to one of the running jokes.

The episode ends with this rather somber title card that says "R.I.P. Jillian", which is a reference to a line earlier in the episode where Jaga thought he was named Jillian. It's a very short story that isn't elaborated on. I do not think it's an actual dedication because it then jumpcuts to a normal "END!" title card a few seconds later with a fart sound. Not sure why they did that.

How does it stack up?

It's not a bad episode, not a bad lesson, and all in all, a pretty decent showing for Jaga's first real episode. There will be better showings, though.

Next, no points for guessing the villain of the next episode.

← Dr. Dometone 🐈 Mumm-Ra The Ever Living →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Panthro Plagarized”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Lesley Tsina

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

A tale of stolen forks.

The episode starts with the ThunderCats looking impatiently at a stack of breakfast burritos spinning in the microwave, with WilyKit and WilyKat asking if they're done yet. Apparently, looking at a timer on a microwave is too much for at least the ThunderKittens and Lion-O. This feels like a similar opening to Prank Call's. However, this time they show the breakfast burritos right at the beginning, so there really isn't a joke here besides them taking this much too seriously.

Eventually, the burritos are done, but, uh oh, when you take a burrito right out of the microwave without letting it cool, it's too hot to handle! All four of them struggle with this factoid as if they were in that part of the infomercial where the family struggles without the brand new and useful product. They may as well have put this scene in black and white, but instead, it's just color with generic one color backgrounds. Cheetara eventually sprays the others with juice to cool them down, that action not ruining the burritos because pineapples.

What can the ThunderCats possibly do with this problem without scalding their hands in the name of breakfast? Could they just wait for the burrito to cool down? Could they just use a paper towel or a fork?

They do use a fork, but not just any fork. Panthro happens to have that brand new and useful product that solves the ThunderCats' burrito problems. That might not be the best term for that, but I am keeping it anyway. It's the Gravity Fork(TM); it allows someone to pick up a hot breakfast burrito without burning their hands. One can do that with a regular fork, but this one makes the burrito float. I can also assume it makes the burrito safe to eat, since I would imagine being able to burn one's hands and being able to burn one's esophagus isn't mutually exclusive.

They all heavily praise Panthro for his amazing invention, and he tells them it's no problem, because he always plays it cool. Lion-O even gets to tell Panthro he saved breakfast, including him walking to a title card that says "Breakfast Open". That could only mean Panthro is going to lose his cool, and that Breakfast will eventually be closed. Otherwise, that title card would be completely pointless.

Missing from the table is Tygra, who barges in the door and asks if anyone wants to go jogging across Third Earth with him. He was apparently just as interested in the burritos as the rest of them are with his jogging offer, as the ThunderCats only nuked 5 of them. Either didn't want the breakfast burritos, which makes more sense, they only had 5 of them, which will be disproven later, or they decided Tygra wasn't important enough to include in their breakfast plans, which is my guess considering what happens next.

As they eat their burritos, Tygra ends up getting beaten up by someone outside. While Lion-O gets out of his seat and calls for the ThunderCats to help Tygra, the rest of them just say "okay, we'll do it" in a way like, as if saving one of their teammates was just like having to pick up their toys. Yeah, it's just one of the ThunderCats getting beaten up, it's not nearly as pressing as that too-hot burrito problem. At least Lion-O seems to care, though it is odd that he's relatively the voice of reason here. He’s supposed to be the Baby King, but it seems like we're just seeing the Baby Jester's Court here.

That someone turns out to be Vultureman, appearing by himself for the first time. Here, he's using his brand new and completely original Gravity Pincer(TM)! With this amazing new weapon, he can pick up cat-like superheroes without any risk of getting pummeled by a bola whip!

Panthro: Vultureman, this is low, even for you!

Lion-O: Yeah, just because Tygra likes jogging doesn't mean he deserves to get beaten up!

Of course, that's not what Panthro was talking about, because nobody cares about Meg Griffin Tygra. Instead, Vultureman's big crime is that he plagiarized Panthro's idea. At least Cheetara seems to come to her senses in this scene, as she's the one who points out they should be focused on saving Tygra. They rush in, and...

...Pincer Crush, ThunderCats Down, womp womp. Unlike a certain other rebooted superhero group, at least it looks like they kind of tried. Even WilyKit had the idea to come up from behind and throw a smoke bomb, but Vultureman's Gravity Pincer was just too strong. It was so strong, it's even able to crush that puny Gravity Fork, which falls right out of Panthro's pockets when he gets crushed by a door. Carrying eating utensils when going outside is normal, apparently. Victorious, Vultureman flies away using his completely original idea.

Panthro: I can't believe it!

Lion-O: Don't worry Panthro, we'll find a way to stop him!

Yes, they just repeated the joke twice in less than a minute. Of course, Panthro's still upset about the plagiarism. However, there is one thing to ponder: Panthro just invented the Gravity Fork, how did Vultureman come up with such a similar idea? He is supposed to be the genius of the Mutants of Plun-Darr, but there’s clearly much more to this story than a mere coincidence.

Panthro flashes back without terrifying the other ThunderCats with the swishing, and we see that he drew up the blueprint for the Gravity Fork, calling it perfect. He then decided to throw that perfect idea in the garbage, because he wants his ideas to be better than perfect. He ends up making that gravity fork anyway, so I can't see how this makes any sense. Did he make an identical blueprint that's slightly better drawn, making it a marvelous blueprint?

After throwing it away, Vultureman pops out of the garbage and plunders the idea. I'm surprised they didn't go with that; he is a Mutant of Plun-Darr, after all. I'm assuming he's thinking about how Vultureman would have stolen the idea and him just dumpster diving it is not literally what happened, but I can see this silly show's version of Vultureman really thinking putting on that little mask is going to fool anyone.

As Panthro tells himself he shouldn't throw away his ideas, Tygra, who is totally fine after his thrashing, points out that Vultureman is invading the Berbil Village, using the totally cool and much better than any fork Gravity Pincer to destroy the village using the Ro-Bear Berbils. Of course, those Berbils don't seem to mind, because, as shown in this series' first episode, they seemed to have no problem getting repeatedly electrocuted for saying Mumm-Ra. Even the ThunderCats themselves can't help but call Vultureman's new weapon cool, not entirely seeing it as a plagiarized weapon.

Them repeatedly calling the Gravity Pincer so cool even when it's used for evil is certainly taking a toll on Panthro's coolness with the situation. He's less concerned about saving the village than he is about showing that he could make a far better gravity weapon than Vultureman could. He even says that if he wanted to, his version of the Gravity Pincers could launch a Ro-Bear Berbil right into the sun, making that ridiculous expression above. At least that expression has more than two frames of animation.

To help these Berbils, Panthro goes to his room to make something that can disable the Gravity Pincer. After a few minutes, in which Vultureman forces the Berbils to begin building a monument to himself, Panthro comes out with some altered Fighting Sticks that can transform to...

...his brand new Gravity Claws! They're so powerful, they can lift the entire refrigerator and crush it without Panthro needing to use any kind of super strength. This is actually a bit of progression with this plot: this started with Panthro helping out with breakfast, and now Panthro, in his hubris, has completely ruined breakfast by breaking their cooling device. Lion-O exclaims that Panthro killed breakfast, and he has to unhook that "Breakfast Open" title card. I told ya!

They go out in the ThunderTank, as the Paw Garage Door opens...only for the ThunderTank to go out of the Cat's Head's mouth, completely negating any purpose for the garage door opening. Can a joke be so silly, it's awesome?

It's also night time now, even though it was all bright skies just a scene ago. There was no indication that him inventing those claws took hours. A day-to-night transition would have really helped here. They make it to the Berbil Village, which had already been ramsacked, and Panthro takes to take Vultureman on himself. He really wants Vultureman to admit his transgression, after all!

Not only does he not admit his transgression, his giant monument, the one that was mentioned but not seen earlier, commemorates that he invented the Gravity Pincer. This shows that he does share Panthro's pride of inventing things, even if he didn't entirely invent them from scratch. This does make Panthro look a little less ridiculous. Emphasis on "little".

Using one of the Ro-Bear Berbils, he even decides to put a giant TM right next to the name, because, in his words, he wants to prevent his ideas from getting stolen by copycats like him. That's a double insult; it's a lie and it's a pun on his race!

If Roar can give us nothing else, at least they can give us a decent fight scene, as Panthro's Gravity Claws are matched up with Vultureman's Totally Original Gravity Pincer. No, really, I really like this fight scene: it shows. In fact, they seem to be evenly matched, with even WilyKit remarking:

WilyKat: I can't tell who's winning.

It's fine; not every battle needs to be one-sided, especially not like the Vultureman battle in the beginning. One of the shots even has him snap his fingers to turn the rock shards into pebbles. Yeah, Panthro's essentially has the Infinity Gauntlet, except it only has powers on space and there's two of them.

Just as soon as it looks like Panthro's getting the win, the Pincers start to work again, moving a giant ball of lava. He then uses the nearby lake to cool that molten rock into a regular but still really, really hot rock. He splits that rock in half, and decides to do the same to the pincer after Vultureman calls it an amateur move. I almost thought he said, "dammit, you", but that's what he actually said. The fight is over!

Except it isn't, as Panthro still wants Vultureman to admit that he stole nifty lifting things, so he would get nothing. He lost, good day sir! However, Vultureman just doesn't want to admit it, so Panthro does what any inventor who hasn't completely lost his cool would do...

Panthro: Oh yeah? Let's see what the moon thinks about that!

This is shown to alter the gravity of Third Earth, as the Ro-Bear Berbils, the ThunderCats, a nearby waterfall, and even a mountain starts to float in the air. I'll admit; this part is actually pretty well animated, too. I guess that's why they weren't drawing backgrounds in that "too hot burrito problem" scene; they were saving money for this.

Vultureman, and the rest of the ThunderCats for that matter, tells him to stop, but Panthro says that he can't. Vultureman starts to cry at this, drawn as ridiculously as possible with him sobbing waterfalls, saying it wasn't worth the possible destruction of Third Earth just to steal Panthro's ideas. He finally gives Panthro an apology, knowing his and Third Earth's life will probably end about ten seconds later.

And, in ten seconds, he just easily puts the moon back in orbit, revealing that he was just lying about not being able to reverse his big mistake. The mountain and all the Ro-Bears fall down too, and the latter are still smiling even if Panthro was destroying Third Earth just to get an apology. They never seem to care about anything, really; they care about as much about what's going on around them as the ThunderCats seemed to care when Tygra was in danger.

There's another The End title card, or just END in this case, coming after Panthro didn't get any flack for his actions whatsoever and him learning absolutely nothing. Sure, he almost destroyed the planet, but at least he didn't steal anything!

How does it stack up?

We get another neat fight scene with two people who can alter gravity with some pretty cool and decently animated scenes. Even with some of the more silly bits, like the entire opening where everyone except for Panthro has forgotten how to enjoy microwavable food, the plot that surrounds it isn't that bad either.

I'm not going to dock this episode for being over-the-top, as that's kind of the entire point of this episode: Panthro taking things way too far over something so minor, and at least Lion-O seemed to be aware of this at some point. There's no real progression with that, from beginning to end, Panthro's totally cool with everything he did. The best I can say for this episode is that it's like Boggy Ben, but it's not as irritating as Boggy Ben. 3 cats.

Next, the Warrior Maidens arrive, and they sure aren't going to knock on the door first.

← Secret of the Unicorn 🐈 Warrior Maiden Invasion →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats - “Working Grrrl”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Written by: Joan Ford

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Grrrl power!

Our episode begins at the Bolkin Stadium, where a crowd of Bolkins are cheering on a huge race between Cheetara...and just Cheetara. Despite being a one-super-fast-woman race, the fans are still chanting Cheetara's name as she becomes a yellow blur.

The rest of the ThunderCats are in the audience too, and Tygra, the straight man of the group, just can't help but question everything around him.

Tygra: What are we watching?!

Lion-O: A race!

Tygra: What race?! It's one person running in circles!

Thanks for explaining the joke. One of the Bolkins does explain that the winner of the race becomes the mayor of the Bolkin village, and suggests that the other Bolkins didn't want to enter because they're slow even by non-super-speedster standards.

Being the only contestant, Cheetara becomes the new mayor of the Bolkins by default. During her victory, a little Bolkin girl named JanJan shows up and asks Cheetara how she can be just as fast as she is. She could tell her that one kind of has to be born with this sort of thing, but Cheetara decides to be...well, Cheetara.

Cheetara: I'll tell you a secret, JanJan. If you work really really hard and train every single day for a really long time...it won't matter, because you'll never be as fast as me.

(JanJan shows disappointment)

Cheetara: ...but that's okay! You don't have to be the fastest to be like me. You just have to be the best...at something!

Nice...save? Cheetara, fitting for her stuck-up character, suggests she can be the best Cheetara fan ever.

To make a short story even shorter, it ends up working.

JanJan: This is my entire identity now!

It's definitely a commentary on something, but I can't really say what.

However, the celebration ends, as, bum bum bum bum, Monkian has invaded the arena, and is challenging Cheetara to a race! Lion-O does what he would normally do when faced off against one of the ThunderCats' sworn enemies, only to be rightfully pushed back because he's not doing anything wrong yet.

Also, Monkian is clearly being silly. Sure, he was a master of swinging across trees in the original, but super-speed isn't really Monkian's superpower. Cheetara knows this, and is just as stuck-up as ever, and decides to risk her newly appointed status on what should be a landslide victory.

The race begins, and it's a race that, while well animated despite the screenshot suggesting otherwise, mostly takes place with a plain blue background. I know, it's TV, they have to cut some corners somewhere. There are some pretty neat ideas, though, like when Monkian runs so fast, he causes a sonic boom dissipating the clouds and breaking part of the stadium. Wait, what?!

Tygra: How did Monkian become so fast?!

I was going to say "thanks for explaining the weirdness of this scene, Tygra!", but I guess they needed some hint that this is not normal for Monkian for anyone who started the series with this episode. There's something clearly going on here.

However, there's no way anyone can prove any funny business is going on with this monkey business, as Monkian becomes the new Bolkin Mayor. Lion-O, once again seemingly ignoring that they have to know he's doing something wrong before beating him up, attempts to get the ThunderCats to beat him up, only for the audience to start throwing garbage at him.

His first order as the new Mayor is to instate a travel ban on anyone who came out of a Cat's Lair. Okay, they weren't that blatant; he just bans the ThunderCats from the arena while he does a few more things to it.

As they're stuck at the Cat's Lair, Tygra, the stater of the obvious, looks at his laptop and notices that Monkian isn't exactly the greatest Mayor ever. He essentially turned the Bolkins into his slaves, and he delights in this so much that, in one of the examples of his tyranny, he's just making them move rocks from one pile to the other for no real benefit to anyone. Even the Brutemen from the original were used to build a lair.

Panthro does point out that the Bolkins kind of did this to themselves by even allowing such a contest to happen, because...he doesn't want justice? Lion-O has a different idea...

