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ThunderCats Roar
 Honestly, it's okay if you don't like this show. It was made for ME, not you. First off, sit down. And shut up. Before I say anything about the cartoon I'm about to review, there are two things we need to establish real quick. Number one, if you are the type of person who feels compelled to react as quickly, loudly, and as negatively as possible to the announcement of any piece of media you don't like that dares to exist, know that I am not reviewing this show FOR you, I am reviewing this show AT you. And number two, if you intend to start parading in circles about what a huge fan of ThunderCats you've been all your life and bitching out this new series as a personal affront to your sacred and beloved childhood or whatever, I'm gonna need you to take a seat and rewatch the original '85 cartoon in its entirety, just like I have (and yes, I mean every single one of its 130 episodes, all without skipping the credits or doing anything else while watching) so that we're on equal footing here. Otherwise, if you're gonna be normal about it, you can stay and listen. Sorry. I generally don't like getting combative with fans online - mostly because that's an utterly pointless and sisyphean venture - but with ThunderCats being as near and dear to my heart as it is, talking about the franchise in any capacity just really ignites my righteous indignation, so please bear with me while I spit a little venom, and for fuck's sake, don't assume I'm attacking you personally. Skip ahead a bit to the gif of Tygra and the Unicorn if you just want to read my thoughts on the show itself without the added context - even though that's the meat of this review.
 Pretty sure I've read this fanfic somewhere once before. Or maybe I just imagined it. Or maybe I'm strongly considering writing it myself now. Dropping out of left field seemingly from out of nowhere with its announcement in 2018, the unnecessarily controversial ThunderCats Roar brought every thirty-to-forty-something content creator and internet personality on this gods-forsaken internet out of the woodwork to post seething hate-click-generating video essays about how Cartoon Network personally desecrated yet another slice of their most holy childhoods. Twitter and YouTube (already nasty cesspools overpopulated by this type of reactionary shitheel) were flooded with countless posts featuring the exact same image of a comically deformed Lion-O with eyes pointing in different directions, typically accompanied by an obvious ragebait headline and filled wall to wall with laborious whingeing about how badly modern cartoons suck ass and whatnot. And if you think I - born in '86, mind you - am hamming up this description of my fellow 80s babies for the sake of making THEM look ridiculous so that *I* in turn can sound like the totally calm voice of reason, I swear to you I am not. For one, I make no promise whatsoever to be calm or reasonable or unbiased. I've met so many people my age who insist they loved ThunderCats (but likely haven't watched it since the last time a rerun aired during their younger years), and judging by how little they actually know about Roar versus how much they remember about the original, it's immediately apparent that very few of them actually have any sort of substantial opinion on either. It really feels like it's just hate on sight and wax nostalgic without a second thought.
 Hmm, an angry reactionary grump clinging to the dusty vestiges of a supposedly glorious past who spends every waking moment scheming to destroy those who would change the paradigm of his tunnel-vision world view...do we know anyone like that? But you know what, all this talk about my possibly-autistic hyperfixation has me feeling frisky as a feline, so I'm going to attempt some empathy here and put myself in the alleged victims' shoes. In order to understand people's frustrations, we need to first dig into WHY people hate shows like ThunderCats Roar to begin with. There's a simple list of possible reasons for this, but rather than try to counter-argue a bevy of bullet points (something I try to avoid, such as in my long-ass Legend of Korra review), I think it's more important to examine how we got to this point by scrutinizing nostalgia and cartoon culture in general. Everyone my age says the same thing, but ThunderCats [1985] is a series that I personally claim as one of my formative childhood experiences that shaped my tastes as a kid and later even reinforced them as an adult (and I do mean both the '85 series AND the 2011 reboot), and I need it to be crystal clear when I say that this review of ThunderCats Roar comes from someone deeply connected to and invested in the other two animated incarnations of the franchise. (The comics, the video game, the fabled ice show? Eh, not so much).
