Don't Lose Hope

I know it's been a while since official news for the new series has come out. I'm sure many of you readers are becoming impatient or losing hope altogether.

I know some information, but I'm not going to divulge it until I'm allowed to. All I can really say is that progress has been happening. So don't worry. :)

SWAT Kats Themes

With the Megakat City and Metallikats themes behind us, I will now focus on listing themes for the SWAT Kats themselves.

From various Gundam series:

The Wings of a Boy that Killed Adolescence
Stand Up to the Victory
Don't Stop! Carry On!
Winners Forever
Just Communication

Others unrelated to Gundam:

Tightrope
South Side

And, that's it. Man I listen to too much music that would fit the Metallikats...

New Music Videos Will Come, Eventually

The Kickstarter for the cross platform OpenShot editor was successful, which means that I will eventually have an editor for making videos again. Judging by the site, it looks like the editor won't be available until sometime early next year. But I have several videos that I plan to make, in order:

• A music video featuring the Enforcers (this one was a request, so it will be done first)
• A music video for the SWAT Kats using the song Busy Child by the Crystal Method
• A Metallikats music video using the Apex remix of Epidemic by Neonlight and Rolar

So I'll be busy with video editing next year for certain. I'll post each one when I'm done with them.

Metallikats Music

A continuation of the music posts. Since I listen to a lot of aggressive sounding electronic music, it's only natural that I do the Metallikats first. I've posted most of these before on the swatkats.us forums.

Fight Like You Live
Potemkin
Scan Me
Slalom
Code Error
Bioactive
Depth
Interlace
Hydraulic
Robotwars
Mosaic

If you're interested in finding more music like this, most of these tracks fall under either neurofunk or darkstep (both of which are sub-genres of drum and bass).

SWAT Kats on Cartoon Network, Inevitable?

Turns out the execs at CN have decided to cancel more action cartoons. Latest on the chopping block? Young Justice and Green Lantern TAS. I've noted twice before that action cartoons have become the equivalent of second class citizens on Cartoon Network, but this trend is worrying. It seems that any show that isn't comedy, live-action, or both can't go more than two seasons at most without being cancelled.

Let's say we do get a new SWAT Kats series going. Judging by the current conditions at CN the new show would last two seasons at most before being cancelled. It would be like the original run all over again, except this go around would hurt more due to the amount of effort put in by the Tremblays and us fans to get a new series made.

Preventing this problem is simple at first glance: stay the heck away from CN. But appearances can be deceiving. Since Time Warner owns some rights to the SWAT Kats franchise (possibly distribution rights), we probably won't be able to put it on a channel that isn't owned by them. So let's assume we're stuck with Time Warner channels. Our choices then boil down to either TBS, CW, or TNT. But think about this for a while: why aren't more cartoons put on those channels to begin with? There's a frustratingly common idea in American society that cartoons are exclusively for children. No doubt a few of the higher ups at Time Warner hold this opinion as well. The fact of the matter is this: we most likely won't have a choice as to how a new SWAT Kats series will be distributed, the Time Warner execs will be the ones making that decision. And that decision will be colored by the idea that only children watch cartoons, and it's off to Cartoon Network with the new SWAT Kats series.

Surprisingly, I'm not pessimistic at all. We're still quite a ways away from getting a new series made and no one can predict stuff like this with absolute certainty. Who knows? Maybe CN will have a change of heart and stop the rampant cancellations. Plus we're part of one of the best connected cartoon fandoms on the internet. Which is all the more astonishing by the fact that practically nothing new has happened in the nearly 20 years that have elapsed post-cancellation (aside from fan based stuff of course). If anything we should take the current news not with despair, but with the knowledge that keeping a new series alive would be an ongoing task and thus a good opportunity for the fandom to flex some of its muscle. In the process we could prove to people that cartoons aren't just for children, and that would be reward in and of itself.

I'll be posting more music related stuff in the following days/weeks.

Music and Megakat City

As we wait for further announcements from the Tremblays, the blog will talk about various SWAT Kats related ideas. One thing I would like to talk about is music.

The series itself had some great music. It was mostly rock music, which fit due to the action in the series. But what if we were to take a look at Megakat City and its kats on a normal ho-hum day? I've been listening to some of the music from Mark Farina's Mushroom Jazz series. The genre of the music (at least according to Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music) is deep house. I might be biased here due to the fact that I live near Chicago (where house music is said to have started) but I think the music would fit perfectly for a normal day in Megakat City.

This Beat
Reflections
Transit
Alive
Just Checkin'
Keep Your Head Up

What are your thoughts?

Dee Bradley Baker as... Razor?

There's a bit of a problem when it comes to who will voice Razor. Barry Gordon (the original voice actor for Razor) is still alive, but he's currently a teacher at California State University. His last voice acting role was for a music video back in 2009. And he hasn't done any series voice acts for an even longer period of time. At this point, it seems that Barry Gordon is out as far as voicing Razor in a new Swat Kats series.

If not Barry Gordon, then who? I had recently watched a clip from the new Thundercats series featuring the redesigned Monkian and Jackalman. It turns out that Jackalman's voice has some similarity to Razor's voice (to me at least). This series' Jackalman was voiced by Dee Bradley Baker according to online sources. The clip I saw was located here (fast forward to about 3:21).