In two different occasions, the Kid Icarus franchise was meant to become something bigger than it did, in its original run when his first two games came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy but also when he had his revival on the Nintendo 3DS. Because of thinking the franchise could be something bigger we actually got some animated shows based on Kid Icarus during these two tries at making Pit one of the mainstays at Nintendo. This little angel stuck in the NES and Smash Bros mindset for most deserves this little look back.
I guess you can’t say his first cartoon was really his, since we’re talking about the Captain N crossover cartoon full of Nintendo characters. But it definitely counts as he’s not only one of the main characters in the show and a member of the team but also one of the main villains is the Eggplant Wizard from his game, his antagonist is one of the main sources for conflict in the show. There’s also evidence that Princess is supposed to be based off Palutena but was changed at some point.
The actual show we’ve talked about before, but in general, it’s awesome. It reeks of 80s video games in a good way. Pit’s name is actually Kid Icarus here I guess to better advertise the game and he has this gimmick of saying “icarus” when he speaks. Through out its run there are some Kid Icarus centered episodes of course. He’s not the greatest Captain N Character but I’m just glad that he’s there and that technically you can recreate the Captain N team in Smash Bros.
For the release of Kid Icarus Uprising we got three different shorts by different studios in different styles which gives us three very different interpretations of how Kid Icarus could be seen. This is refreshing since it wasn’t going to be a mini-series or anything more concrete, at the very least we have a glimpse of what could’ve been done so let’s take a look at them. It’s also worth noting that since they were specifically done for the 3DS, they were all done in 3D and overall the 3D is very well done.
Thanatos Rising is the first short and it’s divided in 3 parts with a total of about 10 minutes. It is a bit boring, the humor is generic with references to the real world. I like the 2D sprite dreams. In general palutena does everything here and Pit is shown a bit useless without her. It is not comedic enough and also doesn’t have enough action. which makes it a bit generic. The CG is really good like in the game.
Medusa’s Revenge shows us some great 2D animation designs and still the 3D is great. This one is the shortest at only being 3 mins, so it’s more of a trailer, and yet it’s far more involving in the world than the previous short. Not much is shown but it’s cool even the with the weird comedic designs.
Palutena’s Revolting is another anime in 2D, here we have some great designs and it looks good as anime kid icarus. The 3D is still good, I feel the short mixed the goofy parts a bit better. Kid Icarus does difficult to get the tone right. I mean eating ahthorpomorphic carrots? whoops!. The short is in two parts at around 8 mins. This does very much feel like a proper anime with fan service tha makes sense in a more Japanese interpretation. Short cute fun story and perhaps my favorite of the shorts.
I guess you can also count the cinematics of the Super Smash Bros games as sort of cartoons of Kid Icarus but those are their own article anyway. And if we are to include that I guess you’d have to include the cinematic scenes from the actual Kid Icarus Uprising game so better to leave it at official Animated interpretations. Unsure Pit will get another cartoon or anime in the future when Nintendo has so many other franchises to use but at least he had some time to shine.