...a training montage, complete with an 80's song instrumental! Unfortunately, they don't really get as far as the training montage, as Cheetara really didn't take losing a race too well. It may have been the first time she ever lost to anyone. Panthro tries to cheer her up by using her own words against this failure-caused depression: she doesn't need to be the fastest to be like Cheetara. Unfortunately, Cheetara continues those words and says that she needed to be the best at something.

She does have one idea, as she leaves the Cat's Lair to find something she can be the best at. She even takes the laptop, despite it not being hers.

This something turns out to be the wonderful world of Business at the Wolo Village. No, really, the business is just named "Business Corp." Her first job is to sort all of the mail in the mail room, and he knows she can do it because all of the other workers are there, too. Unfortunately, they're all sleeping on the job. What is Cheetara to do to prove that she can be the best?

By educating herself with a tape, and since she has to learn all of this quickly, she has to fast forward the tape and try to soak in all of that information. Gotta say, that is an idea I haven't seen, and it is fitting for the speedster. I wonder if The Flash ever did this.

She manages to use all of the managerial skills she learned to get the slackers to form the mail in neat piles. The manager is so proud of this, he decides to just give her his job immediately. Finally, while she can no longer be the best at running, she can be the best at working 9 to 5...though the manager has to correct her that it's actually 10 to 6.

We may not get a training montage, but we do get a business montage instead, complete with a song so great, it's even replayed in the credits for this episode. If there's any nitpick I could make here, that walk-cycle in the lower left is sort of odd. As she walks, her head seems to change shape to this maniacal grin and back to normal every time she takes a step. Maybe I'm missing a joke here, but it's pretty out of place. In the end, she's at the top of the corporate ladder.

We neatly transition from the newly rechristened "Cheetara Corp." to the woods, where the ThunderCats are wondering how Cheetara is doing with her new plan to be the best at business. Even with this minor scene, it enhances the montage's joke even further, as it's revealed that Cheetara's montage of pushing it to the top didn't leave out that much. Not only was this her first day...

Tygra: She left the Cat's Lair, like, three hours ago! She probably hasn't even filled out an application yet!

...thanks for underestimating your teammate's abilities, Tygra. It's understandable, but still. Also, "like"? Is he a valley girl now? Anyway, they make it back to the Bolkin Stadium to find out what exactly gave Monkian his ability to run faster than the former fastest person on Third Earth...

...which also had a name change since we last saw it. The ThunderCats ban is still in place, and Lion-O is just too proud to not exclaim exactly who he and his teammates are despite his plans to just try to sneak past the guards. He should know because he was there when the ban was put into place, but he shouldn't know because Lion-O is the dumb-dumb.

Thankfully, JanJan, remember her, managed to sneak past the tire fires and offers a way for them to sneak in undetected. Why would she do this? Because she already focused all of her energy on being the best Cheetara fan ever, and she didn't want to waste the effort. She can sneak them in, but first, they need disguises.

We Gilligan cut to the ThunderCats in their disguises, which consist mainly of "Monkian is heart" shirts and full manes. Lion-O is ticked off about this for some reason. Either he really didn't like having to pretend to like Monkian, or he really felt that "say we're the ThunderCats" strategy could have worked. Not sure.

Whatever the case, the disguises work, and they're able to go to the Monkian Speed Stunt Spectacular. The ThunderCats didn't get them because...well, maybe they snuck into this audience without having them put on? Again, I'm not sure. They sneak out to Monkian's secret room, which happened to be left open with no lock or key.

They look in Monkian's room, and are shocked to find out. Clearly, it must be the giant unicorn poop on the table. Okay, maybe it could be a giant glob of Neapolitan ice cream that he just put on the table, but that's the first thing to come to my mind. Not enough to show this disgusting room, Wilykit says this:

Wilykit: Why did he do that to the ceiling?

...yeah, the less I question this, the better. Of course, it's not the ice cream/poop, but the obvious safe that Monkian just put in the middle of the room. Panthro says that this is basically breaking and entering, but Tygra, of all people, goads him into destroying the safe with the classic "you're just worried you CAN'T break the safe!" trick.

Sure enough, it's revealed that Monkian was hiding a magic potion in there that gave him this super speed. In other words, he used steroids, but they don't use the "S" word. There was sort of a hint towards this in the race scene, where we get a shot of Monkian's legs being super big as he runs. However, this would be easy to confuse this with ThunderCats Roar's usual problem of having the characters change shape and size between scenes. This episode sometimes does it even in the same scene!

Monkian barges in, and we finally get our fight scene of the week...well, sort of. The good news is that he was barging in because the juice wore out. They don't decide to beat him up, they just toss the magic potion to each other like this is a game of monkey in the middle. Oh, now I get it: Monkian in the middle.

In one particular scene, Lion-O gets passed the bottle, and...he just stands there. Is this the return of the infamous Reboot Puff Strategy?

Lion-O: Hmmm, I should probably move.

...even Lion-O's aware of how silly this is. They do get a little bit of a proud crowd reaction.

Eventually, it ends up in the hands of JanJan, and Monkian is rather eager to take that potion away from her. The audience...actually, they don't seem to do that much to their Mayor even with his misdeeds being fully visible. It's possible they have no real time, because the plots are about to converge like a bulldozer plowing into a building. They don't really cut back and forth between them; it just feels like they completely forgot about it until now.

By the way, bulldozer plowing into a building is exactly what happens, as Cheetara and her shoulderpad suit leads a bunch of bulldozers to bulldoze the arena. Why is she able to do this?

Because Monkian signed a contract, allowing Cheetara Corp to own his name and arena. Unlike the steroids, there was no hint of this happening at all. The reasoning makes sense, as Cheetara, disguised with merely a mustache, had him sign a contract that would declare him "super cool". As told by pretty much all the signs around Monkian Stadium, that's far more important to him than reading any kind of fine print.

Without any additional races or use of that fast magic, she manages to save the day and, after Monkian's disqualification, she becomes the Mayor again. But, uh oh, she can't just leave her business! She finds a solution rather quickly, which I guess fits Cheetara's character, and it is a continuation of a gag from earlier. It passes.

...she really didn't grow as a character throughout any of this, did she? Honestly, I didn't really expect that to happen.

How does it stack up?

It's a simple idea, and the execution isn't bad. Outside of a rushed ending, it works. I'll give this a 4.

Next, a crime fighter not from Third Earth! ...well okay, neither are the ThunderCats, but another one nonetheless!

← ThunderSlobs 🐈 Mandora - The Evil Chaser →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Warrior Maiden Invasion“

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Molly Knox Ostertag

Directed by: Angelo Hatgistavrou

Where the ThunderCats get roared.

The episode begins with a game of hide and seek. No, this isn’t a metaphor for the ThunderCats having to hide from some sort of monster, I mean an actual game of hide and seek. Specifically, it's a variation where the hiders can go to a safe zone to be immune to tagging, so there's more stakes involved. Wilykit and Wilykat are the seekers, but their sibling differences are getting in the way. I really do mean differences, too; this is one episode where they are very much distinct. There won't be a lot of "Thunderkittens" here, that's for sure.

Wilykat is focused on going by the rules, doing a proper countdown before seeking the hiders. Wilykit gets bored and goes out prematurely, quickly ending the countdown before anyone could find a good hiding spot. Wilykat wants to sneak around, not alerting the hiders to their existence. Wilykit smashes stuff, because, hey, they might be in there! Gallant shares his apple with his friends. Goofus eats the apple and says "forget you, I got mine". I think one might get the point here.

Of course, all of this smashing is not helping Wilykit with his seeking, as he gets distracted long enough for everyone else to run away. When Panthro decides to hide in the ThunderTank, something he would be around even if he wasn’t playing hide and seek, he manages to slip away because Wilykit broke something. Even Tygra, whose best idea was to hide in a pan with Lion-O because he couldn’t find a good hiding spot, manages to slip away because Wilykit broke something. Essentially, the same scene repeats three times in a row; they couldn't even be bothered to have her be distracting in a different way.

It is sort of noteworthy that it's the girl that's doing everything to sabotage the game and the boy being the sensible one; cartoons, and fiction in general, usually have it the other way around. I can't say this show is sticking to the cliches. Of course, there's a reason why it's the girl; the title should be a slight hint to that.

They end up losing the game of hide and seek, as the rest of the ThunderCats make it into the safe zone without the Thunderkittens ever tagging them. Tygra leans in and tells WilyKit that she should learn things from her brother. They do justify why this game was such a big deal: because hide and seek is a valuable training exercise. Even WilyKat doesn't buy it, though he would have preferred if they were able to tag one guy without WilyKit's sudden obsession with smashing things.

WilyKit: I am not obsessed with smashing! Hyah! (smashes chair)

See, the joke is that she seems to be obsessed with smashing, despite saying she isn't obsessed with smashing. Aren’t our expectations subverted? I don't remember WilyKit ever being this destructive. There was the time she was destroying things in Driller, but that was an episode where everyone was doing that sans Panthro and Tygra so Panthro can be slightly peeved. Here, it's just so she can be the kind-of sort-of bad guy of the episode. There's not enough time to think about this, because an alarm sounds just as soon as she breaks the chair, and she immediately says that she didn't do it. Eh, I'll give them that.

But no, it's not because of some meaningless chair abuse, it's a by some definitely bad guys. I mean, why wouldn't they be bad guys? They set fire to the Troll Village, they're using locusts to attack the Berbils, they're throwing boulders at a peaceful looking cottage, and they're bullying the Mole Master. They specifically point out the Mole Master as someone Lion-O knows nothing about, but they don't explain the Troll Village. We never even get to see one.

Tygra assumes that the mutants must be behind this, but Cheetara then sees them take off their hoods. Apparently, they needed to wear them just so Tygra can assume they're mutants.

Turns out, it's not the mutants, but the Warrior Maidens. They are so not the mutants that they even have giant text saying that they are Not Mutants. It's even made out of cracked rock to show how brute they are. Right from the get go, WilyKit gets excited to see muscular women, rapidly pushing one of the buttons and giggling with a three-frame animation that I decided to spare anyone reading this with. There are some episodes that really show off that even with these designs, they can have some impressive looking animation. This isn't one of them. They can't all be winners, but can they at least have decent characters in their place?

That is far from the end of the text, as they end up smashing through one of the walls and beating the tar out of the ThunderCats just for being near them, showing off their ultra crushing grasp, super prism refracted laser cage, and their you ain't goin' nowhere grip! It almost feels like a toy commercial, though ThunderCats Roar designs don't look like they would translate well into action figures. I feel like that would be kind of a problem for a ThunderCats revival, but that's another story.

None of this stops the fangirling from looking at these warrior women with awe. As we all know from this episode and seemingly only this episode, WilyKit likes to smash things, and they like to smash things! Who cares if those things are her teammates, they must be the coolest people ever! Even when Willa picks her up and roars at her, she's still motioning to her brother to check them out.

Willa looks like this in Roar, by the way. She even has the added character trait of only speaking in roars, having the other Warrior Maidens doing the talking for her. No bow and arrow or any semblance of a personality besides "HULK SMASH" here, that's for sure. Admittedly, I've never actually seen an original episode with one of the original Maidens, so I can't judge based on comparisons, but what I can say is that there's not much here other than that.

They tell Willa to throw these flea-bitten felines into some sort of jail for their crime of attempting to stop them from breaking and entering into their home. They need them in "jail" so they can check out all of that alien technology that's in the lair, and by check I mostly mean "smash". Smash smash smash, that's all they do. They happen to find a location, and it's very convenient for them and the plot.

They end up in their very own Thunder Brig, which is specifically designed to disable their powers and their gadgets! Lion-O tries to do the "ThunderCats Ho", and the Eye of Thundara turns into a frowny face. I would argue what a ThunderCats Roar would even do when they're all here. Cheetara tries to run out of the room with her super speed, but the Brig sapped her speed. Even Snarf has been deactivated by the magical Brig! Dun dun dun duuun! I should have brought that up ages ago: ThunderCats Roar uses that one musical cue so much that it may as well be its equivalent to Johnny Test's infamous whip crack. (EDIT: From what I've heard, the overuse of this one cue is intentional, parodying how much the original ThunderCats used this same cue. If one doesn't know, the musical cues are taken straight from the original. My ignorance should not be used as a criticism against this show, though I could see people who aren't familiar with that could get annoyed.)

The first question anyone's going to think isn't how they're going to get out of there, but why would they even have something that seemingly only affects them in their own lair? They even bring it up only to have Tygra say that he thought it was a good idea at the time. No hint on why he would remotely think that; it may as well be no reason whatsoever. "How to learn to fight without weapons or superpowers" would have at least been a decent excuse to have it.

Here’s the real reason: it’s so the...adults? Are they really adults? Maybe Tygra, but even that is pushing it in this episode. It’s so the not-so-kids can be taken out of the plot and essentially become damsels in distress, as Kit and Kat are the only people who can fit through the ventilator. Before they leave, Tygra tells Wilykat that he’s in charge. I mean, he might have won that all important game of hide and seek if it wasn't for that meddling sister and her sudden urge to break things!

Wilykit and Wilykit make it out of the Damsel Room, under orders to find the button that unlocks the door to the Thunder Brig. They have to use their best stealth to get past these Warrior Maidens, as even Panthro's super strength was nothing to them. And by they, I mean WilyKat, as most of her plans boil down to things like this:

WilyKit: (flexes her not-nearly-as-big-as-the-Maiden’s muscles) Okay, I'll challenge them to an arm wrestling match, and when I beat them...

That is one of the few lines that made me smirk in this episode. There's at least some variety in the ways Wilykat deals with the maidens. We get an admittedly far too long scene of him trying to decide what smoke bomb to use, only leading to a joke where he just yells "chamomile tea" with a title card with him in a monocle appearing, and Wilykit admits that it's cool seemingly as a way to justify it. Kind of like a fistbump joke, though without the fistbump.

He also uses rope to swing a table where two of the maidens were arm wrestling, making them fall and bump their heads, knocking them out. The rest of the scenes are essentially him sneaking around and saying "sneak sneak sneak" while doing it, which is kind of going against the whole stealth angle.

After Wilykat gets through with his masterful sneak sneak sneaking, with a few "dun dun dun duuns" in the way, they make it to the room where the button is, which is also the room with all of the monitors showing all of the calamities we saw earlier. This leads to the big plot twist of the episode: they're actually using all of that alien technology to stop those calamities from earlier. It makes...kind of a bit of sense?

It turns out, they were actually fighting the locusts, and the Mole Master turned out to be a villainous king, just as he was in the original. Driller was a villain in the original and became more of a misunderstood neutral guy in Roar, so it wasn't like knowing that would spoil this episode. As for the cottage...just guess. One might even guess who was in that cottage, too. Was he doing anything in that cottage? That is just as explained as what started the Troll Village fire. I didn't forget about that one, but if I didn't mention it, would anyone really notice?

