He-Man or Thundercats... Why?

Masters of the Universe
1

Thundercats all the way. Why? Becasue the Thundercats storylines, for the most parts, continued from show to show and what was going in a few shows ago, affected future storylines. Great writing! Another aspect Thundercats excelled in way character development. The creators of He-Man and the writers did very little to give the characters an introduction or some type of clear background. It was like they just threw them into the show and some of the characters only appeared a couple of times and that was it. It wasn’t until She-Ra came out that the attention to details and storylines were put on the frontburner.

Thundercats, on the other hand had great character and storyline development, although, towards the end, I got tired of every other Tundercat turning into babies. What was that like 6 shows where one or more Thundercats were reduced to infancy?

Being that the Thundercats had great character development, you could not help but love the characters, villians included and you actually cared about what happened to them. In He-Man, I could care less about many of the characters partly because that connection was not established from early on in the series. He-man, Battle Cat, Skeletor, and maybe a few others were the only characters I ever cared about.

Overall, its an easy win. the Thundercats is a far superior show when compared to He-man in all aspects including background music and definitley audio. In He-Man, it was easy to hear that many of the voice actors were voicing many of the characters with little variation.

Also, the animation in the Thudercats was ten times better. In He-Man, they used the same cels way to often, but as a kid, I did not pay attention.

Originally posted on the ThunderCats forums and moved here to the heman.org Masters of the Universe forum.

2

Chris here…

I’m a huge fan of the classic He-Man & She-Ra shows from Filmation, and so it’s quite a hard choice for me to make - but, in a crunch situation I would go for ThunderCats. :slight_smile:

Partly that’s because of nostalgia - ThunderCats was the first action-adventure property I was ever “into”, from which sprang my love for He-Man and other properties, and I have more happy memories of playing ThunderCats than anything else! :slight_smile: But also, I just felt ThunderCats had a tiny (and I do mean tiny) edge on He-Man in terms of pacing and excitement, and obviously superior animation. It’s very, very tough for me, but ThunderCats edges it by a “whisker” (groan!)! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

3

I actually prefer the ideas and characters of He-Man in general, and the whole storyline of the mythos.

But, in terms of a well made cartoon, I’d go with Thundercats, It just seems superior to me, it had a mature storyline with excellent animation and character development, and still keeps me entertained. The filmation He-Man just seemed to talk down to its viewers with the only episodes that really jump out being written by a select few writers like Paul Dini and Larry Detillio. Out of the whole of classic He-Man, I only enjoy about half the episodes, where as Thundercats has a bit more variety and can be more engaging.

So, as a concept, I prefer MOTU. But as a cartoon, I prefer Thundercats…I hope that makes sense :slight_smile:

4

Well I’m not going to go much indepth as to why i like Thundercats more than He-Man. Dont get me wrong He-Man is a classic and always will be. I loved it as a child but now as an adult…I’m sorry but I cant stand watching one episode. The storyline compared to Thundercats is far from being up to par, animation is far better and entertainment factor is superb. I can always sit down and watch episodes without thinking wow when will it be over, or wow when am i going to see some action. Thundercats all the way.

5

I’m quite biased, because I love He-Man by nostalgy-means alone, and Thundercats were introduced to me only few years ago.

In He-Man, I love the character-dynamics that were established in those episodes that are the best of series, in a no-brainer coincidense, making them the best. In a way, the looser continuity can make any individual kid tuning in a fan, because of the clear intro that tells what you need to know and an upcoming episode that doesn’t require a previous seeing of the show. Voice-acting is also magnificent considering the amount of people that worked at the time and the special effects count where they matter.

Thundercats looks immediatly flashier and keeps things in tight continuity, with showcasing heroes and villains each on their terms. With the continuity building, you can tune in casually and see a whole episode in space or in a small village with berbils, which requires you to see an episode or two more to fully grasp what it is about. It’s looking the “grass-level” what I call on animation-shows; to understand how a normal day would go with these characters and why specifically the adventure on the episode one is watching makes it either a great one or a dud.

On the whole, I too like the concept of MotU more, but would propably recommend a younger kid first seeing MotU and right after it Thundercats. MotU gives most of it’s morals very straight-on, which suits a younder viewer while TC sneakily injects them as suddenly a characters starts talking to the camera about “following the rules”.
MotU suits for the young 20-something because after you’re older you begin to understand better how much the characters are like actual people that you care about.

