Integration

[AnOldVagrant]

It sometimes surprises me how ignorant some can be. I personally thought that this was a delightful episode, for many reasons, one of which was Lion-O learning how to control his own gait in battle.

So, first of all, let's get the trifles out of the way. Furry hating is a thing of the past, these days you're going to look like a misanthropic gun stroker if you do it. To be honest, I'm far more creeped out by those who fetishise hate (toward any group of people) than I am by anyone else. Hate is not a system of mysticism or belief, you're only going to unnerve people by being so ardently and zealously misanthropic. Right?

With that out of the way... it's worth noting that a big cat has a number of tools at her or his disposal. One of which is speed, another is natural agility, and further is strength. A cat's agility comes naturally and requires the least amount of energy to be burned, their speed is fuelled by their strength, the power behind those muscles, and that can wear them out quickly too.

Lion-O was focusing on his strength, and like any big cat he was just wearing himself out quickly. What he learned in this episode was an important life lesson and a good bit of character building. Don't only live in the moment, but control the moment. He learned to utilise his agility to keep himself out of danger, and his senses sharp, ready to put his strength to use at the right moments instead of the wrong ones.

As a cat, the agility to dodge like that would have come naturally to him, but due to his pride as a lion, he focused solely on his strength believing that his strength would see him through. In future sword battles we'll see Lion-O controlling the moment instead of being easily controlled himself. How one can call a revelation like that 'filler' is entirely beyond me.

I thought the Drifter was an entirely charming character, too. Allusions to the Cheshire Cat would indeed be apt, he was somewhere between that, Usagi Yojimbo, and an old, burned out cowboy. The end result was very intriguing. The episode itself had a sort of Mad Max wastelands quality to it, and as a self-contained story it was told really well.

The Drifter himself likely had the skill to take down the Duellist long ago, having trained in order to defeat him, but also having taken one too many strikes to his confidence. Having the ability to defeat someone and the will to do so are two different things entirely, the Drifter just needed someone to show him that it was possible, that these things could be done, and in that moment he sprung back to life.

Lion-O managed to give someone his life back in that episode. And it was an interesting episode in general, showing some of the culture and the hardships outside of Lion-O's cushy city. Not every episode has to be about saving the world every week. That seems like such a limited way to think, so linear. It's nice sometimes to just have an episode where we see a character grow, and I feel that Lion-O really shined in this one.

The only crime will be if they don't make use of this in future sword battles, but I think they will.

This was just a side episode. In every 'epic' you have the little stories, what the characters are doing in their down time, what happens in between the huge battles, with the special effects of 'epic epicness' or what have you. And frankly, I often find these stories the most interesting, because they're the most revealing about the characters, whereas I find the 'epic' episodes to leave the characters feeling a bit one dimensional.

This, with Song of the Petalars, stands up there as one of my favourite episodes of this new Thundercats. May they keep fleshing out the characters in this way, because I appreciate it.