Thundarr the Barbarian S1E1: "Secret of the Black Pearl"

This review was comissioned by @krinsbez.


Thundarr is a name I'd never heard of before. Looking it up, apparently it's about a rugged warrior-hero fighting his way across the post-apocalyptic ruins of modern society and encountering wizards, weird mutant tribes, and amusing recurring side-characters. My first thought upon reading that was, naturally, "oh, okay, it's a slightly darker early He-Man clone."

But then I found out that Thundarr's first published media came out in 1980, one year before the first He-Man media.

Looking into this more, it doesn't appear that the inspiration worked the other way either though. Both of them were in development for a long time before their first publications in any medium. I guess it was just one of those zeitgeist things, where similar art is produced by different people at the same time due to the ambient cultural environment and common inspirations.

Anyway, let's take a look at the Thundarr the Barbarian pilot episode, "Secret of the Black Pearl."


Like other very-low-budget cartoons of its time, Thundarr's intro sequence consists of a nonmusical monologue spoken over an expository clipshow. I think I like this one much better than He-Man's, though. Both because it's more visually interesting, and because what it tells us about the world and characters is more substantial. Short version: in the distant future, the year 1994, a rogue planet came tearing past the Earth in a near-miss that altered Earth's orbit and pulled Luna right out of our gravity well. The tidal forces destroyed the world as we knew it, and the altered climate of Earth's new orbit ensured that it would never be the same again.

It is now the even-more-distant future, the year 3994, and Earth is essentially an alien planet with an alien biosphere. Humanity has survived, but is only a tiny remnant of what it used to be, huddling in the overgrown ancient ruins of its old grandeur while evil wizards rule with an iron fist. Oh yeah, magic is also back for some reason. No explanation of how or when that happened, it just did. Thundarr, an escaped slave-gladiator who wields a "sun sword" (which looks, acts, and has identical sound effects to a lightsaber) travels the world with his two companions in a revenge-fuelled mission to cast down the sorcerer-kings and let humanity find its own path ahead.

Plenty to chew on. And so Edgar Rice Burroughs that it shits ape-men.

The pilot opens on our protagonist trio - Thundarr the barbarian, Ariel the sorceress, and Oopla the mahk - riding their horses through the tropical jungle that covers what we once knew as New York State. This is a low budget production, but the creators obviously had a clear idea of where they wanted to prioritize their limited resources; the environments and background art are far and away the most memorable thing about the show.

The movements are stiff. The characters are constantly going off-model. Sometimes the wrong person's mouth moves during conversations. But man, just look at the steaming orchid-swamp growing up and over the field of half-buried automobiles under a miscolored sky. I could stare at this type of artwork for hours even without any story going on.

Thundarr and Ariel happen to ride their horses (and Oopla rides his weird horse-fish-lizard-thing that mahks apparently ride instead of horses) near the site of an ambush. An old man is being accosted by a gang of ratlike humanoids called groundlings, who are trying to steal a magic pearl that he was transporting. Experience apparently tells the trio that old men with magic pearls tend to be allies and groundlings tend to be enemies, so they intervene on the former's behalf. Despite the limited animation, the show does a fairly good job of showing how the party fights. Thundarr gets in close with his sunsword and holds the ratfolk back, allowing Oopla to shoot with his heavy-draw bow and Ariel to cast area-of-effect spells that pin the enemy down. They've got a proper DnD party dynamic going on in battle, and have clearly been fighting as a team for quite some time before our introduction to them.

The battle also has plenty of eighties cartoon slapstick, naturally. It goes without saying that somehow, despite the type of weapons the good guys are using, the groundlings only end up getting comically thrown offscreen or forced to retreat rather than anyone actually getting killed.

The old man turns out to be named Tyron, and he was in the process of running this magic pearl from somewhere up north (where his own people just stole it from some bad guys) to the Manhat tribe who inhabit the ruins of Manhattan. This enchanted black pearl was created by the evil sorcerer known as Gemini, whose seat of power is near Manhattan. Supposedly, Gemini *really* doesn't want his enemies to get ahold of this pearl, which probably means the Manhats can use it to defend themselves from him.

As luck would have it, Thundarr and his companions were riding this way to see if they can try and assassinate Gemini. Makes sense, if they're dedicated sorcerer-hunters as the intro claimed. So, they're plenty motivated to complete Tyron's delivery and then join forces with the Manhats against the common foe.

...

For all the goofy worldbuilding premises, the actual plotting so far is surprisingly logical.

...

The fact that no one knows what the pearl does or how you're supposed to use it gives Ariel some misgivings, but Thundarr reminds her that they didn't have an actual plan for dealing with Gemini yet in the first place, so they're not winging it any more than they already were. She concedes the point.

Okay, that was a really fun exchange. Amusing, and also lets the characters show the audience who they are and what they're all about with an elegant minimum of spoken words. While also letting us see that they can respectfully disagree with one another and talk things over until they reach a consensus, which is a surprisingly healthy team dynamic for these shows.

