My Review of The Lion Guard · 11:52pm May 3rd, 2022
My TV Show Rating Score:
5/5: It is an awesome show!
4/5: It’s a good show with minor flaws
3/5: It’s overall okay/guilty pleasure
2/5: It’s bad but not awful
1/5: Look, up in the sky! It’s super bad!
0/5: MY EYEEEESSS!!!
Greetings, everyone. This is Mr. J back with another TV show review for today. This evening, I will be reviewing Disney Junior’s animated series based on The Lion King franchise: The Lion Guard. To be completely honest, I have mixed feelings for this series. While it is a serviceable addition to the franchise, it has a lot of weak aspects which I will be analyzing in this review. I personally like to highlight that I’m not a fan of this show by any means; I’ve been watching this for at least two years or so as a matter of fact. With that said, it’s not terrible whatsoever, but it isn’t that amazing either.
This is about a young cub named Kion, the son of Simba and Nala and leader of the Lion Guard. The other members are Fuli, Ono, Beshte, and Bunga. Together, they form the Lion Guard who protect the Pride Lands from a series of villains who seek to disturb the Circle of Life. Plus, this takes place after the events of the first movie and is a midquel for The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride.
First of all, the main characters of this show are one-note and have little to no distinguishing personality. With the exception of Bunga (who is consciously annoying), the other characters are boring Mary Sues/Gary Stus. They may have made some mistakes as actual characters do, but most of the time, they have very little weaknesses of their own. They constantly overpower and beat their enemies with ease in almost every episode. Not once do the hyenas, jackals, crocodiles, or vultures legitimately beat the main characters and defeat them in a battle. NOT. ONCE. EVER. It got incredibly boring very fast. It’s hard to relate to any of these characters if they have no personality or weakness.
Now season 3 at least tried to make Kion a relatable character, but it was too little too late to make me like him as a character since he is boring. And if you consider them carefully, you notice that the Lion Guard don’t act like kids very often. Considering the fact that this show is being aimed for pre-school children, the show runners didn’t do a good job of representing kids perfectly or show how kids should talk their age. How are kids supposed to relate to Kion and his friends if they act like angels all the time? This is why I think they are Mary Sues and not actual characters.
Do NOT get me started with the musical numbers. The songs the characters sing (especially in seasons 2 & 3) always got on my nerves and made me groan in agony. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic didn’t have that many songs in all their episodes, and that’s saying something! It’s just not that necessary to have a song in every episode. Like, seriously?
As for the villains of this show, most of them are pretty entertaining but also are very incompetent because of plot armor. But my number one favorite baddie of the show is, of course, the best Disney villain of all time. You guys already know his name: SCAR!!
................and he did zero jack squat in this series. While I love that he was intelligent, menacing, hammy, and evil like how he was in the movie, I hate the fact that he did absolutely nothing in the show. How the fuck do you manage to bring back one of the most iconic Disney villains in the history of Disney and have him do almost nothing in the show? Yes, he was responsible for giving Kion his scar (with Ushari’s help) to bring him to the path of darkness just like him, but he doesn’t do anything else except allow his minions to do his dirty work for him.
I expected him to be all-powerful in terms of fire magic, sorcery, and necromancy. Also, don’t give me the excuse that “he allowed the hyenas to do his dirty work in the movie and it went well for him”. True, but at this point, he is GIANT LIVING FIRE HEAD WHO CAN WAKE UP AT ANY MOMENT ON A FIRE SPOT. It’s unclear if he has powers of his own, if he could breathe fire like a dragon, grow his own body made of flames, or just walk around free. With that said, he is nerfed to hell to allow our heroes to win every time. He was all talk but no bite.
Nonetheless, David Oyelowo did a great job in voicing Scar, and I fully enjoyed his songs “I have a Plan” and “That’s How I Got My Scar”.
While the voice acting is awesome, the pacing is terribly slow, the plot is tediously boring, most of the episodes are uninteresting filler, and the dialogue is so awkwardly cheesy and cringeworthy. Not to mention that the African catchphrases got old super quick every single time the characters repeatedly uttered them throughout the whole show. But I will say that I love the animation and the character designs for everyone here. It looks fresh and smooth for a kids show, so I’ll give them that.
In conclusion, it’s tolerable for the most part, but it’s not my type of a cartoon animated series. And yes, I’m clearly not the target audience for this show, but as a Lion King fan, I wanted to watch the show to the fullest and see the overall quality thereof. It’s mediocre but serviceable. This gets a 3/5: overall okay.
Peace.
I say the Lion Guard is one of those shows that is a middle ground. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. And there are a few characters I really enjoy like Rani, Jasiri and so on. Also, speaking about Jasiri, I say she one of my favorite characters in the show since beside from Asante, a hyena from a Lion King audiobook Friends for Life. Jasiri is the first hyena that is good and befriends a lion.
Overall, I enjoy this show
When it comes to Scar, the biggest thing to remember is that he can only go somewhere else when fire is ignited or where lava is present. Therefore, he couldn’t leave the volcano as often as he’d want to.
The one good thing about his return in the series was that it felt inspired and very well-thought, something that I highly doubt the real Grogar appearing in Season 9 of MLP: FiM would ever be.
And yes, I do agree with you about the musical numbers. There were many songs that I enjoyed, but if the showrunners thought more carefully with when to incorporate the majority of the songs then they wouldn’t feel as forced.
Other than that, your criticism of the Lion Guard characters themselves reminds me a lot of my own criticism towards Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War”, in that the way he kept achieving victory over the heroes made him come across as a Gary Stu.
5655263
I know that, which is why I included these words:
The fact that the writers limited his whereabouts to only the volcano and whenever lava or fire is present without giving him any sort of power on his own is lazy writing.
That may be true, except he is also guilty of nearly doing absolutely nothing throughout his appearances until “Battle of the Pride Lands.” Granted he has more personality and character than the fake Grogar (which makes him a better villain by comparison), but he still had so much wasted potential. You can’t deny that.
Except that Thanos has more character and had actual weaknesses than these angel Lion Guard members. Not to mention that he is more fleshed out when it comes to his backstory and character development.
5655272
True. But, that still doesn’t excuse the fact that he won every battle in the most unrealistic and illogical ways possible, and it was all as though he was being aided by pure luck!
Heck, the Hulk could beat the biggest of monsters in a throw down, yet Thanos comes along and manages to beat him after a mere first encounter?! How is that even possible?!
Thor manages to at least get an ax into Thanos’s shoulder, yet that doesn’t kill him?! How?!
5655312
That was his chest, not shoulder. Also, if he was a human, then he would be dead for sure.
5655344
Right. Forgot that it was the chest Thor’s ax hit Thanos on.
I actually liked this show, even though I thought it would've worked better as a sequel series to Simba's Pride and have the original cast members reprise their roles.