Storyboard:
Two disgraced police officers are assigned dump duty, but continue serving the city as vigilante aviators.
The Sweatbox Review:
By 1990, the glory days of classic Hanna-Barbera productions were largely over. The founders were ready to move onto their own projects after the disappointing process of producing The Jetsons Movie for Universal. (Of course, they could have retired then, too, but both Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera worked into their old age.) Their studio was sold from Great American (formerly Taft) Broadcasting to Turner Productions in 1991, where it became a vital component of Cartoon Network when Turner launched it a year later, and both Bill and Joe worked on directing new shorts for the cable network. The company did find new life on cable, with a number of creator-driven shows appearing there over the next few years, but it certainly wasn’t the same Hanna-Barbera anymore. In 1993, the company also produced a syndicated series that bore little resemblance to anything else in the H-B filmography.
SWAT Kats was created by brothers Christian and Yvon Tremblay, who designed much of the show, while Robert Alvarez did the directing for all the episodes. It ran as part of the weekend syndicated block of programming known as The Funtastic World Of Hanna-Barbera, and was seen on such stations as TBS (you remember— THE SUPERSTATION!). Overseas animation was handled by Seoul-based Hanho Heung-Up Co., Ltd., and it certainly shows in the visuals. The show looks nothing like Secret Squirrel, that’s for sure.
Though I’m a big H-B fan, my first exposure to the show has been the recently released DVD set. First impressions were not good. The first episode, The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice, dropped viewers right into the world of SWAT Kats. While it’s an interesting story premise, with a long-buried wizard being released in the modern day, I was left fairly confused as to the premise of the series. No explanation was given in the initial episode regarding who the SWAT Kats are, or why they do what they do. Characters show up without proper introductions, and it all feels more like an episode from later in the season. Consequently, I really couldn’t care about any of it, and I was left unenthused about watching more. The animation style didn’t help, with too many swooping points of view, and that 80s/90s style of overseas animation that used badly-colored line art backgrounds, and comic-style all-black shading (or big blobs of color) in both backgrounds and figures. Even my kids asked me to never show them an episode of the show again. Not a good sign.
For more info-
http://animatedviews.com/2011/swat-kats-the-radical-squadron-the-complete-series/
