Review: Legends of Chima “The Joy Ride” (Or, the Retarded Thundercats)

Is this episode any better than last week’s shit storm? Well…that’s a good question. Be warned, it’s a long one. Read on, kids!

Let me tell you, I’m watching The Amazing World of Gumball, and they show me a commercial that has Chima, followed by Teen Titans Go! After reading last week’s review, and my own personal hatred to the travesty to DC Comics, this hour did not bode well for me. Well, here’s the summary. Spoilers!

What the fuck is with this intro music? This crap is even more misplaced than Ninjago’s music. In any normal cartoon geared towards kids, the main character (Laval) and his friend (Eris), be irresponsible, and take his father’s vehicle.  And of course, when they leave the sanctity of their kingdom, and are attacked by the Croc Tribe. This guy is a worse driver than my ex-girlfriend. He gets A TANK stuck in mud, as well as almost sending it over a cliff. How the fuck do you get a tank stuck in the mud? Laval’s father is taking a trip with some bodyguards to the Rhino Tribe, who love to fight. Meanwhile, back at the “plot,” Laval plays the retard, and forgets to set the parking brake to keep the tank from falling off the cliff. They walk a bit over to the Beaver Tribe, and manage to get them to fix the tank. While Laval and Eris are waiting for the tank, they uncover a plot to divert all of the chi-water to the Croc Tribe lair.

Lagravis is out with the Rhino Tribe, trying to shore up troops for his army. As he is coming back, The Wolf Tribe (is it possible to finally get a name for each of these tribes? Is it so hard?) attacks Lagravis from saving Laval. In a weird twist of fate, the beavers seem to be afflicted by alzheimers or something, because they don’t remember that they were fixing the Lion’s tank. They get the beavers in a fervor to fix the tank to create a diversion.  Then they have a terrible fight, ending with the damn busting, and Laval passing out. Turns out the Beaver Tribe busted out that tank in no time, but put some modifications onto it.

Ok. I was fearing bad, but this was just fucking terrible. Let’s do a list of the terribad coming from this show:

1. The voiceovers don’t even match mouth movements. I’m not looking for the animation to be digitally mapped to the words or anything, but if the mouth isn’t moving, why is there a voice? On top of that, why don’t the voices match the type of animal the character is supposed to be? Shouldn’t an eagle sound a little bird like? Shouldn’t a lion be more guttural, or have a slightly deeper voice? There is so much wrong here, it hurts the show.

2. The music for the show doesn’t match the show. A light poppy punk song, that sounds like a terrible cover of the Ninjago theme, doesn’t fit a show taking place in the jungle with jungle animals trying to fight one another.

3. Where is the comedy? Fuck, where is the action? I’d settle for resemblances of plot. There is no direction of story. Everytime I went to write something down, they jump to something else. I’d like to take notes, but it felt like a child with ADHD hyped on caffeine wrote the plot.

4. Why is it that the only part of this show that looked like a Lego was the characters? Shouldn’t something with the Lego name look like it’s animated Lego’s? Come on, that’s just fucking lazy.

5. There is not even a single original part of this universe design. Let’s go with this, first. We have lions. These lions are the leaders of the law of the land. They fight the forces of evil, mostly containing a lizard. Ok, this has a crocodile…who fucking cares? Now, the different groups of animals (Eagles, Lions, Skunks, Beavers, Foxes, Bears, Gorillas, Rhinos, Wolves, Ravens, and Crocodiles) are picking sides in the bigger battle. They get tanks, and Laval has a big sword.  Now, what other cartoon does this remind you of? That’s right, kids, this is a direct fucking ripoff of Thundercats. Even Laval’s design is a direct rip off of Lion-O. Let’s sit on this for a second.

Alright, let’s process this. Cartoon Network didn’t order a season 2 of Thundercats (CN also lost the rights to the show, thank god), which was hands down the best redo of my holy trinity of 80’s cartoons. Instead, we get a terrible imitation of Thundercats, with so many glaring problems. Thanks, Cartoon Network. You, once again, prove to the world that the only night you care about your programming is Monday night.