Disney's Short-Lived Ninja Cartoon

[Music] Danny Phantom spider-man and everything except for basically anything besides the character designs of invaders if these were the ingredients chosen to create the 2012 animated children's TV series Randy Cunningham as part of Disney XD's ongoing efforts to turn the network into the boys only utopia they always dreamed of this was a show focused on Randy a ninth grader who also happens to be a ninja which no one besides his best friend Howard knows about in the u.s. the show started off August 2012 the same week gravity falls premiered and much like it only watched a few episodes offer any cunningham late in its lifetime unlike Robert E fault so ever and never really found any incentive to continue watching until today thanks to such lovely viewers as Bianca or also informed me that there is something called a national ninja day which I can only imagine as when all the fortnight's dreamers of the world come together and watch a 24-hour loop of cheerleader ninjas or ninja cheerleaders which is the poorer life decision being a fortnight streamer as previously mentioned the show takes elements from such shows as spider-man and any fandom with this teenager secretly being a superhero concept and seeing as her any as a ninja also makes use of that in him having a scarf which allows him to swing around and catch enemies like spider-man whenever he transforms he also looks almost exactly the same as his usual self hanging out with the same people and with even his voice being the same like Danny Phantom this isn't to say it is a ripoff no in fact miraculous ladybug would go on to borrow many elements of the show and I'd say that shows doing fairly well for itself look at all those season 3 promos look at how fan-made they are look at how original the thumbnails are thanks to a mysterious book named the nomicon which Randy randomly finds in his own room one day for no apparent reason he is able to transform into the ninja a powerful hero destined to protect the world from evil in this case consisting of a creature only known as the sorcerer was able to control all living beings in his reach with the help of his weird slimeballs he's like Mineta but they don't have to pass him off as a good guy in this one the sorcerer also gets assistance from John DiMaggio with a brain for an arm and his assistant Viceroy all three are basically hell-bent on destroying the ninja at all cost will Randy tries to make his way through High School was protecting it and the entire city of norrisville unlike in Danny Phantom he is not surrounded by many friends or even as parents who actually don't remember making a single appearance instead we only have his friend Howard with whom he shares a chemistry mostly consisting of a lot of yelling at each other and fart jokes yeah these are ninth graders all right I'm not the biggest fan of these to read of the bats I'm fun with each on their own whenever they go off to either save the day or to spend some time at an arcade it almost every other episode felt like it had to involve some sort of conflict or just constant bickering between the two this may partially be because the show's creators wanted to infuse some conflict into the show with the troubles of being friends in the situation where one is faced with so much more responsibility but it just got way too frequent for my taste there are supporting characters on the show but most of them are either entirely forgettable plot puppets meant to introduce the two to whatever monster of the week they have to face off against all potential shipping candidates Oh God so much shipping a monster of the week format isn't all the shows going for though most of the time Randy Cunningham has some ongoing narrative over the course of the season either in the form of recurring villains references to lessons erroneous learned with the help of the nomicon or this overarching plot involving one at their classmates named Julian the perkiest Garth you will ever meet despite having a strong affinity for everything Goffe and evil he mostly just stumbles around school getting beaten up a lot but at some point becomes this major side character with an evil dark twin trapped inside a shadow dimension who comes to their world and becomes one of the main villains of the second season well the sorcerer could technically be considered the true antagonist he doesn't seem to have all the deeper backstories I found this low progression from annoying side character to main bad guy to be refreshing that's right this random goth boy is more interesting than a villain literally voice betim Curry's a more threatening villains include jennifer Tilly as a dis sorceress who would often try to take over the town in disguise and the ninja previous to randy mech anthe who I'm pretty sure is supposed to be a parody of Rex from Napoleon Dynamite the villains are such a big part of the show but are really just goofballs for the most part you don't imagine his assistant will more reminiscent of dr. Eggman and his robot sidekicks from sonic X if anything both of them are just as incompetent often being the cause for their own failure and easily defeated by both Randy and even Howard sorry Cunningham this week's is winky face the movie there's a movie prediction which didn't come true I will admit that I can at least somewhat sympathize with de Matos character in the season 1 finale he built a time machine just so he could go back to when his favorite cereal was discontinued so you could buy another box that's about the level of evil dealing with here and these two I'm the only goofy part about the show a lot my intro fool you this is a Disney XD kids to a first and foremost and SH needs to contain as many XD lols as possible I'm talking potty humor bars random blood shots random but monkeys more buds on the butt monkey's butt butts too many butts and most of all a whole lot of what that Jews it's ninja time smoke bomb much like the network's other shows like ik Buttowski this one also has a whole lot of catchphrases which I normally don't have an issue with I understand the marketability and things they can actually work in favor of a shows charm when you stand the right way but why not show is spouting the same few nonsensical slurs in your face