Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five

Since I was fat during my school years, this animation gave me motivation. Panda's short film. It was fun.

This short film added to the story as a whole , however , the animation was quite raw , it's good for a short film , but still , it's a big studio .. I expected more .

The original film, despite it's silly ending, was at least one of DreamWorks Animation's stronger films with great characters, excellent Kung Fu action sequences, a compelling story, beautiful animation, and an epic music score from Hans Zimmer and John Powell. So, when I saw this short that continues where the first Kung Fu Panda left off, I thought it wouldn't be as good as the film. It turns out that it's a very entertaining short, although it doesn't have the same inspiring message that made it very solid.

The story, while explaining the back-stories of the Furious Five really well, is a tad predictable in some parts; the humor isn't as strong as the movie and I expected it to be a bit longer like say 40 minutes so that it can explain the back-stories better. That's all I have to say about the flaws.

Everything else is great. The CGI is fine, but it's traditional animation sequences of the Furious Five's backstories is what made this worth watching for me. It's so beautiful and the character designs from the movie are nicely detailed here. The voice acting is pretty good and although we only saw Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, and David Cross return, the voice actors for only four of the Furious Five including Tara Strong, Max Koch, Jessica DiCicco, and James Sie (Jackie from Jackie Chan Adventures) did a good job. The music score from Hans Zimmer, & John Powell (along with Henry Jackman), does retain the same tunes from the movie while using a lot of different stuff in it, which isn't a bad thing. The characters are still as likable as they were especially the young Furious Five warriors.

Overall, Secrets of the Furious Five isn't as inspiring as the original film, but it proved to be a lot more entertaining than I imagined and I think those who haven't seen it should check it out.

First secrets special of the Kung Fu Panda franchise and it gives much needed stories of the Furious Five before they were the Furious Five. The movies are more meant for Po's journey and good to have specials to help show the beginnings of the team. Thus one is more of them by themselves and Secrets of the Scroll is them teaming up for the first time. Good if they had a feature length spin-off film to help explain their absence in Kung Fu Panda 4 and help give them the screen time they deserve. Also, I like the 2D animation of these Secrets specials. It helps it stick out from the 3D animation of today. It seems like 2D animation is dying and it could always be a time for it to make a comeback. Now we have 2.5D animation that blends the two together rather than just fully just 2D. Kung Fu Panda has more scenes that are fully 3D and others are fully 2D but doesn't blend them into one.

Well, lets just say that the producers did not try on making this side feature. It doesn't look like its too much beyond story board. The only tie-in is the whole Kung Fu Panda part.

Anyway, you get to see little bits a pieces of the 5 main characters aside from Jack Black's panda. Yes, to the serious fan of the movie I guess they are OK. But to anybody else, they are a waste of time. And there is nothing more than that.

Overall, not much can be said. It isn't good and its not even in CGI. Lets hope next time they can make a side feature that actually has the same animation skill as the main feature. "F"