User blog:DoodleFox/The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar Review

(IDK if I'll do more of these, but this is just something I needed to get off my chest.)

The Lion King! One of Disney’s most popular animated films, rivaling Frozen. The movie spawned games, toys, clothes, books, and of course, more movies! The Lion King was a great but flawed movie with memorable songs, characters, and locations! Then we got Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride, which was one of the Disney sequels that was actually worth existing, and after that, we got Lion King ½, which is a prequel to the first one starring Timon and Pumbaa.

So, after 21 years of the movie existing, Disney announced they would be making a spin-off series!…for Disney Junior. Already, there are concerns. You cut out a major portion of the fanbase (adults), and give the new series to a group of people who are mostly too young to know about the 21-year history behind the series. With Gravity Falls ending in 2 DAYS, (R.I.P.) this could have filled the hole it left behind with the series’ lore, interesting characters, and beautiful landscapes.

Guess which one they succeeded at?

It may not be in my age demographic, but The Lion Guard fails at nearly every aspect the series is famous for. With the proper love and care, it could have been a great series, but instead, it’s just a giant mess of sloppy animation, bland characters, and failing at making THE MUSIC interesting. So, let’s review this thing.

Let’s start with characters, as they make or break a story. There are 4 I want to highlight: Bunga, Kion, the cheetah girl, (forgot her name), and Simba. Let’s start with Bunga, aka the most annoying character the series has spawned. He’s every bad kids show trope rolled into one: annoying voice, fart jokes, and the inability to learn lessons as shown in an episode later in the series. (The TV was on and I got a glimpse at the horror that is Bunga.) Also, he’s the adopted child of Timon and Pumbaa, who, despite being hyped up in the trailer, appear for less than 4 MINUTES in the special.

The other 3 aren’t all the special, and it’s the same with the other characters. Kion is just a male version of Kiara from the second movie, as he’s basically the new version of his dad as a child. (Kiara’s entire personality has been changed to a tattletale, too.) Speaking of Simba, he’s really weird, as his voice doesn’t even sound like his one from the original movies, and he just…dumps this responsibility on his son to lead a team of the Prideland’s “best,” and is unusually rude when asks his friends to join. He seems to think only lions can get the job done despite the fact he was, oh, I don’t know, RAISED BY A WARTHOG AND A MEERKAT. Finally, the cheetah girl is snotty and mean, pressuring Kion to use the roar somewhere in the special. Every other one isn’t really worthy of an explanation, as they follow the tropes of most cartoons and have little to no personality.

Also, there’s one REALLY BIG issue, and that’s that The Lion Guard ruins the plot of Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride, and even a bit of the original.

You see, Simba explains that Scar was the leader of the original Lion Guard before he used the roar to kill off the other lions in the group. Why would Mufasa let Scar wander around after he killed about 4 other lions? The main issue is that if Scar killed the members of the guard, he can’t have a pride of his own…which was the entire plot of The Lion King 2, in which Scar has a pride! So in that context, why the heck is Kiara still here if this special gives her no reason to exist in the first place?! It was a poorly executed plot, in my opinion..

Credit where credit is due, though: the backgrounds are WONDERFUL. They look great and they mesh well with the setting, ESPECIALLY Pride Rock when there’s the one shot of it at the beginning where it’s zoomed out. The trees, rocks, grass, etc. all feel like they belong in the world of The Lion King and I gotta commend the artists for that. However, that may be my only positive note in the entire review.

Speaking of backgrounds, let’s get to something else that should mix well with them, (but don’t) the character animation! The designs are…harmless enough, although Kion looks like a fan character you’d find on deviantart. There are two main issues, however: the eyes on each character and the walk cycles. The eyes are sort of nitpicky for me, as they feel WAY too large and childish for anything Lion King related, ESPECIALLY on Simba…good lord. But the biggest issue (besides Bunga) is the WALK CYCLES. The characters look like they slide along the terrain they’re standing on. They look and feel…wrong. Like, surely with all the animated series and movies they’ve done, at least ONE person on the staff would notice this and say, “Hey, Kevin. The walk cycles look like junk.” So you have characters that don’t mesh well with the backgrounds at all with comically large eyes.

However, there’s one more aspect I’ve been meaning to talk about: the songs. In films like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Toy Story 3, you can see they borrow, repeat, or “mirror” sequences from the previous films, and that’s exactly what Lion Guard: Return of the Roar is fascinated with. For one, they don’t open with The Circle of Life, a TRADITION of anything Lion King related. But the rest of the songs range from bland, (the first one) to lazy, (Tonight, We Strike) all the way back to Bunga levels of annoying. (Zuka Zama)

In short, don’t believe the hype about Lion Guard: Return of the Roar. The characters range from bland, out of character, and annoying, the animation is horrible at some parts, and the songs are blander than the toast you make in the morning. It’s main issue is that it tries WAY too hard to appeal to Disney Junior’s demographic, aka young kids, resulting in a watered down series with bad animation, characters, and songs. The ONLY thing I would recommend from this film is to find the backgrounds and use them as a screensaver, because those are the star of the film, in my opinion. And it’s because of all it’s tremendous flaws that I give Lion Guard: Return of the Roar a 3.5/10. Thanks for reading, and I’d like to see your feedback! If you enjoyed the film, it’s great you can enjoy something I just…can’t. This was DoodleFox, and once again, thanks for reading!