With this proving that they were good guys after all, Wilykit's way of referring to them, not mine, Wilykat decides that maybe they would be convinced if he just politely tells them that they're heroes like they are.

Needless to say, that doesn’t work, as Willa decides to grab him and roar at him some more. Her translator tells him he's going to go into a different cage; one a slippery mutant wouldn't get out of. Can you believe being compared to the mutants was the straw that broke the camel's back?

Well, you kind of shouldn't, but it does look like she gets angry at this, which makes the Warrior Maidens very pleased! Turns out, they just needed to be talked to in the language they can understand: property damage!

WilyKit started the episode recklessly destroying everything she touches, including things that probably wouldn't be her property, idolizes people who destroy things that are definitely not her property, never changes her mind throughout the entire episode despite people seemingly smarter than her suggesting otherwise, and she ends up saving the day in the end. She had to learn absolutely nothing!

To make a long story short, she ends up pushing the button. Maybe it's because she uses a chair to do it, despite WilyKat suggesting to use her fingers, so she can keep her smashing mood. Hey, if these guys have this amazing little girl that destroys property, they must be good guys!

We do get a little more backstory, including the factoid that the translator happens to be Roar's version of Nayda, but it all boils down to; we existed, we were cool, Mumm-Ra happened, we had to disappear until Mumm-Ra was defeated. Lion-O proclaims that they were the ones that defeated Mumm-Ra in an attempt to get them to be impressed, and that attempt actually works...though they assume WilyKit did it. Because she breaks stuff!

Super Best Friends Forever Fist-Bump!

That is a fist bump, though not really a fist bump joke. Lion-O pretends he doesn't care that they decided to give Wilykit all the credit, but he clearly does and he's jealous about it.

And yeah, that's pretty much it. If there's any other positive I can say, it's that this episode does continue something I miss from today's cartoon. Why can't we have The End cards anymore? Why has it become passe to not have cartoons end abruptly?

Granted, I really don't know why "it's over" with a childish doodle of Lion-O has any relation to this episode. It could represent Lion-O's expression when he realizes these Warrior Maidens aren't going to appear again for a while.

How does it stack up?

Yeah, I didn't like this one at all. It doesn't even have a good animation part to distract from any of this. This is the first time I have to give out this rating.

Next, Lion-O loses the Sword of Omens! Oh no!

← Panthro Plagarized! 🐈 Lost Sword →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Prank Call”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Victor Courtright

Teleplay by: Marly Halpern-Graser

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

I was expecting a lot less from this episode just from that title, that’s for sure.

This episode starts with Lion-O talking about how, as Lord of the ThunderCats, he will not give up on fighting the forces of darkness, as the camera is zoomed right into his face. Gee, I wonder if he's not fighting those aforementioned forces of darkness, but actually doing something really mundane.

Big surprise, that turns out to be the case, as Lion-O is repeatedly punching a TV trying to get it to work. He's not lying about the darkness, he's just fighting against the darkness of a non-working TV. There's more of a joke here than one might realize. This is a problem, because there might not be any TV stores on Third Earth!

Tygra, the down-to-Earth straight man of this reboot's version of ThunderCats, decides to bring out his secret weapon...a TV manual that says "How to Television." If the grammar error was intentional, it really wouldn't fit Tygra as the down-to-Earth and by-the-book voice of reason. Lion-O decides to take all of this to heart and read along with him...

...or, he can just hit it with the Sword of Omens, and let the Eye of Thundara do all the work. Hooray for simplicity! Cheetara may also have a point about there probably being TV stores on Third Earth, because it does get at least one channel that airs the Silverhawks. Kids, that's another show by the same people who did ThunderCats. Maybe if this reboot does really well, we'll get "SilverHawks Squawk."

Unfortunately, this fictional reboot appears to be truer to the original than this one, as it's too slow and boring to appeal to today's kids. At least, that's what everyone seemed to imply about the original ThunderCats. WilyKit and WilyKat aren't swayed by the majesty of Commander Stargazer, and they want to go outside and explore. Tygra tells them that they can't go out to the wilderness by themselves unless they have a chaperone, and he specifically chooses the guy that just hit a TV with a sword. Well, it worked, so I can't argue with that logic.

Lion-O immediately jumps at the opportunity with a audible and visible "heck yeah", but the ThunderKittens respond with an audible and visible "that stinks." Lion-O tries to make his case.

Lion-O: Just us cool kids hanging out, getting into trouble, fun stuff!

Wait, us "cool kids"? Are they or are they not going to go with the "Lion-O is still a kid in a grown man's body" plot point from the original? They never really confirm this either way, though Roar's version of Exodus implies he was an adult even when he was escaping from his exploding home planet. WilyKit and Kat say that if he's a chaperone, he's one of those grownups, with Kat calling him "basically the same as Tygra."

We get a zoom in of his brain at that comment, which is extremely small. This is funny because he's not particularly intelligent. Honestly, I'm surprised he even had a brain. Cheetara comes up, saying that it's also not that bright of an idea to let the "baby king" babysit them, and Lion-O responds that he's basically an adult, which still leaves the answer to the “was he calling himself a kid because he’s still a kid in a grown man’s body” question vague, and there's no manual for that.

Tygra then takes out a book called "How to Responsible". I get it, like how the last manual was called "How to TV". Again, if the grammar error was intentional, it really wouldn't fit Tygra as the down-to-Earth and by-the-book voice of reason.

But no, he's not going to read some stinky manuals; he wants to be cool and hip, not by someone who is literally by-the-book. Lion-O doesn't want to be just a chaperone, he wants to be the best chaperone ever and a general "cool guy". First, he's a cool kid, and now he's a cool guy. I guess that "baby king" comment got to him, if a little bit less than "you're basically Tygra."

Using his and Snarf's knowledge of the coolest things on Third Earth, he takes them out surfing on the waves of the Jade Lagoon, swinging across the Bottomless Gorge, and telling stories about how he convinced a caveman to give him a time capsule. Less than a minute into this outing, the ThunderKittens are already calling him cool...well, almost cool. He rubs his cheeks with enthusiasm at that.

WilyKat points to a big rock with a bunch of pointer fingers pointing to a sign that says "Danger! Evil!! (Bad Stuff Inside!!!)" When the exclamation points get more numerous with each warning, one knows its serious. Even Lion-O knows this, as we don't get the way-too-easy joke about him just ignoring the sign and saying, "well, it must be safe!"

Instead, he tells WilyKit and Kat that they should leave it alone. Snarf nods to this oath of safety, which is fitting for the original Snarf without the annoyance of Snarf's way of speaking. WilyKit is not impressed by this, and says "whatever you say, Tygra."

So Lion-O kicks through the walls into the evil "danger evil" location, and they find a giant crystal in the middle of it. Lion-O gives some pause to interacting with it, thinking that it must be the evil stuff that sign was warning about, but the ThunderKittens immediately go out and touch it. Lion-O tries to raise some concerns, but WilyKit suggests that he's becoming Tygra. They get a lot less subtle about this here; Lion-O outright says that there should be a manual for that crystal. He's just setting himself up for the inevitable "you're just being like Tygra" talk, and he shuts his trap.

In the opposite end of the "how much one shuts their trap" line, the crystal then lights on fire and reveals that it was calling Mumm-Ra. Those telephone sounds aren't just to sound cool; it turns out that this crystal is like a giant telephone, and it only has one number on its speed dial. Mumm-Ra answers what a "who dares to call the tomb of Mumm-Ra", and WilyKit and Kat know exactly what to do.

We get the titular prank call, with WilyKat declaring himself as the evil plumber. Lion-O, again, tries to get the kids to stop doing that, but they respond by reminding him that they did kick his bony butt. Wow, a hint at continuity? Say it ain't so! Well, okay, they're going to kick his bony butt in any other episode featuring him, so it could be a coincidence.

Snarf is even more the voice of reason even if he doesn't use it in this reboot, and Lion-O eventually tells him that he shouldn't be like Tygra. It's a good downwards progression for Lion-O in this episode. He starts out as kind of the voice of reason, and then he just decides to be the irresponsible caretaker that joins in on the mischief.

He does have a reason for that. After convincing Mumm-Ra to screw his cauldron to fix his plumbing problem, causing his lair to flood, they laugh it up. Sure, they angered an evil ever-living guy, but one of the kids called Lion-O the best chaperone ever, so it must be fine for him to do that!

While Lion-O has a brain that is easily breakable, Mumm-Ra's is a bit bigger, as he eventually realizes what's going on. This crystal has a few other abilities, including teleportation, as he's able to reach through the crystal and grab the ThunderKittens right into it. Turns out, this was a crystal he had that he forgot about, even with all the pointer fingers surrounding it, and he knows how to use it. Well, sort of; Mumm-Ra does seem to share Lion-O's hatred of using manuals, as even he doesn't know all the features of the crystal. He doesn't even know where he teleported the ThunderKittens to, only hoping that it took them somewhere nasty.

He does know one other feature of this crystal; it can store and give him evil energies, turning Mumm-Ra into his buff form again. He's not as big now, but at sunset, he'll be at full power. Lion-O would try to stop him, but he realizes that he can't fly, and he's way up there floating on that phone-teleporter-evil-storer crystal.

Mumm-Ra, using the crystal to fly away, goes right back to his pyramid, and Lion-O vows to go to the pyramid and fight him. But not before we get another close zoom-in on his face, getting a slightly off-model shot of him covering his mouth and saying "before Tygra finds out."

For the record, Cheetara guesses it, but Tygra and Panthro are kind of clueless. Hearing some commotion surrounding that evil pyramid outside, they go into the Thunder Tank and drive it, two of them assuming the baby king and the kids must not be there. Tygra may be the straight man in this episode and almost every other time, but even he is fallible.

Lion-O shows up at Mumm-Ra's lair first, and reveals that he found a way against the "but he's up so high" problem: use the robotic Snarf's ability to turn into a jetpack. Maybe he just assumed he had that feature, because he seems to do everything. One can even play video games on him, though they're too old-school for the ThunderKittens. Huh, I realize that's a continuing theme from the last episode, and thankfully for this episode, that's not something I'll say very often.

Unfortunately for Lion-O and fortunately for the TV-Y7-FV rating, he figured out that strategy too late, as the crystal has given Mumm-Ra enough power to be impervious to stabbing. The other ThunderCats show up, and they see that Lion-O just lost the kids.

Everyone knows where this is leading to, but Mumm-Ra has no time for "sorry I'm such a jerk" scenes. He immediately commands silence. Turns out, that crystal takes that as a command to petrify the others into not so flattering poses. One can see Tygra's now-sculpted behind, one cannot unsee it.

He then throws Lion-O and Snarf into the crystal. I would say that if he petrified Lion-O too, the episode couldn't continue, but it's more likely he wouldn't know how to activate that feature again since he didn't read that all important manual. Lion-O’s not the only person who needs to learn a lesson.

It turns out, the crystal teleported to this void, the same void that the ThunderKittens were sent to. They tell him that there's absolutely no way out of this void, which only contains carpet, and they begin to cry about it. It's really over-the-top, with them crying buckets of tears over this situation and blowing their nose with tissue paper. It's not played like a tear jerker scene, it seems more like a "huh, look at how much they're overreacting" joke.

They do throw in one plot-important aspect to that joke, giving it a point: Lion-O asks where did they get that tissue paper from. This scene isn't funny, so we can't use the Roger Rabbit excuse, but it turns out that paper came from somewhere. Let's see Mumm-Ra figure out exactly what it was, as he's gloating about how the ThunderCats are defeated without him even worrying about reading a manual.

Lion-O: You mean this manual?!

It turns out, manuals are good! That's the lesson of the day, kids: make sure to be educated, and Lion-O had to learn this by having every other option be unavailable to him. That's how lessons should be learned!

While he may have found out how to get out of the void thanks to that manual, the sun still sets, and Mumm-Ra's power is now at its maximum. He's big enough to use the ThunderCats base as a chair again. However, he does not c, because reading the manual gave Lion-O knowledge beyond knowledge, giving him the ability to just talk to the crystal to undo all of that evil stuff.

The joke, of course, is that this mystical crystal is more like one of those smart home devices. It's even activated by saying, "hey Crystal", and it talks to him like a Google Assistant or Alexa. See, even ThunderCats has to go with modern times!

We get our fight scene, and yes, one of the actions is a "mummy butt spanking" from Panthro. One can see Mumm-Ra's not-nearly-as-sculpted cheeks, and they cannot unsee it. Outside of that, it's a decent fight scene, with one particularly neat effect throughout it: as one of the evil actions the crystal did was give Mumm-Ra the power, he's constantly fluctuating between his skeletal form and his muscular form. The animation isn't as good as the last episode's, but I'd say the rest of this episode stacks up pretty well against that one. At the end, Lion-O shouts a one-liner to finish this whole scene, echoing the moral of the story:

Lion-O: You should have read the manual! (winks at camera)

Including that eye wink makes that line so cheesy, but I'll accept it. At least it's self-aware about it. He decides to destroy the crystal, which causes Mumm-Ra to revert back to his skeleton form as he falls into the cauldron. Wait, I thought the cauldron was broken! Never mind. In the end, the day is saved, and Lion-O has learned not to trust glowing crystals. That wasn't exactly the lesson, but Tygra accepts it anyway.

Also, there's a "The End" title card drawn in crayon? Cartoons seem quite satisfied with just ending abruptly now, including every other ThunderCats Roar episode I've seen. It's not like this was the end of a running joke, it's just there. Seems like a minor thing to talk about, but I just found it kind of odd.

How does it stack up?

This one feels very similar to Boggy Ben, but it feels a lot more connected. I had no real issues with this episode other than the over-reliance on wacky face gags, something the last episode lacked. It has good pacing, and there's even a moral somewhere in here that the kids could learn.

Again, I was wondering if I should give this one rating or another, but in this case, it's whether it's a 4 or a 5. So far, this is the best episode I've seen, including some episodes after this one, so I might as well give it 5 cats. Maybe there will be better episodes that will make me re-rate this one, and I hope that's the case, but as it stands...

Next, we meet Mr. Driller.

← The Legend of Boggy Ben 🐈 Driller →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar! - “Exodus (Parts 1 & 2)”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Well, here it is, whether one likes it or not.

ThunderCats Roar seems to have all the hallmarks of a bad reboot: a silly art style that's just aping OK KO, a completely different and comedic tone for a show that tried to do something serious the last time, and the teaser for this show, which is one of the most disliked videos on YouTube, is just the reboot's showrunner talking about how cool it is.

This show turned out to be a really like it or hate it affair from what I can tell. The people that hate it are really vocal about it, too. What camp do I go in? Let's find out.

The new series begins with some narration. narrator talks about what a lovely planet Thundara is. Even people who aren't familiar with the original is thinking "it's going to explode, it's going to explode, it's going to explode," and sure enough, it does. The narrator doesn't seem to be phased by this at all, saying "everything explodes someday!" That seems insensitive.

