Series Thoughts: Skylanders Academy (Full Series)

• Released: 28 October 2016
• Developed by: Eric Rogers
• Amount of seasons: 3
• Seasons watched: 3
• Rating: 3/5

Synopsis

A special force dedicated to keeping the peace in the Skylands must face their adversaries.

My Thoughts

I have been re-watching this show for years now with the intention of writing a review/ST on it someday, but just never ended up doing so. Until today, after finishing my nth re-watch. 

First questions first: can you watch this show without prior knowledge of the Skylanders games? Yes, you can. It obviously contains many, many elements from the games, but enough of it is explained that you'll be able to keep up with the story very well. Most more obscure references are only very briefly mentioned but not relevant to the overall story. And in the last season the story takes a bit of a different turn, straying away from the plots tied closer to the games and instead focusing on a new villain exclusive to the show: Strykore.

But first things first. How are the characters? They're...fine. But varying. Okay, so our main team consists of Spyro (the slightly arrogant dragon of a seemingly-extinct dragon race), Stealth Elf (the voice of reason who can teleport), Eruptor (the grumpy musclebound dude), Jet Vac (the older team leader who is very insistent on sticking to the protocol) and Pop Fizz (the mildly deranged scientist and alchemist). They are led by Master Eon, Spyro's adoptive father and a wise wizard and portal master. Who is obsessed with his beard. There's also a lot of side characters (e.g. Hugo and Glumshanks), and of course the villains. The primary villain central to the show (and games) is none other than Kaos, a wannabe-supervillain whose plans mostly fail. There's also the Doom Raiders, a gang of criminals led by the notorious Golden Queen, and of course Strykore in season 3 as the ultimate Big Bad.

Honestly, these characters are fine in and of themselves, but they're written pretty inconsistently. I'm not sure if this is because of different writers having a different idea of what they behave like, but it doesn't feel very consistent. In early season 1, Eruptor is supposed to be the literal grumpy hothead of the team, but honestly his grumpiness only really comes up briefly in episode 1 and then later in the episode where him learning to be less grumpy is the main plot. Spyro is supposedly cocky, but after his introductory episode he really doesn't retain that trait sans for a few moments. Like, yes, he learns his lesson in episode 1, but after that he pretty much loses that part of his personality, making him a much more generic hero character. It's fine for him to be a little full of himself even as a hero, that's a fun trait to play around with. So kind of a shame that they forgot about this character quirk of his after the first episode sans a few brief instances.

The characters do develop, however. It takes some time for some of them, but they do each get their moment in the spotlight. Spyro has the most major character development in the series, however, as he is the main character. Don't get me wrong, Stealth Elf and Eruptor are fine secondary protagonists, but they don't exactly have any huge character arcs they go through. Spyro does. Eon has a pretty solid arc regarding Spyro's heritage as well. My favorite character development in the show goes to Kaossandra (pronounced Kassandra), however. She is Kaos' mother and starts out as a pretty awful one-note antagonist in the first season, but in season 2 we see that there's more to her than meets the eye and she may have some good in her. Then in season 3 she joins our crew on the side of good and wins the Skylanders' trust. She eventually even ends up becoming the new headmaster of the Academy after Eon sort-of bites the dust. Just...very satisfying character arc for her. She still needs to make amends to Kaos for all those years of overbearing mothering, however. But the series is cancelled so I guess we'll never get that. Ah well.

The villains are usually pretty one note. I do like Kaos a lot (much like his game counterpart). He's pathetic, but at the same time funny and his voice acting by Richard Horvitz really steals the show. He also has many fun interactions with his butler Glumshanks, who is much more sarcastic and down-to-earth in comparison to Kaos' grand not-so-well-thought-out schemes. Malefor is...just there, to be honest. He's rather minor, only appearing in like three episodes. I like that he does genuinely seem to care about Cynder, but other than that his character is very boring and not intimidating at all with how quickly he falls for certain ruses.

The Doom Raiders honestly are pretty one-note so I won't go into them much. As for our ultimate big bad Strykore: he's okay. He's exclusive to the show and thus not from the games. Which I don't mind. However, as a villain he's pretty much as boring and bland as can be. He's not fun like Kaos, and only mildly intimidating at most. The show's creator stated that they wanted to introduce a villain with family relationships to the other characters by introducing Stykore, but this honestly falls flat because the fact that he's Eon's brother is barely even brought up. He could've been an effective dark foil to Eon. Like, what if Eon had permanently been darkened in season 1 after using dark magic to send Crash home? But honestly Strykore is very boring and the fact that he's related to some of our cast is barely played into, which is a huge missed opportunity. Honestly the biggest thing he does with his relationships is pretending he's Kaos' father, but even then he only does this barely before ignoring Kaos consistently.

