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Dreamscape
Dealing with fears is a common yet typically insightful subject for a story. In fact, it’s a big topic of some of the strongest and most creative episodes I’ve covered. They also have the potential to reveal some deep truths about certain characters, especially if the fears are of something painful or tragic that could happen at any point. While this episode does a fine job of showing how crippling fears can be, the actual fears are honestly kind of laughable.
It all happens when Jack obtains a newly revealed Shen Gong Wu called the Shadow of Fear. Its power is to allow him to enter people’s minds and bring their deepest darkest fears to life. Along the way, Jack has a very entertaining way of highlighting his scheme and progress. For this episode, he takes up becoming a film director, documenting the entire Shen Gong Wu quest right down applying makeup and having a script of how he wants battles to go. It’s a great showing of his charisma as a villain and highlights that even as an evil genius obsessed with robots, he’s quite versatile in a variety of outlets.
As for the fears of his enemies, when he first enters the Xiaolin Warriors’ minds with the Shadow of Fear, they’re cowering in fear so much, suggesting they’re of something major. Omi’s fear in particular is so big that he doesn’t even want to go out and fight, which is something he’s always up for. That’s not even mentioning that his big fear makes him abandon his guarding position of the temple’s Shen Gong Wu vault, allowing Jack to steal some.
Then when the Warriors set out to retrieve them, the fears are not of anything terribly deep or foreboding of dark futures at all. Omi’s fear is of a squirrel, and while he’s had bad encounters with them twice before, that’s hardly enough to cower before them. Squirrels always seemed like painful nuisances than actual fears. Kimiko’s fear is of a broken doll she apparently used to play with, and even now it keeps saying she wants her to play. It may look creepy broken, but it doesn’t feel like enough to send her running. Why doesn't she realize the doll just wants to play? Maybe if she did, there'd be no problems. Clay’s fear is his own grandmother pinching his cheeks. I get he may not like the pinching, but surely she must be nice on the whole since she is his family. Raimundo’s fear of jellyfish makes the most sense though since they can be dangerous. On the whole though, the fears feel very petty on the surface and I can’t buy that they’d be bad enough to hold the Warriors back from fighting. I just with that they’d just face them like they’re advised to since it feels so easy to do so.
At the next Shen Gong Wu hunt, they get around their fears by swapping them, which is improvising according to Jack’s directing talk. This is impossible to do when the Xiaolin Showdown requires each Warrior to face their own fears in a sumo wrestling contest. By the way, everyone as a sumo wrestler honestly looks more frightening than the monstrous fears. The Warriors end up winning the showdown by getting the courage to fight their fears, but while it’s great to finally get it, I feel their defeats could have been more interesting. Perhaps they could have looked at the fears and realized that they are not as bad as they think. I mean one of them just wants to play, one is a family member, and two are just animals acting in accordance with nature. There are honestly far worse things to fear than them like what could happen to their egos, their group dynamic, or the whole world. I feel like if the episode explored that it would be much stronger.
Still, I give credit for the dark atmosphere it manages to craft and how certain characters approach outwitting their foes.
B+
The Ranking
1. Citadel of Doom
2. Enter the Dragon
3. Days Past
4. PandaTown
5. The Sands of Time
6. Crystal Glasses
7. Dreamscape
8. The Shard of Lightning
9. Hear Some Evil, See Some Evil
10. Sizing Up Omi
The next Xiaolin Showdown review introduces us to Master Monk Guan and Chase Young.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Speaking Terms" and "Tooth and Nail" from Rocko's Modern Life.
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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