We then zoom to the ThunderCats, and I am glad to say that they are wearing the same costumes we know they wear. Thank you.

We get to see all of the characters introduced via trading cards, complete with those animated holographic pictures. Maybe this was meant to be a joke on how merchandised the original was, but it seems more like a way to introduce all of the characters in a way that's cheap to animate. It's not that the rest of the episode fails to do this.

If one freeze frames, they can see they gave all the ThunderCats various RPG stats, and a specific skill. For example, Cheetara has a 20 in dexterity and has skills with "fancy footwork, sick burns, and evasion", and Snarf has 20 in everything and has skills in "all". Wait, what?

The narrator, who described all the ThunderCards via showing his trading card collection, reveals himself to be Jaga. I guess that explains the "everything explodes someday" quip; the original Jaga woke up the kid to see the fireworks show. He's already far more jokey than the original, something that will be common with everyone in this show.

We see one major change this show did to the backstory: Jaga was on the planet when it exploded. I would argue that him not dying while he was getting the ThunderCats to Third Earth does take quite a bit of his emotional weight, and we can't have emotional weight in this silly show. Also taking the weight is this line, describing how he could possibly be looming over the Earth and be so blue.

Jaga: So now I'm a ghost! Hee hee hee! (flies away in a ridiculous fashion)

I feel I should be somewhat insulted by this. I mean, the original Jaga protected the original ThunderCats until his very end. On the other hand, that is Larry Kenney, Lion-O's voice in the original, voicing him. That's cool.

But enough about that, here's the Mutants from Plun-Darr! We can tell these guys are going to be total maroons just by the background of this scene. At least they had the intellect to attach an "e" Post-It note after that poorly made sign. We mostly get to see Slithe, and he's just as much of an 80's villain as he was in the original.

I've seen this show be compared to those abridged series that used to be big in the 2010s. They must not be lying, because all of this happens in the first minute. To do this, they heavily simplify the backstory. No other ships getting blasted, no Jaga dying on screen, no necessary clothing scenes, and no suspension capsules.

One blink, and the ThunderCats already on Third Earth, and the ThunderCats each have their own personalities show in how they react to being stuck on a planet. Panthro's the first to come out, talking about how awesome it is that he can tinker with the scraps on the blasted ship. WilyKit and WilyKat act like this is some sort of amusement park ride, asking if they can do that crash again. Cheetara is the first person to not be happy about this predicament, but only because there's nobody around to see how cool she is. Tygra gets smashed right after saying that they're all the coolest ThunderCat, and he says, "well, at least we're still alive."

Yes, aside from Cheetara, they all seem oddly happy to land in what seems to be a desert. We get maybe three seconds where they get to be sad that the planet they used to live on just exploded, but we don't have time for that. This is a comedy, we can't have "not comedy"!

Oh, and Snarf is there, too! Let's listen to his first line in the show!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

And here's another one!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

Roar Snarf wins. Then again, I only watched one episode of ThunderCats so far, but I can imagine this is an improvement. Maybe PPG 2016 has given me a hatred of animals that talk just because, or maybe I just haven't seen the strength of the original Snarf. Maybe it is a little bit of Column A, and a little bit of Column B.

Oh yeah, there was one other ThunderCat, and the most important one of them all.

Much like the original, Lion-O is the rightful heir of the ThunderCats, and wielder of the Sword of Omens. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to use the sword, which was a plot point in the original. In the original, it was pod-induced amnesia, in this show, it's because this is a silly show, and our protagonist is the biggest maroon of them all. The very first thing he does is use the Sword of Omens to help him get out of the ship, because he couldn't find a way out of it. No, not with the "sight beyond sight" feature on his sword, which isn't even mentioned in this episode, but by cutting a hole in the ship.

Speaking of maroons, Slithe manages to catch up to the ThunderCats, and plans to attack them. Since Jaga was stuck on the home planet, he couldn't be bothered to tell him how to use the sword, but maybe we'll get to see him use it! I mean, how hard is it to use a sword?

Well, he does, but not in the way anyone would want him to. Admittedly, this is probably the best way to use a sword against a flying ship anyway. It only takes out one of the blasters, so Panthro ends up using the remaining exhaust on the ship to blow them away.

At least Lion-O is happy about it, and even Panthro seems to give him praise.

Tygra: He just threw a sword at a spaceship!

Panthro: And did it not totally work?

Cheetara and Tygra: Good point.

I'm pretty sure Panthro's idea to light them with rocket exhaust did the job a lot more, but you do you, Panthro. Lion-O goes out to adventure, because he wants to be the cool leader and this episode really needs some sort of moral for him to learn. Not because he's a little kid that was aged by a suspension capsule, everyone's just like that in this show.

The rest of the ThunderCats go back to working on scraps, when Panthro lifts up a steel bar to reveal a Berbil.

Who are the Berbils? Builders, definitely. Much like the ThunderCats, they still seem to be happy about it. That seems to be the theme of this episode: everyone just seemingly takes all of these problems with a smile, not taking any time to mope about, well, anything. At least they have a good reason for it: building and repairing is exactly what they were built for, as shown by having two scenes of them running in a burning town and seeing the town fully repaired in the span of a minute.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be bright in other ways, as they then talk to them about this guy named Mumm-Ra, a person so evil that even speaking his name will cause that speaker to get struck by lightning. We get a very much extended scene that lasts longer than the backstory of them getting electrocuted because they can't stop saying his name. They really use this running gag a lot in this scene and throughout this episode; It's almost as if there's some huge payoff in the end. Honestly, I'm not used to those.

Lion-O and Snarf do their best to find where those Mutants flew off to in the series' first montage. He finds a frog, a giant turtle, and unfortunately for him, none of them can talk. He then finds this lizard guy and asks where the Mutants are, only to find out that lizard guy was one of the mutants he was looking for, and their ship is fully repaired outside of losing that one blaster.

After a comedic chase scene that has almost no backgrounds at all, he gets chased to a wall, and Lion-O can't seem to leader his way out of this situation. All Lion-O has is this sword he has no idea how to use, and some dragon cat thing that can't even talk this time...

...who is also a robot with a laser beam? Yup, one of the biggest twists of the series is that they changed Snarf from a Snarf that complains about everything to a robotic Snarf with various weapons at his disposal that can only make cutesy animal sounds. Maybe someday he will ta...maybe I shouldn't tempt fate.

Don't worry, he still has batteries, which appear to be his one weakness and a good excuse to not have him defeat everything so easily. Fairy godparents have Da Rules, Robo-Snarf has what appears to be Lion-O's reluctance to charge him. However, this scene seems to imply that he didn't even know he was a robot until now. We didn't, but why wouldn't he know? It's not like they have the amnesia excuse here.

...Mumm-Ra The Ever Living, who really, really doesn't like loiterers on his front lawn. Don't worry, he will look slightly better in future scenes. This show definitely has a loose style that seems to work against it. Don't worry, the Mutants outright shout "we're still alive!" That reminds me of that Futurama episode where they parodied 80's cartoons, and President Nixon had to sanitize it for the young viewers. Maybe I should think about that a little more.

Commercial Break!

Oh good, shouting text humor, or murmuring text humor as it is here. It only appears here. It feels like a placeholder, and that might actually be the case.

He tries to find his giant blue savior who likes to laugh while thunder surrounds him, yes, they do that joke, and he goes into that savior's awesome pyramid lair. Or, as he puts it, the AWESOOOOOME pyramid lair. They sure seem to love that word; it’s like this show’s fistbump gag.

Unfortunately for Lion-O, his savior turns out to be a really rotten person. Almost literally, as right before Lion-O barged in, he was busy making a pollution monster. He tries to show off his Sword of Omens, complete with the Eye of Thundera in its only time it is pointed out in the episode, and Mumm-Ra counters by showing off his Doom Staff. One of its many abilities is its ability to shock people whenever they say his name correctly, which is that running gag from before. Again, the payoff is coming, I'm sure of it.

Lion-O also totally lets him know about his own awesome home base that would make a great shot for a credits sequence. Okay, they didn't really break the fourth wall that badly in this show.

Panthro: Well, this construction is going about as well as it possibly could.

(Mumm-Ra makes the home base's head explode)

Wah, wah, waaah. But don't worry, the Berbils will be on that. Lion-O, upset over his poor, poor base, decides that he's going to give him a royal spanking.

Needless to say, we never find out what he meant by that, as he gets tied up by a chain that can transform into a much easier to animate ribbon.

Mumm-Ra ends up cannonballing into his teleporting pool right to the home base, and the rest of the ThunderCats try to stop him. Unfortunately, they are at the mercy of his feet. No, seriously.

Mumm-Ra: Oh, how eager you are to get a taste of DE-FEET!

Never thought we'd already get to see Mumm-Ra's feet in about as much detail as this show's art style allows. I do not know to know if anyone wanted that. I sure didn’t.

Cheetara: Ahh, that pun!

See, pointing out the joke makes it funny. I would say this joke was really easy to miss; it took me about three times to figure out what she was even saying.

We get our first fight scene that lasts more than a few seconds. It's as wacky as the art style allows. It actually does the same job those trading cards were trying to do, except we actually get to see them in action. The show's wacky art style actually works well with the style of animation they use here. No slideshow beatdowns, everything is very much animated. I will say that it looks a little better in motion than it does in stills, though if one does not like this art style, I can't imagine the animation would convert them.

Lion-O shows up, hoping he's not too late, only to find out that yes, he's too late. At their lowest moment already, can anything stop Mumm-Ra? I won't give it away here, as I've already revealed one of the biggest twists of the series so far, so I'll just say that we do get a payoff to that one running gag. While it was expected, I was kind of hoping that it would happen.

We're not done with the fighting, and honestly, it's better the second time. The running gag even shows up here in a way that I honestly didn't expect. Also unexpected: the sword transformation scene, one of the most iconic parts of the original, is parodied here in a way that shows that Lion-O still doesn't really know how to use that blasted sword. However, they still manage to win anyway, with Mumm-Ra devolving into his Rookie form and running away to try to gain his powers back.

In the end, we get the "sorry I was such a jerk" scene from Lion-O, and he gets to say the catchphrase. That is, "ThunderCats, hoooo!" I did wonder why they decided to call this show "ThunderCats Roar" when that isn't the catchphrase, but maybe Cartoon Network didn't need a show with the word "ho" in the title, and calling it "ThunderCats Hooo!" would make people think it was "ThunderCats Who?" That title probably wouldn't help with a problem I haven't even mentioned yet: how is this going to appeal to kids that aren't familiar with the original? I guess some silly jokes can distract from that.

How does it stack up?

All in all, this is not a bad episode to start this brand new series. It introduces all of the characters, it has some pretty decent humor, and, most importantly, it knows what its doing. That is something I cannot say for a certain other reboot involving superheroes. The show really is pretty occupied with how silly it is, and it does seem to fast forward through parts that are necessary.

So yeah, I don't hate it, but I didn't exactly love it, either. It's just a silly 80's cartoon parody. I don't really know what to expect out of this show, so I'll put this episode right in the middle and see what happens. Who knows, maybe this episode will be a highlight! I hope not.

Next, cookies.

← n/a 🐈 The Legend of Boggy Ben →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Driller”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Victor Courtright

Teleplay by: Marly Halpern-Graser

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

Is it killer, or is it filler?

This episode begins with Panthro doing repairs on that mighty ThunderTank. I never really talked about its looks, as this is one of the first good clear shots of it. This ThunderTank looks even more like a cat than the original, with a big red nose and a cat-like mouth, and it has a perpetually sticking out tongue. It's not as fierce looking as its original counterpart, but considering this is more of a comedy than an action show, it's fitting.

Panthro finishes the job, as indicated by the ThunderTank shining, and he talks to himself about how it must have been so long since he didn't have to fix something. He really must like to tempt fate with that one, that kind of saying is usually followed by everything breaking at the same time.

Surely enough, everything starts to break, all at the same time, and it's all because of his teammates. Cheetara broke the ThunderTread by exceeding its maximum speed it can handle, and the ThunderKittens broke the ThunderFridge trying to get that sweet ThunderCake.

Even the ones that are usually more competent than the others are involved with this massive breakage, as Snarf, the robot cat-dragon-thing with an intelligence level of 20 according to the first episode, is messing around with some wiring like it's a ball of yarn. Panthro doesn't even know what it is, and one thing I'm thinking of is that I'm surprised they didn't pull out a "samoflange" joke yet. As for Tygra, the usual straight man, he's just the victim of a falling ThunderSecurity Camera.

Suddenly, Sadako shows up, calling out to Panthro, presumably telling him that his 7 days are up, and he has to pay for that one month of Youtube TV whether he likes it or not.

No, that's just Lion-O drawn with much longer hair than usual for the sake of the Sadako gag, and he needs his blowdryer fixed. Not a ThunderBlowdryer, just a regular blowdryer. For a second, I thought he was melting, too, but that's actually his fur. They are cat people, after all.

All of the other ThunderCats come in, and Panthro tells them that he'll get to work on all of those problems, and the only repayment he'll need from his teammates is the appreciation he gets for doing everything. Que Lion-O throwing that fixed blowdryer to a wall, breaking it immediately! Get it, because Lion-O is selfish.

It's quite clear, even with Panthro's assurance that it was a easy mistake, that this is getting to him. It doesn't help that he hears something else breaking just outside. He assumes it must be yet another one of his teammates...except they're all here.

The alarms go off, and Lion-O knows what the ThunderCats should do in this situation as their great leader.

Lion-O: The lair is under attack! ThunderCats...PANIC!

(everyone panics)

See, it's funny because this isn't normally what happens! All of the ThunderCats search through various rooms, seeing that someone has been drilling through all of it, leaving giant holes everywhere. Worst of all, whatever is causing this has taken Lion-O's cake! Tygra shows up to tell Lion-O that he found it. No, not the cake, much to Lion-O's chagrin, as he'll never know the truth about that. Alas, poor ThunderCake.

The drilling came from this new robotic man with a drill for a lower body, named, appropriately, Driller. This was a character who first appeared in the eighteenth episode of the original. In the original, he was a mercenary who accepts diamonds as payment, which he will use to sharpen his mighty drill. At the very least, he confirms his want for diamonds in the first minute of his appearance, as the first thing he does is scan if those strange cat people have them.

Tygra tries to stop this new potential threat with a "stop right there, miscreant" and an all important pointer finger, and the miscreant just says no and continues drilling. He doesn't say "no" like a villain would say "never", just an uncaring "no".

There are higher stakes. According to Panthro and what looks like a portable video game console, Driller is heading towards the lair's Thundrillium core! If that gets destroyed, the rest of the lair goes with it. This comes much to the shock of everyone...except for Lion-O, who has a stupid face on throughout this speech. Lion-O only seems to care when Panthro clarifies that it's his stuff that's on the line, too. Get it, because Lion-O is selfish.