Oopla, meanwhile, just makes Chewbacca noises that Thundarr and Ariel can apparently understand, but we just have to infer. Heh, between this and the "sun sword" this show is turning out to be surprisingly dense with Star Wars expies.

On the topic of linguistic quirks, Thundarr himself has this really weird accent that...at first I thought it was a bad attempt at an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, presumably to gesture at his role in the Conan movies, but listening to him more I'm not sure. It's kiiiinda Austrian German, ish, but also very clearly not. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it definitely lets you imagine that Thundarr is from a far future ethnic group with a language that hasn't been invented yet. If that WAS the intent, then it's a nice touch. It could also just be a really, really bad Arnie impression though, so your mileage may vary.

While Ariel casts a healing spell on Tyron and instructs him to try and rest for a few hours while it works, we jump over to the defeated groundlings. They've got a whole underground fortress built and decorated in their own style, which is cool. It also turns out that their attack on Tyron was no random mugging; they're minions of Gemini, and hurriedly contact their master via scrying-pool-thingy to inform him of the complication.

He isn't very happy with them, but he gives them a chance to make up for their poor showing. They're now authorized to use the special weapons he gave them to deal with the new interlopers and take back the pearl.

The special weapons turn out to include both a fleet of refurbished ancient motorcycles, and a bunch of wooden clubs that shoot lasers whenever you swing them. It's still not enough for the groundlings to beat Team Thundarr, as it turns out, but it does enable them to catch up to their horses and give them a decent fight this time at least.

There's a really weird bit where Thundarr dismounts and tells the other two to go on without him, he'll hold the ratfolk off. Ariel insists that they don't leave him to face the groundlings alone, and Oopla ends up physically restraining her from going back to help him. It's all super dramatic, but then...Thundarr just beats back the groundlings by himself and catches up to them again two minutes later.

On one hand, kinda lol. On the other hand, I'm not liking the handling (literal and otherwise) of Ariel here.

She does conjure a bridge of solid moonlight to get them from the cliffs down to the Manhattan Mire, though. That's pretty cool. And oh man, look at the Manhattan Mire:

Better close-up views (well, one is through Gemini's scrying pool, but you get my meaning) from a bit later:

A highlight of this sequence is them seeing one of the few still-standing office buildings, and Thundarr staring in bemused shock when Ariel tells him that - according to the books she read in the library of her evil sorcerer stepfather - these towers were originally built and inhabited by humans. Leaving Thundarr to wonder aloud if his ancestors had wings. Also, just like that, now we know Ariel's backstory too! Wasn't that efficient?

We also get a better look at Gemini as he prepares to go interdict them himself with his squad of robot knights. Including why he's called "Gemini."

It's not a new character design concept by any means, but something about how the head spins around and the two faces are voice acted in this case (one always smiles, and speaks when he's being diplomatic. The other always scowls, and issues battle orders to his troops) just seems extra disturbing. What the hell even is this guy?

The plotting gets shakier after this point, unfortunately. While searching the ancient subway system for the Manhats, the party gets ambushed by Gemini and his robo-knights. Who take Ariel by surprise and capture her before anyone can do anything about it. On one hand, Ariel is a squishy wizard while the other two are both hulking muscle monsters, so it's a sensible in-character choice for Gemini. On the other hand, it's pretty bog standard treatment by the creators of the lone female party member who also wears a stripperific outfit and needs to be physically restrained by her male companions at times. She gets a chance to redeem herself by the end of the episode, but it still annoyed me.

Anyway, Gemini tries to negotiate Ariel's release in return for the black pearl, but Thundarr isn't having it. And, in the act of not having it, Thundarr ends up completely shrugging off a paralysis spell even as it completely disables Oopla. To Gemini's despair, it doesn't take Thundarr long to figure out that carrying the pearl is shielding him from Gemini's magic, and Gemini is forced to retreat before Thundarr can put his discovery to its obvious use. Why he didn't just have one of his robo-knights put a sword to Ariel's throat, I have no idea.

Especially considering that a few minutes later, after Thundarr and Oogla steal a working helicopter from some of Thundarr's other minions and take it to the hilariously obvious supervillain fortress right on the other side of the ruins, Gemini then DOES try exactly that tactic.

Like I said, the plotting does stumble throughout the middle part of the pilot. Fortunately, it finds its footing again by the end!

Thundarr's genre senses correctly guide him to maneuver their chopper to the top floor of the tower, where he leaps in through a window to face Gemini again. Gemini has Ariel locked in a cage, and is threatening to disintegrate her if Thundarr takes so much as one step further. Thing is, he apparently didn't realize that Ariel knows magic herself (wait, I thought he was watching them in his scrying pool when they fought the ratmen and Ariel conjured that bridge?), and she's able to twist his revolving helmet thingy around and blind him while he isn't paying attention to her. Thundarr is able to rescue Ariel and then GTFO with Oogla while Gemini is blinded.

