ThunderCats [1985]

A beloved classic among 80s and 90s babies, ThunderCats is the perfect example of a show that is near and dear to my heart for a multitude of reasons, but not necessarily the *same* reasons as some of my fellow 80s baby contemporaries.

From my observation, for a lot of other 30 and 40-somethings online, when you mention cartoons from the 80s like ThunderCats, He-Man, G.I. Joe, and SilverHawks, they get starry-eyed and wax nostalgic about how these were Extremely Cool Action Shows about muscular dudes with big swords and cool spaceships and badass attitudes, fighting evil villains in space with epic 80s music playing in the background. (Was the music epic because it was grandiose and matched the action on screen, or because it came from the 80s and therefore gained it's apparent epicness by default?). Watching even one episode of any of these shows reveals that they're not quite as badass as nostalgia made them out to be, but that's not what I'm here to focus on. I wanna talk about what makes ThunderCats such an endearing show to ME personally, ripped muscular men in leotards aside.

Fans of beefcake were eating WELL in the 80s.

The premise of ThunderCats is that a group of people named after various types of Big Cats must flee their dying planet (it's literally exploding) and search for a new home, taking with them the shattered remains of their former empire. They discover an inhabitable planet far far away and the crew must enter cryo sleep in order to survive the long journey. Their leader Jaga stays awake to pilot the ship and unfortunately dies of old age along the way, only to live on in young Lion-o's head as a ghost and a convenient voice of wisdom.

Left so fast they didn't even have time to get dressed!

Anyway, the Cats crash land on this strange new planet and must work quickly to make friends with the locals and build a home for themselves, because ANOTHER group of refugees known as the Mutants (so named because it's easier to identify them as "the Bad Guys") were ALSO fleeing their dying home planet and followed the Cats here, itching to steal their fabled magic Sword of Omens, because they're Evil and for no other immediately apparent reason. And while the Cats are off buddying up with the local villages and peoples, the Mutants decide to ally up with an immortal mummified devil priest called Mumm-Ra who seems pissed that a new group of Do-Gooders have landed on HIS planet and are stopping HIS minions from harassing the locals, disrupting HIS reign of terror, etc.

It doesn't help that Mumm-ra has an unlimited arsenal of magic at his disposal, including transgenderism spells.

From here, the premise of every subsequent episode of the show's four long seasons typically revolves around the Cats making new allies or enemies from the widely diverse pool of local inhabitants, either by protecting them from the tyranny of Mumm-ra and the Mutants, or arguing over the rights to ownership of the wreckage of their space ship. And believe me when I say there's an endless variety of wildly unique characters who show up on this planet!

As intense as this guy looks, he is absolutely a one-episode character, total par for the course on this show.

By this metric, ThunderCats is less a show about Muscular Men Fighting Bad Guys and more a show about exploration, culture shock, and living as a stranger in a foreign land. Or at least, that's what *I* always focused on as a kid. I always liked shows about travel, anthropology, and National Geographic type stuff, because we grew up fairly poor and never went anywhere for vacations. ThunderCats provided an outlet for all that while also incorporating the cool vehicles and fantasy sci-fi magic of Saturday morning cartoons. It was an inventive blend of infinite alien backdrops coupled with a decidedly anime-inspired visual style that absolutely entranced kid-me. You could see ANYTHING on this show! Ancient pyramids, giant frog guardians, tree-dwelling amazons, robot pirate island, you name it!

Arm wrestling with cowboys on the moon was also definitely an episode plot at some point.

That said, I don't want to act like ThunderCats never featured any action. It's just that, as with most 80s cartoons, the fighting in question was subject to the whims of conservative media outlets demanding that children's cartoons be less violent. A lot of the battles in these cartoons felt weird and stilted, and were clearly recontextualized so that no character would get visibly hurt or maimed. Instead of punches or kicks that could be easily imitated by children, opponents would typically grapple and toss each other instead.

And weapons like swords were "allowed", but not allowed to cut or stab or slice or do literally anything an actual sword is designed to do, other than occasionally clash dramatically. Firearms were also banned, unless they shot unrealistic laser beams and generally never hit their target. Funnily enough, ThunderCats took this part very closely to heart and regularly gave every single character's weapon the ability to shoot lasers, regardless of how silly that made things.

I feel like this HAD to be an influence on the multi-faceted super-weapons of more modern shows like RWBY.

Now you have to understand, I'm not simply saying all this to ruin people's childhoods or bash the 80s (though I do have a LOT of negative things to say about blind nostalgia). I loved this series to death growing up. I still love it to death. And while I wouldn't call it as "epic" as others my age might, I just think a lot of my fellow ThunderCats-lovers out there have kind of missed out on the true strength of the show: its commitment to exploration-based world building over conflict-based world building. There's a lot to love about a series where your main cast are aliens learning to make friends with such a wide range of characters as a samurai who rides a rocket horse, two old married hippies who shepherd a bunch of unicorns, and a space cop with virtually no sense of humor.

And for a show that ran for a staggering 130 episodes, the character designers never seemed to run out of fuel for wacky character concepts. Of all the weird little guys created for this show, the cast remains seamlessly stylized at all times and not a single one ever feels out of place in this world. Between the robots, the creatures, the normal-looking humanoids, and the furries, this show just embraces the idea that anything can happen, and it often does. When even fucking King Arthur shows up for an episode to challenge the notion that the Sword of Omens is the most all-powerful sword in all of creation, it still doesn't feel out of place. And that feels like a huge accomplishment.

Walrus man on a cyborg dragon? Sounds like a Tuesday to me.

With all that in mind, it's true that ThunderCats contains a whole litany of terrible plot ideas and inconsistencies and contrived solutions that don't make a damn lick of sense sometimes. Being a product of the 80s, there were plenty of things that cartoons were simply not allowed to do on television at that time. Not just in the "we can't show this to kids" sense, but moreso in the "we can't disrupt the formula" sense. Every episode needed to feature the Sword of Omens and the catchphrases for marketing reasons. The Sword itself must be technically omnipotent, so it can be prominently displayed and advertised as THE toy to buy for Xmas this year.

For every cool story element that COULD have been, there were a dozen executive decisions waiting to overwrite them. If you've ever thought the world of ThunderCats would make for a great place to tell an actual epic, you're not alone, and you're kind of in luck! While it was never actually completed, the short-lived 2011 reboot of ThunderCats remains a sterling example of what COULD be accomplished within the familiar ThunderCats framework. It really feels like it was written by people who understood the source material the same way I did, and wanted to try crafting a compelling story out of that. We'll likely never get a resolution to that incredible undertaking, but the story we got was well worth the price of the story we didn't get, in my opinion!

If you think I had a lot to say about ThunderCats [1985], just wait until I finish putting together a review on ThunderCats [2011]!

I have a nearly infinite number of further things I could keep saying about this show: favorite episodes, fun character and plot analyses, theories about the worlds of both Third Earth and Thundera, my own takes on possible recharacterizations for those who did NOT appear in the 2011 reboot, a massive collection of more random gifs, etc. But I think I've said what I really wanted to say here. ThunderCats remains very near and dear to my heart, and while I personally think a lot of other people didn't quite "get it" the way I "got it", I'm glad that people out there still share my sentiments to this day.

Anyway, with nothing further to say, let me piss off a few more people by saying that Queen Luna (yes,the wrinkled little moon gnome who can't walk and wears granny lipstick) is in fact, the best character on the show, and I will not be taking any comments at this time. Thank you!

I hated her as a kid but re-watching the show as an adult, oh my god she is such a little fucking shitlord and I love her.