Also on a personal note, the “theme” in He-Man of an individual shouting he has the power onto his own to do what wants, is perfect for a young kid trying to prove himself/herself to the world about standing on own feet. The “big moment” on Thundercats where the hero is using this mighty magical sword to call for help is again something that I’d see working better for an older kid.

6

Although I love He-Man, Thundercats would get my vote. The animation seemed a little better than He-man’s at the time, and the stories were so good.

7

Oh dear, what a tough choice. Let’s see
He-Man is basically the genre originator, so it has a basic, even atavic flair to it. It takes the concepts and expresses them in their most basic form. There’s a sorceress? Let’s call her…Sorceress! There’s a beast man? Let’s call him Beast Man! Things are clear as water, and it is definitely easier to “jump into” it. It had some unfortunate ideas, like Orko and He-Man’s secret identity, but overall the simple idea of combining sword-and -sorcery imagery with superpowers is a dream come true.
Thundercats is a continuation of the trend. Not as original, but definitely more polished, with a lot more brains put into it. It still has the best intro I’ve seen on American TV, and the backgrounds are just breathtaking. The universe of the Thundercats is more consistent and less naive (which is good and bad, I think) and definitely has a bigger scope.
So, He-Man wins on concept but Thundercats wins on execution. I’ll have to go for concept. It’s easier to polish the better idea, which makes me wonder what went wrong with the remake…

8

I agree with everything Thunderhood wrote. To add something, I like that all the villians were featured in the Thundercats show. With He-Man it was only Skelator and a few of his henchmen even though most of the time it was always a monster, an evil queen or a boring wizard they fought. The really good Thundercats episodes felt a bit more mature than He-Man which was more towards kids.
I can listed to the Thundercats theme all day!! I love He-Man but Thundercats take it!

9

Howdy

He-Man all the way. The acting was better, the stories were better and the characters were far more interesting.

Acting: In He-Man characters rarey spoke where they would pronounce every syllable in every word, in Thundercats nearly everyone does…and it is really annoying. Also characters like the Sorceress (obviously boosted by Linda Gary) just spoke so well.

Stories: There are only a handfull of Thundercats eps that I would classic from the ones I have seen so far: The Mountain, The SuperPower Potion and a couple of others. I also especially liked Thundercubs 1-5 and obviously Thundercats HO! Okay so there may 15 or 20 great eps but that still pales to the amount of classically written He-Man episodes: Teela’s Quest, The Dragon Invasion, Masks of Power, Reign of the Monster, Creatures from the Tar Swamp, Dawn of Dragoon, Evilseed, Prince Adam No More, The Taking of Grayskull, The Dragon’s Gift, The Search, Valley of Power, House of Shokoti Part 2, Double Edged Sword, The Mystery of Man-E-Faces, Eternal Darkness, Temple of the Sun, Dree-Elle’s Return, Eye of the Beholder, Castle of Heroes, The Witch and the Warrior, The Return of Granamyr, Pawns of the Game Master, Golden Disks of Knowledge, The Remedy…okay I think you get my point, I won’t even go into season 2.

Also the He-Man morals were much better done. In Thundercats I always felt they were tacked on but in He-Man…for the most part were there and made sense.

BUT Thundercats did have superior animation…not doubts there and better action but for storytelling in legend: He-Man is the Master of the Univers :slight_smile:

Chris M

10

Chris here…

Well, it’s good to get a differing opinion - there’s a tendency on message boards for the question “X property vs. Y property” to be heavily biased in favour of the property that message board is devoted to! :smiley:

This I do partially agree with - whilst I have no issues with any of the voice acting on ThunderCats, I do agree that the voice acting on He-Man was marginally superior. However, for me there’s not much in it, and I have to say I have a higher opinion of TCats’ voice acting than a lot of other He-Man fans! :slight_smile:

Well, if I can get away with saying I think that’s a slightly subjective argument, given that several of those He-Man episodes you mentioned are not generally regarded by the online community as “classics” as such, at least not in the same vein as episodes like “Into the Abyss”, “The Problem With Power”, “To Save Skeletor”, etc. Don’t get me wrong, some of those episodes I think could be subject to overhyping! :slight_smile: But, I don’t think you can necessarily say “He-Man had more ‘classic’ episodes than ThunderCats”, because IMO that’s a subjective viewpoint! :slight_smile:

