by Kallo » August 12th, 2017, 12:55 am
A pretty good episode. Apart from what little we got of Ono's guilt, it wasn't that focused on the Guard, but more on the crocs and Scar. I could do without Scar's cartoonish writing and most definitely without his super cheesy and lackluster song, but I'm glad his motivation isn't solely to just destroy the Circle of Life, but to rule again. As I've stated multiple times Scar isn't what I had hoped for in this show, but at least I can somewhat accept that motivation for him. That even in death he still wants to rule. That actually kinda brings his character to new levels of insanity. I think David Oyelowo somewhat overplays the evilness of the role a bit too much most of the time, but when he does nail the voice it's pretty good. I liked his delivery of the line "You have brought me vaulable information. Well done, skinks". It had that Jeremy Irons style, very Scar-y pitch shift in the middle of the sentence. If he had those moments more, and didn't quite overplay the role so much the rest of the time, he'd be awesome. Also, while they could have animated Scar to look a bit more menacing and ethereal, I like that for what he is, they animated lots of very Scar-like movements and facial expressions on him.
Speaking of the animation, it seems to have stayed improved, so that's nice. Background music still as awesome as ever and just keeps getting better. It sounds very similar to the music from the original movie. I do wish they'd include a bit more familiar melodies from the movies though. I mean, might as well, right? "Return of the Roar" started with the main melody from the original movie, and I'd wish to hear it again. It was nice that they did include the line "Leave now, and never come back" as a throwback to the movie. Especially coming from Simba, that was a rather interesting moment. Also nice that we got a new intro, but it was pretty poorly executed. Looked like someone just hastly slapped a bunch of random scenes on top of the old intro in a very jarring way.
So far I haven't really seen the series get that much "darker" or "mature", as we were lead to expect. The season is still young, and I'm not expecting anything drastic, but if anything, I feel the show right now is more cartoonish and childish than it's ever been.