Broken Base: Kuzco's going back to being an egotistical jerk has been a sore spot amongst fans. Some despise it, feeling it undermines his arc and everything he went through in Emperor's New Groove. Others though are okay with it, arguing that it was unrealistic for him to grow out of his habits completely in such a short period, given that he has been spoiled since he was a baby. Some also argue that his Character Development is kept somewhat intact, given that he is more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold here as opposed to the unlikable Jerkass he was in the first film pre-development.
Cliché Storm: Firmly cemented by the almost exclusive reliance on gags and plots from the original movie.
Ho Yay: Guaca's strong attention to Kuzco, to the point of getting a statue of him at the end of "A Giftmas Story", may be interpreted as him having more than just platonic feelings for him.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Was heavily reliant on gags and jokes taken from the movie, most of which tended to appear once in every episode. It's not unusual to find fans who feel this did more to hold back the series than it was actually funny. That's to say nothing of both Kuzco's and Kronk's apparent Aesop Amnesia since the first film.
Nightmare Fuel: In “Mudka’s 13”, one of Kuzco’s nightmares has him stuffing himself with meat shakes until he’s fat, and is wheeled away on a table to another room for dessert. However, Kuzco then finds himself tossed before a horde of starving, eager monsters who declare him their desert, and Kuzco has grown too fat to escape getting eaten (with one last visual of Kuzco imagining himself as a meat shake).
A handful of scenes in "The Mystery of Micchu Pachu" are pretty unsettling, most of all when the skeleton anteater first appears: the ominous, ghostly growl echoing from the dark halls, followed by the scowling, rattling abomination slowly emerging from the shadows with a raspy, animalistic moan that will haunt a young kid's nightmares. Fortunately from there the episode devolves into a Scooby-Doo parody, but the initial moment is remarkably frightening.
Older Than They Think: Malina is actually a reworking of a femalecharacter conceived for the original "Kingdom of the Sun" version on the movie, a peasant girl who would serve as Kuzco's love interest and take none of his It's All About Me bullshit. The name of the character, however, would go to the waitress at Mudka's Meat Hut, who in this series is the school lunch lady.
Once Original, Now Common: The series reused so many jokes from the original movie so many times that, to a certain extent at least, the jokes ended up becoming more annoying than funny.
The episode "Evil and Eviler" Lampshades this for Yzma and Kronk's usual secret lab routine. Firstly, when Yzma tells Kronk to pull the lever, Kronk does, causing something they've seen before to come down. He then keeps pulling the lever saying "Seen that, seen that" until they flip in. Next, the "Roller Coaster Inside The Lab" joke was used so many times that the coaster announcer actually couldn't come up with something witty to say that hadn't been said before. When they get to the lab, Yzma struggles to think of something new to turn Kuzco into and suggests several previous animals she turned him into, including a llama. Kronk asks, "You're kidding, right?"
So Okay, It's Average: Even with its over-reliance on the movie’s gags and generic plots, there is enough good writing and character interactions to keep it from being bad.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Kuzco in "Groove Remover". Sure, it was cruel of everyone in Kuzco Academy to laugh at Kuzco's unpleasant appearance, thanks to Yzma's potion soap, but he really had it coming—throughout the first half of the episode, he made fun of his classmates' flaws, so the viewers may think that possessing those flaws and being laughed at is pure karma for Kuzco.
is an upbeat, catchy, funky and fun track that has a vibe similar to the music by Village People.
