SWAT Kats: the Radical Squadron S1E1: "The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice"

This review was comissioned by @krinsbez. Obviously. It's a nineties SatAm cartoon, who do you think comissioned it?


I've never heard of this show before, but I mean...the title and time period kind of says it all, yeah? We're doing another anthropomorphic crime fighting gang who say "radical" a lot. Whether this one distinguishes itself from the pack - and whether it distinguishes itself in a good way, a bad way, or a Street Sharks way - I'll only learn as I watch. Begin!


Well, right off the bat, it does distinguish itself musically if nothing else. No lyrics for the OP, but still, this has a much more ominous, atmospheric soundtrack than most shows of its kind, alternating with hard rock/soft metal for the action bits. The subject matter seems to be pretty much typical (the intro shows giant monsters stepping through a dimensional portal and laying waste to an anthropomorphic cat city, and then the SWAT Kats being mobilized to defend it), but the production values are definitely closer to the upper end of the scale. Visually, it's much closer to Ninja Turtles or Captain Simian quality than Bots Master or Knights of Justice.

Some of those buildings have reflections and glare on their glass windows. This might just the intro, but if the entire show has this kind of visual fidelity then that's pretty good.

One surprising detail is that they're flying fighter planes. I would have expected the "SWAT" Kats to be more like a SWAT team, but apparently not! On another atypical note, this seems to be an entire civilization of cat people, rather than a Ninja Turtles situation. This wasn't exactly rare for cartoons of this kind but it was at least slightly less shameless than the alternative.

The pilot opens on a spooky, long-abandoned graveyard. This place is really falling apart, tombstones tipping over and overgrown with weeds, old ruined church slowly collapsing in the middle, no modern-looking buildings nearby, you get the vibe. A pair of small time criminal cats are digging up graves looking for anything they can pawn off to a museum, in violation of this old graveyard's Historical Site status.

And yeah, the OP is definitely animated better than the show itself. The artwork itself is fine, and I actually like how there's more attention to things like shading than these cartoons usually had, but the movement is fairly janky. Not especially bad compared to its peers, but definitely not especially good either.

Anyway, one crime cat is nervous about doing this; not because of the law, but because of superstitions about this old cemetery. The other crime cat tells him to shut his dumb trap and keep digging; ghosts don't real, but money does.

They dig up a very old-looking coffin with occult symbols engraved all over it and start prying it open with their shovels. Yeah, I'm predicting absolutely no way that this could go wrong.

They open the casket, and there's a spooky glow and rush of air from inside as they flip it open. Somehow, the more skeptical crime cat manages to not notice this whatsoever even when the credulous one timidly points it out. Erm...why is the second one even still standing around here, at this point? Just beat it and let the zombies eat the other guy. Well, they open the coffin, and inside there is either an incredibly well-preserved corpse, or one wearing a fairly convincing funerary mask.

I thought it had devil horns to go with the red fur at first, but nah, those are just normal kitty ears. This definitely-not-an-ancient-vampire-or-anything cat may actually be red, or it may have been buried in a mask and gloves.

In addition to its villainous black hooded cloak and (possibly?) mask and gloves, this body was buried with a gold pocketwatch and chain. Looks like it should be valuable even if not for historical reasons. The greedier crime cat reaches for it, only for - to the surprise of absolutely no one besides himself - the body opens its eyes and rises to its feet. The music continues being exceptional for a SatAm here; zombiecat's slow, moaning theme is perfectly appropriate, and honestly would pull weight even for a show with a much darker and eerier visual style that matched it. When asked who and what he is, the corpse-cat identifies himself as "Pastmaster," and says that he's been hibernating for eight hundred years waiting for someone to let him out of that coffin. Well, he's pretty forthcoming with information if nothing else. Holding up his pocketwatch and making it glow with eldritch fire, Pastmaster announces that he's now going to go recover his spellbook from where he hid it eight centuries ago.

I do like that he uses a clock instead of the cliched wand or staff or the like. Like, Gandalf had a staff because he was, more than anything else, a traveler. A wanderer. His magical focus was a tool that helps you walk and move around. Pastmaster is obviously all about time, even before he ended up being cast eight hundred years out of his own, so he casts spells using a clock. I wish more stories did this. It's one of the few things I liked about Wildbow's "Pact" when I tried reading it; in fact, I think there literally was another clock-wizard in that.

Anyway, Pastmaster runs up to the ruined church and digs around in the rubble before angrily declaring that "the council" must have found and taken his book from where he hid it. Hmm. Meanwhile, the more skeptical crime cat - ignoring his partner's insistence not to - picks up a shovel and starts sneaking up behind Pastmaster to knock him out and steal his watch.

Seriously.

That's...kind of amazing. Like, I'm almost in awe. I'm not sure if I'm almost in awe of the writers or of the character, but still, almost awe.