So they all try to fight him, but it's no use. Even with his need for diamonds at the time, his drill is still powerful enough to spin both Cheetara and the ThunderKittens out of the way. It takes Panthro's super strength to do any kind of stopping, but Tygra tries his best to be useful with his special ability to have a bola whip. I could take this as confirmation that they just got rid of one of the ThunderCat's special powers, though I doubt disappearing would have helped this situation. It almost seems like all is lost and Tygra is about to get a hole in the head, all until the Bola whip eventually makes his drill stop.

They take him in for questioning, and he properly introduces himself as Driller, and he drills. One point that ends up being a sticking point for Lion-O is that he's trying to get diamonds so he can sharpen his drill, which he uses to drill for more diamonds, and even his tiny little brain can admit that is an unending cycle with no real point.

He compares this to shampoo, which has the specific instructions to lather, rinse, and repeat, but one shouldn't repeat forever. Nice to see that blowdryer scene is relevant to the rest of the episode; he seems to know his hair products. He knows enough to know that shampoo is pointless, just like drilling just for the sake of drilling.

While the former is certainly wrong, as Tygra points out, Driller does not take that advice too well. He looks at the diamond on top of his head, which pops out instantly, and he tells himself that he is pointless. He lies down on the ground, clearly saddened of this realization, and this makes everyone else sad too. There is one exception, who boasts that he is glad to help. Here's a hint: it's funny because he's selfish!

Panthro tries to calm his senses, saying that his life is also an endless cycle: he fixes things, his teammates break them, he fixes them again. Driller then gives him his own bit of foresight.

Driller: So Panthro is pointless too?

I always wondered what that guy from that one Radiohead music video was talking about. And yes, Lion-O never gets this, either. Even in the end, he just kind of gets told to do the right thing eventually.

One week passes, and the Lair is still just as holey as ever. Tygra decides enough is enough, and something must be done about it, but Lion-O is happy about this new home arrangement, as he can jump straight from his living room to the kitchen in one jump. The ThunderKittens are happy too, as Lion-O made them a toy out of the shower curtain to cover up one of the holes, a...

JUMP PAD!

Yes, with a choir, too. It doesn’t work too well, though, as it eventually breaks, and we get this overly long joke about how they have to wait for WilyKit and Kat to hit the ground. Lion-O assures the rest that they have to hit the ground sometime. Don’t worry, they turn out to be okay, because nothing has to make sense in this wacky comedy.

Even Lion-O admits that something has to be done. The problem is that Panthro is still depressed and feeling pointless, and he doesn't want to do anything. They do bring up one thing they've been ignoring until now: what about the Ro-Bear Berbils? They built this whole lair from scratch, certainly they would be available to re-build the lair without having to do anything!

Unfortunately, they're busy working on Castle Plun-Darr. Interesting diversion from the original, and it's also interesting to watch this after the episode of the original that explained the origins of that series' Castle Plun-Darr. At least this species is okay with being slaves, because that means they can build something. They didn't want payment from the people who would pay them.

...actually, come to think of it, they probably wouldn't have any Third Earth money, and it wasn't until this episode where they realized they had diamonds. Hmm, let's let something else distract from this, shall we? Cheetara manages to find Panthro, who was literally under her feet, but he's still depressed and unwilling to just fix what will eventually be broken. Even when our favorite baby king begs him to, he won't budge, so he makes a great plan.

To finally give him a point, Lion-O decides to trash the one room of the Lair Driller didn't destroy: that room with the Thundrillim in it! Now he can fix everything he broke, including that unimportant circle thing he was told would blow everything up! Admittedly, that one wasn't intentional, and Lion-O finally has an expression other than pure happiness over the silly things he does. It might have been more than alarm than anything else, though.

See, as he's basically a kid, he only seems to feel remorse whenever something really goes wrong. The original Lion-O had the excuse that he was a kid. Roar Lion-O is just a really, really silly character in a really, really silly cartoon.

They go to Driller, who is eating popcorn, watching an episode of Building with Berbils. They are really using those Berbils this episode; they must be making up for their lack of appearances since the first episode. Also, how is he even enjoying that popcorn? Is that an alternative fuel source? Whatever.

Panthro, having dots for eyes for no real reason other than they didn't want to finish drawing the ThunderCats, begs Driller to drill, as only drilling can solve this problem somehow. Lion-O tries to handle it, because that worked so well for the rest of the episode, with a speech about drilling.

Or, since Driller is a robotic being, Panthro can just rewire his positronic brain to bypass all of his emotions. Thanks to this rewiring, Driller stops caring about anything, being happy all the time, and he doesn't mind this at all because he's always feeling good. See, all we had to do was essentially brainwash the guy to be good. That's what heroes should do!

To make a long story short, Panthro fixes everything, just as he always does. To make a short story long again, he has the unwillingly-happy Driller drill directly to the core, and then pushes his "Reverse" switch. Somehow, for reasons that are surely different than "this episode needs to end", this stabilizes the core. Even the show is aware of how silly this is.

Lion-O: He stabilized the core by unstabilizing it in reverse!

Tygra: That's how science works!

SCIENCE!

It's no Respek Knuckles. At this point, I honestly expected a scene where Driller goes backwards, somehow causing the holes to disappear. Maybe that's what happened, but they didn't animate it.

In the end, Driller becomes his...

NEW FRIEND!

Oh hush. As payment for helping him find his point again, not only does he accept his new head rewiring, he offers to fix Panthro's head wiring with his head drill! I guess that's one bit of comeuppance, even if he never gets to do it.

Lion-O reassures Panthro that he will continue to have a point too, as he broke everything already, and the rest of the ThunderCats and Driller laugh at how he has learned nothing. Driller then teleports, and Cheetara asks what was the point of him even being here. I don't really get it.

How does it stack up?

The creep factor of this episode's solution aside, this isn't a terrible episode. Most of it is just Lion-O being silly and not really being that funny outside of maybe a handful of jokes, and the rest is unnotable at worst. It's adequate. Three cats.

Next, unicorns! Yup, they did exist in the original, believe it or not. Honestly, I'd be surprised if they didn't exist in a universe with cat people in it.

← Prank Call 🐈 Secret of the Unicorn →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “The Horror of Hook Mountain”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Eric Knobel

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

There is a horror in this one...but is it the episode itself?

Our journey begins with Tygra taking Lion-O on a hike for him to learn one of the many, many lessons he needs to learn to become a good Lord of the ThunderCats. One of them happens to be climbing the titular Hook Mountain, which is both terrifying and super cool according to Lion-O. Tygra had to admit that he is right with the latter, though not with the same definition of "cool".

Lion-O: Good thing we got our booties!

Don't worry, he means boots. Really really tiny boots that would not protect him from absolute zero, but boots nonetheless. Cold temperatures aren't the only danger, either, as this mountain has super avalanches, trick snow floors, and lethal stabby ice canyons! Yes, that is exactly how Tygra puts that last one; I could imagine he has to lower his vocabulary to a level Lion-O could understand, but it could be more for the sake of having a running gag where he constantly calls stalagmites "stab canyons."

Treading this mountain would require a leader that can trust his teammates, and, for Lion-O's lesson, Tygra decides to have him do the classic trust exercise. Even before Tygra could even explain what a trust exercise even is, Lion-O reveals that he does know and decides to fall so Tygra can catch him.

Unfortunately, he takes it too far by falling from a very high part of the mountain right on top of a bunch of hungry pterodactyls who just say "yum, yum, yum, yum", which he managed to climb off-screen with the power of cartoon logic. This episode definitely establishes which one of these guys is the straight man. We get to see Lion-O seemingly falling to his death, while Tygra rushes around, tiring himself out.

All of that just for this rather poorly drawn reaction with maybe a little too much attention on the booty. Here, I really do mean posterior! In the name of trust, he decides to trust Tygra's training on this leader stuff, and he starts climbing the mountain with a sentence that shows his confidence as a trusting leader.

In the middle of that sentence, we see Lion-O and Tygra struggling to get up the mountain, as even Lion-O realizes his little booties and cape aren't enough for him to survive the cold atmosphere. They do find a cabin, and Tygra, being the more down-to-Earth fellow, decides to ponder about whether they should trust. Of course, Lion-O decides to take out his Claw and shoot a grappling hook towards the door. Why didn't he just use the Claw Line to climb the mountain? They actually have Tygra ask that question, and Lion-O just shrugs. See kids, we know we're being stupid!

Lion-O sleeps on the snugly bear rug, kind of like, well, a cat. Tygra, without much hesitation, decides to sleep in the bed. It's almost as if Tygra knows he's being forced to do something that would most likely lead to him getting eaten by whatever creature owns this house by the script. He is tired, but still.

The next morning, we get a reason to use that classic "dun dun dun dun" cue, and surprisingly, they didn't even use it until now. They did not even use it for the minute long trust exercise gag! Okay, maybe it wasn't a minute long, but it felt that long. That "dun dun dun dun" was for the reveal that a yeti owns this cabin, and in what horrifying way is this yeti going to greet his unwanted guests?

Yeti: (singing) 1, 2, good morning to you!

It turns out that this yeti seems to be a nice guy, and actually likes having visitors around. He introduces himself as Snowman and also introduces his pet sabretoothed cat, Snowmeow! They also really like to people-watch any people that come to their home to sleep, which gives Tygra more of a reason to not trust them. There's a few more things here and there that could raise his suspicion, namely that aforementioned bear rug suggesting he may hunt, but that's the big one.

Speaking of that rug, Tygra tries to alert Lion-O about that suspicious guy who likes to stare at people, who is still resting on it. They decided to have the all important detail of Lion-O farting as soon as he gets up, complete with a fart cloud coming out of him, because...I have no idea.

Of course, as a good leader who is following Tygra's lessons, he decides to blindly trust this man and his wild cat. Lion-O does get horrified by the snow cat, but only because this cat is nude. This is an obvious joke on how this bipedal cat is reacting to a regular cat. One interesting reference that pops up from this is that he pulls out a spare outfit, and it happens to be an outfit with an abdominal opening like the original Lion-O's.

Tygra is none too happy about this blind trusting, and tries to literally carry Lion-O out of the house.

Namely, as soon as he reaches for the door, a bunch of steel bars pop out of nowhere.

Snowman: You're not going a-ny-where!

It's here where one might expect the obvious twist: that this guy is probably Mumm-Ra in another one of his many disguises. But no, he has a different reason to trap them. As a spider crawls out of his fur just to make him seem more gross, another way to get people to believe Tygra's side of the story, he tells them that it isn't safe out there, because of...

Snowman: The Sparkle-Maw!

I'm certainly sparing the readers all of the wacky close-ups this episode has, because there's a ton of them. In this episode, they outnumber the "dun dun dun duns", which is kind of an accomplishment. He then talks a little history about this Sparkle-Maw, including how it is able to camouflage itself, and that it ate all of his friends. He slowly looks at the one photo of his blizzard buds with tears in his eyes, only to be interrupted by a smoke alarm.

Snowman: Oopsy-poopsy! Bacon's burning! (throws possibly only picture of his friends out of frame, presumably breaking it)

Wow, everyone just doesn't really respect their fallen friends in this series, do they? Whether it be Jaga just shrugging off the destruction of his planet with a "oh, everything splodes someday!", or Snowman just throwing away what is probably a sentimental photo. I get that they're trying to subvert our expectations, but it does take a bit of weight from this.

Tygra doesn't believe him, because, even in this weird world where pterodactyls still exist, there seems to be a man for every type of animal, and the unicorns roam free, he just knows the Sparkle-Maw isn't a real creature. Knowing Lion-O must see through this as well, he tells him to use the Sword of Omens, but Lion-O doesn't want his friends eaten by that Sparkle-Maw, and decides, as a good leader, that he will trust everything this man says. Tygra tries to clarify he didn't mean blindly trust, but the smell of pterodactyl bacon just can't be resisted.

A long time seemingly passes, with Tygra writing in his journal about how unbearable it is that he still hasn't figured out Snowman's horrible plan as he stares at him passing along a ball of yarn with the two other cats in the room, Lion-O included in that. There's a lot of jokes about how they're cats, and they're not particularly cringe-worthy.

That long time turns out to be 375...unbearable...minutes, and I could just imagine Tygra actually counting the seconds in his second, scratching a number with his claws on the wall, as Snowman, his pet, and his other guest remains blissfully unaware. Either Tygra is gradually going nuts, or he's reacting like anyone should when almost everything else seems to add up to a Hansel and Gretel situation. Then again, he did climb into a stranger's bed, he can't be that sensible.

Tygra does get an idea based on Snowman's love of playing games: a game of Thunderian Picture Guess. It's like Pictionary, minus any royalties to Mattel. Since Snowmeow can't talk, and Snowman seems to only see everything as the Sparkle-Maw, Tygra draws something he really wanted Lion-O to say: "lightning purr shovel." At least, that was one of Lion-O's guesses.

Lion-O eventually gets the right answer, "thunder thunder thunder thundercats hoe", which ends up causing the sword to shine through the cabin and right into the Cat's Lair's disco ball. We got to see what they were doing throughout the episode: watching an apparently boring cooking show that only Panthro was interested in. I was kind of worried this would lead nowhere, as if a ThunderCats Roar could fail if they're merely bored. However, they do decide to go after it anyway, though it's suggested that WilyKit is just going with it because the show was just so boring. It's a little more justified than a similar scene in one of the earlier episodes.

Lion-O and Tygra look out the window, and Tygra uses this as proof that there's no Sparkle-Maw out there, as he just sees the ThunderCats in their Thunder Tank, and a bunch of spiders that came out of nowhere.

These must be those Sparkle-Maws Snowman was talking about. He tells Snowman that he should trust him and his teammates, and he eventually decides to let him free, telling him that he's going to miss him. Lion-O valiantly runs forward...far away from the Sparkle-Maws, leaving everyone else to do all the dirty work. From what I've seen in the original, this isn't too far off so far.

We get our higher-budget fight scene here, and I'd put it somewhere in the middle. The animation is above-average, and while there's not as many clever uses of weapons as, say, Boggy Ben, it's doesn't feel like an afterthought either. It's also not one-sided, as the Sparkle-Maws manage to trap them with their big claws.

Thankfully, Lion-O seemingly running away turns out to be a strategy that ties in with one of the first jokes in the episode. Here's a hint: it's almost as long, and it's kind of silly. Also, the Snowman eventually joins the fight, too, getting over his fears and trapping one of the Sparkle-Maws with his net gun. That seems like a good bit of progression with his character, though there might be more to it than that.

In the end, Lion-O reveals that Tygra messing up big time has led him to learn the importance of trust, and Tygra just kind of accepts it. Honestly, the real lesson should have been that Tygra shouldn't have been so prejudiced against yetis, but maybe leaving that unstated is a good thing.

Most importantly, Lion-O gets to celebrate that they defeated the Sparkle-Maws. Sure, he was talking about THE Sparkle-Maw rather than a bunch of them, those spiders didn't really have any camouflage abilities, and those spiders didn't really have anything sparkling on them nor did they have particularly big mouths, but maybe that was just him embellishing the monster...right?

