Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars retrospect

More like me dusting off something I found from four years ago in my journal. I’ve tried to remove any broken links to videos that no longer exists, but I might have missed something.

Lesse now… Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars was a thirteen episode cartoon that had a lot of potential and I think was a whole lot better than a lot of shows in the day, especially with its colorful cast of characters. There was also a comic that was way, waaay darker, I hear. It also had a rockin’ intro theme.

However, like many other cartoons, it did a lot of silly things and opens itself up for some snarking. This is all tongue in cheek, mind. Apart from one character whom I absolutely loathe, I like this show a lot.

Remember, this was all written four years ago.

And we begin with the cast.


Captain Bucky O’Hare is a green rabbit in a red uniform, complete with a cape with a yellow star on. This definitely wouldn’t have worked in the Cold War, eh. Bucky is actually one of the most interesting heroes from this age that I’ve seen. He has reason to angst, because his home planet Warren has just been conquered and swampified by the toads. However, he’s a no-nonsense tough hare who doesn’t take crap – and he can and will take a beating, even if he tends to get momentarily knocked out a lot.

Some will definitely say that his voice actor is doing a sloppy job, especially in some moments where Bucky is fighting and throwing bad puns around. This WAS the age of punination, after all. All cartoons had to have them. And they were FUN FUN FUN. Or so the writers thought. I’m sure the rest of us got quite tired of hearing “we’re in a pinch!” every time a giant crab showed up (as they ALWAYS did at one point or another).

Bucky does deliver the puns when he has to, but he often does it in a dry, tired tone which I in this context find hilarious. It could very well be that the voice actor is just not willing to put force into it, because he realizes that it’s NOT FUNNY. Or it was meant to be. Whatever the case, it really comes out like Bucky is thinking “Well shit, it says in my contract that I have to spout these inane things, so I guess I hafta follow the rules… ugh…”.

Or maybe Bucky just doesn’t have a sense of humor. He is almost always frowning, after all. You can practically count the times he smiles on one hand.

His bitterness is understandable, as he, his crew and their ship [i]The Righteous Indignation/i is one out of three parts of the fleet fighting the toad empire. Seriously. There are three small battleships trying to fight back an armada of millions of brainwashed, slimy killers. Bucky pretty much has the entire universe’s (aniverse’s) fate on his fuzzy shoulders, and he has to wrestle politicians every second step of the way.

But hey, he’s got goggles! Instalove!

Bucky gets captured by the toads very often for being a main character.


Pilot Jenny, first mate is the token girl. She’s a cat alien with loads and loads of pink hair. She’s also probably Bucky’s love interest, even if that’s not very well explored in the show. She does get huffy when the fox Mimi starts throwing questionable proposals at Bucky (seriously, she tries to get him onto her ship, “just you and me…” at one point), and they hug at the end of one episode.

In the final episode, it seems like everyone pretty much expects Bucky to be in love with Jenny – she is captured by the toads, who demand a very high price to free her. Nobody except Willy rises much of a protest (though there’s a bigger reason for this on the heroes’ side) when the normally gung-ho-put-‘em-up-slimeballs Bucky appears to be rendered unable to fight in the face of a threat to Jenny’s life.

Jenny is unfortunately one of the biggest problems on the show. She’s a tough gal and can take care of herself, but this is mainly due to her having mystical psionic, telepathic, healing, out-of-body-projection, make-things-explode-with-her-brain powers. This is apparently common of her race.

The kicker is that Jenny must keep her powers secret (apart from the telepathy), for some unexplained reason. This means that she can only be allowed to kick ass when nobody else is watching, or can see it. I find this to be a pretty blunt and annoying way to limit her powers, making them nothing but a dues ex machina to be used when everyone else has been knocked out cold.

The powers are also limited by not being usable against living creatures, which is a lot more sensible limit. The whole secrecy thing simply feels tacked on.

Also, there seems to only be female cats. Hmm.

Jenny gets captured fairly often.


Deadeye Duck is made of win and awesome. An ex-pirate, trigger-happy, absolutely psychotic duck with four arms and a vocabulary you wouldn’t believe. He can hardly talk about toads or anything scaly without dumping at least ten derogatory adjectives onto the species’ name. At this point in time, “suck” had not quite gotten as much a no-no word in kiddies’ shows as it is today, apparently, which is why you’ll hear various versions of “slime-sucking” a lot. Also calls everyone in the crew “me lad” and “me lass”. He gave up pirating to help Bucky fight the toads, and apparently harbors a deep respect for the hare.

Deadeye is the gunner of the Righteous Indignation, and the one who shouts “let’s croak us some toads!” the most. That’s the tagline of the show, by the way, and another flirt with danger. “Croak” does after all mean “die” in the right context, and this show is pretty violent considering all. These aren’t robots, or ghosts, or nasty monsters being shot at and exploded, but anthropomorphic animals of various kinds. Nobody dies, but you could see it happening. There’s also talk of torture and slavery, even if it’s not touched upon very seriously. Heck, the only reason that there’s a war is that a corrupt computer program brainwashed an entire planet and made them his warriors of planetary conquering. Flirting with religious fanatics much?

