#jca memes

My biggest criticism, and something I changed in my fic, is Jade supposedly being fresh off the boat from China but some how the only one in her family that speaks perfect English without a hint of an accent. Even as a kid that took me out of it. In a similar vein, while I don't expect great representation from a 2000s cartoon before there was a big demand for it, JCA had acceptable representation for Chinese culture and mythologies for the time it was made, you can't ignore the fact that the characters are Chinese ... but other cultures...

And on the topic of Chinese mythology, yes, I just said it's acceptable for the time it was, but it's also not good. I would expect better and more accurate lore for something made today, especially things like the Monkey King and the Immortals.

The female characters are few and underused, I really don't like how anything feminine is looked down on, especially in that J-Tots episode where Jade is repulsed by Viper being a girlie girl, I would have liked for Viper's femininity to be used to show girls don't have to be masculine to be heroic, but that was never in the cards.

I wish Valmont's fall from grace had a little more dignity. Getting nerfed by Daolon in the beginning of s3 was funny, so was Daolon turning him into a child. The whole thing with him resorting to the Oni Mask in s4 was fun because of the good writing in that episode, but the shit show of Season 5 should have just left him out entirely, it wouldn't have improved anything but I'd feel better.

I'm still mad that the final episode featuring Daolon was a clipshow.

Jade should have had a reoccurring friend group, the only characters from her school that matter are Miss Hartman and Drew, and they primarily exist to antagonize her, my girl deserved to have some besties so the few times she is shown with a friend at school it doesn't feel like they had to pull one out of their ass

I do not care for the Jackie/Viper hints, it feels liked forced studio romance because he's the title character and she's the only non related single female in the ensemble. Both of them individually have more chemistry with El Toro than they do with each other, in my humble opinon.

I have more criticisms, but those are the big ones.

I really hate to rag on the only (official, sorry Jade) female member, because I want to like Viper more than I do, but she's so boring and it sucks because her character concept could be so fun if they had leaned more into her criminal background. But there just comes a point where she's just one of the good guys and any flavor she had is gone.

And outside of that criminal past, she has nothing to her. She's bland sexy offbrand catwoman, and I'm already not the biggest fan of catwoman I don't want a dollarbin version in my martial arts and magic show. I'll be real, when I did my first rewatch, I had completely forgotten Viper existed. On my second rewatch with Oddity I said 'she has no solo episodes outside of her debut" having totally forgotten that she was in the episode with Origami

and to add insult to injury: I remembered Origami from childhood but not Viper.

And it's not her fault. This is just one of those things where the fact that it's a cartoon from the early 2000s aimed at young boys really takes it's toll on the show.

I don't want to be like "in my fanfic" for every day but yeah, in my fanfic I'm trying to give special attention to Viper or "Shiri Balkin" and how her past in the criminal underworld is relevant and give her an actual character that has a role to play in the story