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The New Addams Family Reunion Revivals Continuity

10/03/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

After two live action movies and cartoon in the 90s the Addams Family became a household name, sadly because the second movie didn’t do well at the Box Office and the death of Raul Julia we did not see a third film even if the property was still popular. However Saban (Yes, Power Rangers’ Saban) was able to get the rights and we got a new movie that was straight to video as well as a new live action tv series, so let’s take a look back at these two attempts and how well they did.

The Addams Family Reunion

Making a third movie after the amazing first films was going to be a difficult task especially without any of the cast and a much lower budget since it was a direct to video film. For this movie they decided to go for a younger audience but it obviously maintained the main ideas that the 90s reboot had established as the Addams Family. The name of The Addams Family Reunion uses a similar pun like the second film and since all 3 are movies it’d be easy to think this was just another sequel with a different cast but I’ll go into continuity a little bit later.

The Undergrads Cartoon MTV is a hidden gem

09/30/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

I was pretty still a kid but wanted to “grow up” so I’d watch MTV and I found an animated show that grabbed my attention, it was Undergrads and it dealt with a dude who just started his first year at college. I watched it every week until they stopped airing it and I didn’t think twice about it until a few years later when I was in High School and I caught the show late night on Comedy Central and there I got to watch the whole show. I was able to relate to the show a lot more and loved it. I bought the DVD a few years later after that watched it a couple of times more but what makes this such a cult classic?

The premise of the show is pretty basic with just some basic character tropes that oddly resemble those of Nickelodeon’s Doug go to college for the first time and have to deal with life after High School. For the most part it takes it on a fairly realistic yet cartoony approach that you can really relate to it and all the things they experience since you know exactly where they’re coming from even if exaggerated. Some of the humor is a bit aimed at the MTV audience but the character designs are great and so are most scripts which is surprising but very welcome. Life as a University student is portrayed well enough as I mentioned and grow to like the characters as they watch it.

The Legend of Zelda 80s Cartoon is faithful to the franchise

09/26/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

The Super Mario Super Show had an episode of Zelda on their Friday shows and in their 52 episode run meant we got a 13 episode The Legend of Zelda animated short. While it was part of the Mario cartoon its normally packaged as its own series and I think that’s fine, now these are not full episodes as it’s only 11 minute shorts since it shared the airtime with Mario but it was still pretty cool that they sneaked a Zelda cartoon in an unrelated one. The show is rather infamous for being bad but is it really? Let’s take a look back

This show as made with a lot of love and I think in some cases more thought was put in it than the Super Mario Cartoon, you have to remember that this show started production before even Zelda II came out so all it had to base itself off was from the first game. That first game doesn’t have much of a story or characters to work with and even the Super Mario cartoon had at least two games to work with. Many of the things they made up for the show such as using magic, partner fairy, horses among others were all eventually featured in future Zelda games so you can even say that they were visionaries for the franchise. Granted you can argue these are all Fantasy tropes but they’re all a big part of what Zelda is now and they weren’t in the first game.

Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters feels like a 90s superhero

09/18/201811/24/2024 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

I was pretty excited with the idea of a Stretch Armstrong cartoon but based on that first image I was not hopeful. It looked like just another little kid Netflix show trying to sell new Stretch Armstrong toys. Now that may be silly to complain about but what I mean is they seem to be going for a standard “superhero” show. Like I mentioned they either had to go full silly or it’d be a bust and I guessed it’d be similar to that NetflixKong cartoon, but let’s take a look back at Stertch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters.

After watching the trailer it looked so awful, like an mid 90s cheapo cartoon devoid of any creativity and yes that didn’t deter me at all to watch all the episodes. The main character designs are absolutely awful, there’s nothing interesting about them. The look of most characters is really bland as well. I don’t understand what they were thinking when they made this. The two part pilot was so hard to get through, it really was just bad. The show seems like those generic mid budget cartoons we used to get in the 90s, which is actually my cup of tea but without an actual interesting character design or nostalgia or anything it’s hard to get excited about anything that happens.

The Dragon Prince is a dissapointment

09/15/201810/29/2023 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

From the time this show was announced it didn’t sound terribly exciting, but the Avatar connection was enough for me to wait and watch the trailer. I liked the art style and the show was coming out soon. The trailer looked bland and the animation cheap but I did like the celshaded look. So with only 9 episodes released so far for Book 1 let’s take a look back at The Dragon Prince so far. Netflix normally splits their animated shows in two to make the wait shorter so I’ll update review as soon as the second part of Book 1 (or if they call it Book 2) is released.

My first question I had for the show is why the characters in this fantasy world wearing such boring outfits? What happened to cool stylized designs? I mean, it’s a high fantasy show, what the hell are you doing that a high fantasy character designs are boring? The world is rather boring at times with some boring character designs, clothes, animals etc. It’s not always like these as it does have some cool designs from time to time but not enough as say Avatar.

The Braceface cartoon feels like a Nicktoon

09/09/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

I was definitely not the target audience for this cartoon when it aired but it still caught my attention and I watched a few episodes. I There might be a lot of comparison to Lizzy Macguire out there since the cast sort of looks similar but the shows couldn’t be any more different and ironically Braceface was easily more mature in its handling of things. The show overall is pretty damn good after watching all 78 episodes so let’s take a look back.

The premise is of a girl Sharon Spitz who just became a teenager and has to deal with things a 13 year old girl would so just imagine Doug but for girls and taking things a little more serious. To make her life a little worse she also gets braces right before and they’re the gimmick of the show as they’re electrically charged and often get Sharon in trouble at the worst times by activating cellphones or lights depending on the episode. Sometimes it works to her advantage though and thankfully it was not a gimmick that was used all the time as we would only see it used every other episode and it was most times not that crazy in what had happened with them as the first episode might lead you to believe.

Power Rangers Turbo & Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie change of cast

09/06/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on.., Miscellaneous

Zeo aired with a cliffhanger that Lord Zedd and Rita would be back but instead we got this new take on Power Rangers with the now confirmed yearly themes. For this year we got Turbo and I never liked cars as a kid so this was not something I was excited about when I saw the posters that the new Power Rangers movie had cars. But it was crazy, we were getting a new Power Rangers movie and the show would continue based on it so I wanted to watch it even if I never got the chance as a kid. So let’s take a look back at the movie which is the pilot for the rest of the season and then the actual season of Turbo.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

It’s bad, Turbo: a power rangers movie is a snoozefest. I first watched it when I got back into Power Rangers and I tried to force myself into liking it but it never worked out. I know in the fandom it’s well liked and preferred by many over MMPR:TM, which to me is nuts. It feels like a really boring 5 part episode, it’s high budget when compared to the TV show since you get jet skis, horses and a ship but when compared to Hollywood movies or even Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie it’s very low budget. With the title “A Power Rangers Movie”, it makes me wonder if they were planning on making these smaller budget movies for every season but once they saw how badly it did they scrapped that idea. Just imagine a world with Space: A Power Rangers movie, but at the very least we did get Kimberly: A Power Rangers Movie unofficially.