Anyway, Deadeye lives for the thrill of shooting at anything moving. He also wins brownie points when making disgusted sounds and complain to the rest of the crew when he thinks that they’re getting too sweet and sugary about friendship and brotherhood and all that rot.

Deadeye is also awesome because his kind are either pirates or ninjas. Apparently somebody saw the great pirate vs. ninja debate in a crystal ball and decided to use it in this show XD

The problem with Deadeye is his four arms. Theoretically he should be able to pack twice the firepower of everyone else, but he actually never seems to use his second pair of arms in a fight. He only carries guns in his two upper hands, leaving the other two empty and dangling. More lost potential that makes me weep D: He does use all hands when manning the canon of the Righteous Indignation.

Also, I must say that whenever I see Deadeye on screen, I can’t help but think that he reminds me an awful lot of Psy-Crow from Earthworm Jim. It’s probably the color scheme.

Deadeye gets captured by the toads only once. (You’ll see why I’m mentioning everyone’s capture rate when we get to the actual episodes.)


Blinky is pretty useless. This little android is this show’s version of “cute little animal sidekick”. He makes himself useful every now and then, but mainly stands around yelling about things that need to be repaired, making damage reports while somebody else fixes problems, and picks up banana peels thrown by Bruiser. The peels he then stuffs inside his own stomach.

Blinky gets captured twice, but he mainly manages to stay out of trouble due to mostly being left behind to guard the Righteous Indignation together with…


Bruiser, who is, I’d wager, the token black guy – or would be, if they were humans. He’s three times the size of most of the other characters, speaks broken English (all of his kind does, though this is not played as stupidity. They are obviously smart when they need to be, like Bruiser’s brother Bruce), and packs a ridiculously hard punch. Bruiser is a Betelgeusian (pronounced like “Beetlejuician” XD) Berserker Baboon, a space marine. He always charges his enemies while howling “aaaaooooga!”, the battlecry of his kind.

This handy-dandy bag of asskickery joins the crew to avenge his brother, who everyone thinks dead after a photon accelerator mishap in the first episode. (They don’t call him dead, but rather say that he obtained one-ness with the aniverse. He dies in the comic though, as I understand it.)

Since Bruiser is the big bad dude, he has a heart of gold and is very protective of everyone, especially the little Blinky.

Bruiser is one of the biggest problems with the show, and probably caused the writer’s a lot of headache. Every toad in existence is terrified of the Berserker Baboons, and even though they are brainwashed by an evil computer program the toads will turn around and flee in panic at the mere sight of Bruiser. Actually a picture is enough to make them flee. The reason for this is not explained, though toads caught by the baboons tend to get squished into basketballs… which I guess is a good reason. And then again they seldom flinch from flying and leaping straight into gunfire.

So, all Bruiser has to do is show his face to the enemy, and there’s nothing left to fear. Even the very very villainous Toadborg falters for a moment before remembering that he is not a mere toad anymore.

How can a show deal with such a character, and still make the villains threatening?

In Bucky O’Hare, they solve the problem by having Bruiser almost constantly stay on the Righteous Indignation to guard the ship. It does make a bit of sense since that ship is pretty much the only reason the fight can go on at all, but there’s a big logic hole – there’s an entire planet populated with fighting-happy, toad-hating baboons. How hard could it be to find a second one to guard the ship, to let Big Bad Bruiser at the enemy? Heck, why not launch an invasion on the toad home planet and be done with it?

Well, technically that would mean the show would end in about two episodes (Toadborg and KOMPLEX can put up quite a fight, after all), but the logic is not there.

Bruiser gets captured once.

For all his illogicness though, Bruiser is not the main problem with this show. The main problem with this show is the character I shall now present to you.

Or rather in the next post, since I’m limited to six pictures a post.


Willy DuWitt. Why, writers, WHY? This is kid is a preteen human boy who manages to open a portal in the time-space continuum or something through his bedroom door when activating his “photon accelerator”. Now, not anybody can build something that’s called a “photon accelerator”, right? Of course not. Little Willy is a preteen boy genius.

He’s also smart enough to realize that he’s in an alternate universe (as opposed to turning around and running away screaming like a sensible person would do) when he first comes face to face with Bucky and crew. Of course, Willy looks nothing like anything they’ve ever seen before, but they instantly trust him and put him to fixing their broken gear. At the time they’re in an emergency, but afterwards they insist on keeping Willy around even as he stumbles and looks like an idiot and needs rescuing all the time. And when Jenny calls him with telepathy, she keeps claiming that “we need you!”. It hurts.

