- Released: July 14, 2022
- Total amount of seasons: 1
- Seasons watched: 1
- Rating: 3/5
Synopsis
After being stripped of his Dragon Master title because Po accidentally let two villains get away, he now teams up with a no-nonsense English knight called Wandering Blade in order to capture said evil-doers and restore his title.
My Thoughts
As always, this Series Thoughts contains spoilers.
I wasn't really looking forward to this one, but didn't go in expecting to dislike it, either. I was honestly completely neutral on the idea of another animated series based on the Kung Fu Panda franchise. Dreamworks keeps putting out series after series based on their Dragons franchise, so why not another Kung Fu Panda one as well?
The reviews on this series from what I've seen are either mixed or just outright negative. My opinion? It's decent. Nothing more and nothing less, but it barely reaches the decent mark. I honestly was about to give it 2.5 stars but I think that's just a bit too harsh as I've seen other series that are way more deserving of that rating than this.
Okay so, quick plot recap: Po loses his Dragon Master status because he lets two weasel villains, Klaus and Veruca, escape and ends up accidentally destroying a town in the process. He meets up with Luthera "Wandering Blade", a no-nonsense knight with a traumatic past who is dead-set on bringing the weasels to justice. She and Po team up and go on a journey to recover the villains before they can collect four ancient weapons in order to take over the world. This season is mostly just a road trip with Po and Luthera traveling to different towns and locations while pursuing Klaus and Veruca. In the end, Klaus and Veruca win and get away with one of the legendary weapons, while Po and his allies decide that they'll go after them by leaving China, which is the last we get before the season ends.
Thoughts? Eh, the plot kinda works, but the execution is where things fall flat. First things first: this series is a follow up to a non-Netflix series called Paws of Destiny, a previous spinoff series of their Panda franchise, which I have not seen. Because of this there's some missing context that isn't explained here, such as why Po and Mr. Ping now live in a different location, or why Po is called the Dragon Master instead of the previous Dragon Warrior title. However, these missing context clues are rather minor, so I'd say that if you've just seen the three movies you can just go straight to watching this like I did. You'll be confused for a moment here or there, but you can definitely still keep up with the story.
Like I said before, the plot isn't even that bad. It's far from original, but at the same time it does introduce some new elements such as traveling to many distinct locations (the KFP movies usually took place in one or two select settings, such as the Valley of Peace, Gongmen City or the village of pandas) and having more European medieval influences such as knights (which I'm honestly not a big fan of, but it could've been executed worse than shown here).
So with this being a Kung Fu Panda spinoff, you'd expect this to be connected to the movies, right? Well, that's where you're wrong because this series feels so different from the main series that it might as well be a soft reboot for the franchise. All the beloved characters from the movie series, such as Shifu, Oogway, the villains, the Furious Five. Yep, all gone. The only characters that return from the movies are just Po and Mr. Ping. Including later episodes in the season. It's just them, the rest are all-new characters we've never seen before. So if you came here expecting to see your favorite characters, you'll be disappointed. Most of them aren't even mentioned, let alone appear onscreen.
So, how are the characters? First, I'll say that Po and Mr. Ping are definitely still the best out of the entire bunch. They're likable, they're engaging, have some really wholesome moments and you want to see them succeed. The rest, AKA the new characters? God, this is where the series falls flat on its face. They're all so boring or insufferable. Let's start with Luthera "Wandering Blade", our deuteragonist in this series. She's basically every other stock "strong independent stoic warrior woman" character you can imagine. She barely ever relaxes, she's rude, she constantly tries to ditch Po, and giving her a sad backstory doesn't make up for it. Heck, the whole reason her brother was killed was her own damn fault. Granted, she was a kid, but after you see how she acts as an adult she's not a remotely sympathetic or engaging character. She feels way too standard and unlikable to be a good secondary protagonist. Also, her voice actress makes her always sound the exact same, regardless of what emotion she's feeling. Her voice isn't monotone or anything, but she just always has the same way and tone of speaking no matter the emotions. Which sucks if you want to have your audience be in this character that is already not written very well.
