Hear the legend of the Kung Fu Panda. Raised in a noodle shop never seeking glory or fame.
He climbed a mountain top and earned the Dragon Warrior name. Ooh! Ah! Ya! Kung Fu Panda!
Master Shi-fu saw the warrior blossom and master the skills of bodacious and awesome. Kung Fu Panda!
He lives and he trains and he fights with the Furious Five. Protect the Valley, somethin’, somethin’, somethin’ somethin’ alive! Ooh! Ah! Ooh! Kung Fu Panda! Legends of awesomeness! Sweet.
The Nickelodeon series, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness revisits your favorite characters from the Kung Fu Panda films, chronicling the further adventures of Po the Dragon Warrior and the Furious Fives. This DVD set collects of seven episodes from the first season of the TV series:
After his friends make fun of him for being gullible, Po storms off and falls into a pit. He is rescued by croc bandit Fung, who asks Po to help him in return. Fung needs Po to help him rescue his brother who has been taken by Jong Sung Jai Kai Chow (voiced by Wayne Knight). Po sees a kindred spirit in Fung—both are constantly making mistakes—but can he really be trusted?
As part of a peace mission, Po, Tigress and Mantis must escort princess Mei Li safely to the Qidan king. However, the bratty, spoiled princess proves to be a handful.
Po and Tigress are transporting Shifu’s favorite ruby-encrusted statue of Oogway when they are attacked by Fung and his croc bandits, who handcuff the two together. The chained pair manages to escape with the ruby, but the bandits are in hot pursuit. Now the “Furious Two” must learn to work together and overcome their differences.
Po looks into the Mystical Mirror of Yin and Yang and finds himself split into two Po’s—one overly-polite and one overly-mischievous and rude. When evil Po discovers that they feel each other’s pain, he locks up nice Po to keep him from getting hurt. If things aren’t fixed by sundown, evil Po will become the sole Dragon Warrior.
Master Shifu discovers that Tong Fo hid the real Sacred War Hammer of Lei Lang before he was arrested and replaced it with a fake. He decides to send one of the Furious Five into the prison disguised as fugitive criminal Sheng to learn the location of the real hammer. Po takes it upon himself to be the one to enter Chorh-Gom, but when things go awry, Sheng escapes and plans to use the hammer to decimate the Valley of Peace.
Tigress and Po rescue an old man being robbed by Fung and his croc bandits, only to discover the man is actually Shifu’s father Shirong (Malcolm McDowell). However, Shifu is not happy out the reunion—his father is a thief and a con man who abandoned him at an early age.
When Po discovers he has a fan club, he visits the members at their club house. They are excited to meet the Dragon Warrior, but this excitement quickly wanes when the see that Po doesn’t have anything to hit. Po decides to release the deadly Mongolian Fist Demon so he has an enemy to fight to impress his fans.
Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness successfully recaptures the humor and spirit of the original films. The episodes on this DVD are quite enjoyable. Each one is a well-crafted, well-written story that contains lots of humor, action and adventure, and some really witty dialog.
While most of the films’ voice cast from have been replaced for this TV series (only Viper (Lucy Liu) and Mr. Ping (James Hong) are performed by the same actors), the replacement voice cast does an excellent job at sounding like the originals. The series also adds some fun new villains like crocodile bandit Fung (John DiMaggio) and his bumbling gang, and criminal mastermind monkey Tong Fo, who sounds a lot like Christopher Walken.
This is a fun collection of episodes, but with the TV series having just completed airing its second season of 26 episodes (and the third season premiering tomorrow), it’s a little disappointing that we only get 7 of those 52 episodes on this DVD. While I would love to see complete season releases for the series, this DVD is still a good sampling of the show for new viewers or fans of the films.
While the series airs in HD on Nickelodeon, we only get a DVD release. However, the picture quality looks really good on this DVD set. I really didn’t notice any use of the surround channels in the DVD’s 5.1 audio soundtrack, but it does make really good use of the stereo channels. The DVD contains absolutely no extras.
I really enjoyed this DVD and I can see these episodes having great replay value. I would have given this a Highly Recommended if not for the small number of episodes and lack of extras. However, it’s still a great collection of episodes that are worth checking out.
What’s Included on the DVD:
Episodes:
- Seven episodes from the first season: (2:47:03)
- “Cood Croc, Bad Croc”
- “The Princess and the Po”
- “Chain Reaction”
- “Bad Po”
- “Jailhouse Panda”
- “Father Crime”
- “Po Fans Out”
- Widescreen 1.78:1
- Audio: English DD 5.1, Spanish Surround DD 2.0, French Surround DD 2.0
- Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
- Closed Captioned
Extras:
- Paper insert contains unique code to unlock power-ups, exclusive downloads and more at www.nick.com/kungfupanda
Final Thoughts:
Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness is an awesome series that recaptures all of the fun and spirit of the Kung Fu Panda films. It introduces some fun new characters while also exploring the great characters that we already love. It is a little disappointing that this DVD only contains 7 random episodes from the first season and no bonus features. However, the episodes themselves are really entertaining and have high re-watch value. This DVD is definitely worth checking out.