Wait, weren't they planning to assassinate him? Why isn't Thundarr taking the opportunity to do that right now? We've seen him teleport before; the creators should have just had him do it again as soon as he realized he was blinded with an enemy swordsman within arm's reach, and it would have fixed this problem.​

On one hand, nice that Ariel got to help get herself free again. On the other, there's plenty of other questionable story beats surrounding her getting to do that. Eh.

The final scenes are good again, at least. The Manhat tribe turns out to have been watching from hiding when Thundarr and Oopla fought off the robo-knights and forced Gemini himself to retreat. This is the first time they've seen anyone no-sell the local oppressor's magic and outfight his henchmen, and it gives them a reason to stop being timid for once. They run forth to meet the trio when they escape the wizard's fortress, and they get a chance to tell everyone what the pearl does. It turns out that Tyron has finally made it back too, and he's pretty impressed at what Team Thundarr has accomplished with the limited information he was able to give them.

Obviously, it isn't long before Gemini makes an all out attack to try and brute-force the pearl back into his possession, and also to punish the uppity Manhats who appear to have been in on its theft. He pulls out his big ace in the hold for this operation, and - in addition to taking to the field at the head of his robo-knights again - he animates the rusty statue of liberty. Planet of the Apes, eat your heart out.

He also turned its torch into a plasma cannon. Like I said, he's going all-out.​

Nothing that Team Thundarr or the locals have can put a dent in Lady Liberty, and her colossal (well, mostly colossal. Her size is not terribly consistent from shot to shot) footsteps and plasma blasts are tearing the ruins they call home apart. That is, until Thundarr thinks to throw the pearl at the statue.

Upon contact, the golemized statue of liberty stops moving, the magic animating it dispelled. It's implied that Gemini had spent quite a lot of time and resources weaponizing that statue, because when he loses it he looks absolutely horrified and then promptly, wordlessly teleports away again.

Thundarr is crestfallen when he realizes that the black pearl was vaporized in the interaction. Apparently, it could only neutralize so much magic before disintegrating. Tyron surprises him with a more optimistic perspective on the situation, though: until today, no one knew that anti-magic was even a thing. Now that they DO know about it, they can start sending the word out and having people look for other items like the pearl. In the longrun, they might even figure out how to copy it and make anti-magic weapons of their own. Today was absolutely a strategic victory, even if the Manhats might still have to deal with future retaliation from Gemini.

...

We're back to being way, way more logical and better thought out than you'd expect from a show that looks like this.

...

As Team Thundarr rides off to their next adventure, the sun rises over the Manhattan Mire. Apparently, being purged of Gemini's sorcery caused the statue of liberty to revert to its original pose, now above the mud and in full view.

It's a potent symbol, though not of quite the same things that it used to be a symbol of. The end.


I might be grading this overly generously, on account of the average quality of these satam shows. But like...I think this has real merit to it even beyond the refreshing level of competence for its medium. It's not great or anything, aside from the environment art, but it's at least pretty good.

It's also good for very different reasons than, eg, the GI Joe cartoon. GI Joe TAS just had fun being open, unashamed nonsense. Thundarr has a goofy gonzo setting and arguably even sillier aesthetics, but the story's strength is in not actually being nonsense. Like, there's a persistent world with persistent (if very permissive) rules dictating what people can do and why they need to do it. Again, maybe that sounds like a low bar, but meeting it really does go a long way.

Apart from the inconsequential back-and-forth power plays that made up the middle part of the episode, it was also pretty tightly written. I appreciate how, despite being relatively minimal, the dialogue does such a good job at both teaching us about the characters, and at relaying the theme. When Ariel wows her companions with her historical knowledge, and then follows it up by explaining that she learned it from her sorcerer stepdad's library, it shows us that most people in this world don't get to read such books. Combine that with Gemini apparently being the only local player who knows how to use ancient (modern) technology on top of his actual magic, and the way that commonfolk seem to consider motorbikes and magic laser clubs to be in the same category, and it becomes clear why most people aren't allowed to read those books. The sorcerers stay in power by hoarding knowledge, and the key to defeating them is unearthing that knowledge and disseminating it; the strategic victory of the pilot was learning that anti-magic exists despite Gemini's attempts to keep that information under wraps.

I really hope the series commits to that theme for its duration, instead of it just being pilot weirdness. It really gives the story a kind of soul and ethos to complement the zany style.

Again, I don't want to downplay the pilot's flaws. The whole middle part was pretty clumsy and contrived. The animation - especially the faces - really suffers from NOT getting the budgetary priority that the environments did. But I think the merits here definitely outweigh the flaws.

It occurs to me that the two best Satams I've reviewed are both from the very beginning of the genre's 1980-1998 or thereabouts heyday. There are counterexamples of course; Swat Kats was the third best so far, and it was mid-nineties, but I'm just talking general trends. Perhaps back at the start, there was just a better ratio of genuine creatives to soulless imitators before everyone started trying to get a slice of the pie.