there are no videos here or youtube-ing to be done. if you are interested enough to figure this out for yourself, you’ll be rewarded.
i just sat through the entire 130-episode run of ThunderCats. yeah, that’s what i do when i’m not getting laid. it piqued my interest when i found out that they were prepping the series for a new run on CartoonNetwork this year. I gather Studio 4°C of Japan is involved with this venture. I’m actually looking forward to the new series, especially since Studio 4°C has been coming out with some really good work lately. They first caught my attention with their work on Batman:GothamKnight and they’ve not let me down so far.
But really, what really piqued my interest after watching the 130 episodes, is that it is unfuckingbelievably interminable. each episode runs for about 22 minutes, and if you really tried semi-hard with perhaps a modicum of effort you could actually cut it down to about 12 to 15 minutes.
The Good; there’s quite a lot of mythology and canon running loose and from the 2nd season onwards you can see a genuine attempt at a continuing story arc. the 1st season was pretty much lightweight, monster of the week stuff, with the exception of the bumbling mutants and the ever living fuck-up mumm-ra. the 2nd season ups the stakes on 3rd earth with the lunataks joining the rogues gallery – a definite and better class of bad guys, and not forgetting the additions of lynx-o, pumyra and bengali (a running joke if i ever saw one). the 3rd season is premised on the re-forming of Thundera and the frequent commute from 3rd earth – and it was tough on the ThunderCats, when they split up for 2 missions each episode on both worlds by the Lunataks and the Mutants on 3rd Earth and mumm-ra on new Thundera. Then the 4th Season, with everything based solely on new Thundera. It’s all good fun and some of based on decent science fiction. The Tower of Omens was a good addition, especially with the Lunataks running around.
The Bad. The voice acting was really bad. Especially when you compare it to the G1 Transformers, which ran around the same time. I mean, it’s so damned obvious that Earle Hyman is voicing both Panthro and the Ancient Spirits of Evil. Tygra and Bengali the same fucker, Peter Newman. Then you get the hammy jokes. The problem is bad voice directing and i don’t ever recall seeing a credit for this. Then, of course, you have the inconsistencies…. granted that the ThunderCats merge science and magic, and that was it’s appeal, but dammit… you could spot an inconsistency a mile away. Sometimes, when it’s a force field shielding (science) some bad shit that’s happening, Lion-o being the dependent fuck he is, will use the Sword of Omens’ sight beyond sight (magic), and get this, he can’t see past the shielding, you gotta know some didn’t do their homework…. in the world of fiction, magic trumps science, it’s a fucking unwritten rule, dude. not only that, i’m really not impressed with ThunderCat tech. Cat’sLair always gets thrashed and best of all the fortress defences, suck. the bloody sensor array and rays don’t do shit when they’re supposed to. so every time i watch the series it’s one big WTF. and here’s the strange thing. the laser beams that shoot out of the eyes are weapons. but the eyes are not actually laser cannons or anything like that, in fact, when the eyes get blown up and you watch the internal shots of the damage, the eyes are actually the visual scanners/screens.
I think that’s probably why no one’s come up with a live action movie or even a story that’s able to be greenlit. The series was riddled with soo many inconsistencies. i mean like sometimes the Cats can feel Jaga, and other times they don’t know he’s around when Lion-O acts like a blur case when Jaga turns up to give plot pointers to Lion-O.
The Funny – On the pop culture front, I dare you to go and watch the entire 130 episodes or as many as you can. and see if you agree with me that mumm-ra, the ever living (shouldn’t he be the ever undead, or is that even possible… duh, semantics) is the main inspiration for lil’ jon. I fuck you not. just focus on mumm-ra, and you realise that lil’ jon copied his speech/rap patterns after mumm-ra. seriously… i cracked up so hard when i realised this. and you say…. “woo-what!?” So, could lil’ jon actually be mumm-ra’s bastard child after mumm-ra fucked over jagara… or even mumm-rana? i’m leaning very closely with jagara… she’s is space-funky like natalie portman doing a princess amidala.
Tags: Book of Omens, Cartoon Network, Earle Hyman, lil' jon, lion-o, lunataks, mumm-ra, mumm-rana, mutants, natalie portman, panthro, Peter Newman, studio 4C, Sword of Omens, Tower of Omens, tygra
