SWAT Kats

It simply was one of my favorite cartoons on TV while growing up. The main reason for that, now that I think about it, might be that it was one of the rare real cool action animation series that time for me. Sure, there were fantastic animation series like good ol’ Disney cartoons, Popeye, Bugs Bunny and so on. There were also action animations as He-Man. But I guess SWAT Kats was one of the early entrants in the category of kick-ass action animation genre.

From whatever exposure we kids got to the American action flicks through The Terminator, Predator etc, back then I had set certain parameters for a good action movie in my subconscious mind: Some fantastic visual effects, guns blazing, cars & airplanes getting exploded, bike chases, a little romantic interest for the heroes, some supernatural powers and so on. And for a boy whose action-entertainment values were highly influenced by (unfortunately - only by) Hollywood, SWAT Kats proved to be something which perfectly captured all these features. Their jet fighter Turbokat, Cyclotron (my personal favorite - a motorcycle built into the jet) along with some other vehicles were super brilliant. Every episode also had quite engaging nice little story which entertained me thoroughly. Despite the fact that it used to be just an half an hour cartoon episode, the personalities of the characters were given quite good attention too, as I started finding T-Bone & Razor pretty big-hearted, cool & friendly dudes; absolutely hated Commander Feral; and somehow found Callie quite pretty, although she was, after all, a cat!

Another reason which refreshed SWAT Kats in my mind was its music – especially the title track. I now realize that the effect of this music was so profound on my mind - even as a boy who didn’t have much exposure to western music back then – that when I thought of SWAT Kats yesterday, my heart immediately drew a rough sketch of the title tune in my head and told the brain: dude, please go and listen to it as soon as possible - I want to enjoy that rock piece once again! Back then, as a boy I didn’t even care about what sort of sound that was being played at the background. But today when I saw the intro on youtube after so many years, I realized how rocking even the intro was! Of course, one can not compare this to the rock music of the likes of Joe Satriani's, Steve Vai's and so on, but the nice little title tune was a kick-ass piece of rock in its own right - nice start with the drums, pumped up by amazing guitar sound with distortion and good old rock guitar solos building up towards a nice end – setting the scene perfectly for yet another adventure of the SWAT Kats!

Hail T-Bone and Razor!