Well, predictably enough, this rando street tough does not manage to close the distance undetected. Or...actually, he just straight up tells Pastmaster that he's going to attack him, when it looked like he otherwise might have managed to sneak up behind him. This fucking cat person I swear. Anyway, Pastmaster says that even without his spellbook he has enough power to deal with a couple of nobodies like these two, and promptly animates some skeletons to handle them while he figures out where to look for his book.

It looks like anthropomorphism isn't the only physiological abnormality with these cats. Apparently they don't have bones in their tails, but do have bones in their ears.

What a weird fucking detail for them to put in the show, seriously.

The two dummies try to fight the skellies, but are overpowered and disarmed, forcing them to finally run away like they should have to begin with. The skeletons start chasing them, but Pastmaster calls them off; those guys clearly aren't going to be any more trouble, so no need for further escalation. Instead, he instructs the skeletons to dig up the entire church and its surroundings; apparently, he has reason to think the "council" might have moved the book to somewhere very close by.

The skeletons work for a while. Eventually, a police helicopter descends, shines its searchlights on them, and amplifies a command to stop violating this historical site and put their hands on their heads. I'm...guessing the cops in there haven't gotten a close enough look to see that those are skeletons yet? I'm guessing? Either that, or they're even more nonchalant than the thug who tried to mug an undead dark lord lol. Pastmaster declares that "these modern fools" with their machinery tricks don't intimidate him, and instructs his skeletons to attack the chopper when it flies low enough.

Erm. "Modern" fools? As in, he's referring to the current time period, specifically, as "modern?"

That seems off. Extremely off.

Well, it turns out that he spoke too soon. A couple of skeletons with shovels aren't able to dent a police chopper, and the cops inside turn out to be, yes, EVEN MORE NONCHALANT about what they're seeing than that last guy was.

One of them dully asks the other if he thinks there's any point in trying to read zombies their Miranda rights. The other shakes his head, and decides that talking period isn't going to get them anywhere with undead. Rolling his eyes, he simply broadcasts that "they have the right to remain buried" and destroys them with the helicopter's mounted gun.

While, mounted laser gun. Derpy censorship paradigms and so forth. You know what I mean.

I'm starting to think that evil magic is just a semi-common thing in this world, and that the one reluctant street thug was just unusually phobic about it.

The cops get out of their chopper and investigate the site. They photo Pastmaster's coffin, and get an order to bring it in to a history museum for some specialists to look at; taking historical relics out of this site is exactly what they came here to prevent, but I guess dealing with a necromancy incident takes precedence over that.

They tie it to the underside of the chopper and fly away. Pastmaster, watching from a hidden spot in the ruins, concludes that maybe these "modern" inventions are something he'll need to take seriously after all. Since digging up this old churchyard is off the table until he finds an effective way to deal with policecats in helicopters, he decides to head over to this history museum himself. If curious artifacts from this area are typically brought there, then there's a chance he might be able to get at least a lead on his spellbook.

That's pretty rational thinking, all the way through. I'll also note that this villain (if he even is a villain) is much more pragmatic than outright malevolent, at least in his methods seen thus far. He only has his skeletons attack people if they make a point of getting in his way, and even then he only has them chase the interlopers for as long as necessary to get them out of his hair. So far, by both undead overlord AND cartoon villain standards, Pastmaster seems relatively easy to coexist with. Of course, his ultimate plans once he's found his book may change that calculus, but so far he's framing himself as more of an antihero than an antagonist.

Jump ahead to Pastmaster clinging to the helicopter's landing gear as it flies over the city. It looked like the chopper had already taken off before he decided to follow it, but I assume he has some kind of short ranged flight or teleport spell that he used to get up there. This guy is pretty powerful, and versatile, just with his cantrips. That spellbook he's looking for must have some really impressive stuff in it, if this is what a de-powered Pastmaster is capable of.

Pastmaster looks down at the skyscrapers as they fly across the city, and muses on what catmanity has accomplished in the centuries since his entombment. He's not a fan. I suspect that seeing modern weapons make short work of his zombies might be a significant factor in his judgment here, but maybe I'm giving him too much credit and it's just an aesthetic distaste. Well, either because he doesn't like technology-using randos being able to challenge magicians like himself, or for pettier reasons, he resolves to undo the last half-millennium of progress. Once he gets ahold of his spellbook, the Tome of Time, he'll be able to reset this world to the dark ages.

...he actually refers to his native era as "the dark ages." After earlier referring to the present as "modern."

Writers. Please. Use your mirror neurons just a little bit.

Pastmaster cackles maniacally at the thought of returning everything 15-20% of the way to monke (or...to kitte, for these people?). Then, we jump over to the titular SWAT Kats, who are undergoing high speed flight training.

According to the cat operating the simulator, they're being acclimated to mach-5 flight conditions. To put that in perspective, the fastest military aircraft in use today (at least, the fastest that's been declassified/leaked/etc) can reach about mach-3.4 or so. We can fly at mach-4+, but only with rocket engines. So, these kitties are either flying around in rocket planes, or have better jet engines than we do.

