Very good negative review. Most who hate a show would be immature swear-a-holics, but yours is done very maturely, and is very detailed. I like that.
As for why the show is popular, the characters, the voice acting, the OST would probably be some things for why it was popular until Turner cancelled it.
Anyway, I will say this. I love season 1 of Swat Kats, but season 2 was a step down for me. Four 10-minute episodes. To this day, I still have no idea why they thought that would be a good idea to do in this day and age for a serious/action adventure cartoon. Serious/action adventure cartoons need multi-part episodes. Not 7 to 10-minute shorts. In fact, 10-minute The Origin of Dr. Viper, and 20-minute The Dark Side of The Swat Kats (both season 2) were HELD BACK for being too short!
And while I\'m not one of those idiots who condemns merchandise driven shows, a lot of idiots would get put off from season 2 being more commercial than season 1 with the introduction of the Thunder Truck (When Strikes Mutilor, cancelled episode The Curse of the Succubus), Turbo Mole (Caverns of Horror, cancelled episode The Doctors of Doom), and Cybertron Robot (The Deadly Pyramid, cancelled episode Turmoil 2: The Revenge). Of course, thanks to Ted Turner, none of these \"toys\" were ever made.
A season 3 of the Swat Kats would have needed a new direction as the formula was indeed getting stale. I guess the one \"positive\" of Ted Turner\'s power trip is that it spared us from what could have been the season 2 of the Ruby-Spears Mega Man for the Swat Kats.
You may not be a Swat Kats fan, but even you have to admit it\'s far from the worst thing on TV. Heck, it\'s not even the worst Hanna-Barbera cartoon (that honor would go to Sky Commanders and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop) in my opinion.
And I would definitely take the Swat Kats anyday over The Loud House or shows that have long overstayed their welcome (South Park, Simpsons, Saturday Night Live etc.), even if Swat Kats can\'t hold the jockstraps of a Centurions or Justice League 2001.
Swat Kats fan here and... I understand and agree with some of your points, like how the main characters were annoyingly inconsistent. One day Razor would be afraid of swimming, then it would be forgotten, another day T-Bone would be afraid of spiders or something, and then it would be forgotten, etc. About your other points, like if the villains were lame, that\'s more an opinion, but...
Basically what sunk the show was the infighting inside Hanna Barbera and launched at an awful time. Secret Galaxy has a whole video about it, but the gist is that there was a lot of executive meddling that at the same time was afraid of the \'radical\' and more \'violent\' tone of the cartoon (which was exactly what made it stand up from all other boring Hanna Barbera cartoons of the time) clashing with the current anti-violence rules in television (Children\'s television act of 1990), and another side that wanted to capitalize as much as it could of what was essentially a doomed cartoon. So Swat Kats was used mostly as sacrificial pawn to... Captain Planet. The story is quite infamous. I liked the cool jets and gadgets, and I liked that it allowed itself to show people actually dying, frequently, instead of trying to desperately negate that a monster storming through a whole city wouldn\'t hurt even a fly, and unless I\'m not mistaken, it was actually the first cartoon I saw where anthropomorphic animals were kicking ass and taking names instead of having a thick layer of sanitization all over it (like TMNT) with villains that were capable of killing instead of being just comedic pastiches. Were the plots predictable? Absolutely. The action cheesy? Yeah. But there were those special bits that made it stand up to many, many other cartoons of the time.
Very good opinion piece. I guess you can add infighting as yet another reason for the show\'s demise.
Oh, and I hope Peggy Charren is enjoying hell right now for the damage she caused in the 20th century! She is nothing more, but many of the idiot parents who can\'t raise their kids properly. I hate those that uses entertainment as a \"babysitter!\"
I would just like to say that the review is at least a decade old and the reviewer has not been active in that long. Not much point in addressing them, though it\'s helpful to others reading.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
@Reymma
So what if it is?
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"BADAZZ" EXTREEEEME 90s show.... Yeah?
These are the AWESOME adventures of Chance and Jake, two KRAZY cats masqerading as EXTREME vigilantes with their RADICAL jet, aided by cute feline insider in protecting MEGA Kat City while erring on the wrong side of the UNCOOL commander who doesn't quite care for those "lawless" vigilantes and their reckless ways.
OK, I'm gonna drop the 90s lingo, as Im sure you know where I'm going with this.
Going against our duo is the standard rogues gallery, including but not limited to the dark mysterious foe (who'd rather use his few victorious moments to gloat evilly and NOT finish the Kats), the insssane mutated ssscientissst, complete with ssssnake sssspeak to emphasssize how ssslimy and evil he issss, and an time-travelling dictator from the past with ancient powers.
Wrap it all up in an inconsistent art-style (going from one season of cartoony furries to another of anime-esque humanoids) the wailing of an electric guitar when our heroes are on screen, and grand scenarios that are rushed in an effort to fill 23 minutes (negating any sense of urgency or continuity) and you've got yourself a Troperific Cliche Storm of the 90s. You've seen all of these characters and plots before, acting out the same roles and emotions and resulting in the same contrivances to keep the monster-of-the-week formula alive.
Now Saturday morning cheese itself isn't a bad thing, mind you; that IS a part of what makes those shows fun. For example, as inconsistent as the art-style is, the animation itself was slick. The main characters designs stand out from their ugly backdrop, and cats engaging in "dog"fights is nice breath of fresh air from the ninja martial artists and toy vehicle armies running rampant then.
The problem I had with it is that, like I mentioned before, is that there is arguably nothing noteworthy about it. The stories are predictable, the villians lame, and character development almost nonexistent. It relies on the grittiness to set it apart, but it falls flat due to recycling the rest of its elements. When compared to a show like Batman TAS, which could deliver on all these, its a wonder to this reviewer how Swat Kats has the following it does.
At the end of the day, Swat Kats is a bland creation pretending it isn't. If you're up for an 90s show, give it a whirl; though unless you're a dedicated fan, YMMV on the BADAZZ EXTREEEEME part.