a bit rotten at the core

sjarja

firstly. i have watched season 1 and 2 of it - and it was not boring; so the show is not making too many mistakes.

But i caught myself getting annoyed at the main character ( Po ) - and started liking the villains much much more. ... Which should be a problem for such a show.

My main criticisms:

Po is unlikable. Not quirky but "good at heart" as in the movies ( KFP2 ) but much MUCH more annoying - the Furious Five seem to be a nothing but single-liner-punching-bags ... extremely disappointing. - almost no character ( good or bad ) has any significant development. They mess up one episode to learn from those mistakes - just to mess up a few episodes later again - for the exact same reason. - inconsistent continuity - you never really get a real idea of the peace valley, its inhabitants or the jade palace dwellers. in short - the village and the valley appear to be very very empty, especially compared to KFP1&2 - but that is probably due to the TV sized budget - the show gives a rather bad example for kids. While it hints at the other aspects of Kung Fu other than beating each other up - it never shows it. Every problem seems to be solved by beating others up - usually followed by Po admitting the truth to a mistake. ( not always but so often that it gets old ) - few consequences for the violence shown - although it is a kids show it would be nice sometimes to show that getting beat up actually hurts.

I cannot help but compare it to 2 other animated shows i consider kind of similar in terms of story-arc ( mêlée combat focused "chosen one" shows )

Avatar, the last airbender - which in a brief summary does almost everything right - Xiaolin Showdown - which has a better continuity, character development and arc ( it does get weaker after season 2 though )

on the plus side though....

the visuals are nice. not as great as the movies of course, but still nice. the animation is well done, the movements are well done and do not feel too repetitive - it captures the feeling of the movies well. - it has some funny villains - the story and characters get "slightly" better after mid season 2 ( very slightly - and occasionally )

all in all a 6/10 from me - above average and no waste of time, but by no means as enticing as my current standard "Avatar, the last airbender" ( which does not quite include Korra )

score 6/10

sjarja 12 February 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2959445/