by Sammi Bold, Reporter

ThunderCats, Ho!

The Cats are back in action. Check out our reviews of their latest adventures:

“Ramlak Rising” picks up immediately where “Ancient Spirits of Evil” left off, with Lion-O (Will Friedle), Tygra (Matthew Mercer), and Cheetara (Emmanuelle Chriqui) mourning the death of their father and King. Lion-O’s rage at Mumm-Ra causes him to abandon the mission of finding the Book of Omens, and instead wanting to avenge his father. The group starts on their journey, but not before joining with the adorable kittens, WilyKit and WilyKat. Lion-O’s angst drives the story forward by angering his friends and brother to keep going forward despite the harsh conditions. Before completely running out of supplies, the group stumbles across the Sand Ocean with food lying in the middle of it. (It’s a trap!) They run out to go and eat it, although they get captured by Koinelius Tunar, a fish captain. Koinelius attempts to convince Lion-O that he should gain revenge first and foremost rather than protect his crew. He wants revenge on a monster called Ramlak that sucked up all the water that made his and his crewmates’ home. However, while battling Ramlak, the ship gets destroyed and the crew is in danger. This pushes Lion-O to remember what he is fighting for – the cats he cares about. Ramlak eats the crazy captain and Lion-O, but Lion-O escapes by using the Sword of Omens, releasing the water that was held inside him. With the fish crewman’s water home back, they wish Lion-O’s group a safe trip with the mission to find the Book of Omens. While this was going on, Mumm-Ra has been torturing Jaga (Corey Burton) to tell him where the Book of Omens is held. He declares that he will take the secret to the grave, but Mumm-Ra then traps him inside a dark magic lantern that directs a light to where the book is.

This episode was homage to Moby Dick with the captain obsessively attempting to kill Ramlak. It’s a good parallel to what Lion-O just went through and cures him of his angst within one episode (take that Harry Potter!). With this episode we also get to see a little more of how WilyKat and WilyKit act with the rest of the group and that they can take care of themselves quite well. Yet, this episode still is lacking. It wasn’t a good episode nor was it a bad episode, but there was nothing that made it stand out. The story of Moby Dick has been used several times in several TV series’, and in this case it was helpful to throw in, but I would have liked to have seen something new in the third episode. I was even bored with the design of the fish people.

ComicsOnline gives “Ramlak Rising” a 3 out of 5 kittens filled with angst. 

This brings us to the next episode, “Song of the Petalars”. The Lizards are catching up to the cats so they decide to hide in a thorn-bush forest. Tygra gets upset at Lion-O for not wanting to face the Lizards head-on since Thundercats never retreat. It gets brushed off quickly once they find a group of tiny plant people called Petalars. A young Petalar named Emrick takes a liking to Lion-O and declares him as his role model. He tells Lion-O that the Petalars are lost and are trying to get back home. Lion-O agrees to help them with the aid of their leaf map. They soon realize that Emrick and the rest of the Petalars live only one day. By the time Emrick is a young adult, they are ambushed by three of the lizards. The Petalars stun the lizards so they can get away. Alas, Slythe is tired of waiting and orders his army to burn down the forest. The updraft from the fire makes wind and allows the Petalars to escape the forest and go back home. At this point Emrick passes away and Lion-O gets a life lesson on how “it’s the journey that matters, not the destination”. Lion-O decides to now fight the Lizards instead of running, so the Thundercats run out of the forest and fight them. They are highly outnumbered, until a machine starts blasting the Lizards away. Who’s inside the machine? None other than Panthro. Dun dun dun…

This episode was much better in plot and characterization than the last one. There was more depth and thought process in it. It gets the audience to question life a bit, especially with Emrick’s final line of “In the end, what matters isn’t how long we’ve lived… But how fully we’ve lived… The good we’ve done… The friends we’ve made… The love we shared along the way…” The design of the Petalars was cute, and Emrick was a joy to watch throughout his life cycle. Everything flowed quite nicely with a balance of humorous and serious moments. And the cliffhanger! How is Panthro alive?! Despite all of this, I believe they can still be better with their writing and dialogue. A lot of what Emrick says is based off of other famous quotes and the rest isn’t very intriguing.

ComicsOnline gives “Song of the Petalars” a 4 out of 5 petals floating in the wind.

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