Hannibal’s Revenge
A lot of instances with shows feature great ideas but not enough time to properly develop and explore them. That doesn’t mean they don’t deliver in any good execution or bring general entertainment. With this in mind, I’d say this episode is a solid instance of this concept.
Its center is of a legitimately creative idea of combining Shen Gong Wu with modern tech. Kimiko uses the minimized Eye of Dashi and the rarely seen Mind Reader Conch to power her PDA. This allows her to connect to a satellite which opens up access to the minds of just about everyone. A few gag scenes of exposing more personal and embarrassing moments from her teammates are just as much there for training purposes as they are for messing with people. To her credit, it really isn’t long before the plan is used to its productive potential. Thanks to Kimiko, our heroes easily figure out what all their enemies are up to, even setting possible strategies to get back Shen Gong Wu they lost.
In the process, it does shed instances of ideas not being able to be used to their fullest potential. The backdrop of the story features an eclipse going on that’s set to weaken enemies, but we don’t really see the full effects of such an event. It’s just a background detail that’s staged to be something huge, but is hardly even noticeable. The only productive scene the eclipse is a part of is the only seen drawback to Kimiko’s plan. Hannibal Bean just happens to catch sight of her listening in on the thoughts of all the villains and overhears Chase Young explain how the eclipse is going to weaken him. He teams up with Wuya since both of them have a growing disdain towards Chase, and together they steal the Shen Gong Wu from him while he’s weakened. In other words, they do what the Xiaolin Warriors were setting out to do before they even have a chance to pull their idea off. The takeaway of all of this is that while certain beings of evil are manageable for our heroes by themselves, they’re far more formidable working together. For coming from the series’ antagonists, this is honestly a very strong and believable take on the subject of dynamics.
It’s soon decided that the best chance they have to stop these powerful
forces from beating the side of good for long is for them to be beaten by a
much weaker villain. If you know the
cast of this show, you could probably guess that the weakest has got to be Jack
Spicer. With a few boosts to his ego,
which honestly are so shoddily made even he should notice but doesn’t, the
Warriors set Jack up to come out victorious in the next Shen Gong Wu hunt. The thing is, he’s easily beaten, and the
Warriors only gain the advantage when Kimiko uses the Treasure of the Blind
Swordsman to turn her into Jack. Results
are obtained when she faces Chase and Hannibal in a Xiaolin Showdown in this
form and wins, but more faults show from this storytelling move. This could have been done all the time, so
what was even the point of getting Jack himself to beat the villains? The Warriors could have done that all by
themselves. Not to mention it shows just how underutilized something as cool
sounding as the Treasure of the Blind Swordsman is; this is the only time he’s
used to solve a problem. While we’re
left with something fairly good with this episode, it goes to show how
execution of some of its good ideas could really use some work.
On
another note, should I mention that we’re nearing the end of the entire series?
B+
The Ranking
1. Bird of Paradise
2. Wu Got the Power
3. Oil in the Family
4. The Treasure of the Blind Swordsman
5. The Dream Stalker
6. Finding Omi
7. Hannibal’s Revenge
8. Omi Town
9. The Life and Times of Hannibal Roy
Bean
10. Chucky Choo
11. The Return of Master Monk Guan
It is true. The next two reviews are on the final two episodes of the entire series. Next time, we look at the first part of a major time travel saga including an extremely dark alternate universe.
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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