I have a very serious research question.
Did any of you watch Loonatics Unleashed? -R

For the "no what's that" crew, it was one of the crop of mid-2000s superhero kids cartoons - except it was also an edgy loony tunes sequel/reboot. I swear this is real. I've been furiously debating sitting down and watching the whole thing. -R

all right so far everything I've heard about this show is
-nobody remembers the plot
-porky pig Tragic Backstory™
-it's really not as bad as people think
-I absolutely one thousand percent need to watch this

-R

all right I'm stoked for this dive into pop culture archaeology let's DO THIS

first episode starting off strong with a bunch of batman-beyond-style human characters running around with no toons in sight

coyote… is talking…… and so is the roadrunner……

okay so the daffy duck character, "danger duck", sounds commendably close to original daffy. everyone else sounds generically superheroic, except for the bugs bunny guy, "ace bunny", who sounds generically superheroic with a joey wheeler brooklyn accent

nice to see "lexi bunny" is fulfilling the superhero archetype pioneered by saturn girl - only girl in the main squad, pink, psychic

wildly missed opportunity to make their zordon figure some random hologram lady instead of, like, the gramma from the tweety bird cartoons

lexi has had two lines so far and one of them is "sweaters make me look chubbo"

oh so coyote and roadrunner never shut up but the tasmanian devil is still totally incomprehensible, I see how it is

ace bunny got these new bad guys with the classic rabbit-season-duck-season defense and I don't hate it

look I know an edgy superhero reboot of looney tunes was destined for tonal inconsistency but giving the main character and leader the world's goofiest brooklyn accent is reeeeeeally straining me

oh yea forgot to mention, the bad guys are a crew of interdimensional robot vikings trying to freeze the planet

what is it with ice-themed villains always doing the most puns? like it happens with all bad guys with the the ice ones it's pathological

this robot viking's voice is suspiciously goofy, I'm dearly hoping it'll turn out, like, yosemite sam or someone is in the armor

sadly it was just your garden variety robot viking. really not taking advantage of the full spectrum of toons

episode 2 appears to be the stock Gremlins parody episode - cute fuzzy pets that turn into monsters when you void the warranty

whenever there's a toon world, you always need to at least KIND of address the role humans play. Ducktales 2017 makes it clear humans don't exist, and are seen as "horrifying flesh-faced monsters". In old looney tunes, the toons were just very smart animals. Here? WHO KNOWS

This appears to be a city of only humans, except for our heroes, who are human-shaped animals with funny heads. We've seen exactly no other toons, and we've never even seen our heroes interact with any humans. Classic Looney Tunes didn't leave us guessing! WHAT DOES IT MEAN

okay the mad scientist of the episode just said his evil creations have "a taste for duck and rabbit" so I guess real animal status confirmed???

look at this picture and tell me what I'm supposed to think

ah, the classic mad scientist motivation - "those FOOLS at the institute called me MAD for creating an army of carnivorous chocolate-loving tribbles but WHO'S LAUGHING NOW"

pro tip: the scientist. the scientist is always the one laughing now.

"daffy duck is perfect lancer material for this five-man band" someone thought, and then said, and then made happen in this show

villain for this episode is "black velvet", a creepy floating color-inverted lady with an army of minions, and all I'm thinking is why didn't they just use queen tyr'ahnee

oh yea, I SUPER wanted to see the team discuss how hot the villainess is, and NOTHING makes me like a heroine more than her immediately insulting her enemy's appearance

something about the cartoony face designs plus the BIG overdetailed anime irises is really throwing me

if this shadow lady can't stand any light, why is her evil villain lair in a zeppelin in the SKY

Hey, fun fact! While it's a time-honored tradition for superheroes to fight-flirt with their nemeses, it's REAL WEIRD if one of them is canonically an animal! For instance-

Coyote: You're dreaming, hot stuff.
Villainess: *grabs muzzle* Not many DOGS can resist my charms, tech!

