Blackstar

Blackstar was a fun fantasy adventure cartoon that I always looked forward to watching on Saturday mornings. I wanted escapism, brave heroes, cool weapons, goofy sidekicks, and random weirdness. Blackstar delivered! I loved it! Blackstar had everything I wanted from an early 80's Saturday morning fantasy cartoon and more. You just can't beat a brave hero traveling through a black hole to an unknown universe who is armed with a cool sword, rides an even cooler looking flying dragon, is aided by a sorceress and a shape shifter, and battles the villainous Overlord in a strange magical fantasy world filled with all types of impossible creatures (Air-Whales?!) and other assorted weirdness. It was a perfect recipe for enjoyable Saturday morning escapism. Blackstar was fun!

I remember watching this show as a kid. And it was one of my favorite show. For years been trying to look for it and finally saw it at a Fry's three weeks ago and purchased it. The package contains 2 DVDs with a total of 13 cartoons. Not bad for like $14 which equals to a little over $1 per cartoon.

So far I saw like 8 shows and it was OK. Notice a lot of "repeat animation" like when the dragon is swooping across the screens or the pink creatures running away.

One thing disappointing is looking at the titles, there would be no "ending" to the series. Similar to Pirates of Dark Water where the series were canceled before the 10th stone was found. As the previous comment were true, the 1st episode does not have a "beginning".

Another thing I notice is that somehow every time I watch one of the cartoons, it makes me sleepy. Don't know if you guys feel the same. But at least I get a good nap after watching it.

On its face, "Blackstar" is nothing more than a second rate pastiche of iconic IP's like "John Carter", Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers". Had that been its only virtue, it would've been buried under the rubble of pop culture obscurity decades ago. But, like Frank Stallone, "Blackstar" has a famous brother. In this case, his name is He-Man.

A few years after "Blackstar" ended its one season run, Filmation Studios released "Masters of the Universe". After the government relaxed rules regarding the use of animated series as promotional tools for toy lines (in exchange for the 'toons providing a "In today's episode we learned"... message tacked on at the end), toy companies sought out studios that could create daily or weekly animated series that would act as an organic promotional vehicle. The first of these was Mattel Toys' "Masters of the Universe" aka "He-Man".

The toy line was released in 1982 and became a massive success. One year later, the cartoon followed suit, and together they became a juggernaut for the next half decade. Seeing this, second-tier toy company Galoob decided to try and get in on the act and licensed Filmation's earlier series, "Blackstar". The results were what you'd expect. The cartoon, which had been off the air for two years, did not create any appetite for the toys, and so the line quickly fizzled out and ended up at yard sales and in land fills across America.

So why do I go into all of this? I guess I'm bored. Kind of like when I watch "Blackstar". To be honest, it's not a terrible cartoon. The voice acting is exactly that of "Masters of the Universe", featuring most of the same players. The animation here isn't quite as vivid, but it uses the same techniques and recycles more than a Green Peace member. To be sure the music isn't as good as "Masters of the Universe", and while it has a (relatively) more serious tone, it lacks the humor and fun camp that makes "MOTU" still an enjoyable watch; albeit in small doses.

In the end, this is a series that I found far more interesting to research than to watch.

It is simply a bad cartoon as most of the toons are not really animated besides a single arm moving or the moth and nothing else. And there is a lot of reuse of those few animations that are made.

Story lines are quite boring classical evil conquers but is in the end defeated anyway. Somehow they use swords and stuff like that. Quite strange as everything even the swords shoots beams all the time. They should have gone for ray guns instead in my opinion.

Series is not ended. But you will not miss the end. All episodes are ended just with different opponents each time.

Good for kids most likely. If grown up find another cartoon.

Blackstar was an animated fantasy series done by Filmation, who went on to create He-man and the Masters of the Universe and She-ra, Princess of Power. In fact Blackstar seems very much like a warm-up for He-man; the combined science fiction/fantasy atmosphere of Sagar would be reborn in a new form in He-man's Eternia, which would end up getting developed a lot more deeply because He-man ran for something like 130 episodes and Blackstar ran only 13. I last saw this series in the early 80's, and I still vividly recall it with wonder. It was a true epic fantasy. I highly recommend it if you can find it on video somewhere.