I must've spent hours watching this as a kid, as it's been there, lodged in my memory all the way up to my current age of 17. I could remember very little about it yet somehow it never left my mind. After getting it on DVD recently I find it is as good if not better than I could recall.
The series follows the adventures of Captain Bucky O' Hare and the crew of his ship, the Righteous Indignation, in their battle against the toad menace. It's a war of mammals vs amphibians, and with the mammals fleet consisting of just one ship at the start of the series going up against an enormous toad star fleet, Bucky and co. are outnumbered. The crew are joined by human science nerd boy Willy DuWitt, who inadvertently transports himself through to 'The Aniverse' from our own world.
Visually it is quite impressive, the designs are very original, the ships are unique and extremely cool and characters are all fun, colourful and all completely different in appearance. The animation is better than most Saturday morning cartoons and while jerky on occasions, the action comes thick and fast so it is not a bother. The voice artists do a great job, even if speech is a little over-exaggerated from time to time. The story lines are all unique and interesting and on first viewing it's easy to get addicted to wanting to know where they'll end up next.
The heroes of the cartoon are all likable and it's easy to get attached to them. Bucky is completely heroic and there is not a bad bone in his body. However his trusting nature and inclination to walk into at least one trap per episode it seems often get him into trouble. Deadeye Duck is the cocky, trigger happy four armed pirate gunner of the ship. He tends to say the same things a lot, usually something to do with his lust for 'croaking toads' but doesn't get annoying. The ship's sultry pilot, Jenny the Cat will go down with fans of anthropomorphic women, *wink wink*, and she is a pretty cool character, harnessing mysterious witch-like powers. Bruiser the baboon is dumb but lovable and the robot Blinky is painfully cute. You feel sorry for the poor little guy as he is frequently captured.
Humour comes from the utter idiocy of the toads. The air Marshal is suitably stressed out of his head for the whole series and says everything like he's about to explode. Also the frequent commercials on Toad TV, showcasing wart cream and constant images of voluptuous scantily clad toad girls prove amusing.
The parallels to Star Wars are clear from the off. Characters all seem to have Star Wars counterparts, Deadeye duck is a very Han Solo like character, Bruiser could be Chewbacca and Blinky takes on the role of R2D2 and C3PO rolled into one. On the evil side there's an evil toad emperor, his right hand man who is a dead toad inside a mechanical body (Vader anyone?), the bumbling toad legions are referred to as stormtroopers and the money hungry bad-guy-for-hire Al Negator could be seen as a crocodile Boba Fett. There even seems to be scenes and dialogue taken straight from if not heavily influenced by the Star Wars films. e.g. "You're actually going to go into an asteroid field???"
The only negative part of the storytelling is the part of Willy DuWitt. He is the human character who constantly flits between the aniverse and his own uninteresting homeworld of earth. Whenever the storyline goes over to his antics with bullies at school, it gets a bit lame, but then it doesn't last long, so it's easy to forgive. Another negative point is that it's obviously censored. There's no toads getting shot in the head. However there is lots of explosions, spaceship destroying and robot trashing as well as hands on violence.
Overall it's a good, action packed sci fi cartoon that should never have been cancelled. Anyone who says it just jumped on the TMNT bandwagon should be pointed in the direction of the original 70's comics. The TMNT cartoon is undoubtedly why this got the green light but this has not been shoddily thrown together by any means.
9.5/10 Recommended for fans of: -Star Wars -Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles -Any of the 90s super hero animals cartoons (swat cats, biker mice from mars etc) -Science Fiction action in general
