Saturday, September 8, 2018

'Toon Reviews 21: Xiaolin Showdown Season 1 Episode 8: Night of the Sapphire Dragon


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Night of the Sapphire Dragon
The featured Shen Gong Wu for this episode has a huge mystery surrounding it and a huge dark direction to take the story in.  As a result, the series becomes more than just a light-hearted action series. 
The mystery is apparent at the beginning when it’s seen as a black dragon bauble, but no one knows its name or abilities.  That said, getting the Shen Gong Wu brings on the exciting tone for the episode.  It’s an intense dive into a volcano to retrieve it before Jack Spicer does.  We even get a huge Xiaolin Showdown for it that’s big on intensity in the volcanic setting. This could be a problem through getting the climactic showdown in so early in the episode with nothing else living up to it.  However, as great as the showdown is, what follows is just as exciting, maybe more. 
The Xiaolin Warriors win the Shen Gong Wu, but its mystery persists and from that, the darker turn slowly becomes apparent.  The buildup to the darkness feels natural to not make what happens feel out of place.  Things start calm as Kimiko researches the Shen Gong Wu, then when she scratches it, there’s a layer of sapphire-blue under the black.  Things get dark the moment the dragon’s eyes glow and the room fills with blue smoke. The result is the darkest fate imaginable in fiction when Kimiko turns into solid sapphire, and more people around the Xiaolin Temple face petrification over time.  While the occurrences leave a lot of shock of many good people becoming inanimate objects fated to never be heard, it thickens the desire to learn how this is happening. 
The petrification aspect soon crosses with the mystery of what the new Shen Gong Wu is like.  It looks like a black dragon, but it’s actually called the Sapphire Dragon.  It goes from a bauble to a real blue dragon that turns the good, evil, and indifferent into sapphire, getting more powerful with every victim.  It only loses its power when covered in soot, which is why it was hidden in a volcano.  Something making people statues at will makes the petrification instances more disturbing than it already is.  Even so, it does make the statues its sentient lackeys who attack the only remaining victim, Dojo. 
Speaking of Dojo, this episode is a major shining role for him developing past just being the Warriors’ smart-talking dragon guide to Shen Gong Wu.  He’s self-conscious about his strength after failing to help his comrades get the Sapphire Dragon earlier. Also, he's constantly cowering in fear when the Sapphire Dragon starts its dark powers doesn’t help his case.  It’s an endearing side of Dojo whose conflict is not foreign to most people who can easily feel inferior in certain areas. 

His eventual takedown of the Sapphire Dragon not only brings his character to a good conclusion for the episode, but is also very clever.  There are a few signs of Clay’s hot sauce being resilient to intense heat by sustaining the volcanic lava and how he suggests Dojo use it to build up his fire breath.  It turns out that’s just what Dojo does to save the day.  In a humorous Western getup, he mans the hot sauce bottles like a cowboy welding his guns, drinks them all, and gets a fire breath that overpowers the Sapphire Dragon’s power.
With everyone back to normal and the Sapphire Dragon once again dormant , it’s a big grand end to the ensuing drama and Dojo’s arc for the episode.  It leaves the episode as one of the show’s grandest Shen Gong Wu escapades which sells the dangers of the artifacts, develops characters, and is big on creativity.
A+


The Ranking
  1. Night of the Sapphire Dragon
  2. Shen Yi Bu
  3. Chameleon
  4. Katnappe
  5. The Journey of a Thousand Miles
  6. Like a Rock
  7. Ring of the Nine Dragons
  8. Tangled Web
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Omi has to claim a new Shen Gong Wu through playing basketball in New York City.
If you would like to check out other Xiaolin Showdown reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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