...actually, I'm pretty sure I saw rockets on one of the planes in the OP. So, yeah, that's more technically consistent than usual for this kind of show. Color me surprised.

They get out of the simulator, and some pretty obnoxiously loud guitar riffs play over them bragging to each other over how long they were able to take the g-forces this time. This is the only blemish on the show's musical scoring so far, but it's a bad one. Making it quieter would have helped, but only somewhat. They posture at each other for awhile, and then...get back in for another spin. We don't even get their names before we move on to the next scene. That was kinda pointless.

Cut to the history museum. It looks like the cats don't see a distinction between natural and feline history, as the "history" museum includes everything from dinosaur skeletons to 19th century looking artifacts. This might be sloppiness on the creators' part, but at least for now I prefer to be charitable and interpret this as deliberate worldbuilding. The cat society overall looks and acts very much like contemporary America, but they might do some things differently, and their division of academic disciplines could well be one of those things. At the moment, a Dr. Zinian is being interviewed by a local news outlet about the plans for the museum's imminent reopening after some major renovations and reorganization.

Apparently, the land Megakat City is built on used to be covered in swamp until relatively recently in geologic terms, and it's also been inhabited by cats from their palaeolithic equivalent up until the present. As such, the region is a treasure trove of fossils and artifacts from all different ages.

The reporter also asks Dr. Zinian about that creepy casket with occult symbols all over it that she has open on a worktable. The doctor tersely replies that it's a dark ages artifact that they're still trying to identify. Huh...is it just me, or has that coffin gotten smaller since the last time we saw it? Might just be the artists going off-model, but anyway. Dr. Zinian doesn't seem to think that it's a burial casket, or at least she doesn't mention that possibility to the reporter. Judging from the engravings, she says, it looks like some sort of reliquary.

She also doesn't mention that the cops brought it in, or that it was collected in connection to a confirmed necromancy incident. She's probably sworn to silence until the department and/or mayor decide to make the case public.

...

That said, given that they KNOW it's related to a necromancy case, I feel like keeping it in a room with a bunch of dinosaur bones is asking for trouble just a tiny little bit. Just a smidge.

...

As the interview raps up, Pastmaster makes his way into the museum and starts nosing around looking for hints about where his Tome of Time might be. Passing some ice age skeletons, he muses that "the past is dead" here, and is further motivated to pursue his agenda and rectify that. That's pretty poetic for a SatAm villain, ngl. When a security guard stops him, he animates a life-sized model smilodon to chase him away while continuing his search.

Also, I just realized that Pastmaster is really small.

Like, virtually child-sized compared to the other catpeople. Maybe that coffin really is supposed to have been unusually short, if it was constructed with him in mind specifically.

Anyway, his animated smilodon growls and leaps just like a real animal, which makes me wonder if that model is actually built over the bones of a real fossil that he reanimated with some old instincts. Curious. Might be overthinking it, but curious.

Speaking of me overthinking things, I wonder how smilodons fit into the "human" phylogenetic tree in this world? They're obviously fairly close relatives. Hell, they might even be directly ancestral for all we know.~

The (possibly undead, possibly just animated plastic and imitation fur) smilodon happens to knock a displayed skeleton over as it chases off the guard. The sound of clattering bones brings Dr. Zinian and the reporter over. Pastmaster has already moved on from this room, but he left his new minion to cover his back for him, and it makes an intimidating threat display when the women get too close.

Well, having more sense than most people in this world, the two of them scream and run away. Meanwhile, Pastmaster happens to pillage around the labs near this display until he finds his way to the same room that Dr. Zinian and the reporter were just in. His casket is laying there on the worktable, which tells him that this is a place to check extra thoroughly for related things. He doesn't find anything pertaining to his book, but he does find the reporter's handbag, which he pilfers. Amusingly, he mistakes her lipstick for food, and seems neither thrilled nor disappointed with the taste after taking a bite. After not finding anything of interest in there, he tosses it all away across the room, which happens to hit a button on a pager that she had in there.

Back to SWAT Kat HQ! An alarm goes off! The two dorky pilots get out of their spinner and wobble dizzily to the phone, where they pick it up expecting to hear an important update from "Kelly Briggs." Sounds like that reporter is their April O'Neal, basically. Every furry superteam has one. The two SWAT Kats themselves are also named, belatedly, as Jake and T-Bone. Picking up the phone, T-Bone doesn't get any answer; just some distant clattering sounds, and then a horrible roar followed by a dial tone as the sound of the pager brings the smilodon down on its location and it gets smashed apart between the cat's tusks.

Well, they might not be able to glean too many details from that, but they can tell that their April is in trouble and they know where she is (or at least, where she was when the pager got destroyed). They run loopily, still recovering from their reckless flight training, to their plane and get ready to head over.

That's about halfway through. I'll cut it here.


So far, this definitely seems better than average for a Turtles-Like. It pays a hell of a lot more attention to detail than most, that's for sure. I'll see how I feel once I've finished the pilot, but we're off to a better-than-expected start.