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Description
Episode: 24
Year: 2005
Writer(s): Jeff Allen
Jack Spicer's face says it all really: Chase Young is a fucking cool villain! This is the point in the show where it decided to take on a somewhat more serious overall tone with a far more threatening and competent villain than anything they've ever faced before. Chase Young has been alive since the days of Grand Master Dashi and Wuya's imprisonment, courtesy of the Lao Mang Long Soup. This soup, made from the full body of Chinese dragons, keeps him young and maintains a level of immortality; when he doesn't have the soup after some time, he becomes that thing! I guess the old saying is true: you are what you eat! Which in my case makes me a bloated sack of cheese, sauce and dough due to my diet consisting of pizza and junk food.
But in all seriousness, this type of shift really didn't benefit Xiaolin Showdown in the long run. Up until this point, the show has always been a comedy with the darker consequences in the background, or Dragon Ball GT done right! Chase Young himself, while he is cool, is a villain sue like Gargoyles' David Xanatos, only with none of the depth. He's such a badass, he doesn't even need Shen Gong Wu to fight, and we see him and the titular Master Monk Guan, who I might add is one of the more depth filled characters, fight in a legitimate battle of marital arts prowess for the freedom of Dojo and the Monks. Despite what I said, Season 2 was still very enjoyable giving us all sorts of wacky adventures, new villains and vastly impressive Wu. Those problems wouldn't really surface until Season 3, which I'll talk about some other time. I love plenty of episodes from Season 2 and plan to review a good chunk of them in the future as well, especially the season finale!
Sorry if this review sounds brief, but this is a very interesting episode for the show that really does a lot to change up the typical Saturday morning cartoon formula. I don't want to spoil too much of the episode itself, it really is something you need to see for yourself. Make your own judgments about whether the change in tone was a good thing or not; after all, who am I to tell you to get your own opinions?
Xiaolin Showdown is caught between Canada and Warner Brothers.
1001 Animations is from
Regulas314
This is how like 80% of the show goes like.
1. The Xiaolin Warriors are all mucking around at the temple, probably training or having some sort of personal issue.
2. Dojo's Shen Gong Wu sense starts tingling, they get on him and fly to its location somewhere in the world.
3. Jack Spicer and Wuyah, or some other reoccurring foe are in hot pursuit of the new Shen Gong Wu.
4. The Xiaolin Warriors search for the Shen Gong Wu, using any others they've acquired in the past episodes to search it out. While doing so, usually whatever personal issue they had before starts peeping up at times.
5. Suddenly they cross paths with the said bad guy, usually Jack. A fight breaks out between bad guy's minions (like Jack's robots or Katnappe's mutant cats), while they still look for the Shen Gong Wu.
6. The good and bad guy ALWAYS happen to touch the Shen Gong Wu at the same time, triggering an Xiaolin Showdown between the two. They wager one Wu they have, and begin.
7. As always, this starts another crazy challenge with them using the one they put up for bets. During the challenge, usually the personal issue starts to affect them, and the outcome is often decided if the said hero can resolve personal issue. If he doesn't though, the bad guys usually win.
8. The Xiaolin Warriors either return home and learn a valuable lesson, or leave empty-handed while having to dwell upon past mistakes.
Rinse and repeat for the next bunch of episodes.