I have legitimately no idea why the lazer just made the zeppelin implode or even what the bad guy's actual deal was

a character just got fully struck by lightning on live tv and her overbearing boss was like "WHAT is she DOING" uh being struck by lightning dude

finally we see some human characters interacting with the toons, and apprently their toon anthropomorphic animal status is completely beneath notice. so WHY ARE THERE NO OTHER TOONS

coyote just rescued roadrunner from peril and then winked at him. is this, like, a Thing?

Lady on the train got rescued by Ace Bunny and said "Oooh! I knew his great-great-great grandfather!" which raises FAR more questions than it answers

oh yea forgot to mention they're fighting a dragon-shaped storm cloud controlled by a wannabe weather-girl and they beat it by blowing up a volcano, pretty standard stuff

detecting some very minor size inconsistencies

they just made a joke about getting chinese takeout and danger duck is uncomfortable with all the duck on the menu and I'm back to pondering the confusing ethical ramifications of this toon world where animals talk and are mostly people-shaped

I really do like how one of coyote's explicit powers is a crazy healing factor. allows for some genuine quality toon physics in a show that otherwise works by superhero rules

"To reverse the polarity, we'll need an intense burst of electromagnetic radiation."
"Electromagawha- Tech, do you mean LIGHT?"
"You make it sound so boring!"

did. did this show just shut down its own goofy-ass technobabble

this planet sure deals with a lot of meteors

okay so we're getting some backstory, and everyone on the team had a normal profession before getting powers, like stuntman, pool boy, tech student and cheerleader. So toons are just a normal staple of this world. But we've never seen any beyond these guys. what does it all MEAN

there aren't even any toons in the background shots!

why are all these villains just random humans?? this is looney tunes! if they were worried we couldn't take it seriously if the bad guy was sam sheepdog in a mechsuit, then WHY GIVE ACE BUNNY THAT GOOFY ACCENT WE CAN'T TAKE SERIOUSLY ANYWAY

villains 1-5: nonstop puns, nonexistent motivation, ridiculous names, nice clean defeats
villain 6: turns a small child into a monster crocodile demon thing and abducts him while his distraught parents call his name and his red balloon poignantly floats off into the night sky

TIM CURRY????

everyone got hybridized with random animals and all their powers got scrambled, hijinks are ensuing, but mostly tim curry is the bad guy and I'm super digging that part

lexi just described her current skunk-hybrid form as a "pepe le pew look" which raises WAY MORE QUESTIONS THAN IT ANSWERS

I always wonder how characters with eye-blast powers ever miss.

This is the second animal-hybrid-themed bad guy I've seen turn into a giant chimera squid lobster thing for the final boss fight. Was this just a mid-2000s thing?

I'm taking a quick break to make some dark lunch and mull this over so far – I feel like, while dark reboots or sequels have sometimes worked really well, this one is inherently limited by the silliness of the cast. No real room for character drama when everyone is this goofy.

So the logical alternative would be to lean into the silly toon aspect – harken back to the old jokes, the base rules of each character. Bugs Bunny never started a fight, Coyote's inventions always defied his expectations (and ours), etc. But they REALLY wanted the superhero vibe

Ironically, those old joke characters defined by single rules were much more engaging than these more complex versions with supposedly fleshed-out personalities. Bugs Bunny is a chill dude who minds his own business until messed with. Ace Bunny is…… a superhero?

And the weird thing is, classic Looney Tunes had room for different settings. Daffy and Porky played out Robin Hood adventures. It was like a whole thing. Because no matter the setting, the world worked the same way – it had the same rules. This one doesn't.

The funny thing is, Daffy is almost exactly the same as Danger Duck. They're both egotistical glory-hounds who don't like sharing the spotlight. But in Looney Tunes, Daffy is constantly getting cartoonishly smacked around for it, whereas Danger just smoothly becomes a lancer.

That's STUPID. That's just Foghorn Leghorn! He even does the "boy I say boy" thing. WHY IS HE A HUMAN. WHAT IS HAPPENING

so how exactly is this human man a descendant of the original foghorn leghorn, hm??

this brilliant scheme to disguise danger duck as an eccentric gazillionaire and sneak around this party is stymied by the fact that there are NO OTHER TOONS AROUND

I've seen a lot of superhero cartoons in my day, and it seems like they all struggle to varying degrees with the fight scenes. Since our heroes can't really LOSE after the twelve minute mark, it's usually just a bunch of characters punching each other into a foregone conclusion.

