Awesome Music: The main title is suitably epic. The background music when Jade brings all five battlemoons into the fight with Remorrah also qualifies and is a fan favorite.
Base-Breaking Character: Femur. Fans of the show generally can't decide amongst themselves whether he is an obnoxious line-stealing distraction from the main plot, or a much needed comic relief character in an otherwise nihilistic cosmic horror series.
Complete Monster: The Beast Generals, the malevolent servitors of the world-devouring Beast Planet who help their master The Beast scourge entire solar systems and destroy all worlds within them, each qualify in their own right:
Lamprey is a master of deceit and subterfuge who weakens worlds from the inside out through complex gambits, occasionally pausing to murder people who cross her path for little other reason than to amuse herself. Lamprey introduces herself tricking Emperor Femur into installing a device meant to drain all the life from Planet Bone. After this, Lamprey possesses Tekla and tries to use her to destroy the Alliance from the inside out, contenting herself with subjecting her to horrific Mind Rape of her planet's destruction and trying to slowly kill her from the inside once this fails. After this fails, Lamprey murders a resident of Planet Fire and pins it on Jade's hands, intending for her to be horribly executed by being dipped into a fall of lava. Lamprey's final crimes in the series stem purely from petty spite: Seeking revenge against Tekla, Lamprey has her Beast drones attack a bar with the intent to kill everyone inside, personally disintegrates Captain once he gets in her way, and furiously attempts to kill everyone who stands between her and Tekla before her own demise.
Blokk is a brutish warrior who firmly believes in the power of absolute force over everything else, preferring to overrun worlds through his armada to destroy all they see whilst basking in the carnage. Blokk's repeated attempts to attack the planets in the Cluster result in numerous deaths and the successful destruction of Planet Jungle. Blokk personally attempts to trick Cryos into killing his own daughter whilst leaving his planet vulnerable, and grows more and more vicious after his repeated punishments at the hand of the Beast. In the finale of the series, Blokk takes over Planet Rock by force by besting and killing Lord Mantle, while promising to give the Alliance members he's captured—two children among them—a slow death at the Beast's hands. Once he's left stranded on Rock, Blokk slaughters his way to Rock's World Engine, personally executesFeldspar, and sets the entire planet on a collision course with the nearest star out of sheer spite.
Fridge Logic: In the second to last episode, when the Beast Drones were swarming planet Rock, why did the rank and file not use the Sonic Cannons to defend themselves and their King Mantle? Graveheart and Jade displayed, in rather dramatic fashion, just how overwhelmingly effective they are, even being able to destroy waves of Beast Drone fighters in flight with incredible ease. Jade was able to get them quite easily in episode 2. So it begs the question of why every single last soldier just continued to use their considerably less effective quartz shooters until they were all dead.
Another example of Lord Mantle's stubborness.
Genius Bonus: As with all Mainframe Entertainment productions, classic quotations and references abound throughout the series, particularly in episode titles. J'accuse deals with a murder accusation against respected soldier Jade and Ragnarok brings about the end of the traditional Cluster society. As with ReBoot and Beast Wars, Mainframe shows that being a children's show does not mean intelligence is left at the door.
A mechanical monster planet who's first shown act is eating a world of living robots, only to have their one survivor deliver exposition on its identity to the heroes later? Déjà vu. Even better, the creators of the show made the sequel show to the movie.
I Am Not Shazam: The main characters of the show aren't called "The Shadow Raiders"—they're called "The Alliance". The title, in fact, has barely anything to do with the story, and seems to have been mainly chosen because YTV and Mainframe couldn't call the show War Planets in Canada.note The one (very tenuous) connection to the story is that the denizens of the Cluster are forced to habitually steal natural resources from one another's planets to survive, which is officially called "raiding". And the Beast Planet, whose primary element is darkness (or "shadow"), is driven to consume the planets of the Cluster for sustenance—which is effectively "raiding" on a bigger and more destructive scale.
Nausea Fuel: Cryos breaking a tooth on some food from Planet Rock, complete with gruesome sound effect.
Special Effect Failure: Since the CGI is very 90s, there are plenty of stand-out moments such as:
Several explosions just shrinking out of existence.
Destroyed machines disappearing without being obscured by an explosion or laser beam.
2D explosions that look more like a green screen effect than CGI.
When Prince Pyrus catches his falling staff in Episode 3, the staff just poofs into his hand.
In the same episode, when Graveheart "jumps" across lava while holding King Cryos, the former appears to still be running instead.
Also, when Pyrus drops a bridge with Beast Drones on it into lava, both the bridge and the Drones simply disappear in orange clouds instead of splashing into the lava.
Episode 4 has a boulder shattering...but it just disappears while shards fly away from where it had been.
Later in the same episode, Femur summons holographic ships. The first three materialize properly, but then several more just poof onto the screen.
The same scene has a Beast Drone fly in front of the life-draining device, causing it to briefly disappear instead of simply being obscured.
Then when same life-draining device is destroyed, it shatters into pieces in front of an unconvincing 2D explosion.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Nothing the heroes do has any chance of destroying the Beast Planet; if anything, they kill as many innocent people as it does.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: A Cosmic Horror Story... aimed at kids. Tons of horrific imagery, violence, death, and the onscreen obliteration of entire planets and their inhabitants beside the general premise. Even the ending is depressingly bleak, although this is more fault of being Cut Short.
is suitably epic. The background music when Jade brings all five battlemoons into the fight with Remorrah also qualifies and is a fan favorite.