Willy stinks Gary Stu. He’s a genius, bullied in school because he’s too smart, and all the good guys near-instantly love him. Apart from that, what’s the excuse to have him on the show? The aniverse is full of creatures, and they could have done perfectly well without the random insertion of a human. Willy comes off as nothing but a connection to the “real world” for the cartoon. Of course, a lot of cartoons with non-human characters did similar things. Turtles had April, Transformers (and Gobots, come to think of it) had human allies, the Carebears… were all about making humans happy (which sounds like a really, really sad existence), and so on and so forth. However, those shows took place on Earth (mostly). Bucky O’Hare takes place in a closed universe populated with animals. Did Sonic (SatAM) need a human kid to come tell him where to run and what to do? Did the Swat Kats need a human girl to pop up and help them fix their plane? How about Darkwing Duck, did you ever see the little human boy who set up all his gear for him and instructed him on his missions?

I THINK NOT. Okay, so there are humanoid characters in most Sonic cartoons/games, but you know what I mean.

The point is, if the show takes place in an anthropomorphic world, there’s no NEED for humans to come mess things up in canon.

We can safely leave that in the hands of 98% of the world’s fanfic authors, you know.

Willy gets captured almost as much as Bucky does, and that’s saying a lot. The difference is that Bucky actually can fight his way out. Willy, on the other hand, gets grabbed, lifted and carried off while squealing like a pig.

My ranting about Willy done (you’ll see more of the same in the future, however), it’s time to meet the villains!

(There are more heroes than this, but for now we’re focusing on the main crew.)

This show makes it very simple. Mammals and birds = good. Amphibians and lizards = bad. One rare exception are three toads who appears in the episode Kreator Konspiracy, because they were sent away from the toad home planet before KOMPLEX brainwashed everyone else.

Onto the enemy!


KOMPLEX is a computer program created to take care of everyday lives of the toads. However, for some reason it went corrupt and brainwashed as good as every toad in existence into a mindless slaves. However, this only seems to go for male toads. The only female toads you’ll ever see on this show seem to be running commercials, starring in beauty contests, or be courtesans of some kind.

SEXISM YAY.

But, at least the ladies aren’t out there getting blasted by crazy ducks. Besides, the toads are eeevil, so why not let them be [strike]pigs[/strike] chauvinist slimeballs on top of everything?

Apart from a scarce few times, you’ll also only see female toads on Toad TV, which the toads are always watching when they’re not fighting. Apparently there are some news shown, but the toads are mostly watching something suspiciously alike TV-shop. After a while it turns out that Toad TV is just what KOMPLEX uses to keep his peons under control, by sending them orders via sublime messages through the commercials.

Makes a scary lot of sense to me.

In one episode, the toads also attempts to brainwash all the mammals of the aniverse by showing them mammal-programmed shows.

Anyway, KOMPLEX plays Evil Overlord™ and scares every toad spitless with his fury, yet he seldom takes action on his own. Typical, really. His kind tend to be like that, whether they’re computer programs or nightmare kings (The Dreamstone, anyone? Lord Zordrak looked cool as hell, but apart from feeding one poor sod to killer crabs(!! That freaked me out so bloody much back then) and turning a girl to stone for a while in the first couple of episodes, he didn’t do much).

Being an Evil Overlord™ who can’t get off his butt but sits around shouting at everyone else™, KOMPLEX gets the kind of peons he deserves – the toads have the power in numbers but that’s pretty much it. The only exception is…


Toadborg, who despite his ridiculous name is a really good villain. He’s a toad turned cyborg (duh!) and one has to wonder where KOMPLEX found a toad like this among his hordes of brainless morons.

Unlike the rest of his race, Toadborg is actually smart (most of the time). He’s got that cold planning thing going down, coupled with brute strength and a no-nonsense-badass-bastard personality. To add up, he’s near impossible to beat in a fight, which makes him a true threat. He means business, and he’s one of the best things on this show. With most of the other enemies being cartoony, this guy is a gold nugget.

Seriously, how often do Evil Overlords™ in these kind of cartoons actually have henchmen who actually go out there and do what they should, and do it well? Of course, the heroes always have to beat Toadborg somehow, but the fact is that he’s very seldom actually defeated. While it does happen, his appearance on the scene more often than not means that the heroes have to grab what they can and then run for it, because Toadborg is too much for anyone to deal with.

Toadborg actually balances Bruiser’s existence a bit, but the baboon remains overpowered even in face of this bad mutha’. It’s not like the heroes drop everything and run screaming at the mere sight of Toadborg’s purple metal visage.


The Air Marshall and his two subordinates/beating bags Frix and Frax (dear LORD) fulfill the “comic villain” quota. Frix and Frax seldom do anything apart from whine and watch Toad TV. You know their kind.

The Air Marshall is a fat toad who bumbles along trying to please KOMPLEX (a very, very tough job indeed), but of course, he’s bound to fail in everything he does. He also has a medal fetish. Seriously. The many medals he already has proves that at least at some point he has managed to do things right, though.