Audience investment in a superhero fight usually depends on everything BUT the fight. We need emotional stakes and investment in the characters involved. It's like, if the fight would have the same impact as a floral intermission screen, why are we watching it?

feels like if this power-stealing superhero-wannabe really wants to win over the crowd, blowing big holes in buildings isn't the way to go

I figured it out. This show is made for action figures. They had fun little blasters in the first episode, there's a different Cool Vehicle every time they travel, and they've all got power armor now.

To this show's credit, this is the first time I've seen a character get punched through a building and leave a person-shaped imprint on the OTHER side of the wall

this episode is making time loop noises and I don't like it

"oh what a strange dream that was, hey cool today's playing out just like I remember, how weird"
"hello my name is timedude mcclockson and I have some URGENT NEWS-"
"NOT NOW MAN I'M BUSY RELIVING THIS TIME LOOP"

well it took ten episodes but we finally hit an interesting episode premise

they're being remarkably cavalier about the fact that they all canonically died five days in a row

I've seen a lot of tiny large-headed genius characters but this one is pretty charming - maybe it's her fun performance and/or her little robot friends

this show still hasn't made it clear how animal-like toons fit into this mostly human world, but when some of these villains call them "little bunnies" or "mangy dogs" it makes me feel like we're glimpsing a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style seedy underbelly of endemic toon racism

ah yes, the Die Hard stock episode where they need to sneak around the vents in their own compromised base - a timeless classic

"You're proving yourself to be more WILEY than I ever expected."

I have reached…… the season 1 finale

and you better believe it's called "acmegeddon"

*two people get spaghettified and pulled screaming into a black hole*
Mastermind: "Fascinating!" *jumps in*

oh I knew I liked her for a reason

I'd be more surprised and/or invested in Zadavia's secret backstory if the show had EVER acknowledged that we know literally nothing about her and she makes no sense

"Hey, look! He's kissin' the ground I walk on!"
"Never on the first date."

show just implied coyote and mastermind dated in college and now I'm back to questioning the ethical/social status of toon animals in this world

everyone's shocked to see zadavia in the flesh like this didn't already happen eight episodes ago and go completely unaddressed

zadavia's homeworld is "600 parsecs from your galaxy", aka about 2000 light years. the milky way is 200,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. pretty sure that puts zadavia's planet IN the galaxy/

so optimatus was so into the idea of conquering the galaxy that he took over his planet and shot a meteor at zadalia, and now he's also butthurt cuz he got phantom-of-the-opera'd by zadavia's spaceship. this villain motivation has layer, but they're all tissue-paper thin

"I'll hold them off" is supporting-character-speak for "I've got, like, ten seconds tops"

oh how convenient, they have new spacesuits! someone tell the toy designers

not to nitpick, but the insult "you one-eyed cyclops" is redundant

this is one of those shows where I can be having a good time, and then my eyes refocus and I remember I'm watching a wise-cracking future daffy duck fight a deviantart OC

it's always a damn bold move when a character wearing a cape calls anyone else "so dramatic"

cool they won

well that's season one done! unsurprisingly I can't watch season two tonight (cuz, like, sleep) but you better believe I'll be back for the rest

So I was like "I kinda wanna make a big bowl of frosting", then I was like "for plausible deniability I should probably bake a bunch of cookies to put this frosting on", so now I have cookies and frosting. This feels like a good state to watch Loonatics Unleashed S2 in -R

we're off to a good start with the introduction of yet another fun color-coordinated vehicle for the action figures to ride

YOSEMITE SAM HAS ARRIVED!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! WE HAVE MORE TOONS!!

this new opening… is i n s a n e

so we're doing more silly toon stuff this season but we've ALSO introduced a new human OC named Deuce with the same voice as Cyborg and some kinda subplot about an interdimensional train

Oh hey, this yosemite-sam-alike is actually "ophiucus sam", a thirteenth constellation on the zodiac and confusing enough that he has actual trouble pronouncing it, I don't hate it

it's more toony, but the fights are still choreographed like superhero fights instead of the classic toony stuff. So much of what makes looney tunes work is the movement, which is probably why this still feels so weird

by the way ace has had a sword this whole time and apparently it's magic and deuce is a secret bad guy and stole it are you having fun yet

okay so there's something really, really funny about the fights in this show. Everyone's doing a toon-y voice during most of the show, but during fights, the actors obviously do effort noises - which DON'T sound toon-y at ALL.

