WesternAnimation I'm Not a Fan
I loved Kung Fu Panda, and it's sequel, and when I heard there was a TV Series coming out on Nickelodeon, I was overjoyed!
Now, I'm disappointed. I watched most of the first season, and it failed to impress me. Now I can't stand watching it, due to the fact that it lacks basic Kung-Fu Panda-ness. I know TV shows never really live up to the expectations of the movie, but this goes lower than any other I've seen so far.
First of all, the animation is awful. In the original films, it was excellent, and made clear that the characters were meant to be animated that way. I can deal with the Penguins of Madagascar, because they're penguins, and there's not much texture on the penguins. Also, I'd like to note that Cartoon Network is doing a better job animating Dragons: Riders of Berk, despite the obvious budget changes from a movie to a TV show. Secondly, the voice actors. This isn't a complete failure, because I know it would be hard and expensive to get the original voice actors to work on the show, but Po's voice doesn't sound like it did in the movies. Or at least, that's what I think. There is an upside, though. The amount of kung-fu fighting in both movies can be found here. In every episode I saw, there was some sort of fight. However, due to the low quality of the animation, it doesn't dazzle as much as it used to. The episodes introduce new characters that I don't like, and they get heavily flanderized just over the course of the first season. The writing's pretty clear. There's gonna be a problem. Po messes something up. There's a fight. There's a lesson. It's over. I'm not saying the plots of the movies were amazingly original, but the show could've done a lot better with this.
In conclusion, I don't really find any interest in this show. Sure, there's some humor somewhere in there, but other than that, there's really nothing. It's a pretty hollow TV Show, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong if you like it, and it's nice to see more Kung Fu Panda out there. But I just think it could use a little more effort, because it certainly had potential.
WesternAnimation Meh.
As a big fan of the Kung Fu Panda movies, I’m pleased to say that this show surpassed my expectations, but only in the sense that I think it’s just mediocre instead of horrible.
Right from the get-go, my biggest concern was how this show would treat the characters I’ve come to know and love. Unfortunately, it treats them very badly. First of all, there’s Po himself. No longer is he the fun and lovable panda from the films. Instead, he’s now an insufferable Jerkass who not only causes most of the problems he ends up having to solve, he is also prone to bouts of Aesop Amnesia, meaning that he never truly learns NOT to be an insufferable Jerkass. He is easily one of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever seen, and being the main character makes this a pretty big problem.
Shifu and the Five aren’t nearly as bad, but they still have their occasional OOC moments. They were also nerfed quite heavily from the films. When the episode isn’t focused on them, their only role seems to be getting their butts handed to them by the Monster of the Week so Po can come in and save that day. But to their credit, the episodes that do focus on the side characters tend to be the best that the show has to offer. Anyone who is a bit sore about the Five getting snubbed in the films can get some real enjoyment out of episodes like “Hometown Hero”, “Serpert’s Tooth”, and “Kung Fu Daycare”. It’s these kinds of episodes that keep me coming back to this show.
There are some other positives as well. Every episode has a segment done in traditional animation that tends to be rather well-done. I only wish the entire show was done like this because the 3D animation is much less impressive. I understand that they couldn’t make the animation as good as it was in the films, but it’s my opinion that if you can’t do 3D animation right, you shouldn’t do it at all. That said, some of the fight scenes can be very creative and fun to watch. A lot of the new characters, especially the villains, are also pretty good, even if most of them are mainly comic relief.
Overall, it’s an okay show, but nowhere near as good as the films it’s based off of and I refuse to consider it canon. Still, it does have it’s moments and I urge any Kung Fu Panda fan to at least give it a look.