- Released: November 22, 2015
- Creator: Ford Riley
- Amount of seasons: 3
- Seasons watched: 1, 2, 3
- Rating: 3.5/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
I have seen so many mixed takes on this series, and I 100% agree. Some things it does well, other things it handles poorly. Let's just dive in.
Starting with the story. Each season overall consists of a different main story to follow. Season one shows us how the Guard was formed and how it's faring in its early days, dealing mostly with attacks by random Outsiders such as jackals, vultures and hyenas. The second season revolves around two things: the dry season making life in the Pride Lands difficult, and the rise of Scar as he comes back from the dead and forms the unruly Outlanders into his personal army. The final season deals with the defeat of Scar early on. The Guard succeeds in bringing him down, but not before Ono loses most of his sight and Kion is scarred in the process. In order for them both to heal, the Guard, joined by Rafiki's apparent ice Makini, leaves the Pride Lands to find the Tree of Life, where both of them can be healed.
So each season has a slightly different concept to it, and I honestly like that. If it had been three full seasons of the exact same shtick as in season one, it would've gotten old pretty damn fast. But throwing in these new elements without overly pandering to the audience with lore and such, it works. I like that we get a little bit more on the history of the Pride Lands and are shown some locations outside of it without it becoming overkill. It does become a major factor in season three, but seeing how there's a good reason for the characters to travel outside of the Pride Lands it feels fitting.
The comeback of Scar is honestly the plot point I'm the least enthused by. I get why they did it; he's the most iconic Lion King villain and manages to organize the Outlanders into an actual threat, but at the same time it feels a bit pander-y to bring him back. It does make sense within the lore of the world: if good lions can come back (such as Mufasa), there could be a way for bad lions to come back. But Scar's comeback and his appearance in the second season aren't handled the most competently. He's rarely an actual threat to the Pride Landers because his minions are huge buffoons most of the time. Also despite being supposedly a really good schemer he barely makes any process in his plans despite fighting the Lion Guard, literally a group of kids, for seasons to the point Kion and his friends are teenagers by the time he's defeated.
Speaking of which, the ageing system in this is also a bit weird. Certain characters are aged up in season three, but others for whatever reason aren't. Characters that are aged up include: the Guard and Kiara and her friends. But others who are clearly shown to be younger as well just...don't age, such as Makini, Janja, Cheezi and Chungu. Which is weird. If you bother to age up your cast, why not go all the way with it instead of doing it half-and-half?
The writing in most episodes is just of a very standard quality and I think it's mostly just okay. Nothing bad but nothing good most of the time, either. Honestly, it's mostly just moments within episodes that tend to be pretty good or pretty shit, with the rest of the episode being perfectly serviceable. Most of these are bad moments, however particularly surrounding the character of Bunga.
Bunga is...a whole can of worms. Most of the characters in this show are perfectly fine. Usually they're pretty basic, but they do go through small arcs and have more to them than one or two personality traits. They're just not full rounded, either, but just pretty decent protagonists for a children's show.
But Bunga is...Bunga. He's definitely the worst character of the show. He's loud, he's smelly, he's obnoxious, he's rude, he doesn't think ahead, he's dumb, he makes insensitive remarks. He's pretty much the worst way a comic relief character can go. And it would maybe even work, if they had written him this way to expand on his character. Have him learn to be more considerate of others and less loud and smelly. But instead the series just fully embraces him this way and is even aware of how he's very obnoxious because he addresses it multiple times. But they don't do anything to fix it. And instead of him getting better across the seasons, he gets worse. Despite being one of our main characters and a supposed good guy, he does some pretty insensitive things such a robbing food stores from a mother bird or saying really horrible things to Kion while he's struggling with his mental health. And not even apologizing for it. Yet other characters are vilified for the same things.
Another thing is how this series handles the whole Circle of Life, or rather, it doesn't. Back in the original Lion King, the Circle of Life was more of an abstract concept of the balance being kept in nature, but The Lion Guard just takes away all meaning and pretty much boils it down to "this selected group of animals gets to decide who hunts where and when". And they're bad about it, too. Various predator species are just all around banned from hunting in the Pride Lands and are instead banished to the Outlands or Back Lands. Based on what? We don't know. Hyenas, jackals and leopards are just barred from hunting animals despite being native predators in Africa. Heck, sometimes the Lion Guard even oversteps their boundary and prevents an animals from hunting outside of the Pride Lands (where they shouldn't even have any authority?!). Which is just uncalled for.
