Last night Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiered on Cartoon Network with two episodes. I saw the movie that was out in theaters in August, so I already had a good idea of what to expect. The series uses a unique style of animation that seems to be about halfway between realism and cartoon. The style seems to work pretty well in combination with the style of action, dialog, and plot that are targeted more or less at children.

For me, watching a children’s animated series as an adult is kind of a strange experience. I find myself thinking how much I would have loved this series when I was eleven and just discovering Star Wars. But now, it can be a bit of a struggle to get past the heavily cliched and cheesy dialog.

Nonetheless, the two episodes were somewhat enjoyable. The first episode followed Yoda as he and three Clone Troopers battled legions of the Seperatist’s Droid Army in order to prove the worth of siding with the Republic to the Toydarian king. The plot made little sense and the attempts at comic relief with the Battle Droid dialog were pathetic. However, Yoda kicked some serious butt and the action scenes were pretty cool.

The second episode followed Anakin Skywalker and his new apprentice, Ahsoka, as they searched for survivors of recent space battle. The episode also featured Jedi Master Plo Koon who was in command of a  small Republic fleet when it came up against the Seperatist’s new weapon, a huge battle cruiser armed with a gigantic ion cannon (reminiscent of the one on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back). When the ion cannon hit the Republic ships, they all lost power and the Seperatist cruiser blasted them to pieces. Plo Koon and three Clone Troopers managed to escape in a life pod and were eventually found by Anakin and Ahsoka.

Though the second episode didn’t contain the same level of action as the first, I found that I enjoyed it more. The plot was a lot more believable and compelling. It was also interesting to follow Plo Koon for much of episode, who proved to be a fairly interesting character. Luckily, it also had less cheesiness than the first episode, so that helped too.

Overall, I think the series will probably end up being something that children may enjoy quite a lot. Fortunately, I think there is also enough positive factors that adults can also enjoy the show as well, but probably to a lesser extent.