Pretty much every episode of ThunderCats Roar ended in a way where everything went back to normal, and this episode is an outlier. It's strange because there's no other episode that ends like this yet. One will see what I mean.

How does it stack up?

I didn't really have too much to say about this episode, but not much to complain about, either. Well, except for maybe the overuse of exaggerated, but that's kind of the norm for the series.

I'm going to put this whole episode in the middle. Not great, not terrible. Three cats.

Next, this show with messy animation gets literally messy!

← Lost Sword 🐈 ThunderSlobs →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “The Legend of Boggy Ben”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Written by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: Victor Courtright

It sure is "boggy".

So, the first episode of Roar was essentially a re-adaptation of the first few episodes of the original ThunderCats, with a few jokes thrown in there. It was actually kind of entertaining. How does this episode start?

Cookie-O-Clock!

With some of that good ol' fashioned choir text humor! Okay, there's a little bit of build up to that. Lion-O decided this hour was the hour to open up an old jar of Thunder Snaps from his home planet, and everyone is excited. See, it's a little bit more high stakes than one might expect, since they couldn't exactly order another jar from Thundara, since, well, everyone knows at this point.

Unfortunately for all of these Thunder Snap lovers, Lion-O can't seem to get the jar open. Tygra offers to help, but Lion-O believes a leader shouldn't ask for help. Tygra responds to this lack of wanting to call for help by saying that he means he should use the “call for help” function on the Sword of Omens. Just like in the last episode, he decides to let the sword help by using it opener of cans and/or jars, which was apparently wrong. What was Tygra even meaning with that piece of help, anyway? The ThunderCats are all already here, so doing a "ThunderCats Hooo!" isn't going to do anything.

I want to give this episode some credit for that particular joke: while trying to open the jar with the Sword of Omens, the Sword of Omens seemingly leaps out of Lion-O's hand and lands right into the carpet. The Sword of Omens can disobey Lion-O in the original, as seen in the last episode I reviewed where it did the same action when Lion-O tried to use it for hunting, and it's fitting that it wouldn't obey him here, either. Whether this cookie jar was just that much powerful, or the act of using a sword on cookie jars is considered an evil act is never really touched upon.

Cheetara offers a better idea for Lion-O that isn't "just let Panthro take off the lid with his super strength": she knows of a magical elixir that can give Lion-O enough strength to open any cookie jar. The only problem is that it's in the soppy swamps of Boggy Ben, a powerful swamp monster that only exists in legends. Only she knows where it is, so Lion-O lets her join him in the magical quest...

...as he sings a powerful rock ballad about how he doesn't need anybody's help on his mission. It's essentially a montage of him talking about how mighty he is. He would sing about how he can lift rocks, he would be seen right next to a huge rock, and the camera pans out to show him pushing over a much, much smaller rock right next to it. The joke is that Lion-O is childish and weak.

To prove even more how unqualified he is, he keeps singing until he ends up falling right into the swamp. After seeing a cute frog that tells him he's going to croak out here, because that joke wasn't telegraphed from a mile away, Lion-O comes to the obvious conclusion:

Lion-O: This swamp is spookyyyyy!

Somehow, saying that makes the TV Y7 FV rating appear with a giant flash, complete with a clang sound effect. Honestly, it took me a few times to realize what was going on; I thought my video glitched. This doesn't become a running joke, and I don't even get what this joke would have been. Was Lion-O going to say a bunch of expletives about how he was in this bog, and the TV Y7 FV prevents him from saying it? Honestly, I'll just chalk it up to it actually being a glitch. He then falls into the bog again, with the animation degrading to Atari 2600 levels.

No, the animators didn't give up, this is actually a transition to WilyKit and WilyKat playing an old video game on their Snarf video game system. Apparently, an old bad video game that seems to star Lion-O. Maybe they're playing their own C64 adaptation.

WilyKit: This game was in fact, the toots.

Jaga said "oh, Thunder-Toots" when he had to introduce the mutants from Plun-Darr, and I am glad to know that's going to be a saying throughout this whole thing. Cyborg had "boo-yah", this show has "toots". Seeing their boredom with the video game, Panthro tells the ThunderKittens that he's working on a super sweet secret weapon for the Thundertank that he hypes up a lot, and he needs their help. While they don't want to do help, a curiosity fail gets them to help anyway. We know this because of giant text saying

CURIOSITY FAIL!

because the viewers can't see what's going on unless someone screamed it at them. This show is really reminding me of a reboot, and I'm not thinking of a Disney one.

Meanwhile, after leaping across several rocks, giant skulls, and muck, Lion-O and Cheetara end up at the lair of Boggy Ben. Lion-O walks in only to find Cheetara in a cage. Did Boggy Ben lock her in there? Not even she seems to know. Suddenly, Boggy Ben shows up, and Cheetara tells him to raise the Sword of Omens.

As is the case for Lion-O, he knows exactly what to do with that sword. He raises it, and slices Boggy Ben's head off. Since this is a TV Y7-FV cartoon, which apparently this cartoon really wanted us to know in the middle of the episode with that weird gag from before, anyone can guess that something is off.

Apparently, that anyone even includes Lion-O himself, who knew that it was just Tygra in a costume. Cheetara and Tygra admit that the whole thing was a sham to get Lion-O to use the Sword of Omens properly, and accept that maybe letting people help him is a good thing.

Lion-O looks down and takes all of this to heart that his friends are filthy liars, possibly literally filthy due to all of that swamp water. To be honest, I was barely listening to this scene, because my mind was going, "he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy, he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy, he's going to ask if Boggy Ben is fake, who's that guy..."

Lion-O: So if Boggy Ben isn't real, who the toots is that guy?!

Gee, my surprise cup runneth over! That's because I have never watched a cartoon in my life, except for every one of them! This comes as a shock to everyone involved, as Cheetara seemed to think this swamp lair was uninhabited by anyone and that the mythical house dweller was just a legend. Turns out, the only legend that isn't real is the cookie jar opening elixir.

Lion-O: Toots.

Believe it or not, there's no actual fart jokes; it's possible they felt the amount of "toots" in this episode was enough. I am referring to both the amount of times they say the word "toots" and the brain-toots of this episode. Left with no choice, Lion-O, Tygra, and Cheetara have to face off against this monster, and...

...I'm not going to lie, it's actually a pretty decent fight scene. No joke! As much flack as I've given this episode so far, this is a pretty big saving grace for the episode. There's bits of great animation here and there, like one scene where Lion-O rides on a piece of the ceiling to try to bop him on the head with that sword. They still add bits of comedy here and there, with Tygra getting played with like a yo-yo, and the monster using just one of his hands to sword-fight with Lion-O, using his nails like swords. This isn't bad at all; there's a lot of creativity here that doesn't really show up in the rest of the episode, and the only problem is that the pacing can get hectic.

Then I have to think about all of this: what did Boggy Ben do to deserve this? This whole thing was supposed to be a ruse to get Lion-O to learn the value of teamwork, as constantly throughout this episode, they tell him to call for help. Looking at it from Boggy Ben's point of view, though, he just came home and found people in his house. Sure, attempting to kill them may not be the greatest thing to do, but it's not like the ThunderCats were really in the right, anyway!

Despite their combined efforts, they're not successful. They need more ThunderCats in the action. It would be here where Lion-O would do the classic "I'm sorry I'm such a jerk scene", but he instead decides to accept his and his friend's death. Cheetara eventually talks some sense into him, and, for the first time in the series, Lion-O finally does the "ThunderCats Hooo!", making the sword shine that symbol.

I like how we get to see that Cat Signal burst through the ceiling, as if the symbol was like a giant laser beam. If it can project itself onto nothing, it might as well be able to do that! Panthro, the ThunderKittens, and Snarf see this symbol, making their eyes glow yellow. This comes just in time, as Panthro was finished with that much bally-hooed secret weapon!

This episode still does what it was set out to do, as with the teamwork of all the ThunderCats, they manage to do a lot more against Boggy Ben. Tygra tries to do another bola attack, only to be caught in the same paddleball trap from before. Panthro jumps up to take Tygra's place, using the spikes on his outfit to bruise his knuckles. Snarf, the now robotic cat thing that can't talk gets in on the action too, using Ben's now bola whipped up hand to make him punch himself.

After the ThunderKittens use their trademark smoke bombs on his eyes, giving me a screenshot that makes the show look a lot gorier than it's supposed to be, it all ends with Lion-O doing a finishing blow...by literally blowing him away. It is supposed to be a comedy-take on an 80's cartoon, and that is a joke I actually didn't expect them to do. That was something that was needed in this episode.

Also needed in this episode is a conclusion to the cookie plot, as much as the cookie plot felt kind of tacked on. We get one with Lion-O accidentally dropping the cookie jar, breaking it and all of its contents. Is all hope lost? Well, just guess what Panthro's secret weapon was. Here's a hint: it makes everything all better. Lion-O falls into the bog again, proving that he has learned absolutely nothing, and the episode ends.

How does it stack up?

Yeah, it was a good and well animated fight scene, arguably better than any of the fight scenes in the first episode. It's too bad it didn't come with a story.

I debated on whether this should be a 1 or a 2. Even with the fight scene, there's some baggage with that. However, the fight scene does raise it a little, and it would seem odd to rate something with such a low rating when I've only seen two episodes so far. Maybe if this turns out to be the worst episode, I'll re-rate it, but as it stands, I give it 2 logos.

Next, the apparently totally adult Lion-O has to prove that he really is a kid.

← Exodus (Parts 1 & 2) 🐈 Prank Call →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Dr. Dometone”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Justin Becker

Directed by: Jessica Borutski

If you're looking for me, you better check under the earth...

The episode begins with Tygra suggesting a new mission for the ThunderCats: go around the rest of Third Earth and try to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of it. They know about everything around the Cat's Lair, they know about that evil pyramid where Mumm-Ra lives, and they even know about the horrors of hook mountain, but what about everything else?

Tygra, being the sensible one, just wants to make friends with everyone around them, but Lion-O immediately gets out his sword and thunders it up. Tygra makes a desperate plea to Lion-O to use his words and not his magical swordplay if he manages to find anyone in his spot of land. This happens to be a beach, and unfortunately, or maybe fortunately even if Snarf was there to prevent any kind of wrongful swordplay, nobody on Third Earth wanted to do a suntan. There is far more than a slight implication that Tygra put him there because he doesn't really trust Lion-O to not accidentally start wars, though that might come from Tygra's unique ability of having common sense.

Lion-O does manage to find a crab, though. The crab clearly can't talk, but that doesn't stop Lion-O from chasing it under the water, telling the crab that he just wants to ambassador it. No, there's no explanation to how Lion-O can speak and/or breathe underwater, but they do at least make him do a gurgling voice. It is basic cartoon logic: plot holes are okay as long as they're funny, and...eh, I don't know.

Speaking of holes, Lion-O lifts up a bunch of rocks that the crab was trying to, and one of them happens to be the Giant Oceanic Plug. One might think a giant plug at the bottom of the ocean was something made up for this wacky reboot, but no, that's actually something from the original ThunderCats. Unplugging it was something the ThunderCats had to prevent, as unplugging leads to...

...a really, really dry planet. This is shown by showing what the other ThunderCats are doing, with the oceans receding into the hole that plug was covering in the background. They could have just ended with the shot of Third Earth without an ocean, but it's good to see the effects Lion-O's bumbling is causing in the world, even if nobody else seems to care. Well, one person seems to care, at least.

The episode is called Dr. Dometone, so we get to see him come in with his giant amphibian robot, which he names Hercules. Just like in the original, he is the guardian of the Great Oceanic Plug, and he's none too thrilled to see the lack of water. Lion-O has no time to discuss this, because hey, a new guy to ambassador!

With no knowledge of what evil person could have done such a thing, he jumps into Hercules, and dives right into the plug. Somehow, this diving makes a fart sound, because we needed one of those. Lion-O, who snuck into the robot alongside Snarf much to the doctor's mismay, just ends up telling him he did it. Any kind of tongue lashing against him would have to wait, though.

There's an upside down city of mushroom people known as the Moldians, all sobbing from having their underground city flooded. As the Lord of the ThunderCats, he tries his best to tell everyone that he will help them out with this sudden flooding without telling them he was the one who did it. I do like this line:

Moldian Mother: My baby is all wet!

Lion-O: I'll get you a new...uh, I'll dry your baby.

A rare moment where Lion-O has to realize what he said. They manage to find the mayor, Sportimer Fungustus, and he tips his hat-shaped head as much as he would allow at the fine gentlemen. Dometome tells Lion-O to stay quiet and let him do all the talking, as Lion-O has done enough harm. He does make the mistake of introducing them as being with him, and Lion-O had to say two words that really gets the Mayor upset: "what's up?"

It turns out, the Moldians aren't exactly hip to that phrase, and assume he's asking what is up. The Mayor points down to the ground and says "the ground", and this leads to an argument. See, to the Moldians, up is down and down is up. They spend quite a bit of time explaining this to the audience, along with how they're in the hollow part of Third Earth. This could be our first confirmation this isn't a far out into the future version of the Earth we're on now, but I'm not sure about that.

Because the plot needs to go further, Lion-O butts in and says that nothing Dr. Dometome is saying is making any sense, because all of that water was drained into this city. With a zoomed out shot to possibly indicate how awkward that statement was, it's clear that the Mayor isn't too happy to be eye to eye with the people responsible for the great flood. Lion-O may not get that tongue lashing, but he will get something else.

BUM BUM BUM BUM, Lion-O, Dr. Dometome, Snarf, and even Hercules are now tied up to a mushroom rocket with chains! The Moldians did at the very least know that superheroes would need a little bit more than ordinary rope. That rocket is headed straight for Third Earth's core, or, as the Moldians know it, the "great sky ball."

Frowning at the fiery doom that he has accidentally put his new friend and his cool robot into, he can still hear the nagging words of Tygra, telling him that he should do the opposite of what he normally does. I'll say this, how he interprets this is way better than the way Lion-O did the opposite of what he says he's going to do from the previous episode. It also gives a point to that sword scene in the intro, which is nice to see.

We do get our mandated action scene, and I'm not complaining about that at all, as the Moldians have declared war on their "underground" menace. Aw, and he was trying to prevent that from happening! It's here where Dr. Dometome's involvement in the plot besides all of that exposition reaches its apex, as we get to see him use that giant robot to avoid all of those mushroom missiles. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Technically doing the opposite of what he did, even if he's actually doing the same thing he did before, Lion-O goes "up" into the ocean. "Over" their waters, they have their own plug, conveniently labelled the "reverse plug". Who put that sign there? Who cares, the most important part is that it fixed everything, and none of the other ThunderCats suspected a thing. He must be so glad everything ended up being convenient.

