Animation i'm just going to let you all know now that over the next few days to a week chances are your going to see a lot more posts from me just because I have a ton of animated episode reviews that I want to do and I have the episodes already on my laptop. So yeah you better get ready to see alot of reviews of older shows because trust me I have alot of them and as you can tell for this review i'm taking a look at the very first episode of The Real Ghostbusters called "Ghosts R Us" so enjoy guys and girls and everything inbetween.
The plot of the episode is the Ghostbusters find themselves being run out of business called Ghosts R Us but the Ghostbusters suspect that nothing quite what it seems with the new ghost hunting business. I found the plot to be honestly rather enjoyable and while the plot isn't as good the plot of the first movie for a Saturday morning cartoon the plot was honestly rather enjoyable and it was fun to see this storyline play out.
Starring in the episode is Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler and Mr. Conrad , Frank Welker as Ray Stantz , Zonk and Slimer , Garfield voice actor Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman and Arsenio Hall as Winston Zeddemore. Also starring in the episode is Laura Summer as Janine Melnitz and Snarg and Ron Masak as Slug and Toy Ghost. I'm honestly shocked that alot of the cast voice multiple characters in this episode just because you really cannot tell at all that it's them doing the voices for alot of the episodes cast of character.
In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode it was honestly not that bad and was alot better then what I thought it was going to be. Which given the cast is kind of to be expected and I felt that all of the characters were perfectly cast but I will say that it was easy to spot Frank Welker since he's using the voice he does for Fred in Scooby-Doo but performance wise every actor brought it in my opinion.
For once I actually have no idea who for sure did the animation for this episode since several companies are listed as doing the animation for the show but none are listed as doing the animation for the actual episode.Which is a shame because the animation in this episode is honestly pretty freaking good i;m not going to lie and say that it's amazing because it's honestly not but for a Saturday morning TV show the animation was really freaking decent which in my opinion is a good thing.
Now while doing some research for the show I found out that only one actor from the show was interested in reprising his role from the film and that was the great Ernie Hudson. However instead of doing the respectful thing and offering him the role of Winston Zeddemore he was force to audition which makes no sense since he already played the character in the first film so why not just offer him the role.
One of the things that I think this show is well known for is it's creature / monster design and yeah the monsters / creatures in this episode look really creepy. I never thought that i'd say this about a kids show but they actually made the monsters in this episode quite scary which I honestly loved since the Ghostbusters movie had some scary scenes and so it makes sense that the cartoon version should have some creepy looking monsters in it as well.
Even tho this does get explained in a later episode I still find it jarring that they have Slimer a character who was somewhat of a villain in the movie act as an alley to the Ghostbusters not only in this episode but in this whole series. I'm not against the character becoming alley's with the Ghostbusters but when you explain it in a later episode and not in the first one it can come across as jarring especially for those of us who have seen the first film and know the character to be a kind of villain.
This show started airing on September 13th 1986 and run for seven seasons lasting until October 5th 1991 with the show airing on ABC for it's entire run. When this show and oddly enough the character of Slimer was at his most popular the show would be retooled into Slimer And The Real Ghostbusters with the show adding in a new Slimer cartoon which I guess makes sense since the character was popular with kids but why not just give him his own show there;s no need to retool a show that was already a hit.
This episode saw the introduction of the Ecto-2 which is as far as I can gather a mini helicopter type vehicle that the Ghostbusters store in the back of Ecto-1. Which to me is just weird since it's such an obvious ploy to sell a toy version of the vehicle plus it honestly makes you question firstly how in the hell these four guys who know nothing about flying managed to build a fully functioning mini helicopter and they somehow managed to fit it in to the back of Ecto-1.
Overall this was a pretty decent debut episode and if i'm right for many this was there introduction to the world of Ghostbusters. That being said even tho this episode is pretty fun to watch the episode does get a few things wrong all of which i've covered in this review of the episode but at the same time I have to give this show credit since it did keep the Ghostbusters brand name alive and in the minds of the public as such this episode gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.
All the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Ghostbusters fandom wiki page. I fully admit I wasn't expecting to find any high definition images not only for this show but this episode and so to find quite alot of HD images for the episode is to me quite surprising as such I have no choice but to recommend the official Ghostbusters fandom wiki page to those of you who want to use high definition images of from anything to do with the Ghostbusters brand be it animated shows , live action films , the comics or the games.