Shadow Raiders - Uncommon Hero (Vol 1)

Amazon.com

When the evil Beast Planet destroys the Planet Tek, only Princess Tekla escapes. She crashes on the distant Planet Ice and warns King Cryos and some raiders from Planet Rock of their imminent danger. Graveheart, a Stallone-type hero made of rock, swears to fight the menace. But defeating the Beast Planet's forces will require the four worlds of the solar system to abandon centuries of internecine warfare and unite. King Cryos and his feisty daughter travel with Graveheart to Planet Rock. King Mantle rejects the idea of an alliance and exiles Graveheart, but Graveheart's friend Jade joins the group. On Planet Fire, they recruit young Prince Pyrus, whose fiery hair unfortunately makes his head look like an unsuccessful flambé dessert. The dedicated cadre fights their first major battle on Planet Bone. King Femur, a leering Gremlins look-alike, tries to play both ends against the middle and finds himself attacked by Beast. This derivative motion-capture/computer-graphics series borrows heavily from the Star Wars films: Planet Ice looks like Hoth, Planet Rock resembles Tatooine, and the space battles with the Beast Drones are lifted from the attack on the Death Star. Rated "suitable for all ages," but violence and grotesque imagery are inappropriate for children under 8. Contains the first four episodes: 1. "Behold the Beast," 2. "On the Rocks," 3. "Born in Fire," 4. "Bad to the Bone." --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews:

The Secret's Out.......2006-03-28

Shadow Raiders is a quite pedestrian title for such a ground breaking series. This show began as a simple tie-in for the War Planets toys, but Mainframe Entertainment kicked it up a notch, creating an involved backstory and peopling? the planets with an extensive roster of entities. Mainframe is known for cutting-edge CGI and in-depth story lines as previously shown in ReBoot and Transformers Beast Wars, but this show took both to new levels.

Viewers may have passed on the show when it originally aired, dismissing it as another glorified advertisement for a toy line, and viewers now would hardly be attracted by the lackluster title "Shadow Raiders." But as viewers then and now have discovered, this show is one of the best kept secrets in animation. Now on DVD, at last the secret's out.

Doesn't get better .......2005-01-04

I saw this when it was a television series called War Planets, which alternately is based on a collection of rather interesting toys. I have no idea why they would change the title to Shadow Raiders, which says absolutely nothing about the series. Usually when you see a show based on toys all you really get is a shameful commercial for the toys. This time you get something that not only goes beyond most other toy-shows but actually is a lot better than most regular animated shows that came out at the time.

This show has it all. Character and plot development, great soundtrack, impressive special effects, all the things you come NOT to expect from a kids show. This first DVD volume gives you the creation of the underlying plot of the whole series... survival against the planet-eating Beast. In these four episodes you get a whole lot of story development and get introduced to a fascinating back-story of how these several planets who have an abundance of one resource constantly steal from each other to get the resources they sorely lack.

The actual computer generated animation was excellent for its time, rivaling that of similar shows like Reboot (even surpassing in my opinion). I'm guessing those of you used to seeing more modern CG like Shrek and Incredibles might balk at this earlier work, but if you do that's your loss. The voice talents they got for this series are perfect. Not an oddball in the bunch from the serious characters to the comedy reliefs. The extras on the DVD aren't plentiful, but it's better than nothing. You get some interesting background data (albeit a small amount) as well as 350 degree views of various stuff from the show.

This is a series worth getting if you're a fan of science fiction. The story premise alone is worth looking at, but it's even better with the fact the execution of said premise was done so well. You really gotta check this out.

Excellent!.......2002-01-05

This is a great show not to be passed by. The story line is superb the charcters are all great.

If you are a ReBoot fan who has never seen War Planets/Shadow Raiders do not hesitate to check it out you will not be dissapointed. I have only just recenty seen this show after buying it on DVD and fell in love with it and was disapointed when I found out there were only 2 seasons made, but those 2 seasons are both on DVD and play out extreamly well.

This is definatly not just a kids show.
If you are a scifi fan I highly reccommend Shadow Raiders!

Great DVD set of a Great series.......2001-11-02

This disc is great the quality of the picture an sound is supurb, and the extras are interesting and well organised throughout the set. The series is great and everyone who likes cgi stuff and Transformers should see it. It works quite well as a prelude to Transformers the Movie, kind of like a story of what unicron did before he got into what he did in that movie. Although of course the beast in this is not unicron but he could be, I think the series ran it's course and did all it could do, if it hd carried on longer it would just have gotten thinner and dragged out. Also it's great that every episode is here just as they were originally, only two tiny things to fault with this set. One, there is one episode that didn't really need to be there, but that's a problem with the original writing. Also all the episodes have 1 advert chapter break instead of two, but this is such a minor point it's not even worth mentioning.

Great Sic--Fiction Show!!! (A viewer from Australia ).......2001-06-09

Shadow Raiders is a show that is full of good twists.You can HATE Lord Mantel for exiling Graveheart from his home world, Planet Rock. I like he part when Graveheart's best friend Jade joins him on his mission(she would have to be my favourite). At some times I hate Emperor Femur because of all the truouble he courses for everyone(like the time he used Tekla to steel Planet Rock's Battle Moons).At times we see different views of each of the creatures in the show. But its a great show, worth watching.

DVD:

DVD

DVD