As the honest Lord of the ThunderCats, he does end up telling him the truth about his adventures, but Tygra doesn't believe him. They do add a twist on this by making him not believe anyone else, either. Admittedly, playing ping pong with a mole man? Those are pretty outlandish compared to fighting giant mummy monsters.

It all ends with a rather generic The End card, but I do appreciate the consistency with their appearance.

How does it stack up?

It's a pretty silly episode, but I do like the (literal) world building. 4 cats.

Next, with such a title, an episode that's sure to be exciting!

← Mandora - The Evil Chaser 🐈 Study Time →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Mandora - The Evil Chaser”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Written by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Cait Raft

Directed by: George Kaprielian

MAN-DOOO-RAAAAAA!

The episode begins with Snarf and Lion-O catching butterflies in jars. Being the Lord of the ThunderCats, he knows very well that the act of catching butterflies requires the best of stealth, as he perfectly shows off.

Lion-O: Be careful, Snarf! Butterflies scare easy, so we have to be super-duper-duper quiet. (yelling) Ooh, butterflies, HOOOO!

See, the joke is that he's doing the exact opposite of what he said he was going to do. This is going to be a constant through the first half of the episode.

This act of butterfly catching gets interrupted when a huge pod lands on Earth, with voices calling out to pull the lever. Obviously, that must mean they were just scared little voices that just needed his help.

Lion-O: Scary voices, definitely scary voices...

Or, he can acknowledge that the voices are scary. He decides not to open the cage and let out all of the scary voices, and the rest of the episode is about him catching butterflies. No, of course not, the plot wouldn't advance if Lion-O didn't let all of those scary voices out by pulling a lever because those scary voices really wanted him to do that. As one of the space criminals tells him "thanks, hot stuff", he just waves his hand and says "you're welcoooome!" in a sing-song voice despite being literally steamrolled over by one of them.

But hey, maybe it was a mistake, and those people with the scary voices were just nice people that were mistakenly put in a jail cell. One person certainly doesn't agree, as that person makes a dramatic entrance on a flying motorcycle.

As the cool motorcycle person on the cool motorcycle makes a cool motorcycle landing, Lion-O widens his eyes so hard that it becomes 80% of his face. I didn't really want to screenshot that, so here's a screenshot of our titular character-of-the-week: Mandora, the evil chaser, a character from the original cartoon. In fact, this plot is actually a parody of her first episode, also named "Mandora The Evil Chaser", which also features the original Lion-O ignoring obvious danger signs and let loose a bunch of criminals from a prison pod. Being Roar, this is exaggerated for comedic effect, and they decide not to reference "curiosity killed the cat" here.

This exaggeration also applies to Mandora, who was a no-nonsense cop in the original. Roar turns her into a super serious cop with a scowl not too dissimilar to Judge Dredd. As Lion-O criticizes her way of showing her badge with her picture upside down, Mandora makes the correct assumption that this bumbling lion is behind the prison break and arrests him. Snarf brings out his weapons, including a chainsaw, and we can only wonder what would have happened if there wasn't a prime directive against fighting interplanetary cops.

Lion-O tries to defend himself from these accusations by saying he's an evil chaser too, bringing up that fights these guys called the Mutants that are 100% evil. As another space criminal runs out of the jail cell, Lion-O, still handcuffed, hops right on top of him. The criminal does explain that his only crime was tax evasion, and Lion-O considers letting him go because his crime was so minor, but Mandora tells him that getting in the way of streets getting funded.

Despite his unwillingness to capture that crook, his help with capturing that tax evader does convince Mandora that he's on the side of righteousness, though she does consider him an oaf.

Zooming into his very tiny brain reveals that he thinks "oaf" is an acronym for "officially awesome friend", and is overjoyed by the compliment. Mandora then gives him a badge, declaring him a "deputy oaf". She had that badge ready this whole time; it's possible this is a common occurrence for her. Considering the general silliness of everyone not named Tygra in this reboot, that's not too hard to believe.

In order to Mandora to not change her mind on how heroic he is, Lion-O has to prove his status as the deputy oaf by capturing all of those criminals he let free. I would say accidentally, but he called them "scary voices" and let them free anyway.

As Mandora and the oaf zoom past by on her bike, we see Molly Lava, the space criminal that called Lion-O "hot stuff", hiding behind a bush. Other than her possible attraction to Lion-O, which only seems to come up twice in this episode, she just looks like a tiny little rock monster that doesn't seem like much of a threat. This means that most of the episode is going to be about capturing this particular criminal. In fact, all of the other criminals are caught rather easily. How?

With a montage, of course, complete with a song that exposes the might that is Mandora. The action scenes do prove that, with Mandora swatting giant flies with giant flyswatters, zapping lake polluters clean, and fighting people with laser whips. It's pretty cool, and a good contrast to how little Lion-O helps out in this montage.

Sure, Lion-O does help out slightly in a few of the scenes, but for the most part, it's just him looking at Mandora in awe of her abilities and dancing various dances. Yes, this does include doing the Booty Scooty at the camera, but I feel like it's less offensive when he did it than when a certain other group of superheroes did it. For starters, I think Lion-O is supposed to be an adult here. Well, maybe. They could de-retcon that in the future.

After the montage, Mandora does at least show appreciation for Lion-O for making her job marginally easier, and that is actually an accomplishment. Definitely a back-handed compliment, though not an undeserved one, but Lion-O takes it with pride anyway.

Something has to ruin this somehow, and it's not just because he missed that one villain. One of the criminals informs Lion-O that he shouldn't take pride in being called an oaf, and asks him if it even knows what it means. After getting what looks like a Speak N Spell from Snarf, he finds out he's been called an uneducated, clumsy person. It's not wrong, but don't tell Lion-O that.

Mandora finds out she hasn't caught Molly Lava yet, and Lion-O suggests that it would be easy to catch that cute little thing. As anyone could predict, that little cute thing is the worst criminal of them all. It would be even more cliche if she decided to call her "the destroyer of worlds"...which is exactly what she does.

Because of his newfound knowledge of what an oaf is, Lion-O offers that if he captures the cute little thing, maybe Mandora can consider him something that isn't an oaf. As Mandora tries to explain that a deputy oaf couldn't possibly defeat the destroyer of worlds, Lion-O decides to commit grand theft cool motorcycle. But hey, maybe he might be able to capture that small little rock before she leaps into a volcano and become a monster worthy of being called a destroyer of worlds. That could totally make up for that!

Unfortunately for that handsome guy, Molly Lava ends up diving into that volcano. Worst of all, Mandora shows up and realizes what the oaf has indirectly done by not letting her use her own bike.

Lion-O tries to defeat Molly Lava at her full power in, I'm not going to lie, a really impressively animated and creative fight scene. Not only is he trying to show his heroism, he also wants to look good in front of his new idol. I also like the call back to the fight in Exodus, as he repeatedly makes his sword bigger as he realizes he needs more power to defeat her with his strategy of cutting those lava arms off of the lava monster. Sadly, he doesn't seem to realize cutting off Molly Lava's arms isn't doing anything.

Exclaiming himself as Lord of the ThunderCats and King of All Thunderians, Lion-O leaps right at the giant monster's mouth, getting ready to swing his sword right into the monster. Well, something went right into the monster. Or, rather, someone.

It's here where Mandora seemingly has a change of heart on that oaf. Mandora may have only seen him as an oaf, and he pretty much was an oaf, but in her heart, she knew he wasn't lying about being a king. A king that would sacrifice himself for his people, and, while he was a dummy, he was a very brave and apparently regal dummy. A lot of emphasis is put on the king part, as if to soften what is a complete 180 on her character.

She exclaims that she would shed a tear for this sacrifice, but she knows she can't cry when she's on duty. She then takes out her time card and swipes it so that she can go on a break. Or, in this case, a "cry time." Was this really a good time for a joke? Well, anyone could assume Lion-O would still be alive since the show would have to end prematurely, so it's not like we need to take this super seriously. Still, I'd say it works.

To avenge the fallen king, Mandora gets ready to fight, her music playing as if she's about to do something really cool. This all changes when Molly Lava starts getting a big bump on her head, as if someone was coming out from the inside.

Unfortunately for the people who judged this show as horrendous because of that teaser and that Teen Titans Go crossover that the ThunderCats Roar team had nothing to do with, it turns out Lion-O is okay, spinning his sword like a propeller right out of Molly Lava's gigantic lava body, with Molly Lava herself in tow.

In the end, thanks to his bravery, the deputy oaf gets promoted to officer oaf by Mandora. As she slowly walks towards Lion-O and stretches her arms out around Lion-O, he also gets something else, too...

...for grand theft flying motorcycle, hey, I wasn't too far off, he gets a mugshot. Lion-O is still smiling at this, though, because nothing phases him now, not even when Mandora spells his name wrong. One can't forget that all important hyphen.

How does it stack up?

At first, I thought this was going to be yet another Boggy Ben, where the animation is awesome, the music is awesome, but everything else is just "lol Lion-O is stupid" humor. This one also has some great animation and a pretty cool song, and I think the plot works pretty well.

This is as good as Prank Call, and I gave that a 5, so...

Next, Lion-O has to save the ocean.

← Working Grrrl 🐈 Dr. Dometone →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Lost Sword”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Written by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Is it a lost cause?

The episode begins with a shot-for-shot parody of a particular part of the original's intro: the part where Lion-O shouts, "thunder, thunder, thunder, ThunderCats, Hoooo!", except here, he's saying "Breakfast Time, Hoooo!" while shining bright lights everywhere. The ThunderCats are already together, sans Panthro, so he is just doing this just to show off that he's going to eat cereal with the sharp part of a sword. Oh, but don't worry, because it's apparently plastic according to Lion-O. No, really:

Lion-O: You're no match for the sting of my dull, plastic blade!

When was the Sword of Omens plastic or dull? I get that Lion-O is not exactly being reasonable here, as he is trying to eat cereal with a sword instead of a spoon, but even in this silly reboot, the Sword of Omens has been shown to cut through metal like a can-opener. Is Lion-O underestimating the sharpness of the sword? Is it a reference to them being a toy franchise? The former may add a little bit to the episode's themes, but that's all I can muster.

Wilykit and Wilykat want Lion-O to share his sharp eating utensil, but mean ol Tygra tells him not to share the sword. He's supposed to protect the Sword of Omens, and Lion-O. Cheetara gets annoyed by all of that shining and tries to take the sword from him. Either one of these could lead to an answer to whether or not the sword would react if someone other than Lion-O handled it, or if Jaga's ghost would just show up and say "no" or something.

We don't get the answer to that, as the power starts cutting in and out. Tygra notifies him that, every night, he needs to put the sword in the reactor's slot in order to stabilize the base's power. One of the many abilities of the Eye of Thundara apparently includes being one of those portable batteries. Of course, being the sensible Lord that he is, Lion-O admits, rather quickly, that...

Lion-O: I totally forgot about that!

Tygra: (groans)

Oh, Lion-O, you forgetful oaf! Cheetara then gloats that the baby king messed up again. This series doesn't have the explanation that Lion-O is a kid in a grown man's body, so I can only assume that insult comes from his small stature. Height is certainly a variable with this art style, though. Lion-O tries to make a huge speech about how, as Lord of the ThunderCats, he will vow to fix his huge error, only for Tygra to tell him to just plug it in already.

Of course, he gets side-tracked from that plugging in when he walks across the engineering room. He sees that Panthro is testing a new addition to the ThunderTank: a cat-apult. This heavily impresses Lion-O, who says it's awesome. Panthro is not too pleased to know he was actually talking about the pun, but he hides it quite well.

He actually does need Lion-O's help, though: he needs Lion-O to use his "sight beyond sight" to see if the cat-apult has launched a soapy balloon from the engineering room to Castle Plun-Darr. I believe this is the first time he got to use that ability in this reboot.

Using the sword, he can see that the Mutants are having a nice picnic right outside of their castle, and the soapy balloon has hit the bat-like creature's head and made it all shiny. It also made their castle look kind of doofy, but that seems to be normal in this series. Slithe vows vengeance for the loss of his precious filth.

This episode really emphasizes the sword's importance. Right from these first few minutes, it's used as a power source and stabilizer, it can be used as binoculars, and it has repeatedly been said to be a very important item that Lion-O has to protect at all costs.

...so how is he going to lose that sword? I mean, it's not like that should be unexpected even if this episode wasn't called Lost Sword.

Just have him set the sword aside and pull the cat-apult lever, and by aside, I mean right on top of the cat-apult. Whoops, he just accidentally launched the sword, including its Eye of Thundara, right at Castle Plun-Darr! After making another speech about how it's his duty to do whatever it takes to get that sword back, he launches himself using that same cat-apult, using a strategy to swim across the air to grab the sword.

Oh, don't worry, he has a strategy to survive the inevitable fall: he'll just tuck and roll at the right time, and all of that bone crushing that a large fall would cause would disappear. Somehow, it works!

Snarf suddenly appearing out of nowhere and jetpacking him probably helped with that, too. I was hoping I missed a scene where Snarf secretly snuck onto Lion-O's leg, but no, he just appears on his back in mid-air. We do see Snarf following Lion-O into the Engineering room, but that's as much as we get.

He then bumps into this troll, who claims that he's a friend passing by, and he knows where sword-nabbing birds nest! 80% of the shots featuring him are these horrible close ups of him, and Snarf is constantly shaking his head at this, but Lion-O trusts that this troll's face is a face one can trust.

Despite all the warnings, Lion-O decides to let this troll help them out, as he does a ridiculous two-frame walk into a dark corner of the clearly evil forest, as even Lion-O puts it. See, that intentionally poor animation, accompanied by tiny plunger sounds, is supposed to emphasize that Lion-O isn't very bright. That's pretty much every joke in this episode so far.

Meanwhile, Panthro and Cheetara, knowing fully well that Lion-O will definitely mess this up, decide to take the ThunderTank to the forest in order to retrieve the sword. This is actually important, because Panthro reveals that not having the sword in the reactor will do far more than cause blackouts. If they can't get the sword back in the reactor, the base explodes. Cheetara does bring something up that I actually didn't expect.

Cheetara: No, wait, wasn't hitting the Thundrillium core the thing that makes the base explode?

Panthro: Well, there's a lot of things that make the base explode!

Surprisingly for a show with such a non-serious tone, they're bringing up events that happened in a previous episode. In this case, the episode Driller, which involved the base almost exploding because that titular misunderstood guy almost hit that core. There’s actually a few jokes like that coming up; it’s an unexpected touch, but I like it. It’s better than having episodes seemingly exist in their own universe.

As Snarf continues to roll his eyes at his really, really stupid owner, the troll leads him to a laser shield trap. Surprise, the troll was a troll! He's not just any troll either, but he's...

...Mumm-Ra! Just like in the original's "All That Glitters", Mumm-Ra transformed into a troll that fooled Lion-O into a trap. I would have never caught that reference if I didn't look up if that Troll Village from the last episode was referencing anything. Funny how that worked for this episode's favor.