throughout every single episode over and over and over it gets hard to wobble of a deal with it's saying something when one of my favorite episodes of the series was that one holiday special where any wasn't even able to use the smoke bombs for an entire evening although season two's Hanukkah special are still the superior holiday episode I don't know maybe I was just too old already when the show first aired but what a much preferred the comedy / was it's fairly unique art style a mixture between the environments and color palette of Tell attunes detention air and Nickelodeon's invader zim while Joan and Vasquez did provide the series with its main characters and most of the monsters designs he wasn't involved with any of the actual animation process although now that I think about it he must have at least talked to the show's staff in person at some point because well just look at the guys voicing Randy and Howard the show is a very rugged grimy look to it especially in sequences the sorcerer is involved in it also kind of reminds me of Motor City another Disney XD show tip Moss was involved in that was airing around the same time Kenny running ham also has surprisingly fluid and diverse action sequences and while most of them only consist of Randy running away for a while until at some point he decided that maybe just spooning someone Linus isn't the best course of action monsters he faces off against was still creative enough to keep you engaged I looked forward to these moments the most when watching the show whenever Randy entered the nomicon they didn't just cheap out and reuse the same sequence over and over and seem to actually care about the law of this universe episodes like the one involving time travel I have mentioned before also proved that the show is capable of stringing along a plotline over a full twenty minutes as they go back to when the first ninja was still around to fight the sorcerer so I'm like an avatar there are multiple threats the ninja of each generation has to face off against as well like this one to two just had nothing better to do these years which even Tim Curry seems to have gotten tired of eventually since he got replaced but Bank Ross in season 2 other than that I'd argue that this season improves upon the first and almost every way though not just because of the introduction of that story our convention but also with improved lighting more interaction with the other students at school and far we had a plot lines there was a certain charm to the completely ludicrous nature of this show you can tell that they were trying really hard to produce the best possible silly action comedy for edgy kids they could surfer dudes don't have bros to play vids with they were trying really hard it seems like the comedy wasn't their full focus at first though in the show's pilot you can see that Heidi weinerman Howard sister and host of the school's news show was intended to be the ninjas love interest while still having no clue but his real identity John a matchless character would have kept tabs on the whereabouts of the ninja alongside Viceroy and a new character named Judy the sorcerer is known to be seen though only Howard and when his relationship seems to have fully remained the same well it would have much preferred an even more dramatic turn for the series in its second season with something like this romance subplot going on I also get that not every shot is an X D can be gravity falls when the season 2 finale rolled around the Creator still seemed pretty confident it would go on for at least a few more years though left it on a pretty hefty cliffhanger involving a mysterious characters scene and many of the episodes prior who announced to finally take on the ninja in the upcoming season the show was canceled shortly after but one of the show's creators would go on to start a series of 9 secrets never revealed about the show on his tumblr which was also cancelled after only five of them are released and they asked me whenever grow attached to anything the resulting finale were left with was at least satisfying enough to give closure to that whole Julianne arc with Randy and the sorcerer teaming up in a cool two on one fight against him I would like to know though that they actually used that dumb annoying trope where one characters to move away and the other gets pissed at him only for them to averted by the end of it sure do an episode like that I don't care just maybe don't put it in your season finale if you aren't even a hundred percent sure the series would go on for another season maybe what I wanted it to not really there's not that much for me to say about Randy Cunningham that doesn't become apparent from watching just one episode as it tends to be very predictable in the way its characters are written and the plots will play out it got to the point where there was an episode in which I literally predicted two jokes before they were about to happen in succession which I guess boils down to the comedy again but seeing as how this is an action comedy I can't really ignore that aspect just because it looks pretty I can't partially recommend the show if you're a nun for some fast paced action cool monster designs weird atmosphere and great songs in there except for the theme song funnily enough which despite its great visuals is just god-awful much prefer the ATLA parody when Howard took over for an episode Randy Cunningham is a decent show with a few flaws here and there that I could see others being able to overlook and I just hope you were able to enjoy the show when I couldn't I'm not here to change anyone's opinions about the things they love that's what litleo chat is for you no one's gonna fall for that Howard [Music]

Channel: Cosmodore

Views: 623,921

Rating: 4.9289107 out of 5

Keywords: randy cunningham, 9th grade ninja, ninth grade ninja, nostalgia, disney xd, reviews, cartoons, animation, disney, cosmodore, smokebomb, ninja, animated series, kick buttowski, disney channel, oh yeah was a thing, randy cunningham 9th grade ninja, Ninja Total, randy cunningham ninja total, Der Ninja aus der 9. Klasse, Un Ninja in classe, 9. Sınıf Ninja, nomicon, candy runningham, tim curry, sonic movie

Id: Nhxw99tMryk

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2019