I really appreciate how this show is obviously made by fans. Each episode seems like a labor of love and I am really enjoying how they present their own versions of the classic stories.
Like I said, this episode was right out of the original series too. This is this show’s version of “Good & Ugly”. The message is presented with more subtlety & fantastic action sequences.
What really made it work here is that most of the episodes have followed this pattern. Thundercats meet a new race or new character, befriend him, and they work in harmony to save the day. So up until now, we’ve been led to trust every new ally the Cats have made (except for the Mad Captain in Ramlak’s Rising"). Here we get a deviation from the norm where the monster is actually the good guy, but the Paper people were pretty believable. I especially liked the scene where Zig tried to comfort Lion-O as he did come across as genuine.
Clue Number 1 for me is that it was Tygra who initiated the attack on the spirits, not the other way around, so that made me think that the Cats were just hastily reacting to an un-welcomed presence rather than being attacked. And then when the Sword stopped working, I was thinking “Are they going to bring that old Sword of Omens’ rule into play” and sure enough they did. And for some reason, when Lion-O said “He doesn’t look so tough” when getting his first glimpse of the bird, I saw that as a bit of foreshadowing.
The large bird (name escapes me, sorry) really reminded me of The Wise Owl from The Secret of NIMH. Scary & imposing, but filled with wisdom & is a guiding light for the characters.
The villains this week were good. I especially liked that it was a team of villains, much like the specialty lizards from “Song of the Petalars”. Its fun to see the Cats work together to topple a larger enemy, but its also fun to see them match up against a team of opponents with special skills that can match theirs. My one knock is that I felt like I was watching Yu-Gi-Oh as they summoned Origami monsters, but it did lead to some great action sequences. The fight scenes throughout the episode were all pretty cool.
Its a small thing too, but I liked that they brought Lion-O & Tygra’s competitive nature to our attention again as from what it seems like, that is going to be a major issue in the next couple of episodes.
My one thing is knock is that I wish we’d get a sense of what Mumm-Ra is up too. I mean in the early episodes, we would see The Lizards doing something or Mumm-Ra planning something, even if fighting him wasn’t the major focus of the episode. Now, we haven’t really seen him since episode 6 (7 was all flashbacks) and we haven’t seen or heard anything about him or what he’s up too. I would like him to have more of a presence.
But otherwise, great episode this week. Definitely a step up from last week’s and I can’t wait to see what we’ve got coming.
