#really I think we got trolled by an accidental troll that doesn't know their core is made of trollstuff

[hottakehoulihan]

(BNHA) I recently reread all the questionablecontent webcomic, and the dumbingofage, and a couple years ago I did a few other webcomics I like

and they usually are kind of terrible at the start and then as the gags get old they start becoming good or even amazing. Continually, as the author runs out of gags or out of patience for gags, it stops being a work about lazy gags and starts being about character growth and worldbuilding and humanologies and more.

I'm not sure how long I'll move on with BNHA, for instance. Conventional wisdom is I need to make it to episode ten or perhaps into the second season before it really hits its stride.

In our era of "we don't have a scarcity of media we have a scarcity of attention" (well, I certainly have a scarcity of attention hehwince) this is a rough sell, but I want to acknowledge that you can't really give something a fair shake unless you experience enough of it to know what the fans are on about.

So it's not my thing now, and it turns out I can't afford (physically) to have some ethanol and snacks with every episode, but I intend to keep going. It'll sound like I'm giving a flippant dismissal if I do drop it now (and hell, I've got things I'm eager to watch that are in the queue and I'm not getting around to those either) but while it is still hard for me to imagine getting my heart wrapped up in this series, I wouldn't have thought I could even tolerate several other things I now enjoy, based on their first few pages/minutes.

Cheers at you anyway

[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.

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