(That said, I really like all of the He-Man episodes you listed - especially glad to see “The Remedy” getting a mention, I think that’s probably the most underrated episode out of all 130! :))

For me it’s kind of two different approaches - I’ve heard a lot of fans of both properties say that what they found better about ThunderCats was that it didn’t “preach at you” (their words, definitely not mine! ;)) like He-Man did by having the moral segments at the end. Conversely, I love the morals at the end of He-Man episodes and I love the whole moral centre that the show had in general. It’s horses for courses I guess! :slight_smile:

Like I say, it’s a very tough choice for me personally to make, but ThunderCats edges it largely because of nostalgia and also because without ThunderCats I would never have gotten into other action properties like He-Man. However, like I say, it’s great to see a detailed post in this thread from the other side of the coin! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

11

Howdy

Well you can always expect my honesty with debates like this no matter what forum I am on.

I agree it is subjective but I was more doing it from my viewpoint and explaining why I feel He-Man is better :slight_smile:

Yes the Remedy isn’t mentioned alot and I can’t understand why. (I was tempted to put in Quest for He-Man).

He-Man while the animation suits the show perfectly, Thundercats has far better lighting and explosions etc. He-Man was adequate in those areas but with very little shading especially in the first season ther was not much eye candy. BUT it does make little things even better for exaplme the beautiful scene in The Problem with Power where He-Man is about to transform back to Adam and throw away the sword (that scene also gives me goosebumps). Then you have the just as beautiful transformation in Into the Abyss outside of Grayskull.

Strange for me since with a lot of things I rarely go into detail but I felt it needed as I didn’t want to say “He-Man is better end of”.

Chris M

12

Between the two… hmmmmmmmm why choose?
Thundercats, it had some amazing plots. He-Man was cool but it wasn’t till Princess of Power that I felt a strong connection to that universe, but in through them I was in heaven! They inspired my love of writing and developed my imagination I don’t think I’d be who I am had I missed one or the other! :pumyraveryhappy:

13

I grew up watching Thundercats. For a few months I went over to He-Man when I bought a few VHS Videos but was soon back to Thundercats.

I am unable to really compare the two as I have not watched He-Man since I was little. All I know is that as a child it never captured my imagination in the same way as Thundercats.

Today the concept of Thundercats I still find amazing, so I guess thats why I would say Thundercats..

14

When I was a kid, I lived way out in the country where we had two stations on television. If the wind was blowing just right, we were able to pick up a third. Two of my main shows each day though were ThunderCats and Masters of the Universe, which played back to back Mondays through Fridays. I had to watch both of them each day.

I loved and still love both shows for so many reasons, so I can’t choose one over the other. At this point I’d throw Transformers in there as well, along with several other shows. So sorry, I’m of no help in this thread. I just thought I’d throw my thoughts in the mix though.

  • Nate
15

I guess it is like comparing night and day to me. Thundercats was a better show hands down. I really think the two shows were geared for different age groups. Thundercats as older kids and He-Man toward younger.

16

TekN8, sounds like me growing up.

Yeah, I think the Thundercats is a far superior show in every aspect.

I just purchased He-Man, Season Two, Volume Two yesterday and I liked the interviews more than the actual show. Same goes for much of the series. I find it to be boring and the show has not aged to well.

In my opinion, the saving grace for He-Man was He-Man and of course, Battle-Cat and Skeletor. The show does not have too much weight if they are not on it.

Thundercats, on the other hand had multiply characters that could hold up the show without using Lion-o too much.

I was going to make a new tpic, but maybe not. I really hope that WBV makes the effort to create a pamphlet, just like the ones in the He-Man DVDs that list every single episode with a clip from each show and a brief synopsis.

In the case of the Thundercats, it would have to be one pamphlet. I thought that that was a nice touch and i appreciated BCI for doing that in the He-Man contents.

What are the odds of that happening?

17

What you say is very true. The problem with He-Man is that almost all of the characters were not developed while in other 80’s shows they were; including Thundercats, GI Joe , Transformers etc. Which is why I think He-Man wasn’t kept alive as long as GI Joe and Transformers. Filmation forgot about the toys and they focused only on a few characters. So you can say there are two He-Man universes: the toy world and the Toon world.
He-Man has many great episodes, but He-Man isn’t an action show if you analize it deeply. It’s more like adventures tales. The action is not the best thing on He-Man and I am sure everyone knows that.