 Tell me how this scene is any different than exactly what happens to Tygra in any given episode of '85 ThunderCats. Go on, I'll wait. To begin, a lot of haters most likely hate ThunderCats Roar for the same reasons they hate Teen Titans Go. That is, adults who grew up with the first Teen Titans animated series continue to clutch it to their chests long after leaving the age range of its target audience, and watching it "come back" as a cartoony comedy "aimed at young children" - as opposed to picking up right where it left off, or creating a time-skipped adult continuation - comes off as some kind of personal insult to their experience with the series. In their eyes, watching the original Teen Titans as an impressionable young'un was a mind-blowing experience that rocked them to their very foundations, and the notion that it's coming back with a different vibe for a different primary audience makes it feels like a betrayal to that memory. Granted, there is something very relatable to that feeling. When a piece of media (be it a TV show, a movie, a game, a book, whatever) resonates with you on a fundamental level and alters your entire world view - especially as an emotionally volatile teen - that memory can become a cornerstone of your entire personality. That sort of core identity-shaping is the reason people still cling tightly to their precious Harry Potter spin-offs despite the author's unsightly descent into rampant right-wing politics and transphobia, and the reason so many people automatically reject "female-oriented" reboots of iconic nerd shit like Star Wars and Ghostbusters and Mad Max. People feel like their "cornerstones" are under attack. I shouldn't need to tell you why it's a bad thing to have fictional works be so anchored to your personality, but that's a whole other can of worms for another time.
 People are multi-faceted and shouldn't be locked into one singular defining character trait. To make matters worse, we (especially in America) have a massive predisposition toward cartoons being thoughtlessly labeled as "kids' stuff". It's a constant point of contention too; ask any animation aficionado and they'll fire off a litany of titles off the top of their head that prove otherwise - that cartoons can be for any age, and shouldn't be confined to the limits of G-rated fluff and rainbow meme assaults intended for children. But I think sometimes this attitude can cause a sort of feedback loop that bleeds over into other core opinions in frustrating ways. The idea that "animation isn't just kids' stuff" tends to put people on the defensive, and sometimes that idea morphs into "animation SHOULD BE for adults, and turning something INTO kids' stuff jeopardizes that". With that context in mind, it's easy to see why people immediately recoil in disgust at remakes like Teen Titans Go and ThunderCats Roar. In their minds, they remember the originals for the parts that rocked their world, coloring them as incredible and mature epics against a sea of "kids' stuff" that set them a world apart from the perceived trash of their respective eras. They remember Teen Titans as being so much more impactful than say, My Gym Partner's A Monkey, or ThunderCats being ten times cooler than the Care Bears. Because certain aspects of these shows stuck out to them as "adult" back then, the idea of making "kids' stuff" out of them now triggers that defense mechanism, resulting in the knee-jerk reactions that plague social media every time any new reboot is announced.
 Blind nostalgia is the specter of your past self leading you down a hallway of wrong memories, and if you're not careful, it will swallow you right up. But the reality of this whole situation is that every beloved classic looks like a classic if you forget that you're still wearing those damned rose-tinted glasses. I'm not here to play Nostalgia Critic with your childhood (as an aside, fuck that guy, what an asshole), but it behooves me to point out that what you remember as earth-shatteringly epic and "not just for kids" was often still fully intended to be enjoyed by kids in the first place. And there's nothing inherently wrong or insulting about that. For every gripping moment like Robin slowly losing his sanity and grip on reality, still thinking he can see the horrifying masked visage of his mentor/tormentor Slade lurking in every shadow long after he had been confirmed destroyed, there were ten other moments of pure goofiness before and after. Who could forget Larry, the fat little Robin-shaped cherub flying around comically breaking pieces of reality with his magic finger, or the Scooby Doo door chase sequence in Mad Mod's Mansion, or BeastBoy only being able to escape his hypnosis because he couldn't stop giggling any time someone said the word "boogers"? Teen Titans wasn't ALWAYS a game-changing epic, and regularly left plenty of room for kid-friendly shenanigans. So by that measure, revisiting the series about a decade later in a silly comedy format shouldn't really feel THAT sacreligious, should it?