Though he’s second only to Toadborg in the toad army, this pretty much only means that he’ll be the first to get blamed when things go wrong, as they always do. Every cartoon needs this kind of villain, I suppose.

The Air Marshall likes to proclaim himself Bucky’s archenemy, though Bucky himself may have different ideas. On the other hand the fat toad led the invasion and enslavement of Bucky’s home planet, so there may be something to it.


Toad stormtroopers are the remainder of the toads, pretty much. Apart from newscasts, commercial actors and a beauty contest host, as well as toad scientists, all male toads seem to have been turned into these soldiers. They may squabble and act silly, but given orders they’ll carry them out without flinching… unless a berserker baboon shows up, of course.


Captain Smada is one more break of the toad norm, a prettyboy-toad(?!) who seems to have his mind pretty intact. He also seems to have a moustache. Or at least, there’s something very odd with his upper lip.

Smada only appears on one episode where he slouches on a seat getting served a drink by a lady toad, then gloats over a captured Bucky, does a sleazebally chin-grab on the chained Bucky who seems VERY disgusted by this (BADFIC ALERT), and nervously takes an order from KOMPLEX. Then he’s gone, which is a shame. He seemed like one of those villains you love to see have his ass kicked. Also one of those villains who could turn around and suddenly be mega-evil. Hey, he had the creep-factor going right there.

Then again, his lisp could drive anyone mad if he stayed on the show for longer than he does.

I suppose the writers just didn’t get around reusing him, as the show only got to run for thirteen episodes.

It makes me laugh that he’s described as “extremely flamboyant” at Wikipedia. That’s not the only thing they mention fans theorizing about there, either. ker-snort

Then there’s also Al Negator who is a purple alligator, or “sleazasaur” as he’s called. A mercenary, spy, and extra muscle occasionally hired by the Air Marshall to deal with things too delicate or complicated for the toads themselves. He seems to have eyes and ears pretty much everywhere.

Though a villain most of the time, this guy is of the profit-in-any-way school, and will switch sides if he thinks that he can get a better deal out of it. One would suppose he’s smart, though an early mistake of being fooled by Willy puts that into serious question.

Now that you know the characters, let’s dig into the show itself.

Episode One: War of the Warts

The first episode kicks off with a view of space, then goes into the bowels of the toad mothership where Frix and Frax are watching toad-TV, as they’ll be doing a lot. Frax also tries to make out with the TV, enamored by the lady toad in the commercial. Oooh, charming.

The Air Marshall shows up to berate them for being addicted to TV (wouldn’t KOMPLEX support that in his troops though, considering?), then drags them off to watch slave ships being unloaded. Chained up hares are being led off and the Air Marshall gloats that he’s not only conquered an entire planet, but the home planet of his “greatest enemy, Bucky O’Hare!1!(one)!”. He starts drooling when he shrieks Bucky’s name. He tends to do that when he gets excited.


Ew, ew, ewww.

Considering this, then Captain Smada, and then most of the character’s respect for Bucky, one could easily make a case for our hero to have a case of what I’d like to call Jak-itis, though Jak was created much later (Future Weiila: The readers of my blog and myself were pretty obsessed with the Jak and Daxter games back then). That is of course, you could see possible pairings for the hero with almost every other character. Even Toadborg and KOMPLEX are rather obsessed with getting their hands on Bucky, after all.

Anyway, apparently the Air Marshall wasn’t listening in Space Villain school when they said that no matter how easy things have been up till now, the moment you invade the hero’s home planet you’re serving yourself trouble cake.

And yep, the moment the drooling speech is finished we cut back into space and see the Righteous Indignation for the first time since the intro. The first crew character we see is Deadeye (whee!), sitting by the canon and showing off his teeth to the emptiness of space.

We move to the command bridge, where Jenny announces that she has traced the source of a distress signal they’re following. Really, this was a bad idea in Alien… anyway. It’s coming from a toad slave ship, and according to Jenny there aren’t many fighter ships escorting the transport. Hearing that, Bucky orders everyone to battle stations.

Here’s a case of bad editing (there will be more, I’m afraid), where Deadeye is suddenly shown sitting at the back of the central room of the very small ship and checking his handguns, instead of manning the canon as he did half a minute ago. As soon as Bucky mentions that there are toads on the way, Deadeye gleefully rectifies that, however, cackling like a crazy horse.

Why aren’t there more characters like him in all those sugary friendship-and-love-solves-everything shows? Then again, this show is hardly one of those, most of the time.

Next we see Blinky, answering Bucky’s request for a report from the engineers about their status. The little android reports, while picking up banana peels, that the engineer, Bruce the Berserker Baboon, is “deeply involved in contemplation of the photon accelerator”.

Bruce then delivers one of the best lines I have ever heard anywhere. “I don’t like the sound of this photon accelerator, cap’n. In fact, a part of this machine ain’t even in the same time-space continuum with us.” Bucky says to just “put it on a backburner”. Yeeeah, that sounds safe. Kinda like a portal to another universe in the making.