"nyehh what's up dAH OOGH AGH THE PAIN"

it appears the villains of this episode… are evil dolphins

you know what, I'm not gonna sass this show for getting silly, cuz at least it's not taking itself too seriously anymore

but at the same time, the stakes have somehow gotten higher? I don't think the heroes EVER got hurt last season, and that's definitely not holding this season

Update: evil MUTANT dolphins waging war on the polluting humans of the surface world

you guys know how flash solves everything by running really fast, usually in a circle? yea it's happening

i KNEW this evil dolphin sounded familiar! mark hamill ya did it again

cursed human pepe le pew is edging out cursed human foghorn leghorn in my "most cursed" category

cursed gijinka pepe le pew is apparently the villain of the week

gijinka pepe le pew is running an intergalactic gladiator arena, so the only explanation I can think of is that, centuries prior, pepe le pew successfully boned some kind of alien warlord and spawned the world's most cursed lineage

this evil gladiator match is To The Death but they're not allowed to say "die" so roadrunner just super-speeded through every cartoon-approved PG synonym for death before they settled on "a goner"

it's a legitimate plot point that slam and danger duck don't KNOW that this is a fight to the death, and it's unintentionally hilarious watching the rest of the crew try and explain it without speaking The Forbidden Word

in real looney tunes this'd be an ACTUAL joke, rather than unintentional censor comedy, but I'll take it

sylvester the cat has arrived and he's super buff and dressed like darth vader for some reason

oh okay it's because Tweety Bird is a space prince and the rightful heir to the throne currently guarded by "Queen Grannicus"

honestly intergalactic space war IS the logical endpoint of the eternal tweety-sylvester blood feud

oh shit nobody tell marvel -R

darth sylvester's robot suit being the result of tweety's constant MAIMING is genuinely horrifying

Queen Grannicus is EVIL?? this would be more surprising if she wasn't the only other character in this episode who could possibly be the evil hologram emperor

roadrunner's parents are visiting, hope no Shenanigans Ensue

oh my god they're coyote racist

"Oh dear… and no leash?"

oopsies! you were aiming for racist and hit kinky instead!

this is already ridiculous but if you combine it with the shipping subtext these two occasionally have it becomes EVEN WEIRDER

so the ACTUAL plot of this episode is roadrunner's disgruntled younger brother whose parents dismiss and ignore him fusing with an evil robot for attention, so I guess the coyote racism thing is just a Character Quirk

"IF YOU WEREN'T A COYOTE (and a guy) I'D KISS YA!"

because we all know looney tunes was super concerned with both of those things

so the coyote racism didn't even get like a TOKEN resolution

this appears to be the stock episode
"the most annoying protagonist becomes briefly famous and somehow becomes insufferable enough that you miss the old version"

holy shit, every time they drop a random object on somebody there's an anvil stenciled on the side

there's a villain whose Thing is making animated rock monsters and turning people to stone, and his only one-liner is "time to ROCK!!" which is conspicuously not a joke

look I get this plot but I legitimately don't understand why coyote is afraid of being crushed by falling objects when one of his powers is explicitly a crazy healing factor and he fell off a cliff like eight times last episode

excuse me. just checking. is this boba fett sniper lookalike elmer fudd??

my suffewing is etewnaw

every single frame he has his faceplate open looks like a shitpost

honestly on principle extrapolating "futuristic bounty hunter" from "obsessed game hunter" is potentially hilarious, I just literally can't visually process what's happening

