Synopsis: The gang of Mystery Inc. take a trip to Japan and find themselves circling Asia and the Pacific in a treasure hunt, racing against the vengeful Black Samurai and his Ninja warriors to find the legendary Sword of Fate, an ancient blade fabled to possess extraordinary supernatural powers.
OWN IT ON DVD – April 7, 2009
I grew up on cartoons, and one of the shows that was always on was the original Scooby Doo which I saw in syndication in the 1980s. Still that means I grew up on this show, and while I can appreciate bringing it into the year 2009, I felt a bit nostalgic at the same time. We have the whole gang here though, which is nice, because I was never a big fan of the shows where we have only a section of the crew.
Does everyone have a knack in Scooby-Doo shows for picking out the villain? Yeah, it usually is not by the context of the clues but rather from when they appear on the screen and their body type. That is ok though because we always had fun as children (and adults) by putting all the clues together at the end of the show. What was interesting with this movie was that after we think everything is over, we are only halfway done with the story. Here is where it gets a bit tricky. On one hand, everything that leads up to the unmasking of the villain is all built upon reality, or some sort of reality, the villain can fly because he has a jet pack etc, they’re robots… But after the unmasking we realize that this story then takes a turn to the mystic and magical end. I was always a fan of Scooby because it was built around villains that did not have any sort of special powers they were just resourceful. The downfall to that was usually that they were not the super coolest villains either, most were rather mundane, so this movie goes for super cool at the expense of resourceful, and that is something that caters to the age demographic and that is fine.
How awesome was it that the villains are searching for the Sword of Doom, I do not think it gets more evil than that, I just love that name. We also get the patented Scooby-Doo chase scenes in this movie, so they did hit all of the humor that makes a Scooby-Doo movie unique. One of my favorite running jokes on Scooby-Doo is the timed tickle, which we see Scooby use to perfection on the Black Samurai. We also have Scooby-Snacks in vending machines and all of that good stuff. The food jokes are always rampant in a Scooby movie, and we get to see Shaggy and Scooby train to become Samurai. What I found odd was Daphne being invited to a Bloodsport type event, even though her character has never been known to have an interest in the martial arts, but hey, gotta get the story started. While I will not give away the ending I thought it was handled nicely from a story standpoint as well as something that is more kid friendly than I thought it was first going to be.
I wanted to comment a bit on the quality of the cartoon, I thought it was superb. The colors were nice and vibrant, the quality of the animation was very nice as well, the backgrounds themselves and secondary animation was just sick. You can even see it from the stills how crazy good the quality is. You can see from the stills how the background and background animation is just so crisp and honestly quite stunning. I think sometimes when DVD movies are put out they tend to scrimp on some things from a quality end, this is NOT the case with Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword, the animation immerses you in the show. A great job on the technical end of the whole production, kudos.
I did enjoy Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword despite the shortcomings that I have mentioned above. The quality of the cartoon, mixed in with the story was entertaining, it was just a step too far away from what I consider to be the golden age of Scooby-Doo. This is coming from someone though that watched the original series, so you can place my age. I can also take a look at the show from the eyes of a current kid and feel for them, Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword would be a HUGE success. It combines everything that I see in current successful cartoons. It has loveable characters, that are lighthearted and mixes all types of humor while telling the story. It also contains villains with an interesting goal and a journey for the good guys to defeat evil. A good showing to bring the Scooby-Doo gang to a new generation.
Special Features:
Scooby-Doo DOJO! – Take a Kid Friendly Look at the World of Martial Arts and Learn More About the Samurai Tradition
This special feature is a 10 minutes look at the martial arts, with various clips of the cartoon mixed in, to keep it relevant. We have a Sensei who talks a bit about the Samurai’s basic traditions and beliefs, he also touches a bit on Ninja mystique. He then launches into a basic routine for the martial arts. This includes some basic stretching techniques, stances of the martial arts, blocking techniques, and it culminates with a board breaking demonstration. My children loved this portion of the DVD and worked along with the Sensei doing all the different techniques, it was also great for it to be related with the clips of the cartoon that they just watched.
Trailers
We had a bunch of trailers for titles from Warner Brothers, always nice to see if the children are into it before going out and getting the full movie.
The DVD also came with a secret code that allowed you to “Unlock an Exclusive Scooby-Doo Content”
