Animation Saturday: Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars (1991)

Science fiction and anthropomorphic animals are two clichés of animation I always find heart warming. The reason for this was my introduction to both tropes through the adventures of a green rabbit and his motley crew of animal adventurers. Ladies and gentlemen and third gender, I give you the 90s serial Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars.

Anyone who enjoyed the original Star Wars trilogy would know that this series was easily a kids version of said franchise but with animals instead of humans and aliens. It had every single cliché of soft sci-fi: an evil imperial menace, a hero who’s down on his luck but proves himself as the best in the fleet (Bucky O'Hare), a cat with a set of psychic powers – ideal for mental manipulation (First Mate Jenny), hyperspace and time travel (Blinky the Robot), and duck pirates (Dead Eye Duck).

Yes, you heard me correct there: Duck Pirates!

(Four armed duck pirates to be exact).

Anyway, the series surrounds the eponymous Rabbit Captain and his battle to rid the Aniverse of the Toad empire. And in the middle of said battle, a boy genius, Willy DuWitt, from San Francisco accidentally ends up in the parallel universe by building a photon accelerator.

Now I’m no physicist, but I do know that photons travel at the speed of light, so wouldn’t accelerating them lead to time travel rather than entering a parallel universe inhabited by anthropomorphic animals who have mastered space travel? I don’t know. If any physicists are reading this, please give me some light on this. But then again, we are talking about a 90s cartoon where the villain is a Toad on a screen.

The backstory explains the Toads were a harmless race who wanted to use technology to help keep order and bliss, and they invented KOMPLEX, a televised servant who would do all the boring things the Toads didn’t want to do. But eventually KOMPLEX took control of the race sent them on a course of military aggression and made them into an imperialist military hell bent on destroying any warm blooded animals.

As you can see, we have elements of Star Wars and hints of 1984 with KOMPLEX resembling Big Brother and the telescreens observing the everyday moves of Winston Smith, etc. Plus one of the villains is Toadborg, a Toad soldier whose body was put into a robot body to carry out KOMPLEX’s heavy work – plenty of references to Darth Vader there.

But what I could never get my head around was that Captain O’Hare and his crew were the only ‘Mammalian’ warriors employed to take on an entire empire. That’s as if the Rebel Alliance decided to cut back on all the X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, etc. and instead just commissioned the Millennium Falcon to battle the Dark Side. Never once in this series do we see the good guys stage a battle of epic proportions against the forces of evil. And most of the episodes cover Bucky and his friends carrying out covert operations which makes you wonder who is keeping up the heavy work in this war?

But if you want a pretty funny satire on the USA’s addiction to TV and money, the concept of ‘Toad TV’ might make you smile on more than one occasion. Having watched the show again as an adult, it’s a pretty mediocre cartoon, but the whole concept of animals at war and using cold-blooded vs warm-blooded as a metaphor for racism is pretty damn original.

And yes, we do see the damsel in distress trope here, again! In the final episode our psychic cat pilot Jenny is captured by the menace and needs the ‘funky fresh rabbit’ (seriously, that’s how the theme song goes), to save her life. That’s a pretty stupid storyline to employ after you’ve seen Jenny thwart the plans of the Toads using her high levels of intelligence and mental-manipulation techniques that no other animal is capable of wielding. Something I presume would give her enough power to help her try and escape – but this cartoon was to sell toys more or less.

So if you want a cartoon that will help young people understand science fiction with more colours and family friendly characters than the Star Wars films, give Bucky O’Hare a shot – but don’t expect anything mind blowing. And the Willy DuWitt character does bode well as an introduction into Low Fantasy and will be a good character for anyone wanting to overcome bullies who don’t have any legit reason to pick on him.

But most of all, if you want to hear one of the catchiest theme songs ever, this is the cartoon for you. Another piece of TV remembered today mostly for the theme song and the NES game. Theme songs were big business in the 80s and 90s, just give it a listen and you’ll know what I mean.