Also, to make her character worse: for the entire season, Luthera is this stuck-up bear who thinks she is better than Po just because she's a knight. She even makes him her page, basically making him do all her dirty work except for fighting. But then in the last episodes, what is the big twist? She was never even a knight. She is a huge knight fangirl and studied their techniques, which is why she's a good swordsman, but her armor and sword are stolen and she went rogue on her own mission to bring Klaus and Veruca to justice, rather than letting the queen's knights handle it themselves. So, basically, this character who has been acting so haughty towards Po all season because "she's a knight" isn't even that and lied about it. What the hell. I already disliked Wandering Blade before this, but this reveal really threw any character likability out the window instantly. Po and Mr. Ping have every right to be very upset with her after this.
The other major newly introduced characters here are Klaus and Veruca, a brother-sister weasel duo who seek four ancient weapons in order to summon a zombie army and presumably take over the world. Or have their revenge on the queen of England, I don't know. They were pretty vague. Klaus was the more bearable of the two, having a better design and voice, but character-wise he's far less interesting than his sister. Veruca has a more engaging backstory (plus magical powers) which we were actually shown through flashback, however she's just so unbearable. Her design is all over the place, her expressions way too extreme and her voice is grating as all hell. So out of these two, we have one who is boring but at least looks and sounds pleasant, and another one who is slightly more interesting but every moment she is on screen is like nails on a chalkboard.
And all this aside, when comparing them to the epic villains from the movies, these two are just so lame. We had Tai Lung, a villain with a very personal backstory who was super adept in kung fu. We had Shen, one of the best written villains ever who was subtle, awesome, dark, and humorous all at the same time. And even Kai, though definitely the weakest of the three, was still a pretty decent villain. In comparison, Klaus and Veruca seem like generic villains of the week you'd find at a cheap Saturday morning cartoon. They feel so lazily written, like the writers didn't even try to get on the same level as the movies. Even if it was just a villain at the level of Kai it'd still be a massive improvement over whatever the hell this is.
There's other side characters, but they barely really contribute outside of some minor characters. One character that should be noted is Rukhmini, an old con-artist who is in possession of one of the ancient weapons and now seems to be a part of the main cast as of season two. I don't like her and how she was written, but she's at the very least more interesting than either the main villains or Luthera.
As for the visuals: they're pretty standard as far as modern CGI Dreamworks shows go. I've seen people shit on the visuals in reviews, but honestly it doesn't look that bad to me. Look, I know that the Kung Fu Panda movies are some of the best-animated and best-looking movies by Dreamworks, but if you expect that in an animated series, of course you'll be disappointed. The animation to me was very standard for CGI shows today. It doesn't stand out in any way (particularly in the fight scenes), but it's far from horrible. That said, there definitely were some moments where the animation was actively bad, such as when Rukhmini first appears and her evil laugh just in no way syncs up to her animation. Or the expressions on Veruca's face where they were just trying to push her character model too much. Or some of the models that look slightly uncanny (e.g. Mr. Ping or certain background characters). But these were mostly just moments. I did like the surroundings our characters ended up in, however. They're usually very standard and featured only in one episode before Po and Wandering Blade move on, but they were pretty varied and I liked seeing these locations as, like said before, the movies never really had much time for a slow road-trip.
But overall this series is just very mediocre. I'm not going to call it bad like some other reviewers, but it's just very average and outside of some interesting concepts and two likable characters, this series really doesn't have anything to offer. The writing was mediocre, the animation standard with its bad moments, the other characters mostly unlikable and it is so loosely connected to the Kung Fu Panda brand that honestly it might as well have been its own thing. Replace Po and Mr. Ping with other non-Kung Fu Panda characters and this could just be an original thing rather than being connected to a pre-existing franchise.
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