 In another life, Wilykat could have made a fortune as a snake oil pharmacist selling cure-all mystery capsules. Now let's offer the same comparison for ThunderCats. I've talked about this in my other two ThunderCats reviews (the '85 one honestly needs a full rewrite, since it was the first review I posted on this site, before I knew what I wanted my reviews to actually sound like), but I don't think I saw in ThunderCats quite what everyone else my age apparently did. My fellow elder millennials often talk about '85 ThunderCats like it was an extremely cool action show about cat people fighting monsters and demons in space. And sure, those elements are PRESENT, but I don't feel like they're the primary focus of the show. The 2011 series was definitely built more like what they're talking about, but still stuck true to the one core aspect of '85 that set the franchise apart from the era's other action-oriented contenders like SilverHawks or G.I. Joe. '85 ThunderCats was (again, in my opinion) a show not explicitly about crimefighting or peacekeeping, but about culture shock. The Cats are strangers stranded on an unknown world, crash landed very far from home (a home that literally doesn't even exist anymore), struggling to establish a new life for themselves in an alien land full to bursting with its own diverse pool of peoples. Nearly every episode of '85 is devoted to the Cats meeting some new inhabitant of Third Earth, and making either friends or enemies with them as a result. And to be honest, although space travel did occasionally factor into it (especially in later seasons), '85 was FAR more fantasy than sci-fi, and bore a closer resemblance to fairy tales than space-faring superheroics. I suspect people who remember it as more sci-fi than sword and sorcery might be getting their wires crossed with SilverHawks. To a degree, that's understandable, given the two shows aired around the same time, and shared an art style, a production team AND a voice cast.
 One of the joys of making ThunderCats more cartoony is finding even wilder and wackier ways for them to use their weapons outside of the norm - no small feat, considering that was a recurring element of the original series too! I've noticed people using the word "whimsical" a lot more these days, and often with a vaguely dismissive or negative tone. Most of the cartoon-watching crowd I've talked with over the years have a strong preference for the more "adult" parts of any given show's story, focusing on things like the heart-breaking drama, the inevitable buildup to some kind of war or rebellion, or the dire consequences of making difficult choices, and they prefer shows that feature fully sequential episodes that play out like a really long contiguous movie rather than a series of bite-sized weekly mini-adventures. They often imply - intentionally or not - that the more "whimsical" episodic type of show is more juvenile or amateur by comparison. And well, I hate to break it to you, but cool as it was, '85 ThunderCats was also chock full of whimsy, and was never a stranger to corny jokes or light-hearted comedy.
'85 regularly featured stories built around such fluffy concepts as old shepherd hippies watching after a herd of unicorns, villages populated by robot teddy bears, an ice queen trying to capture a magical singing peacock, Mumm-Ra disguising himself as a fairy temptress, and Lion-O even meeting King fucking Arthur himself (if only to accommodate a scene of the two comparing their It's plain as day, whimsy and comedy were hard-baked into the original series, and they both serve an integral purpose to the show's entire vibe of learning to survive on an uncharted planet full of strange and disparate cultures. So even though there were also episodes about freeing enslaved creatures from the tyranny of the Mutants, defending against attacks from Mumm-Ra's latest hired goon, and reliving the trauma of the Cats' storied history on their dead home planet, it's frankly impossible to disconnect the more whimsical moments as if they weren't an equally crucial element of the show.
 You know what's wrong with Third Earth these days? Everyone is obsessed with death (instead of unicorns and candyfruit). And so, at last, this brings me to ThunderCats Roar. It's probably true that the show was intended to capitalize on the franchise's long-lasting legacy while re-tooling it for a young and easily-distracted audience. Roar IS every bit as goofy and memetic as Teen Titans Go, but does also bear a few key differences that give it a flavor distinctly unique from it's fellow reviled reboot. Haters may hate me for saying it, but - speaking as the massive fan of '85 that I am - Roar is far more than just a gimmicky grab of the ThunderCats pie, and actually functions as a genuine love letter to the franchise as a whole. And the uproarious reactionary hate for Roar proves that fans of the original completely failed to see just how much love FOR the original was poured into Roar. Unable to get over Lion-O's dopey facial expressions, disgusted by the high-pitched Jpop-esque vocals in the (multiple) intro and promo songs for the show, or pathetically sobbing over the transformation of Cheetara's leotard into shorts (yes, I saw multiple people do this), whiners always find the most asinine things to bitch about. There are so many incendiary posts about the show online that it blinds people to what's actually on display here. Yes, that brand of hyperactive kid-friendly comedy a la Gumball IS the main focus of the show, but it coexists alongside a genuine nostalgia and downright nerdy appreciation for the finer points of the '85 series. I can't tell you how many times I felt like Leo DiCaprio pointing at the TV every time I noticed a reference or riff on an episode of the original series, and as a forever fan of '85's sillier side, I was downright giddy throughout all 52 of Roar's episodes.
