"The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest" In the Realm of the Condor (TV Episode 1996) Poster

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1/10
A brutal early episode and mistake for the show
disneylandw28 May 2017
Warning: Spoilers
In many ways REAL ADVENTURES is maybe best remembered as a odd little foot note in the history of Jonny Quest in general.

It also pretty much is notable for being the reason it killed any chances of QUEST being on TV ever again and this episode basically makes that point anymore clear.

The only female character is the entire episode is treated as being a "greedy!?" fortune hunter whose been after the legendary city of El Dorado for of course the gold inside it. Thing is surprisingly the Quest family doesn't care for that since there for searching for rather crazy scientist "uncle"who somehow become the leader of a strange tribe of bird worshipers basically these rather menacing giant condors.

One of which earlier in the episode were actively trying to kill Jonny!!!. Yes it was the first of there "save the animals" theme which also involved later on a killer elephant and a rampaging tiger both of which the Quest family treated like poor puppies rather terrible menaces.

The condors here are "gods" and makes for a rather uncomfortable scene in which the girl(Estella) falls to her death in some rocks bellow and the uncle then decides to let the condor gods rescue Jonny. I ended up feeling more sorry for the girl who were wouldn't supposed to care about(it doesn't help that she's animated to be in the same basic age range as Jonny and Jesse who think goddess doesn't show up in this episode) then the actual main character.

Estella's sudden forced "villainy" toward the end felt more like a sense of desperation and panic then anything else. Yet it she does ends up dead in the end(or near fatal injury) makes you realize as why the first season of this show was a bizarre stress test in terms of how much the writers were on the uncaring level themselves.

You know the first season was garbage when the uncle the Quest have been after basically said "It was a fate well deserved for her"

If any cartoon like that was on today it would be getting a lot more heat for how the heck they get away with such things like this in 1996. Even then the save the animals phase was completely forgotten(along with Estella and El Dorado)when the show started to really into the one thing that really shot this entire premise in the foot....

QUEST WORLD!
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5/10
This episode is the sad reality of why the show started with a left and never recovered...
julianmarku10 March 2024
First of all, I need to say that this episode is THE BEST looking episode in the entire series. It really blew the budget or created new expectations for the style and all the hard work of the animators. 10 out of 10 for the animators!

Sadly the Achilles heel of this show is the writing team who were either prevented from writing more adult themed stories or had no idea what to write. Take this episode for example, it is the first for 7 animal savior themed episodes in a season of 20 episodes, only 2 of which have a supernatural element to it. You have: The condor, the whales, the elephant, the tiger, the dolphins, the yeti, the werewolf. I am sorry, but it makes the Johnny Quest world seem very full of uninteresting human characters. While the original show had great villains almost every episode.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the villains were written better. Take Estella for example, she seems like a interesting greedy villain inspired by Jade. I love that she STRINGS the Quest team along with that fake story but real artifact?! Where did she get that if her "grandpa" never came back and he was... a bird researcher!? Did he do some tomb raiding on the side?

Next, he has the dumbest reveal in the whole season. Literally like a child being distracted by ice cream, she leaves safety and start to minecraft a giant piece of gold in front of everyone!! Her plan?! Well she had no plan, she was just a really bad tomb raider.

If in the first episode, we didn't even meet the villains or understand why they dressed up like a Scooby-Doo themed story, this one writes a compelling villain before dropping her out-of the sky like a condor did this episode.

Do you want to know how to fix her?! Make one of the helpers/guides the son of a diserter of the village who didn't know how to get there but had the stolen artefact. Have him follow them and call for a helicopter full of mercenaries ready to invade the city.

These kinds of sloppy writing is a precursor for the next ones... sadly. Thank God for the voice actors who did an amazing job.
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