So those are the characters. What about the plot? It's pretty simple. The Skylanders are the do-gooding heroes who keep the peace in the Skylands, while villains such as Kaos, Malefor, the Doom Raiders and of course Strykore obviously seek to destroy said peace. A basic plot, but they do fun stuff with it. It's also not the entire premise. They have a lot of episodes dedicated to the Skylanders stopping one or more villains, yet, but there's plenty that just focus on solving interpersonal character conflict instead. There also is a bigger ongoing plot, with Strykore being freed and manipulating Kaos and a darkened Spyro in order to take over the Skylands. 

The quality of the writing is honestly quite baffling. Aside from it being inconsistent in the character department like I've mentioned before, it's also inconsistent on the quality part. I'm going to be honest. I love this show, but it's a huge guilty pleasure of mine. It's not because of the quality of writing that I like it so much. Most of the episodes are honestly either bad or just mediocre, being on the standard level with most just-okay kid's shows but not standing out in any way. Then there's a few genuinely really good episodes spread in between. There's not a lot of these, but there are some genuinely good episodes (or even good moments in otherwise mediocre episodes) out there. And I honestly don't know why because the rest of the series is usually just okay at best. My favorite episode is probably the season one finale, as it has some genuine conflict between the characters on a deeper level that isn't really featured in other episodes. 

As for the visuals, they're also just...okay. Decent environments, decent animation, and the character design follows those of the games pretty well, making some needed adjustments here or there (e.g. Stealth Elf having blue sclerae to make it clear where she's looking). I like the designs (yes, including pug-nose Spyro), but I'm honestly quite baffled by some of the texture work, particularly the fur textures.

Some of them look really good and like they have actual hair/fur (e.g. Hugo) but then there's other characters where the fur is made out of a clay/plastic-looking material instead, so no hair textures? And if this was an issue of budget (which it probably is), why did they spread it so randomly? Aside from Hugo, one of the only other characters to have a fur texture is Trigger Happy, a background character with like three lines. Why couldn't they have given this fur to a much more major character with fur (such as Wolfgang) instead? Weird choice to make.

As for the skin textures, some of them are actually done really well. Like, most CGI cartoons will have the human-esque characters skin textures be mostly the same color except for maybe some freckles. But here, if you look closely you can see some characters have slight inconsistencies in their skin, such as small birth marks, scars, etc. It's the most obvious on Glumshanks, who is covered in scars and scratches, but even characters such as Kaos and Stealth Elf have some visible depressions on their skin if you look closely, which I do think are really neat details as it'd be so easy to just color the skin the same tone everywhere without any details. Spyro's and Cynder's scale textures are also very good, by the way.

The comedy is mostly hit-and-miss for me. I get that it's a show trying to balance a more serious plotline with funnier moments, but sometimes the (often unfunny) jokes really take away from the more dramatic tone of certain scenes. There's a time and place for your series to tell jokes in, and a scene we're supposed to take seriously just isn't it.

Another criticism I have is the more contemporary setting of the series. The original Skylanders games take place in a world completely unlike our own, with regions that have barely any technology, magic, a mix of magic and technology or very futuristic tech. This makes the games feel pretty timeless. Meanwhile, the Netflix adaptation has the characters with things like phones, TVs, tablets, games, a Skylands equivalent of Netflix, pop culture references, etc. It makes the series feel much more contemporary, which honestly will just be dating it pretty quickly, whereas the games have that timeless feel to them. So that's kind of a shame.

Overall I don't think Skylanders Academy is a very good show. An ultimate guilty pleasure I love a lot to be sure, but not a very good one. I feel like even fans of the games may be disappointed by it because it's just not very strong and also is just not what we were promised (a show à la Gravity Falls). Do I recommend anyone check it out? Eh, I guess not. Even if you like the games there's just not a lot of good here. It definitely has some good elements (the textures, certain episodes/scenes and character interactions), but in no way does that fix the fact that the writing is otherwise pretty sloppy.