Skeleton Warriors (1994) – CB 289

I was four when this came out, and I would always see the commercials for the toys on TV and I thought they looked like the coolest things ever, even though I never got any. As for the TV show, I knew of it but I never watched it because I was only four and wasn’t allowed to use the remote control so I basically just watched whatever my parents put on, which was Fox Kids (which was probably for the best as the 1994-1995 season was probably the blocks’ best year).

When I was reminded of the show as an adult I just brushed it off as a typical stupid, cheesy action figure show. I wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally watched it, and while it is some of what I thought it was, I had a lot of fun with it and thought that the writing was better than I had originally gave it credit for.

Heh, I like how you guys said you can’t say Skeleton Warriors without screaming it like in the theme song. I can’t hear the words Skeleton Warriors without mentally following it up with that instrumental Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.

When I first watched this show I was drawn to the idea of the heroes fighting what was essentially an unwinnable war and was impressed that a kids cartoon would make a show based on such a concept. So I was initially disappointed when they found a way to turn the skeletons back into humans in the third episode. However, after giving it some thought I realized that they had to add some hope spots to this series otherwise it would’ve risked becoming too bleak and the audience would start to not care about what’s going on. Still, maybe it could’ve happened later than the third episode.

While I do agree with you that this show could benefit more from picking a tone, I feel the need to defend it a bit. For as dark and serious as Batman The Animated Series was, it still had plenty of jokey moments in it, and even Batman himself would make the occasional quip. Also I don’t think it’s fair to criticize this show for not being as dark as Batman The Animated Series and Gargoyles. Batman was on Fox and Gargoyles aired on syndicated networks, while this show aired on CBS, a network show. This show probably faced much stricter censorship due to being a major network show that anyone could watch without paying for cable.

I also think you hit the nail right on the head when you compared this show’s animation to X-Men’s animation. This show was part of a block on CBS Saturday Mornings called The Action Zone, along with WildC.A.T.S. and the eighth season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the beginning of ‘The Red Sky’ era). The entire block was created as a way to capitalize off the success of the X-Men cartoon, and it was evident with the shows that were part of the block. What with Skeleton Warriors similar animation style, the eighth season of Ninja Turtles focusing more on them being mutants and suddenly being feared and distrusted by the humans, and WildC.A.T.S……well, there’s a lot of obvious similarities that I don’t think I need to get into.