So I thought of breaking up the "woke ruins everything" train by sperging about something else.
You know what's another show where revivals never seem to get it right?
This little thing you may have heard of called....
While my favorite 1980s cartoon is He-Man, Thundercats is a close second. Fun music, fun adventures....
But what makes it fun is its overall premise. If you've never seen it, well, ask your dad to buy DVDs next time he's at Wal-Mart--the full series has been available for yonks now.
It takes a few episodes to get going though even the first four are showing some interesting stuff.
But basically, the eponymous Thundercats are the last survivors of Thundera, having got off just before it exploded, and thanks to their enemies the Mutants, they crash-land on Third Earth and are basically fucked with no choice but to set up shop. Now, Third Earth is implied to be Earth in the far future, so far past the apocalypse its come back around and become primitive again (think Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind after the bugs succeed in making most forests re-grow). There are anomalies everywhere which could, potentially, be because of past shit. And any other intelligent society the Cats find (and usually ally with) are a lone village with no clue if there's anything past that.
And this is what makes Thundercats interesting: Third Earth is an awesome setting. It's primitive, its mysterious, its dangerous. Exploring it is legitimately cool, but tempered by the knowledge that if Lion-O didn't carry around the Sword of Omens, the cats would probably be screwed.
And the show is good about highlighting some things about how this changes your priorities. For example, there's an episode where they meet a ghost obsessed with gold... but they don't even know what gold is, until they somehow get clued in and realize they have tons of the stuff... they kept thinking it was impurities in Thundrillium, a resource they are *actually* looking for, and were actually about to throw a ton of it out!
Getting back to the Sword of Omens... I love that thing. One fun aspect is watching each episode to see what new bullshit that sword will pull next. In fact its almost worth sitting through the final story arc just to see what the Sword pulls in the final episode (trust me, a lot of the impact is lost if you skip episodes or just have it spoiled for you).
And yes, Thundercats is one of the few eighties cartoons that actually has story arcs, continuity, and an actual ending.
It's not a perfect cartoon. The animation in season one is obviously on a budget, and for some reason all of Rankin-Bass' shows have this weird, stilted voice acting where its like everyone over-enunciates (its most noticable with Mumm-Ra, though you could argue in his case that its on purpose). It also has the usual eighties flaw of episodes that introduce lesser nobody villains that you don't care about... one of which also introduces a woman named Mandora the Evil Chaser, a sort of galactic cop. On that note one other issue I have is that the Thundercats are rarely ever challenged... I mean, okay, I just mentioned the Sword of Omens, but what I mean is there's a couple of major battles the Cats win without even having to put up a fight. The episode "The Last Day" is a good example.
But I can forgive these flaws, because Thundercats is a very unique cartoon. To this day there's never been another with its concepts and ideas, or even a close approximation.
This despite Thundercats getting a bunch of reboots.
The first one I heard of was a DC Comics take that went some of the usual Darker and Edgier routes. It retcons the ending so Mumm-Ra won and enslaved them all and Lion-O now fights as a gladiator in an arena....
Okay wait.... gladiator? Arena? There's actual societies now?
I never read this interpretation because... well frankly, if I wanted this kind of take, that's what Fanfiction.net is for. I wasn't interested in dark-and-edgy takes back then (to my mind the only franchise that ever had a dark and edgy take that actually worked is Lucky Luke) and its rare that I am nowadays. Especially from DC Comics where I know how it'll go.
But then there's the 201X Cartoon Network version.
I gotta be honest... I own the DVDs of this, and I caught it on its original broadcast. My exact feelings started out as pessimism but as the first episode (or two episodes) went on, I started to like it. I liked the second episode as well.
But I never got past the episode "Song of the Petelars."
I'll save my sperging for a later post, but just saying, "Song of the Petalars" is such a stupid story that it made me not even care to watch more. But thing is, this story would be stupid even if it were part of an original series and not a Thundercats reboot.
The big problem I have with this reboot as a whole is the fact that its now a fantasy adventure series about a party of heroes on a quest. So basically, Dragonlance Animated.
It's the same problem a lot of people have with things like Minecraft Dungeons or Minecraft Story Mode. It's like... what is even the point? You lost the part of the thing that made it interesting. Well okay, the Sword of Omens is still overpowered bullshit but I highly doubt the 201X version ever topped the sheer brilliant nonsense of the original.
And now I hear there's a new version called Thundercats Roar, which is apparently closer to the original concept... except its a comedy.
This is me facepalming.
Seriously, what about this is hard? Characters on a primitive world where civilization is only just getting past the hunter-gatherer stage, possibly kept down by an ancient sorcerer, and where the characters' only leg-up is some overpowered magic and whatever technology they could salvage from their wrecked ship.
Unpopular opinions, by the way: One, I actually like Snarf (his nephew from later in the show though, I could live without). I think Mumm-ra is cooler *before* he transforms into his muscular form... dude in a red cloak looks sinister, muscular dude... well he works but I look at red-cloak dude and I think "he's up to something."
Final unpopular opinion... I never hated the new characters that were introduced for the "Thundercats Ho" five-parter--Lynx-O, Pumyra, and Bengali. In fact I actually really like Bengali. and his hammer. There used to be a myth that every episode involved him fixing the sword of Omens... but the people who said that were on drugs. Also I really like the Luna-Taks, new villains introduced shortly after the new Thundercats. Unfortunately by the time they show up, the show is at its halfway point. Which kinda sucks... for me the episodes between "Thundercats Ho" and "The Last Day" are the shows' highest point.
Oh, and this is one of those cartoons that just casually drops a dark premise in one episode--the episode "Chain of Loyalty" basically outright says that all the Thundercats are only good because of brainwashing (except Lion-O, who apparently is naturally good). Seriously, just wow.
Anyway, I just thought I'd talk about a good cartoon to get everyone's spirits up.
EDIT: I also love the Ending Credits sequence. Seriously, for some reason seeing the camera pan across the desert with the red sky both takes me back to the past... and yet also makes me feel like I'm glimpsing into an unexplored world. It's like I'm a time-traveller and an archeologist at the same time.