 '85 Lion-O: "What was IN that gun?" '85 Mandora: "An ancient formula, now a closely guarded secret. It used to be called...'soap'." Starting with simple elements like soundtrack composer Matthew Janszen revisiting and even wholesale remixing Bernard Hoffer's original '85 soundtrack (which STILL lives rent-free in my brain to this very day, and has even provided direct inspiration for some of my own music), cameos, callbacks, and inside jokes are Roar's soup du jour. A majority of the episodes center on directly parodying one from '85 with an appropriate level of wacky cartoony comedy and nudge-wink references if you're paying attention. In many ways, the show plays out like its own take on "ThunderCats: The Abridged Series", except with a full production studio behind it to turn each episode into an 11-minute whirlwind of gags that are twice as funny to those in the know. And the ultimate wildcard of it all is that no episode or character (recurring or one-off) is ever too obscure to potentially make an appearance. I fully expected to see Roar's wacky takes on familiar heavy hitters like the Warrior Maidens, Hachiman, Mandora, and Ratar-O, but nothing could have prepared me for hammed-up renditions of deeper cut classics like Safari Joe, Doctor Dometone, or Wizz-Ra. And, true to the spirit and vibe of '85, Roar sticks to the idea of spending most episodes exploring another of the countless cultures and civilizations of Third Earth, giving it a truly unlimited cast of characters - both old AND new - to work with. And that's not to even mention the occasional jabs at SilverHawks (acknowledged in this universe as a TV show the Cats watch when nothing else* is on).
 I can't believe it, but Safari Joe actually did it again. *Quick little fun anecdote: the reason I started watching ThunderCats as a kid - even though the show first aired one year before I was born - is all thanks to my parents. Both of them used to work night jobs at the time, and would come home around mid-morning, lay down to catch a few hours of sleep, then get up some time in the afternoon and watch He-Man while they drank their coffee and woke up. Well, one day He-Man was replaced by a new show they'd never heard of called ThunderCats, and since they couldn't find the remote, they grumbled about it but were too tired to get up and physically change the channel, and just accepted watching that instead, eventually deciding they liked it. They would later introduce ME to the show when we saw a VHS copy of the first few episodes for rent at the local video store a few years later. Thus, having the Roar Cats begrudgingly watch SilverHawks simply because the batteries in their remote stopped working is extremely funny to me personally, and I couldn't care less if I'm the only one laughing at that!
 I grew up on ThunderCats but didn't even watch SilverHawks until very recently, and the sheer number of bizarre similarities between the two made it feel like stepping into a bizarre alternate reality. Like any Abridged series, the key to accurately parodying beloved characters is to rewire them using a sort of "earnest hyperbole". That is, mapping them to the mold of a given cartoony stereotype, but keeping the subtle nuances of the original character intact, which results in a heavily exaggerated but entirely recognizable version of themselves. To reiterate for those of you who only remember drooling over Cheetara during the '85 series, Lion-O was canonically a 12-year-old who was shoved into a cryo pod during the long space trek from Thundera after its destruction, and aged another 12 or so years before landing on Third Earth, so - checkmate, naysayers - having him act like a child in a man's body is 100% lore accurate. The rest of the cast have a few minor alterations, but remain hilarious in their new context. Panthro is decidedly younger than his '85 counterpart but still radiates that cool and confident "badass uncle" energy, and yes, is still inexplicably afraid of bats. Wilykit and Kat act more like siblings than ever, though perhaps a bit more feral than usual, probably thanks to their portrayal in the 2011 series as homeless scamps. Painting Tygra as the fussy dad of the group is chef's-kiss perfect, seeing as he was the eldest (and often the most useless) of the '85 Cats, and yes, his silly bolo whip STILL gets him into more trouble than it's worth when it comes to combat. The only significant character change is that of Cheetara, who now leans away from her mysticism roots in favor of being the gym rat of group - not exactly faithful, but an otherwise fun twist on her usual status as "the one who runs fast" all the same. And last but not least, not content to continue the shtick of either annoying sidekick or Pokémon-esque team pet, Roar's take on Snarf makes him into an enigmatic and unpredictable swiss army knife of a mascot character. Like the Gome-chan to Lion-O's Dai (or the Mog to his Eiko, for FFIX fans), Snarf seems to be hiding an unfathomable power and deeply mysterious past behind that goofy blep face, and functions in this series like rolling a D100 for a wild magic surge (for less nerdy folks, like throwing a dart at a board full of possible outcomes) and using the result as a punchline.