JOY.

All set and a battle plan given, the crew cheers out their “let’s croak some toads!” and set off to do just that.

The toads, noticing the intruding ship, decides that it’s better to shoot first and ask later. All the escorts head off to attack, and Deadeye starts blasting while Bucky pilots.

Here’s a good place to point out a major problem with the Righteous Indignation - the canon is the nose of the ship. There are no other weapons aboard apart from the crews handguns. So, theoretically Bucky and crew would be sitting ducks (duh) if the toads would just keep shooting at them from behind instead of honorable facing them from the front whenever they can.

Do the toads ever make proper use of this design flaw as often as they should? Guess. It does happen occasionally, but really… Bucky’s ship doesn’t look like it was made for quick movements, while the toad ships are small and slim. It shouldn’t be that hard to avoid getting in front of Deadeye’s aim, but the toads seem to prefer head on assaults.

Moving on… we’re two and a half minute into the episode and I’ve written one and a half page of this drivel already.


The Visage of Happiness.

Deadeye shoots like the trigger-happy psycho he is, and whenever a toad ship explodes the pilots safely float off in the bubbles they apparently sit inside while piloting. So even if things go boom, nobody dies. It’s still a kid’s show.

While the toads are preoccupied by trying not to have their ships go explody due to crazy duck, Jenny and Bruce flies towards the slave ship on the Toad Croaker, a scooter-like vehicle which can fly in space and on water, as well as jump on toads. Oi.

Bucky gives Deadeye an ego boost which the gunner follows up, while drawing a mark on the wall. Was that for the ships or his cap’n’s praise? Hmm? XD

The toads are less amused, because nobody is stroking their egos.

Meanwhile, Bruce and Jenny blast open a hole in the hull of the slave ship and enter. Curiously, this does not lead to, y’know, vacuum trying to eat the innards of the ship. Ah, whatever, a lot of cartoons ignores this.

An alarm goes, causing one of the pilots of the slave ship to jump and knock himself out on the ceiling. The other pilot calls for security. Storm troopers gather, sure of their victory… until Bruce breaks down the door, whereupon we’re for the first time given a view of the toad phobia of baboons. Here, Bruce plays the same part his brother will play through the rest of the series, charging and howling at fleeing toads. Except he shouts “gahyooga” instead of Bruiser’s (more official apparently, as he’s seen teaching marines in training this) “aaahyoooga”.

Jenny is left to fend for herself, complaining about baboons never doing things right. She’s assaulted by a toad robot, but since she’s alone and nobody’s watching, she just blows it up with her sooper sekkrit powahs of destruction. While speaking in a veiled, seductive voice.

She then uses her fists to beat up a couple of toads who foolishly admit to being relieved at her being “only a cat” as opposed to a berserker baboon. Being a first episode, one can tell all of this is mainly serving to present the characters and their abilities. You’ll seldom see Jenny go hand to hand with anything later on – she can use a gun like everyone else. But she’s definitely established as a tough gal now.

Anyway, by disposing of those toads (the pilots, actually), Jenny takes control of the ship and turns it around.

Meanwhile they’re having a bit of trouble at the Righteous Indignation, with the toads actually making use of the whole “only one canon, at the front” thing. Deadeye complains, Bucky reports that the shields are taking a beating, but it’s all for the cause of getting the toad ships away from the slave ship.

Blinky, meanwhile, says and does nothing.

Man, what a bummer if the slave ship was all a trap, eh?

With one final look at the Righteous Indignation being shot at in the depths of space, we suddenly turn to… sunny San Francisco.

NOOOOOOO!

But yes, it’s time to meet Willy. We cut to a school, where our blond wonder comes over to his locker to find that somebody has written “NERO” on it. He looks really bummed to be called a crazy roman emperor.

Supposedly it should be “NERD” (according the following dialogue), but that’s the roundest D I’ve ever seen.

Enter three bullies. They’re twice his size and ride their skateboards indoors (oooh, bad boys!). They rag on him for a bit (though he tries to sound tough right back and not sounding convincing), threatening bodily harm if he doesn’t fail the next science test. This is because his amazing math and science skills make them look bad.

Because everyone knows that you’ll pass any test no matter how few points you score, as long as everyone else does just as badly.

Anyway, poor little Willy is bullied because he’s too smart for his classmates. That stench you’re picking up is Eau de Stu. It’s not strong yet, but it’ll get a lot worse soon. Brace yourselves.

After that annoying episode, we’re back to space fighting. Bucky loops up and behind the toad ships, making it easy for Deadeye to both insult and blast them to bits.

The toad squad leader curses at the Righteous Indignation, threatening the crew with the Air Marshall’s fury. Oooh, scary. Bucky smirks back that he demands a withdrawal of all toads from mammal space or he’ll send the United Animal Space Fleet at the amphibians. That’s unfortunately pretty big talking, because the fleet… the Righteous Indignation is it.