Mumm-Ra also reveals that bird that stole the sword was his pet Skymeleon, giving Mumm-Ra the sword. Lion-O asks what he's going to do with his cutlery, because he still sees the all-important sword as his spoon replacement, and Mumm-Ra tells him that he's really after the Eye of Thundera, and it landed right into his grasp. He takes the eye and absorbs it into himself, causing him to transform.

Oh, so that's where the budget for Lion-O walking went: they decided to animate this transformation sequence on ones. It's actually kind of distracting how smooth this animation is, especially after that two-frame walking from a minute ago, but I'm not really complaining. This does look like the kind of animation that would be reused for future episodes, and I wouldn't mind that. I would hope that doesn't mean the sword wouldn't be constantly stolen, though.

At his lowest point, Lion-O decides to make a comeback, complete with him actually admitting that he has made a serious boo-boo.

Lion-O: I may be a bad leader, but at least I don't smell like a TOOT!

Aw, I was thinking they stopped using that word! Even Mumm-Ra is upset by that, as this comparison to flatulence causes him to shoot a laser out of his hands like he did in the original's intro. As Lion-O seems to perfectly know that intro as he referenced it in the first minute of the episode, he knows that all he needs to do is deflect it with his sword, which he doesn't seem to have. Snarf flies in and takes the laser, but it only leads to a Mumm-Ra Laser, Snarf Down. Once again, animated on ones!

The cavalry does eventually arrive, as Cheetara and Panthro runs everyone over with the ThunderTank. Somehow, this only just disables that laser force field. They are glad to see that they got there before something crazy happened, only to Lion-O to point out everything that happened so far, including that minor detail of Mumm-Ra having the Eye of Thundera implanted inside him.

Even though he should be all powerful at this point, he decides to make this a slightly fairer fight by calling for his own cavalry: the Mutants, who are busy applying sludge to their far-too-precious-for-them head. Get it, because they are icky villains, and they want their Castle to be icky like they are! This doesn't distract them for long, though, as they take their chance on the vengeance they vowed earlier.

Thankfully, Panthro knew the possibilty that Lion-O wouldn't be able to use his sword, so he brings him the Claw Gauntlet. I thought it was called the Claw Shield, but I guess the names are interchangeable. The Sword of Omens is just lying on the ground and nobody has grabbed it yet. Maybe it really is made of dull plastic!

I guess the animation in the ensuing fight scene is good, and there are some creative ideas like the axe tearing through Lion-O's hair and Jackalman ending up hitting himself with his own club, but something that's a bit too distracting is that this entire fight scene has a plain green background. I think it's supposed to be the fog, but could they not draw any not-so-happy little trees?

They also do yet another reference to the original show's opening by having Cheetara run across and jump just like she did there. Alas, Lion-O's use of his Claw Gauntlet isn't as well animated, probably because they didn't have anything to take from the intro. They did forget Vultureman, but Wilykit and Wilykat apparently snuck in the back of the ThunderTank, and he gets defeated with some smoke bombs and Wilykit pressing an "Autopipi" button on his robotic wings. They don't question why they would stow away in there, and neither will I, and they decide to go after Mumm-Ra. Unfortunately, Mumm-Ra can fly too, and there's no "fly away and eject the Eye of Thundera" button on him.

Cheetara says that this is a tough act to follow, thinking this is a good time for a quip. Even Lion-O knows this isn't one, as he has an expression that seems to be despair as he picks up his Eye-less sword. However, he then gets back up, knowing exactly what to do.

Using the Cat-apult, Lion-O jumps right up to Mumm-Ra. Mumm-Ra then fires a laser from his hands again, and Lion-O uses the sword to deflect it like in the original intro. However, this causes a chain reaction, as the sword uses that laser to hone it's right into Mumm-Ra's chest...which is now where the lasers are coming from?

Lion-O: I'm just winging it!

So were the animators, apparently! I mean, it does make sense that Lion-O didn't know what he was doing, as this seems to come out of nowhere. Somehow, this gets the Eye of Thundera sucked out of Mumm-Ra, Mumm-Ra runs away, and the day is saved. Well, except for one minor thing at the Cat's Lair. Let's see how the one member who decided to stay at the Cat's Lair reacts to this.

Tygra: Does anyone else think it's a bit warm in here?

Okay, not sure why Tygra, the well-established down-to-Earth smart guy, is completely ignoring that "reactor critical" warning there. He is the most consistently written character in this show, so it's pretty jarring to see jokes like this with him.

With the help of Cheetara's super speed, though it was not her choice of plan, he piggyback rides back to the Cat's Lair, making it to the reactor just in time. We get the classic "I'm sorry I'm such a jerk" scene, but Tygra interrupts him before he can finish just to praise him for at least getting the job done. Cheetara then praises him for kicking butt, in a complete contrast to her "baby king" remarks in the beginning of the episode. I think that's what they were going for.

And then Lion-O makes this face in reaction to all of this. Most of the time, this show's reaction faces aren't nearly as bad as that certain other reboot's. Most of the time. The end, but no The End card this time.

How does it stack up?

I was almost ready to send this one to the swamp too, but the latter half was decent enough for this not to be a 1. I debated whether this should be a 3, as I didn't dislike this as much as Secret of the Unicorn or Boggy Ben, but, eh, most of the good parts were just stolen from the classic intro. This one gets 2 cats.

Next, we go mountain climbing.

← Warrior Maiden Invasion 🐈 The Horror of Hook Mountain →

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Secret of the Unicorn”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Ben Crouse

Directed by: Angelo Hatgistavrou

Spoiler alert: there really isn’t a secret.

The episode begins with a group of unicorns chatting amongst themselves about how they're unicorns. Yes, there were unicorns in the original; I just haven't gotten to them. Also from the original are the Mutants of Plun-Darr, beginning their most evil plan yet involving those unicorns. At least Slithe seems to know the plan, but the other two are interested in a different one.

Monkian: Yeah, smash the unicorns!

Jackalman: Smash them good!

No, that's not the plan, much to Monkian and Jackalman's disappointment. They even kiss their weapons while Slithe looks in disgust at this obviously silly action.

To introduce the real plan, Slithe gets out his book on the creatures of Third Earth, as the other two sigh about him and his books again. Was Slithe really a bookworm? Maybe he was in the original, but I don't recall if he even picked up a book yet. It's not like he's a certain ThunderCat with a love of manuals or anything, something this series has been consistent with.

One particular joke I can highlight is that the first page he shows is decidedly not one about the the unicorn, but the Albino Pusmother, a disgusting creature that even the Mutants are terrified by. Well, okay, the Mutants seem to be terrified by anything that could remotely put up a fight, but still. But no, Slithe wanted to let the Mutants know that, according to the book, unicorns can grant wishes, and they can use that power to destroy the ThunderCats once and for all.

Finally going with a plan that doesn’t involve smashing and crushing, the Mutants get Vultureman to drive his bulldozer to collect all of those unicorns for that sweet, sweet wish power. The unicorns don’t even try to run, they just get pushed like they’re just beanbags.

As they're cheering at this wonderful idea, one of the unicorns shows up from behind a tree, and realizes all of her friends are gone. Assuming that she had become the last of the unicorns, the unicorn cries, running away, animated in a way that doesn't really fit what seems to be a serious scene. To be honest, even when this art style isn't working against this show's animation, it's hard for it to convey anything other than silliness.

Speaking of silliness, we get to see Tygra read a book while sipping tea. Clearly, this is going to go completely smoothly without someone interrupting him! He even says "ain't nothing gonna ruin this moment", just to tempt his fate with that. I thought Tygra would be against double negatives, but I guess I was wrong about him being the character that wouldn't pick up a book called "How To Television".

Sure enough, Lion-O shows up, dancing with his sword and...yodelling to music Snarf is playing with his boombox. How silly! He also decides to use his swords ability to shine light by shining it directly into Tygra's eyes. I thought the sword was supposed to give people sight beyond sight, not get rid of someone's sight!

The other ThunderCats show up and wonder where the dance party went, and Tygra tells him magic is not supposed to be fun. Not only is Tygra the designated bad guy, the other ThunderCats don't even get much of a character beyond "just agree with Lion-O." Yes, Lion-O is supposed to be the leader, but they should know Lion-O is still learning all of those important lessons, like "don't shine a strobe light in people's eyes." He never gets to learn that, because there's no consequences for that.

Suddenly, the unicorn, revealing her name to be Gwen, shows up at the Lair's doorstep crying for help. Being heroes, the ThunderCats are on the case to either find what happened to the unicorns, calm Gwen down from her possible-extinction-induced depression, or, preferably, both. Even Lion-O appears to be saddened by this, because the plot doesn't require him to not care about anything around him.

Unfortunately, Gwen is too sad to remember exactly what happened to her friends. I would argue she wouldn't know what happened because she wasn't there when they were taken, but the episode is now written as if she has amnesia, or "sad brain" as our lovable baby king calls it. Lion-O has his own cure for sad brain: a yodelling dance party, complete with him flashing that light in Gwen's eyes! Didn't that light destroy that cave in one of the previous episodes? Maybe he should be careful with that.

Unfortuantely, that mean ol' Tygra stops him before we can see if it had any effect. He has his own plan instead. Tygra gets out his book on the creatures of Third Earth, as the other ThunderCats sigh about him and his books again...wait, that's the same joke they did with Slithe, right down to him having the same book. They even have him show that Albino Pusmother, though with a different twist in that he reads the wrong description.

The joke appears to be that both Tygra and Slithe are all about the books, but really, it seems that the only similarity is that they're the only ones in their respective teams that aren't silly. Well, Vultureman doesn't get to do much, but I can assume he's not a bookworm. Also, is it really that easy to turn to that page? I would think the creature that begins with the letter A and the creature that begins with the letter U would be on the opposite ends of the book. Whatever, silly cartoon, silly methods.

He's going to fix the problem with a little relaxation with Tygra, complete with a title card specifically for it. At least the choir just says "bum da-bum", so it's not just another "shout what's on screen for the viewer = possible funny" moment. His way of relaxing is to read books, drink tea, garden, and do paperwork. There is a joke here, because all of these are shown to be something not too easy to do with hooves. In fact, she doesn't even try gardening, but I imagine it'd be too hard, too.

Gwen: But all of those things are so lame and boring!

Well, that too, I guess. Honestly, I can't help but be reminded of a certain other character that I have become way too familiar with, especially considering paperwork appears to be something he does for fun.

I can only hope this show's face faults will never be this bad. I really, really hope, though this episode will test that.

Speaking of crying unicorns and/or demonic forces, Slithe has a whole bunch of the former, and he really wants that wish. His main strategy, along with Vultureman, is to chant “we want the wish” over and over again. The unicorns just keep crying, not doing anything else, but they’re sure this is going to work. It wasn’t that Slithe was the intelligent one, he’s just the intelligent one by association.

While they're chanting, Monkian and Jackalman are just tossing a grenade around, them not realizing it was a grenade until one second until it explodes. I'll admit, I actually chuckled at that joke. It's silly, but it was something they would do and the joke does not overstay its welcome. That is something I couldn't say about the weapon kissing.

We get about 10 seconds of the other ThunderCats not just doing what Lion-O was doing. Panthro tries to use the ThunderScope to no avail, while Cheetara is looking at her tablet, presumably searching for "lost Unicorn" ads. However, they are interrupted by an even more depressed Gwen, who still can't remember anything despite Tygra's help. She at least knows what happened to that mean boring old man: he's out to get a facial scrub. From where?

From the Pusmother, of course! At least there's a payoff to the Albino Pusmother gag, and it's actually used in the plot. Is it plot-important? Well, kind of.

Just as soon as Lion-O tries to do his plan while the grumpo is way, slowly moving his figure towards the Eye of Thundara's "shine light into people's eyes" feature, Tygra barges in. He is willing to put pus all over the unicorn. I mean, that's what that has to be; it can't be called the Albino Pusmother for nothing.

To make a long story short, it doesn't work, and Lion-O finally decides to confront him with the knowledge that his plan stinks. He makes some good points: the unicorn is even sadder, and even Tygra is sadder. Tygra admits defeat, and Lion-O decides to do his plan. Tygra only attempts to stop him by saying it would never work...

...and, despite Tygra saying otherwise for the entire episode, not only does it work on the unicorn, it even works on him despite him being annoyed by it before. Finally, we got ThunderCats Roar's version of the Teen Titans Go intro dances. Also finally, the unicorn remembers what.

Gwen: (the music stops) It was the mutants.

Lion-O: Toots! Should have known that.

Stop trying to make toots happen, it's not going to happen. Is toots even happening? I don't even care!

After this obvious conclusion of what happened to the unicorns, the ThunderCats go to Castle Plun-Darr to fight the mutants, and Monkian and Jackalman are so happy, they kiss their weapons with excitement. Really, it's not that good; the animation isn't that great here. It's as if they spent all of the budget on the dance scenes. They didn't even bother giving them great lines.

WilyKit: Hope you like whatever these are! (throws capsule smoke bombs)

Whatever these are? Granted, they apparently didn't have a cool name for them anyway, but at least call them ThunderBombs or something. The Mutants do what they do best even in the original: run away as soon as the ThunderCats show any kind of strength. However, the unicorn and Lion-O go up to the duo and punch them right into the sky like Team Rocket.

It looks like this. They just put two dots, a huge circle for Lion-O's mouth, and angry eyebrows on the unicorn and that's it. After watching the last few episodes, I would have said this show has pretty great animation, and here's comes this episode with animation. At least it's still smooth and not a two-frame animation, but that's the most praise I can give these fight scenes.

The ThunderCats walk right into the lair and confront the rest of the Mutants...

...and Vultureman and Slithe just let them have them, because their attempts to get a wish by just chanting "give us the wish, give us the wish" doesn't seem to be working. It's here where we get to learn the closest thing to a secret the unicorns have: their powers only work when they're together. Slithe curses his book for not telling him this, but they would have told him if he wasn't yelling at them. So...it's not a secret. The title lies!

After this show adds "Thundies" to the list of terms I hope to not hear again, and I do expect my hopes to be trampled like a herd of unicorns running out of a cage, we get the obligatory "sorry I was such a jerk" scene with Tygra. It's played so straight, that's nearly a quote from this scene!

Tygra: Sorry I was such a grump!

See? Anyway, after all the unicorns are together again, Gwen tells Lion-O that they can do a wish for the ThunderCats. No, it’s not what one might think Lion-O would wish for, because the show actually had to sense for Lion-O not to wish for something he can already do on command.

How does it stack up?

I wasn't exactly into this episode. I won't say it was an unwatchable episode, and I expected a lot worse considering my usual track record with legendary creatures appearing in rebooted cartoons. Unlike the Hell-Horn and the Tenderfeet, I have no reason to hate these unicorns, but I don’t necessarily like them. Two cats.

Next, the ThunderCats battle plagiarism!

← Driller 🐈 Panthro Plagarized! →