 Remind me when I get around to rewriting my '85 review to talk about how my opinions on Snarf have really changed over the years. Beyond the personality shuffles, the show's humor follows the typical format of any modern cartoon in that - much like your kids - it never sits still. Episodes often fly past, delivering a rapid-fire barrage of quick-cut dialogue and subtle background gags while the voice cast go all in on comedic line delivery, making every silly joke count. Max Mittelman's ability to effortlessly switch between speed-talking and sing-song voices really makes this silly take on Lion-O shine. There's also a surprising amount of musical numbers in the mix, most of them appropriately riffing on "the 80s" with hair metal or exercise video-style songs about whatever misadventure the episode has in store. Granted, I think for most people my age and older, this brand of kinetic kid-humor will be a little too loud and too fast for their tastes. Which, y'know, is fine. Everybody has preferences and all that. But what I truly want to stress here is that while Roar's general approach to humor is intended for all ages, it boasts a massive web of densely layered meta jokes hiding just underneath it's sugar rush surface that are not only clever, but would ONLY make sense to people old enough to have actually watched the original series to begin with. Honestly, it feels like watching a group of nerds passionately roasting a show from their childhood, not because it was a "bad" show, but because they genuinely loved it.
 Accurate depiction of every anime-loving 80s baby the first time they laid eyes on Hachiman. In fact, I'd have a hard time believing that many of the show's jokes AREN'T direct or meta references to the original series. For example, watching the Ancient Spirits of Evil mistaking bad Mumm-Ra impressions for the real thing and unintentionally granting their superpowers to the Cats feels like a deliciously subtle dig at the infamous "Snarf-Ra The Ever-Living" bit from '85. It's a joke so inside baseball that I couldn't help but grin like an idiot when I saw it. Goofs and gags like these never feel like they're mocking ThunderCats' supposed "coolness", but rather, provide neat little easter eggs for fans to sniff out, and I can't overstate how much fun that was for me. Taking it one step even further, the writers for both Teen Titans Go and ThunderCats Roar must have fully predicted the inevitable backlash from the more entitled "fake fans" out there, and decided to produce a Teen Titans Go episode where the Titans themselves play the role of embittered ThunderCats fans who hate the new reboot (simply on principal), and spend the entire episode trying to get Roar cancelled. Immediately skewering every hot garbage take and review bomb I ever saw any whiny little bitch post about Roar, and following up with a series of zingers lambasting blind nostalgia into oblivion, the episode echoes many of the exact same sentiments I've pushed in this very review. Raven even perfectly exemplifies that overly-defensive reactionary stance I mentioned regarding "kids' stuff" ("Oh, so just because it's for KIDS means it doesn't have to be any good?!"). It's a scathing takedown that only makes sense if you're this deep in the sauce, and it absolutely cracked me the fuck up.
 The fourth wall is only as real as we want it to be. Real cartoons don't give a flying fuck about the fourth wall. Even funnier though, after settling their differences through cartoon violence (the Titans being no match for the suped-up action antics of the Cats), the episode ends with '85 Lion-O himself (yes, complete with Larry Kenney reprising his beloved voice role once more) stepping down from the heavenly curtains of the cartoon afterlife to mediate peace between them, offering the suggestion that people who don't like ThunderCats Roar have a bad case of poop mouth. Can't argue with Lord Lion-O, now can we? And as if that weren't enough, the episode ends with a stinger of '85 Snarf lamenting that once again, no one cares about him, or the 2011 Lion-O standing beside him. This makes yet another brilliant jab at the millennials who openly pine for a reboot of '85 ThunderCats in the same vein as the new "X-Men '97 [2024]" series; the same would-be audience who completely failed to even show up for the 2011 reboot back in its day, despite that series more or less having everything they've ever asked for in such a ThunderCats reboot. The whole thing is a throwaway joke that lasts no more than five seconds, but as a staunch supporter of 2011, it utterly fucking SLAYED me. There can be no way gags like these could have been written by normies who weren't intimately familiar with ThunderCats to begin with.
