Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thundercats
Your hosts:
Ben Carver: Hero Academy
Neil Purcell: Dasien – Superhero Webcomic
Kittyhawk: Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki
Episode 144: Rankin-Bass Action Cartoons
Animation Aficionados
A weekly Animation Roundtable Podcast
Rest in peace, Mr. Rankin.
Indeed. We didn’t mention his passing on this episode, because there’s a bit of a lag on our shows at the moment. We’ll mention his death in a future episode.
Did you mention the 2011 Thundercats series?
Very briefly, but we’d like to give it its own show.
No Ralph and Sue Dibny? But anyway, other than that great episode.
Sorry, wrong comment session in wrong site. Ignore me.
I was a bit letdown by this episode. You didn’t get into much discussion about the shows. It’s obvious that you’re not huge fans of the shows, except for perhaps ThunderCats, which in my opinion is the best of the three. I don’t recall ever seeing TigerSharks, but I had heard of it. The new ThunderCats from 2011 did include Mon-Star and one of the TigerSharks very briefly on a video wall in one episode to showcase creatures that existed in the ThunderCats universe, as I recall. It was very brief and no characters actually made an appearance in the shows or became part of a storyline. Just a correction as well, it’s the Sword of Omens, not the Sword of Thundera. The Eye of Thundera is correct, however.
Besides the general continuity of the series, I liked the progression of the characters, particularly Lion-O, which you alluded to during the show. After the first season or so they stopped concentrating so much on Lion-O being a boy in a man’s body. He grew as a character, having faced the anointment trials against his peers, and ultimately facing Mumm-Ra. Plus, some time had passed and Lion-O learned from many of his earlier mistakes, gaining less help from Jaga as the series progressed, from what I remember. Eventually the ThunderCats built a space ship and setup a home on New Thundera. New characters are introduced, including new ThunderCats who also escaped Thundera’s demise, and we met the Lunataks. Plus, all throughout the series we got introduced to other secondary characters and creatures on Thundera. I appreciated this exploration aspect of the show. It had more heart and intelligence than SilverHawks, which I also found very difficult to watch. I was into SH as a child, but as an adult it’s just painful. It has its moments, but there are so many things wrong with that show that it’s difficult to watch.
To me this felt like a rushed episode in which none of the hosts had much interest in the series and it just made for a difficult episode to enjoy. I expected more. Rankin-Bass produced a lot of material, with their holiday specials and ThunderCats being their most successful properties. It would have been more interesting to hear about their histories.
Honestly we don’t cover every tiny aspect of every show. We were overall positive about thundercats over the other two properties, a sentiment you seem to share, so I don’t see what the issue is.
I know. I’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, as you know, but I had hoped for more coverage of the Rankin Bass cartoons, that’s all. There was a lot of bonus material and I was expecting more of that time to be dedicated to the main subject.