Marvel fans the company has put out alot of animated content over the years but ever since Disney bought them they've seen to be putting more and more animated shows out. Some are pretty good and some are flat out bad but they all have one thing in common there all released a year or two after a live action movie a great example of that is Guardians Of The Galaxy where the movie debuted in 2014 and the show debuted in 2015 and so here is my review of the first to episodes of Guardians Of The Galaxy: The Animated Series called "Road To Knowhere" and "Knowhere To Run" respectively so enjoy everyone.
The plot of the episodes is the Guardians discover an object that only Peter can open and have to hide the device from Thanos. That's most likely the vaguest plot summery i've ever given but it's also the only one that I could give since these two episodes are really lacking in terms of story with there being very little actually going on as such I don't really see why this had to be a two part episode this story could have very easily have been told in just one episode.
Starring in the episodes are Will Friedle as Peter Quill / Star-Lord , Vanessa Marshall as Gamora and David Sobolov as Drax. Also starring in these episodes are Kevin Michael Richardson as Groot and The Broker , Trevor Devall as Rocket Raccoon , Dave Fennoy as Korath , The great James Arnold Taylor as Yondu and Cosmo and Isaac C. Singleton Jr. and the mad titan himself Thanos. For once I don't have to get a cast list for both episodes because every character who appears in the first episode appears in the second.
As for what I thought about the acting in these two episodes it's honestly not that bad but it's also not that good either. The main issue that I have with the acting is that barring a few performers the actors don't really sound right for there characters take for example the actor playing Korath the voice he uses for that character doesn't fit the character and it's the same with Rocket and that to me is very distracting but tho in the case Rocket the performer actually does a solid job even with the voice that doesn't fit the character.
Doing the animation for these episodes and the rest of the series is Studio Mir who people will know for there work on The Legend Of Korra. I honestly feel that the animation in these episodes is one of the best animation seen from the current Disney Marvel animated shows which i'm not quite sure if that's a good thing or not since the animation here does look fairly average at times espically during the scenes where the characters are standing still but when it comes to action the animation in my opinion is really good.
As you can no doubt work out by the poster but these episodes and the show uses designs based on the 2014 film Guardians Of The Galaxy. Which I guess makes sense since that movie was awesome but at the same time it stops the show from having an identity all it's own since it's reminds people that they could be watching something better hell the first song that they play in the episode is Hooked On A Feeling which is now more well known for being in Guardians Of The Galaxy then being a song released decades before the film was even made.
Now before you all say anything yes I know that alot of the images i'm using aren't from these episodes but in my defense none of the fandom pages have alot of images for this episode and there's not that many HD images on Google so i'm doing the best that I can. That being said I liked the fact that we got to see a bit more of Knowhere in these episodes which I liked because the idea of Knowhere is such a cool one and the first movie didn't give us alot of time on Knowhere and so to it come back and play a big role in these episodes was a good thing in my opinion.
Unlike the first movie these episodes actually give Cosmo something to do which is great because after re-watching these episodes I like this character. To me what makes the character of Cosmo so likeable aside from the fact that he's a cute doggie who is most certainly a good boy is the fact that you can have him team up with any character in this show and the interactions that they could have would be different each time and that makes him fun to watch as well as a fun character.
One of the things that I didn't like about these episodes is that even thor Thanos is the main villain for both episodes he doesn't really play that big of a role in the plot. Which is a shame because as the movies show us he can be a cool villain and so it's a shame to see him wasted in these two episodes hell when it comes to these first two episodes we don't even see him in person until the final act of the second episode with alot of his screen time being present via hologram which really isn't as good as seeing him in person.
The other thing that I didn't like about the first episode is that they turned Groot back into a baby for no reason whatsoever. There's no reason given in the story as to why Groot had to be a baby again and him being in baby form has to impact on the story he's in hi baby form for a few seconds and then due to the events of the episode is really tall and then in the second episode is back to his regular normal form and so I have to ask what was the point in having in his baby form when your not going to do anything with him and it's not going to play a role in the story , to me it seems like the creators of the show saw a rough version of the movie and so included baby Groot just to appeal to people who thought that version of the character's cameo was cute and nothing more which is stupid as hell reason to include that version of the character.
The show started airing on September 5th 2015 and finished airing on June 9th 2019 with the series airing on Disney XD. I will always say that three seasons is good run for any animated show good or bad and the same is true here they had a solid run with seventy seven episodes under there belt which regardless of what you think of the show that's an impressive amount of episodes for any show in my opinion.
Now then since this is an action show that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in these episodes. Like I said the action is where the animation is at it's best for me since everything just leaps of the screen and is stunning to look at during the action scenes it's just a shame then that the action itself is pretty tame we don't get to see the guardians punching or kicking anyone at best we see them shooting the bad guys and that's it which is fine for one or two action scenes but when it's the majority of them it get's boring to watch fast.
Overall these episodes despite there many faults are still fun to watch which for a Guardians Of The Galaxy product is an important thing for me. Even tho i've just said these episodes are fun to watch they do still gave there faults all of which i've covered in this review and i'm sure there's a few of you out there who will tell me that i'm wrong for liking this show but I do feel that it's the best animated show from Marvel under the Disney banner as such these episodes get a combine score of a 7 out of 10 from me.
All images that I used in this review were gathered from either official Guardians Of The Galaxy The Series fandom wiki page or the official Disney fandom wiki page. I honestly cannot say which is the best website to use for images from either this show or these episodes since the Guardians Of The Galaxy The Series fandom wiki page doesn't have that many images and the ones on the Disney fandom wiki page aren't that HD so use either website.