 Allowing Lion-O to increase the size of the Sword of Omens indefinitely by repeatedly chanting "Thunder!" without actually finishing the chant with a "Ho!" is simply priceless. Still, that's not even the highest high of it all. No, the meta humor reaches its absolute zenith right at the tail end of Roar's one-season run, wherein the show takes its shot at Grune the Destroyer, a recurring character in both series who became integral to opening up the Cats' lore and mythos, and was ultimately kind of a big deal. For his appearance in Roar, his story is summarized in a musical tribute (introduced as an educational video played on a "laser bagel" - 80s babies will understand). And the guest star they booked for this little musical number? Who else could it possibly be but afro-futurist neo-soul bass maestro Thundercat himself. Let it sink in for a moment. Cartoon Network asked Thundercat - who indeed took his artist name from ThunderCats [1985] - to write an original song based on the lore of ThunderCats [1985] for a parody sequence in ThunderCats Roar, 34 years after the original first aired. And, although it could have been just a goofy piss-take or a fakeout, Thundercat did exactly what he does best, and wrote a genuine fucking one-minute fusion jazz jam that utterly blew my socks off. The sheer layers leading to this moment's existence is PEAK creative humor in my book. I'm still completely starstruck over it.
 If Grune's entire personality could be represented by a single musical instrument it would totally be the bass, no doubt about it. Okay, okay, getting back on track. Aside from simply being funny, Roar makes frequent and excellent use of some wildly creative and frenetic action sequences - no doubt in homage to '85's legendary intro - combining its fruit gummy-shaped art style with some extremely detailed comic-book-shaded close-ups, making ideal use of the full animation toolset in the process. Borrowing 50/50 from ThunderCats' dual identities as a "sci-fi/fantasy" and an "American anime", Roar maximizes on keeping its character designs simple and easy to follow (not to mention easier to animate) while pushing the rotating camera tracking shots and exaggerated movements of anime fight scenes, delivering a one-two punch of action that manages to be both exhilarating and hilarious to watch. Ironically, I think it's probably Roar's art direction that contributed the most to people's outrageous reactions to the show. Certain self-aggrandized voices in the animation community frequently bemoan squishy cartoon art styles* as inherently "inferior" to the more detailed or realistic styles of say, superhero comics (especially seeing as a lot of older ThunderCats fans seem more attuned to the decidedly-more-adult comic series than the animated ones). In simpler terms, people tend to automatically label simplified shapes as WORSE art and more detailed shapes as BETTER art, regardless of whether or not that's true (it's not). And from a singular glance at a chibi Lion-O with a no-thoughts-head-empty expression on his himbo-ass face, they assume that the whole show MUST - "logically" - be trash. Not sure why we're still out here judging books by their covers (or listening to dickheads like John Kricfalusi or Amid Amidi and their anti-modern-cartoon screeds), but it's a trend I'd like to see die forever, please and thank you. *I swear to fuck if I have to see that phony graphic depicting the "CalArts style" one more time, I'm going to piss in someone's coffee.
 Remember that time Panthro started dating a bat queen in spite of his deathly fear of bats and their date was suddenly interrupted by the bat queen's gold star lesbian ex the rat queen interrogating the bat queen on her apparent bisexuality and Panthro's only reply was: "Whoa, I didn't know you dated other...royalty?" COMEDY. GOLD. And with that, we come to the end of my review. To sum it up, ThunderCats Roar is NOT the obnoxious meme-machine shitshow you were predisposed to think it is, and in fact offers some of the biggest payouts to true-blue ThunderCats fans since '85's infamous blooper reels first surfaced on the internet. The show is clean enough to watch with kids about, but offers plenty of sly references cooked in the fires of an ungodly deep meta humor that will definitely satisfy the initiated. And if the jokes don't do it for you, surely you can at least appreciate the impressive action sequences. It's a wild ride that I clearly found worth the price of admission, and I sincerely wish more people would give it an honest chance. Part of me wants to close things out by asking why the fuck so many of my fellow oldbies got so viscerally angry at the mere existence of this show, but ultimately I'm not sure it matters why. Whether it was maybe anger over this new reboot providing the final nail in the coffin for the unresolved story of the 2011 series, or people just being tired of having their childhoods sliced up and served reheated to them because corporations aren't as willing to take risks on new franchises anymore, the "why" is no longer important. I'm not talking about people who simply didn't like Roar, I'm talking about the more outspoken reviewers and reactionaries and the lengths they went to tarnish its name by review bombing (an astounding 2.2 rating on IMDB, wow) and dogpiling the showrunners on social media (it appears that many of them deleted or locked their Twitter accounts). But yeah, congrats, you did it. You defeated the "evil". Good job, ya fuckwits. But if I'm truly honest, I don't really care if THIS review changes anyone's mind about ThunderCats Roar or not. A lot of people my age are fickle bastards who will never be satisfied by ANY reboot or remake, and that's okay with me. What matters most is that I finally took the time to suss out all of MY feelings about this particular reboot, and chronicled everything here to fully explain just how much joy it brought me and me alone. To Victor Courtright and Marly Halpern-Graser and every single person who made this show a reality, if any of you ever happen to see this, I want to personally thank you from the bottom of my heart, as it really feels like you made this show with ME in mind, and I. Fucking. Loved it.
