I am making a rant thread in here because, let's face it, we all need to rant once in a while. And since some rants (possibly the one I'm about to make) might conflict with people's views or even offend them, I thought it best to put it in the Controversy Area. And without further ado, let's move onward.


My topic of rantingness today might seem very odd, considering the forum we're on. But I have quite a bit of a mouthful to say about the show Loonatics Unleashed.

Today I watched an episode of LU on Daily Motion. It was the Fall of Blanc, I think. It had been six or seven months since I had actually watched the show, and considering that not only do a post on a fan forum, but am also writing a fan fiction about this show, it'd be best to keep up with it just a little. So I watched.

And, unfortunately, while I was watching, I started to remember why I hadn't watched it in about six or seven months.

Let me say, first of all, that I quite liked Season 1. The plots, even if they didn't spread through numerous episodes, were interesting enough and easy to follow. Each of the characters got a fairy (although I do emphasize fairly) equitable amount of airtime, and they all had good, funny lines from time to time, especially Duck. Basically, it was an enjoyable show then, and contained episodes that I could conceivably watch repeatedly from time to time.

Season 2, however, was a bit of a trainwreck in comparison. Yes, the episode I watched today was from Season 2. And it was quite obvious that it was, even if not for the differences of the show introductions.

Oh, and the SHOW introductions! Okay, Season 1's was... well, nothing particularly special, but it captured the essence of the show pretty well. Also, each of the Loonatics got an exactly equal amount of time during the opening theme, with each of their bios being shown for each respective characer. They should have kept with that.

Season 2's opening theme is horrible, in comparison. First of all that stupid song just reeks of "4kids" (even though they have nothing to do with this) and, frankly, gets on my nerves. I make sure I skip past it whenever I'm watching the show. And also, unlike the S1 opener, each character does NOT get equal representation. It's pretty much like this:

"Look, it's Ace! Oh my god, Ace! We all love Ace! He can do martial arts! And blast lasers out of his eyes and stuff! Oh man, he is so cool! No wonder he's the team leader! We all love Ace. Man, this whole show should be about Ace.

Oh, but don't forget Lexi! She's cool too; she is a GIRL, after all. Girl power! Gotta love girl power. And also, she's a bunny, like ACE is, so she must be cool.

Hey look, it's Duck! He's so goofy! Just a kooky slapstick, always getting into trouble and doing funny things! Laugh and a half, really! Oh, you Duck! You and your goofy ego!

Slam! He eats a LOT. Man, I can't believe how much he EATS. He just eats and eats and eats.

Tech, too, he's there! He is that cool, mysterious character we all love. He can come back from the dead and stuff with his cool powers.

Oh and there's that roadrunner guy too, he's fast.

But look at ACE! Swordfighting while eating a sandwich! Man, what a badass guy! I'd like a piece of that."

Yeah, I got off on a bit of a tangent there. But if I had never seen the show before, and that introduction was the only thing I've ever seen, that's the exact impression I'd get. Seriously, Season 1's opener should have been kept.

But anyway, back to the actual contents of Season 2.

Admittedly, characters like Rev and Slam never got an exact proportional amount of airtime in Season 1, but there wasn't that much character deprivation, at least to the point in which it bothered me.

This, however, became a big problem in Season 2. Except this time it was Rev and Tech who generally got the shaft. Slam, particuarly near the end of the season, got to go on missions a lot more. Well, good on him. The big guy needed a bigger piece in the action.

But they seemed to substitute Tech for Slam. Sure, Tech did get arguably the most attention during Season 1, but sometimes things work for a reason. Poor old Rev, meanwhile, who didn't get much attention in S1 anyway, almost seemed to be completely wiped off the map, for the most part, in S2. They seemed to have tried to make up for this with The Family Business, a Rev-centric episode, but they never did much more with him after that.

This, however, is actually not my biggest qualm with S2. It was the general plotlines. Some of the individual plots that only took place during one episode were okay, I guess. I admit to absolutely loving The Family Business. But towards the latter half of the season, they seemed to have tried to attempt this sort of epic, futuristic LOTR type of deal.

You know it. It involved musicians, and Zadavia's brother, and douchebag or whatever his name was, all involved in this scheme to take over Tweetums' (don't even get me STARTED on him) army or whatnot. I can't remember exactly how that all worked, probably because it wasn't memorable.

That whole deal really was a train wreck for me. It was as if the writers were trying to respond to a critique of their show being too simple by adding this huge, overtly-complicated plotline involving wormholes and planets and musicians and siblings and knights and old ladies and packets of milk and God knows what. Needless to say, it didn't work. It simply wasn't interesting enough, being so convoluted by attempts at plot depth. And the ending was, even so, boringly predictable.

All of this might have been tolerable enough if Tech and Rev, who in my opinion are by far the most interesting characters on the show, had any sort of significant part in it at all. Needless to say, they didn't. They pretty much just sat out of it at HQ the entire time, only getting screen time when the writers wanted to pull some sort of cheap rivalry gag. (This was ESPECIALLY evident in Apocalypso). That's all they really did, though, until the writer's realized they should be doing something productive. And even when those times came, it was not much. It was still the same old Ace, Lexi and Duck show that everyone knows and loves. Particularly emphasis on Duck, too; he seemed to get quite a handy amount of attention in S2. Good for Duckies, I guess.

Now, let's take an episode like The Comet Cometh. Now that is what the entire show should have been like throughout the show's entire run. Interesting plot, plenty of good action, lots of little funny moments, every character pretty much getting the same amount of airtime, and, perhaps best of all, interesting background information of the characters. Character depth is always a good thing. The Comet Cometh is definitely my favorite episode, for all of those reasons.

LU showed it had a lot of good potential in such episodes like The Comet Cometh. And for the most part, those episodes only appeared in Season 1. But, quite frankly, all of the fan fictions on this board are much, much better and interesting than the crap the writers came up with during S2. Should this show have a third season, it should take a bite from its roots, or at least make a good attempt to make all of the characters equal.

I do not say all of this out of nostalgia for Season 1, either; I discovered LU after Season 2 had pretty much already been wrapped up, so the chronological order in which they appeared makes no difference to me.

These flaws will not divert me from coming to this forum, or writing fan fiction; in fact, I am now more encouraged to write fan fiction in order to make an attempt to utilize all the good pontential LU has and make it into a decent story.



All views and opinions expressed above are soley those of Dragon Wing, AKA Angela. These views by no means reflect the views of the forums as a whole.