Star Wars fans I promised you that I would be taking another trip to a galaxy far , far away and well I truly did mean it. For you see both this show and Droids were airing at the same time under the name The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour but where as Droids was made for the more adult Star Wars fans the show that i;m reviewing today was made for the younger Star Wars fans and of here is my review of the first episode of Ewoks AKA Star Wars: Ewoks called "The Cries Of The Trees" so then both Star Wars fans and animation fans alike enjoy.
The plot of the episode is an evil witch called Morag captures Queen Izrina (a fairy) and puts a spell on her so is forced to set the forest where Wicket and the other Ewoks live and so it's up and all of the ewoks to put the fire out before the whole forest is burnt down. For a show aimed at little kids the plot was shockingly alot better then what I thought it was going to be I honestly went into this episode expecting it to be pretty light hearted but nope it couldn't be further from that in fact the episode was pretty freaking dark and I loved that as well as the story.
Starring in the show is voice acting legend Cree Summer as Kneesaa , Jim Henshaw as Wicket and Jackie Burroughs as Morag. Also starring in the show is George Buza as Chief Chirpa , Doug Chamberlain as Logray , Paul Chato as Paploo , Alyson Court as Malani , Don Francks as Umwak , Pam Hyatt as Bozzie , Taborah Johnson as Latara , Eric Peterson as Teebo and John Stocker as Widdle Warrick.
As for the acting in the episode it's alot better then the acting in one of the more recent shows i've watched which is Wuzzles but that's not a nigh bar to reach at all. I honestly feel that out of the two Star Wars cartoons that I watched this one has the better acting and that's because just based of this episode of course but the script is better and when you have a good script the actors are of course going to deliver a great performance.
Just like with Droids the animation for not only this episode but also the series was provided by Nelvana. I admit that I wasn't expecting the animation in this series to be good or even passable for that matter and so you can imagine my surprise when it turned out that the animation was actually really good yes it's not as good as something from say Disney for example but it's alot better then it had any right to be.
Unlike with Droids where they made some slight colour changes to C-3PO here Wicket is not only the same colour wise as he is in Return Of The Jedi but his design is actually pretty freaking close to what he looked in Return Of The Jedi as well. I of course have to single out Wicket because he's the only returning character from the films and they honestly did a good job of making him look like his film counterpart and making him look adorable as hell.
In terms of the timeline of when this show is meant to take place I think it's meant to take place before Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Which in turn takes place before Return Of The Jedi so what we have here ladies and gentlemen is a prequel set before another prequel which does mean that this episode and thus this show has the same trappings that all prequels that feature the same characters have in that we already know that there going to make it out alive and so there's no suspense at all.
What kind of is confusing is the fact that in both of the Ewok films and Return Of The Jedi the ewoks cannot speak English hell they barely speak broken English. Yet in this episode and thus this show they speak perfect English and speak in full sentences which really doesn't make any kind of sense whatsoever and this is perhaps the only time where Disney not making stuff canon is a good thing since it now clears up the fact that the Ewoks cannot speaking English that well and so they don't speak English in full sentences.
To me this is better then Droids was and alot of what makes it better comes from the fact that this show in some way expands upon the world of Star Wars. Since before this series aired we had no idea that there were other races living on Endor we just knew that the Ewoks lived there and yet this very episode tells us that there are more races living on the planet and so from that we can gather that some of them would have most likely helped out in Return Of The Jedi.
Now it's not all good i'm afraid since the opening theme song to this show is freaking terrible luckily I cannot find the name of the song. The theme song that they use for this show just doesn't match up with the fun nature of the show at all if anything some thing like Yub Nub would have worked more since it's a song from the movies and it's a fun song the song they have here is very downbeat and just doesn't go well with the show at all.
Now both for it's first season Ewoks aired alongside Droids as part of a programming block called The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour. However when Droids didn't return for a second season and Ewoks did the name of the programming block was changed to The All-New Ewoks and infact this show actually lasted longer then Droids did since this show started on ABC on September 7th 1985 and ended on December 13th 1986 so it lasted one season more then Droids did.
Overall I honestly think that this show is alot better then Droids simply because it's not only in a format that better suits these characters in that it's episodic and is made for little kids but it's also expands on the world of Star Wars. Now im not going to say that this episode is perfect because it's honestly not and so to say so would be freaking dumb but out of the two Star Wars cartons that we got in the eighties i'd rather watch this then Droids any day of the week as such this episode gets a 6.5 out of 10 from this Star Wars fans.
All images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Star Wars fandom wiki page or Google Images. Just like with Droids I wasn't expecting to find any high definition images for this episode and so I wasn't surprised when I couldn't find any at all as such I really can't recommend either website but if I was pushed i'd say use either website since the images your going to find are of the same quality and so it makes no difference whatsoever.