No wonder the toads are winning so far.

The Air Marshall gets a report of what has happened, and lashes out at the poor messenger and raving crazily about Bucky always getting in his way. I sense a bit of obsession here. When hearing about the fleet-threat, the Air Marshall just laughs (righteously), not sounding too convinced that the mammals actually have raised an entire fleet. He then orders every toad ship at his disposal to head out to find and destroy Bucky.

Oi. Obsessed.

Then again, Bucky is pretty much the only hope for everyone here. It would kinda smart if he was the one who croaked.

Jenny meanwhile leads Bucky into the slave pens on the ship and warns him that it’ll be hard for him before she opens the door. Bucky is immediately assaulted by cheering hares, but the joy dies down when he realizes that this means that Warren has been conquered. Apart from the hares on the stolen ship, all of Bucky’s kind are trapped in the toad mother ship or already sent off to who knows where to work in toad factories.

Bucky swears revenge, but one of the hares tells him to “be true to your mission” to save the entire aniverse (whoa, I hope he gets paid as much as he deserves) and warn the mammal council on planet Genus (Genis?) of the toads. Bucky does not look thrilled, but then assumes a stoic look while the hares cheer.


His day will suck but he will face it bravely like the rabbit hero he is.

By the way, as you can see Bucky has pink eyes. Maybe his attitude is his desperate attempt at compensating that, and the fact that he’s a rabbit and still has to be the hero.

Back to Earth. Goddammit.

Willy is seen not wanting any dinner, which makes sense as his mother asks him if he doesn’t like the tofu burgers. He claims not being hungry. His dad asks what the matter is, being very perceptive apparently. Willy then asks if his dad would still do something he felt was really important even if he knew somebody was going to beat him up for it.

Instead of, y’know, getting suspicious that their son may be threatened by somebody, his parents assure him that one should fight for what one believe in. Then they realize that they have to run along and leave Willy to look glum, clearly unsatisfied with his mother telling him that important things is to make sure there will still be an ozone layer and wild animals in the future. I think we’ve established that Willy’s parents are kindhearted but too busy to dig too much or deeply into their son’s problems.

Or they just don’t like him, like me.

Well, at least they’re not abusive. But if Willy was a girl, you know they’d be.

We quickly go back to space again. Thank you.

The Righteous Indignation and the slave ship, now piloted by the hares, approach planet Genus’ defense system. Unfortunately the satellites aren’t sentient (duh!) and therefore only see a toad ship breaching the defense area. The hares get shot at until Bucky and crew transmits a clearance code to let them safely pass.

In a real world somebody would have thought about this in advance, but hey, they’re trying to show that Genus’ has really tough defenses here. And the poor, already tried hares have to pay for it. Pff.

We then cut to the council of Genus, where they’re about to start a meeting. Bucky stomps in together with Jenny, Deadeye and a random hare, asking for (demanding) a fleet, pointing out that so far they’ve given him “one measly frigate”, and the toads have invaded Warren unopposed. He warns them that they could be next, and everyone starts shouting at him.


Bucky knows he’s not really paid enough for this bullshit.

Our hero tries to get the council members to shut up the polite way, but Deadeye loses patience within three seconds and fixes things the pirate way.


Apparently nobody’s really sure whether or not Deadeye really WOULD put a laser beam between someone’s eyes to get the attention he wants.

Bucky, once more allowed to speak, points out that it’ll take more than just his ship to fight back an entire planet’s worth of crazy, murderous toads. The leader of the council, a pig, kindly explains to “my dear Bucky O’Hare…” that they need documented evidence of the toads’ atrocities to sanctify the expenses of more ships.

How come allied forces of countries/planets/whatever always do this in these kind of shows? You see it here, you see it in Star Wars (where power is vested into he who will be Emperor bit by bit without struggle), you see it in Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (which is a videogame, but the same rule applies). I assume it’s valid criticism of primarily the UN sitting by and taking too long making important decisions, but the difference is, the UN demands evidence and discussion in order to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. Here, it’s pretty apparent that the toads are a threat to every inhabited planet. The council seems too soft and stupid to be true.

One could of course wonder if the real war has just begun, but Bucky and crew seems to have been fighting for quite a while considering the attention they’re getting.

Bucky snarls that if they want evidence, they’ll get it.

Back to the toad mother ship. Man, they scared me there, for a second I thought we’d go back to San Fran.

The Air Marshall hides the fact that he’s watching TV by covering it with a big map, when KOMPLEX suddenly makes his first appearance on the screen, causing the commander to jump and salute.

KOMPLEX wants to know if Bucky has been dealt with yet (obsessed!). The Air Marshall promises results and gets warned not to let his computerized master down. In a touch of 1984-ness, KOMPLEX promises to be watching. Well hey, he’s a brainwashing computer program. He should have constant access to every piece of technology the toads have, shouldn’t he? Then again, in a later episode he proves unable to notice severe destruction of TV screens he’s controlling, until Toadborg points it out.