 Thinking critically and not accepting popular opinion as fact is how I always deliver the final blow in any review I write. If, against all odds, you find yourself interested in watching other shows akin to ThunderCats Roar, there are plenty to choose from (especially from the 2010 era of Cartoon Network), but one particular title I'd like to highlight is Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart. Similarly built on what should be an action-oriented epic tale of heroic camaraderie and derring-do, Mao Mao subscribes to the same chaotic gag-a-minute comedy formula as Roar, and even follows suit with its own stretches of sleek action and stylized sequences, thanks in no small part to the boundless talents of its legendary production house: Titmouse. As the ever-mounting pile of de-listed obscure cartoon gems grows by the week, I simply feel compelled to keep the memories of shows like this alive and thriving, so go check it out any way you can! Otherwise, aside from the obvious mention of Teen Titans Go, other easy follow-up recs include OK KO: Let's Be Heroes and Niko & The Sword of Light. For something ever-so-slightly more serious, you could always try Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai (now available in two flavors: 90s and 20s!), or any number of 00s classics like Dave The Barbarian, Xiaolin Showdown, or My Life As A Teenage Robot. And yes, most of these shows are not only in the same vein comedically speaking, but also feature surprisingly slick action sequences to boot. Never underestimate what a so-called comedy cartoon is capable of!
 As a reminder, all cartoons are written and animated by people who love animation. Just because a show is generally goofy doesn't mean it can ONLY be goofy! Final comments? I dunno, man. Stop making snap judgements about reboots and sequels, and maybe try actually watching one some time. Would *I* like to see less reboots and more new originals? Hell yes I would. But that doesn't mean a new twist on an old classic is automatically going to suck. We live now in an age of cartoons regularly getting shafted by companies like Warner Bros/Discovery, all for the sake of trying to turn profits in the name of debt relief or tax write-offs or whatever the fuck they're doing over there, and it feels like we're heading into a pretty dark tunnel going forward. It's important to take what you can get, and look for the good in it while hoping for something better to come along in the future. I'm sure most creatives currently working in the field agree. In the meantime, given how ThunderCats 2011 failed to gain any support or traction from networks (and would-be fans) alike, and then Roar being flamed into submission by rebels without a real cause, something tells me this may be the last we see of ThunderCats for a while. For the record, there is NO part of me that wants to see a live-action ThunderCats movie, especially since the rumor mill on that one has been actively churning for what, 15 or 20 years now? There's no way it's gonna be worth that much trouble at this point. And I'm even less enthused by all the shitty AI-gen non-trailers that have been popping up on YouTube nowadays with some of the most godawful fancasts I've ever seen, so don't wake me up unless there's news of another attempt at a new animated ThunderCats series (preferably a continuation of the 2011 one, but I ain't holding my breath!). P.S. Please give Kaitlyn Robrock my warmest regards and a kiss on the cheek for her flawless Lynne Lipton impression as the voice of Queen Luna (whom I have no shame in listing as one of my personal "hear me out" characters), because she absolutely NAILED IT.
 Look at her. LOOK AT THIS LITTLE SHITLORD! She's awful and terrible and I love her! See you in the next Review, where I can all but promise to sound less combative toward the various swathes of internet denizens who piss me off!
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