Aimed at the Saturday morning and weekdays-after-school crowd, Xiaolin Showdown has been a hit with the kids for the WB network and for Cartoon Network. Unfortunately the series seems to have stalled out after three seasons and 52 episodes.
The series features the adventures of four martial arts students who have to go in search of powerful mystical artifacts that have been lost throughout time. Called Shen Gong Wu, these artifacts give the bearer tremendous powers. In addition to our four stalwart heroes, an evil witch named Wuya and her flunky, Jack Spicer, pursue the Shen Gong Wu as well.
This season one collection contains the first 13 episodes on two discs. There’s no extra content for more bang for your buck, but if you love the show, the 13 episodes are great at the price.
I watch the show with my nine-year-old on a regular basis. Xiaolin Showdown had a deep and richly textured history for those that care to delve into it. The magic, the fighting, and the responsibility of the characters all fit into the cartoon world really well. Kids that don’t really care about the development of the world can cruise through the episode superficially and pick up the jokes and the fighting sequences. There are plenty of those.
But for kids like my son, and willing adult participants like myself, Xiaolin Showdown delivers that history and connectivity like pieces of a much larger story unfolding. You can watch the episodes out of order, of course. I did, because I was hit-and-miss with watching them with my son, but as I sat down with the season one discs, I realized how well the pieces fit together and how hard the writers made them stand apart at the same time. It was like viewing an old serial movie from the 1930s or 1940s. Even though every episode ended in a good place instead of a cliffhanger, you know there’s more to come.
In fact, the season one cliffhanger really is a cliffhanger when Raimundo goes over to the evil Heylin side to join the bad guys. That storyline isn’t resolved till a few episodes into season two, which is more tightly plotted.
Our four heroes in the series are Omi, Clay, Raimundo, and Kimiko. Omi is an innocent and naïve young warrior who was raised his entire life in the Xiaolin monastery. At the same time, he can be a bit of an arrogant jerk, and it’s this juxtaposition of qualities that makes him a blast to watch as he pretends to know everything — including stuff that all the kids know he’s got wrong.
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Article comments
1 - Baronius
This really is a good show. I don't know when Chase Young comes along (maybe second season?), but he's a different kind of character. Other villians talk about taking over the world; Chase is evil.
The characters have motivations, and come on, this is a cartoon show, so the writers could have been lazy. They weren't.