YMMV / Double Dragon (1993)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Shadow Khan is built up to be a far bigger threat than the Shadow Warriors and when he's finally released he proves it by beating them all into submission and launching a massive attack on the Dragon Dojo. To defeat him the Dragons are forced to... have Daj sick a bunch of dogs and cats on him. Not even supernatural or mutant animals, just normal ones. What this says about the threat-level of the Shadow Warriors is up for debate.
• Anvilicious: This show is not big on subtlety. Every episode ends with a short PSA that literally tells you the message of the episode.
• Ass Pull: Dai Lung's former master being an actual dragon. It's foreshadowed only briefly in the episode it happens and seems to happen for no reason.
• Badass Decay:
  • Shadow Khan's Terror Warriors take a sudden decrease in threat level the second time the Dragons face them. Justified, as their first appearance ends with the Lee Twins getting armor specifically built to fight them.
  • In season 1, Sickle is decently threatening to the Dragon Warriors, but in season 2 he gets Demoted to Extra with the result that the heroes start beating him easily.
• Complete Monster: The Shadow Master is the leader of the Shadow Warriors, and the uncle of the Double Dragons, Billy and Jimmy Lee. Shortly after the brothers were born, the Shadow Master trapped their mother in the Abyss and abducted Jimmy, raising him to be his second-in-command, Shadow Boss. Despite promising his sister that he would never harm Jimmy, the Shadow Master callously orders him killed when Jimmy fails him, which spurs Jimmy into joining forces with the heroic Billy. Ruling the criminal underworld of Metro City with an iron fist, the Shadow Master has flooded the city's streets with drugs and weapons, enslaved most of its marginalized mutant population, and terrorized its citizens with illusions of their greatest fears and a massive beast called the Shadowmonster. The Shadow Master's other plots include hacking all of the world's banks; consuming minds to increase his own intellect; and starting a race war between mutants and humans by framing the mutants for the abduction of a little blind girl, who he then tries to kill. Any minion who displeases the Shadow Master is magically added to the Shadow Mural, a tapestry which is covered in dozens of victims, all of them frozen mid-scream.
• Creator's Pet: Daj appears midway through season 2 and suddenly devours the plot.
• Funny Moments: After Colonel Neil McReady (who would later become Blaster) discovers the Lee brothers' identities by finding a fishing rod in the back seat:
  Billy: I told you to clean up the back of the car!
  Jimmy: Hey, man, I was busy!
  • From the same episode when they go after the main villain:
    Jimmy: Are you going to use your dragon spirit?
    Billy: Why don't you use yours?
    Jimmy: Oh, that's right. Forgot I had one now. (clears throat) Mighty spirit of the dragon! Lead us to the butt we wish to kick!
    (The spirit comes out and flies down the street)
    Billy: You call that a mystic incantation?
    Jimmy: Hey, it worked, didn't it?
• Growing the Beard: Surprisingly, season 2 shows a lot of signs of improvement. The animation is generally smoother, there's genuine continuity and developing plotlines, more Worldbuilding, and much more characterization and development. It almost makes you wonder if the show could've improved even more in the unmade third season.
• Moment of Awesome: Throughout the episode "Rebirth", one-armed mechanic Mike Pollard has been having self-confidence issues due to his disability. Near the end of the episode, he is hanging from a broken catwalk, jumps up, takes Shadow Master's scythe and uses it to take a bomb that the Shadow Master had set.
  Shadow Master: You can't do this!
  Mike (throwing the bomb away): Yes, I can. I can do ANYTHING!
• Nightmare Fuel: The Shadow Mural. Composed of every Shadow Warriors the Shadow Master deems a failure, frozen in place for eternity. Left as constant reminders to his minions the price of incompetence.
• The Scrappy: Daj, who drains screen time from the established characters, speaks with an incredibly annoying tone and accent, and has a ridiculous Story-Breaker Power that lets him basically save the day single-handed every time he appears.
• So Bad, It's Good: If one can get over the radical changes to the source material, they'll find a show that isn't exactly good, but can be a lot of fun to watch with the right mindset.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Most DIC adaptations of video games, while often radical departures, at least kept the core themes and characters from the games intact. Not so with Double Dragon, which abandons even the slightest connection to the games with both the introduction of the Shadow Master and the demise of Abobo and Willy at the beginning of the second episode. The focus on toyetic weapons and vehicles, unfamiliar villains, unfamiliar heroes, and concepts like the Code of the Dragon alienated anyone who was a fan of the original games and was hoping for something like them.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Abobo and Willy, two of the few villains actually from the games, get trapped in the Shadow Master's Shadow Mural after a single episode in favor of a bunch of original characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The season 1 finale reveals that Shadow Master is the Lee Twins' uncle and that he kept his sister (their mother) sealed away rather than killed. You would think this would be a big plot point or at least give Shadow Master some depth, but it's never really brought up again and the reveal does nothing to change how either the Lee Twins or Shadow Master act.

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