I mean, hell, it was a straight-up superhero trope for a while that some obsessed hunter would decide the protagonist was The Most Dangerous Game. This lines up WEIRDLY well, and somehow it's still the most physically painful plot development to date

oh no they got duck

oh noooo lexi and roadrunner thought tech made a videogame but it was actually a real weapons system that LOOKED like a videogame, how very Enders Game of them

(naturally the thing they blew up was marvin the martian's death star)

this season has had a surprising number of greek myth references - first "perseus's shield" containing a reflection of medusa and petrifying people, and now lexi comparing herself to helen of troy by accidentally triggering a war with the martians. I don't hate it!

and now they're literally using a trojan horse to go rescue her

got em with the old "nuh uh" "yuh huh" "yuh huh" "nuh UH" maneuver, classic classic

this episode has… hot plant ladies

so cartoons sometimes had stock episodes where the heroes run into some pseudo-amazon society, express surprise that there are No Men Around Here, and then the episode starts making Social Commentary Noises

Avatar is the only show I've ever seen do that episode in a way that wasn't physically painful

oh cool, they're ALIEN ladies, and they HATE men, and they've got some kind of evil plan to destroy the planet AND its men, probably with plants

another component of this stock episode: the female protagonist (there's usually only one) is feeling unappreciated, possibly due to uncharacteristically blunt sexism from her dude friends, and the Evil Amazon Ladies are like "ditch them, they don't APPRECIATE you"

and then the heroine is like "given the choice between tolerating shittiness from my dude friends and ending all male life on earth… I choose my FRIENDS" and it's a big moment and the writer strains his shoulder patting himself on the back

but hey, we finally got some looney-tunes-approved crossdressing!

oh just kidding it's actually about environmental destruction - the plant-lady planet was Ravaged by Men Bulldozing The Rainforests Or Something so they turned the men into plants and now everyone's happy including the men I guess???

gotta admit, that was NOT the resolution I expected from the Evil Amazon Apocalypse premise

props for the fakeout but "yes we transmuted our men into living plant amalgams to restore our environment and now we all live happily together c:" is kind of an existential nightmare

but on the other hand, I was braced for an early 2000s Lean In, Ladies stock episode, so I can't be mad about it NOT doing that and making it chill instead

"Pinkster" is NOT the name I would choose for the new Porky Pig character. Or for any character. Or ANYTHING, in fact

oh cool, Duck and "Pinkster" grew up in the same orphanage! Duck got adopted instead of him cuz he won a coin flip and Pinkster NEVER got adopted! And got to see him live his dreams and be a superhero! this is fun happy stuff for this ridiculous looney tunes superhero cartoon

duck, you monster, cheating on the coin toss to get adopted

so the superhero fight choreography is definitely the weirdest part of this show, but bringing in "pinkster" to cartoonishly screw up and bring cartoon physics into this really just highlights how they don't work together

sadly some of you guys spoiled that pinkster had turned to a life of crime but it was still a well-done twist - he was so convincingly clutzy and endearingly incompetent, like we'd EXPECT porky to be in this superhero world. This is the GOOD way to subvert prior characterization!

and just in case we were feeling too morally ambiguous, turns out pinkster WAS adopted! by gangsters! and it was planned all along! by him! including the rigged coin toss! so it's fine!

oh god human leghorn is back

the season finale is one episode away and the bad guy is some ridiculous funky music-themed villain

I like how this show keeps forgetting to explain Zadavia's powers or whole deal and instead dumps in exposition at the last possible moment, like "mwaha since your POWERS COME FROM LIGHT AND HAVE THIS WHOLE TIME this magic light-absorbing flower will KEEP YOU HELPLESS"

I am so confused

oh apparently this music man is some… random disgruntled artist who's mad he didn't get to write their planet's national anthem

so I'm no longer confused, this is just stupid

okay so the funky music man stole zadavia's weird powers and went to find her evil brother, who was stranded in space in the season 1 finale and was apparently upgraded to "chained to a random rock in space" since then

so I guess it's finale o' clock

oh no tweety's planet has been INVADED and RAZED TO THE GROUND in like FIFTEEN SECONDS