Animation Saturday: The Dark Crystal (1982)

Welcome to an all new weekly segment where I review animation every Saturday. This little venture is a nod to the old days of Saturday morning cartoons, which provided me with many great stories and characters and fantasies that will live on in my all time favourites forever. Though I will not be reviewing just movies and TV from childhood, I will review anything I remember or have watched recently.

And this first episode falls into the latter, for I only just watched this classic Jim Henson flick yesterday. Ladies and Gentlemen and Third Gender, I give you The Dark Crystal.

I’ll start off by saying the story is incredibly simple and you have a good idea how things might pan out at the very beginning. I do know this film was meant to be for kids but its dark overtones and atmosphere and music certainly made it suitable for the whole family. 

Our hero is Jen, the last remaining Gelfling, an elf-like being whose race was destroyed by the evil Skeksis, who now rule his planet. Jen was rescued from the carnage brought by the Skeksis and was raised by the Mystics, a gentle race of beings who devote all their time to knowledge, philosophy and wisdom. The Skeksis and Mystics appeared on Jen’s homeworld after the eponymous Dark Crystal split and the two races were born out of the imbalance of peace and chaos.

The Mystics and Skeksis are now dying out and it falls to the chosen one to find the missing shard of the Dark Crystal. An ancient prophecy tells of a Gelfling being the one who will bring order to the world – hence the Skeksis’s mission to wipe the race out.

Jen eventually learns of his destiny from his master and sets off to find the missing shard. On the way he questions why he is doing this and eventually discovers the shard in the house of Aughra, a wise old being who observes the planets and universe in her dwelling. 

Jen then escapes a Skeksis attack and then meets with another Glefling called Kira, who also survived the genocide and was raised by the Podling race. This race of small beings gave Kira the ability to communicate with nature and animals, which provides the resources to get to the crystal before the three suns align and bring the end of the world.

Eventually the two Gelflings get to the Crystal after being captured and tortured by the Skeksis and Jen manages to restore the crystal before the apocalypse occurs.

As I said at the start, this is one very simple story but told like an epic, with some of the most detailed and beautiful animation I’ve seen from the Henson universe. The concept of Jen being the chosen one reminded me of the Eternal Champion stories by Michael Moorcock, my all time favourite fantasist. Jen being the one to atone his race and carry the shard of the Dark Crystal made me think of Elric of Melnibone whose life being bound to the runeblade Stormbringer certainly mirrors how one last being might destroy themself in the hope of bringing order to the impending doom.

But what I enjoyed most about this film was the fairly ambiguous ending. We see Jen restoring the crystal and the spirits of the Skeksis and Mystics, together as one, tell of a new world of peace before the film ends on a shot of a new and healthy world.

You could say there is some Adam and Eve symbolism of Jen and Kira and you would assume they went forth and repopulated the world with a new race of Gelflings, but I felt Henson decided this was a story where you can make up the epilogue for yourself.

As a children’s film, I will praise the ambiguous ending for teaching kids to think for themselves on how stories are told and that they don’t always need to be informed about what happens next. I think we have a strong encouragement of creativity with the ending. 

I have read that there is a sequel in the works and a Manga series was released in 2007 – something I would recommend for all you Manga buffs out there.

Overall I was very impressed and my heart was truly touched by this movie. Though to criticise something very small, I did feel a little let down by Kira being damseled at the climax of the movie. Even though she learnt how to use her powers over nature to free herself, I felt having her stabbed in the ending scene was a little too cliché, as it made me think of Jen only carrying out his duties to save her, which is another trope I’m getting sick of. A hero only doing his duty to please his love interest.

However, referring back to the ambiguous ending, we may never know if Jen and Kira fell in love, so who knows what may come if said sequel is made.

And last of all, Fizzgig has to be the cutest sidekick I’ve seen in a long time. He also scared me in his entrance to the movie, and that just goes to show how Henson and Frank Oz were able to make animation that is both heart warming and frightening – something for all in the animation spectrum.