Bucky and crew are heading back towards Warren to document the toads atrocities, supposedly. However they’re spotted by a toad ship just before they go into hyperdrive, and on the Air Marshall’s order a buckload of toad ships follow the Righteous Indignation. Jenny notices that the sensors are going nuts, but just then the toads swarm the heroes. In the onslaught of enemy fire Bucky’s ship disappears in a cloud of space dust worthy of Dragon Ball Z. After the black screen of commercial break however, they’re out of the cloud.

The shields are taking a beating and flickering, and Bucky orders everyone to prepare for hyperdrive again. However, Bruce warns that all the rumbling is “doing the photon accelerator no good!”, and it has to be fixed first. Bummer. The accelerator sure is smoking and flaring with electricity, which really can’t be a good sign.

The shields go down enough to let the toads successfully blast the engines, destroying two. Bucky promises to buy Bruce some time to fix the problems downstairs, and flies into an asteroid belt where he docks the ships in a big hole in a big asteroid. This offers some protection from behind and around so that Deadeye can deal with anything coming from the front.

Of course, this also means they’re kinda stuck in that hole, with the toads pouring on towards them. Good going there, Bucky. They’re not captured yet, but they’re trapped.

The Air Marshall orders every ship to head there to “DESTROY HIM!”. Obsessed. Seriously, Bucky isn’t alone in there. Be a little more subtle with your fixation, man, it’s showing.

Bucky shouts at Blinky and Bruce, while the ship rocks with all the blasts, that they need the photon accelerator right NOW. Despite obviously knowing better, Bruce starts switching it on.

And… yep, not a good idea. The accelerator starts sucking Bruce and Blinky in, and though the little android grabs the big baboon’s collar, Bruce is eaten by the miniature black hole or whatever it is. Naked, too, by the looks of it. Blinky manages to tear out the cable powering the accelerator, but then has to sadly report that "Captain, chief engineer Bruce sucked into other dimension by photon accelerator… or, he has attained oneness with the universe”. Man, that lil’ guy can calculate stuff!

Bucky gives Jenny the command and heads down to have a look. “Poor Bruce, we’ll miss him…”. And that’s that, though he still looks bummed as he turns his focus to Blinky trying to fix the accelerator. Well, they ARE in a pretty bad situation. Mourning can come later.

Deadeye is just blasting away like nobody’s business while all this is going on.

Blinky warns that activating the accelerator will lead to unpredictable results. No shit. However, the shields are failing and Bucky decides to risk it anyway as they have thirty seconds to get away.

Back to Earth. groan Willy has just finished a photon accelerator for his science project – what ARE the chances, eh? – and is talking to himself about it. Well, he’s talking into a tape recorder. He’s telling his mum and dad via the recording that “remember, I did it in the name of science”.

You KNOW this can’t be good.

Willy and Bucky turn on and pull the levers on their respective accelerators at exactly the same time.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?

The lights go out at Willy’s and he frantically tells the recorder that “the accelerator is absorbing all the energy from the area!”. Oh, the cops will LOVE that one. However, when Willy looks out the window there’s a swirly vortex of shinies just outside, and touching it (is that a sign of intelligence?) he spouts something about it feeling like gelatin. Riiight. Anyway, this probably means the cops won’t care too much since the kid probably isn’t ‘in Kansas anymore’.


If it’s shiny and swirling and you don’t know what it is, remember to dip your hand into it. You could get sucked into your favorite video game!

Willy hears something from the door (I think there’s a sound effect missing here), and nervously heads for it.

Back in the aniverse, the hole Bucky docked into has shrunk due to bad editing. Deadeye reports that the guns do nothing, and Jenny that the ship has been enveloped in an impenetrateable force field. Below, Bucky and Blinky are walking around a randomly appearing door and trying to figure out what the heck that is. There’s a swirly vortex on the back of it and a purple coat is hanging on the front – Bucky is puzzled by the size.

Willy opens the door to his room and steps out into the Righteous Indignation. He gasps, the brave space heroes scream.

I groan.


OH SHIT IT’S OUR SUE… STU!

Deadeye almost shoots Willy, thinking his flashlight is a light saber, but Willy manages to explain his harmlessness in time. Crap.


“You’re a green rabbit!” –actual dialogue.

Looking at this screen though, and considering the size difference, one could make an argument that one of the heroes’ reasons to put faith in Willy could be that they just don’t realize how young he is. He’s the only human they’ve ever seen, so how should they know?

Bucky rather irritably introduces himself and his crew, then demands to know what exactly Willy is. Being a genius, Willy not only introduces himself but concludes that, no matter how weird it sounds, “I’m a human from another universe!”. You can’t beat that kind of logic.

In another moment of awesome, Deadeye comments to Bucky’s confusion about the term ‘human’ that Willy “must be some kinda mutated hairless baboon”.