I am a big He-man fan, I have bought all the DVD sets so far and will keep buying them. Even the NA He-Man, many people hate it but the cartoon is great if you watch it and give it a chance. But this fact doesn’t blind me and I can see the cons and pros of the toon.

Many of He-man’s best episodes explore some origins and backstories of characters or give character development to them like The Rainbow Warrior and Problem with Power. They are some of the best because they explore what we needed from the start and there are only a couple like these. Filmation’s He-Man doesn’t have an origin for the main character, the intro simply lets us know what happened in a very quick and easy way so how can we expect origins for every character? That was a very sad and dissapointing side of the classic toon. And it is too bad cause He-man has so many cool characters like Scareglow, Jitsu ,Fisto, the Horde etc. The late minicomics had a much better vision of the He-man universe.
A 3 to 6 year old will enjoy the classic toon if you sit him to watch it but a 7 to 10 year old will get bored cause toons nowdays have more action in them ( This isn’t really a good thing in many cases cause they lack content as well, this is just to prove what I am saying) and they will lose interest very quickly beacuse they are used to action.

But if you watch Thundercats, Visionaries, GI Joe etc they have that in them plus character develpment and will be more appealing to them than classic He-man. This is sad but true.

I prefer He-man cause they have a better universe and the idea is more creative but Thundercats is a very close second.

18

That’s a really good point, which I’d not really thought about before. It’s very true, Transformers and G.I Joe had a lot more characters, which sometimes made them too cluttered, but also gave you loads of characters, and they developed them all, often giving each character an episode to themselves and actually building upon them in future episodes. There was a lot more variety in the casts. He-Man had a small cast of regulars, but the other characters rarely got much spotlight, whenever they did use a new toy character it would often be for one episode, then we’d never see them again save a minor cameo.
Perhaps if they had made better use of the huge ammount of characters available the show and toyline might have lasted longer.

19

Chris here…

I actually disagree - I think one of the strengths of the original, Filmation He-Man cartoon is that it did only focus on a core group of characters who you would come to view in the context of the series as a “family”. IMO, one of the mistakes made by Mike Young Productions with the 2003 MOTU cartoon was focussing on too many characters too quickly, and thus not properly connecting the audience with any of them. :slight_smile:

For me, ThunderCats got the balance just right - initially there were eight main good characters (Lion-O, Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara, WilyKit, WilyKat, Snarf and Jaga) and four main evil ones (Mumm-Ra, S-S-Slithe, Monkian, Jackalman), with the addition of Vultureman later on in season 1 to make five main villains. Whilst throughout the series there would be guest characters introduced, some of them recurring guests like Willa, the Berbils, etc., the focus was always on the main ThunderCats and their primary enemies. There were just enough different characters there to make the mix interesting without making things confusing, or risking turning the characters into rather faceless individuals with limited characterisation. :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

20

Atfer buying the last He-Man DVD to complete my set, I have to say that the show is a complete bore.

I always loved Thundercats much more than He-Man, but this proves it. I was able to watch all three DVD sets of Thundercats back to back without falling alseep, on the other hand, I feel alseep numerous times watching many of the He-Man episodes. There were only about ten episodes that I can truly say were really interesting.

She-Ra has more of a chance of giving the Thundercats a run for its money. I always found She-ra to be more entertaining and I love the background music too.

Please, please, please TPTB do not go the same route as the producers who made the last He-Man cartoon called, “The New Adventures of He-Man”.

If Warner Bros. would just make the Thundercats cartoon a contiuation, I think it would be okay. Update the characters looks a little for modern times, give them much better animation with the technology we have now, and just continue the storylines.

Now, if they continue the storyline, the questions will be; will it start at or around the time that the last episode finished or will it start years later.

If it is years later, that would be cool because that would leave a lot fof room for the writers to be creative and to write flashback scenes. Who knows, it would be cool if they actually started the new series with Thundera being blown up again and the Thundercats having to return back to Third Earth once more. Wouldn’t that be cool and ironic to restart the show?

The episode title could be, “Thundercats Return to Third Earth…Once More”.

Ahhhhhhh, the possiblities! - I am cool with any storyline so as long as they don’t distort character personalities and rewrite history. I want to see ALL of the main characters from the Thundercat universe featured in the new thundercats TV show unlike the TMNTs where Kraig, Be-bop and Rocksteady are not in it.