Look, if you're going to have an universe where prey and predator animals can communicate, you're bound to run into awkward situations. It does have this slightly cannibalistic ring to it because they're just eating something equally sentient and sapient which they can talk to. So a lot of media solve this by not bringing up this problem at all. But the way The Lion Guard handles it is just so weird. Lions and cheetahs are allowed to hunt, but species that are banished to the Outlands are not. The excuse that certain Outlanders overhunt is brought up once or twice, but 90% of the time the Outlanders are simply just hunting, with no surplus killing being mentioned whatsoever. So why drive them out constantly instead of devising a schedule for who is allowed to hunt how and when? Making sure everyone gets their rightful share sounds way more like keeping the balance of the Circle of Life than flat out barring certain predators from hunting. Or maybe just not touching on the subject at all because it will always be weird as hell to have a universe where predators eat prey despite both being equally sapient and capable of speech. Maybe the Lion Guard could've just been a task force dedicated solving to smaller problems rather than just constantly chasing out people they don't feel belong in their land.
Season three, like said before, is a whole other can of worms as it deals more with lore and traveling, but like I said before it's not exactly overkill either. It's still perfectly fine and not overly pandering. But it does introduce some interesting new concepts, such as what lies beyond the Pride Land and Back Lands, the Tree of Life, and a different pride of lions called the Night Pride. They're pretty good characters and I liked seeing another pride with a different pride culture than the Pridelanders. My main gripe with season three would be the romance: Rani, queen of the Tree of Life, falls for Kion within a few episodes and their relationship feels rushed as hell. There's also several other potential love interests introduced, such as for Bunga and Fuli, but thankfully their relationships are never made outwardly romantic because the only canon ship is already rushed as hell. To imagine them doing that twice more, maybe thrice if they did it with Janja and Jasiri... Wouldn't have worked.
The visuals of the show do overall look pretty good. Despite it being rigged animation it doesn't feel that stiff (except some of the walking/running cycles they used) and I like how this type of rigged animation allows for more movement and freedom with angles. If you look at another rigged show like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, for example, you'll find that despite it being well animated it's mostly just confined to three angles (front-facing, three-quarters and side view). The Lion Guard doesn't have this problem with characters being shown from all kinds of angles, which is pretty cool. The animation definitely has some errors here and there and isn't perfect, nor does it really improve that much between seasons, but it definitely looks pretty good. My one complaint would really have to be the switching between 2D and 3D. For some crowd shots or shots with larger amounts of characters, they will sometimes use 3D models for certain characters, which looks fine at a distance but once they're more in-focus it looks pretty jarring when they don't move as well or aren't as expressive as the 2D rigs, especially if they are used alongside one another.
Also, can't talk about this show without the fart scene. This is one of these moments where an episode is otherwise completely fine, but one moment just ruins it. There's this scene where Bunga and his possible love interest Binga have a farting contest, and it includes the characters sniffing each other's farts. How many times do we have to teach you to keep your fetishes out of children's media, old man? Look, I get that Bunga is a honey badger and those use stink as a way to defend themselves, and despite that being pretty gross, it can still be used to its advantage, such as when Bunga uses it to ruin Mama Binturong's tuliza. But to actively have the characters smell one another's farts for joy is just...disgusting and reeks (pun intended) of fetish material. If they just had Bunga use it in defense sometimes that's one thing, but to put in this fetish fodder...yuck.
Also this series pretty much introduces magic to the Lion King series. In the first movie, everything outside of Mufasa's ghost appearing to Simba was pretty down-to-earth or just cartoon logic. And even Mufasa's ghost could possibly be seen as just Simba seeing himself in the water and hallucinating his father's ghost because he takes after Mufasa. But all of that is thrown out the window here. Lions can come back from the dead to speak to relatives whenever they want. Paintings that Rafiki makes can be animated. The Roar in and of itself is basically a superpower, especially by the end of season three where it becomes ridiculously overpowered with all sorts of new abilityes. And for me this doesn't really work. I always liked the more down-to-earth style of the original two movies. The third movie about Timon and Pumbaa is pretty much a non-canon shitpost, so we're not counting at that. But The Lion Guard absolutely introduces these new elements and is canon. So I get why people like me don't vibe with these more out-there elements. It doesn't ruin the show for me, but definitely changes what can and cannot be done in this universe.
Overall this series is not the greatest. It has some pretty mediocre writing, introduces some wack concepts. It's a fine show overall, just decent. But it also has some pretty bad elements such as butchering the concept of the Circle of Life and having one of the worst comic relief characters I've seen to this date.
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