Willy then decides that his photon accelerator must be the cause of his door turning interdimensional, prompting Blinky to show off their own malfunctioning machinery.

At this moment the toads decide that they have been ignored in favor of the annoying wiz-kid for long enough, and rocks the ship – through the impenetrateable force field… man, they’re good! – with a hail of bullets.

Willy sounds more surprised at the fact that they’re attacked by toads, than he’s sounded surprised at any of this other stuff, like talking rabbits. Apparently feeling that civilians-of-unknown-origin-who-are-trespassing-on-his-ship deserves explanations, Bucky explains that “Yes, and unless we fix that accelerator those toads are gonna take us prisoner and conquer every free world in the aniverse”.

Did I mention that I hope that Bucky and crew gets paid as much as they deserve, considering their importance? Even Superman only has to worry about ONE world (most of the time). Bucky must be addicted to sleeping pills, because I have a hard time imagining him ever being able to relax naturally. (Future Weiila: Offhand, this ranting inspired me to write a fanfic about that.)

Willy offers to help, but Bucky shows a good deal of sense by replying that help from Willy doesn’t seem likely, unless he could possibly fix that accelerator.

Lucky for them that Willy just built one, eh? He goes through the door again to get some things, and Bucky and Deadeye follows. Noticing a toy gun on Willy’s bed Deadeye snags it, but at least reports to Bucky that he’s “confiscating” the “weapon” for safety’s sake. Though not looking convinced on his psycho peon’s intentions, Bucky lets it pass.


Deadeye isn’t doing much for Bucky’s mental health.

Willy concludes that it’s all amazing, because he’s never been in another universe before. That comment makes me pinch the bridge of my nose. Deadeye packs everything Willy brings down from a shelf into a bag, including a bundle of toy money.

Back in the aniverse Willy quickly fixes the accelerator and warns the crew that the force field will disappear for good when they turn the machine on. Jenny questions if this won’t remove the door back to Willy’s world, but the kid says that it should hopefully come back when they return from hyper drive.

Here’s an idea, a sensible thing would be NOT to stay in this weird universe if you can leave right away. The door is right there right NOW. Adventure or no, if you’re so into science and stuff you should KNOW that you could die from a cold due to your body not being able to cope with alien bacteria and stuff.

Jenny tells him so (well, not about the bacteria), but Willy decides to hold the same speech about important things “you have to do no matter what the cost” that his dad gave him ten minutes ago.

Jenny turns into a real girl in the face of such manliness and gives Willy a really cartoony kiss.


Seriously, WTF?

I wished Bucky would clock his sudden rival here, but the hare just grins madly and sends everyone to their stations. Everyone obeys as the toads prepare an all-out assault. Of course, Willy turns on the accelerator, turning off the protective force field, just when the toads begin to fire. The Righteous Indignation is rocked by gunfire, now shield less…

Aaand we cut out. The first episodes ends with a To Be Continued.

Tune in next time as we finally meet Toadborg and Bruiser. :smiley:

Toadborg looks like an interesting fellow. Might be his mass and the fact that he’s headless.

I feel sorry that you put all that time into this post and only got one reply. This is definitely not the forum to be doing that anymore. I loved that cartoon when I was little. But I only ever say the first few origin episodes (I have them on tape). The theme song is one of the best ever created. I thought Jenny was fucking hot even before I was into girls (again, 7 year old here) and I wanted to be Willy and just jump to and from the aniverse at will. Great show that needs to be on DVD.

That’s sweet of you, DR ^^ Don’t worry though, I got a lot of replies back in the day on my livejournal. I just posted it here to see if people were interested :slight_smile:
It definitely needs a DVD release. It’s a gold nugget in the rough.

I think I only vaguely remember hearing the name of this show before, but I don’t think I ever saw it. I don’t even remember how I ended up here now. I was searching for something totally unrelated to this and ended up coming across this page, and I was intrigued by the first picture of Bucky you put up there and so I kept reading a little more. I didn’t intend to read the whole thing, but after reading all the character introductions, I decided to read a little more into the first episode and then I kind of got captivated by it and it was almost like I was watching the first episode in an informal kind of book form.

So you shouldn’t feel like it was a waste for you to post that. I enjoyed it, and you’ve made me decide that I want to try to see this show. Hopefully it’s available in torrent files or on YouTube or something like that, and hopefully the video will be of good or at least very decent quality.

I’ve got a lot going on right now, so I’ll have to “put this on the back burner” for now. Ha ha… If you don’t get the joke, refer to Bucky’s previous quote you mentioned in one of your posts about the photon accelerator needing to be “put on a back burner”. :stuck_out_tongue: But trying to see the full series of this show is definitely on my list of things to do once things settle down for me, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.

Thank you for writing such a thorough description of this show’s main characters and first episode.

Take care. :slight_smile:

:enguard:

Dude, I don’t know how I missed this. Bucky O’Hare was and is awesome. Deadeye was pretty much my childhood role model.