My two cents about the series

I kind of like the series because it does have good animation and good voice actors and one or two plot points like Ping being Tai Lung's nephew which is good, but overall, what bugs me is how it pulls away from the personalities and traits of the characters in the movies.

An example being Po. Yes, he definetely is a child-like fan boy but he also knows when to be serious and knows his limitations, even trying to avoid those limitations but in the series, he's kind of a lazy brat. I mean in the movies, he's like the world's biggest kung-fu fan boy, even having dreams about being with the Furious Five, yet in the series, he always tries to avoid training and that's what gets him into trouble. A fan boy of his caliber would not do that!

I mean in the first movie, he put himself through so much trying to learn kung-fu from Shifu and the Five, even taking their abuse along with it. In the second movie, he's driving himself nuts because he's having dreams about his true parents, feeling guilt for Mr. Ping and trying to figure out the meaning of Inner Peace at the same time.

Another thing that bugged me was the continuity of Tigress's character. I'm guessing that maybe the tv series is taking place between movies 1 and 2 but I could be wrong. If so, it would make sense that at the beginning of the series she was a bit more cold still from the first movie but eventually grows into a bit warmer character and being good friends with Po by the time it gets into the second movie, but either way, the way they do it in the series doesn't quite work because even in the end credits of the first movie, we see Tigress goofing off a little with Shifu with the noodle mustach and in the second movie, she. joined in with the Five in cheering Po on for putting like forty bean buns in his mouth. The other thing though is that she doesn't do well with kids in the series, but in the movies, she loves kids. I mean she grew up in an orphanage and before being helped by Shifu, learned to control her temper and made some good friends. She also protected a kid bunny from the Tai Lung Wushi Finger hold explosion and was feeding a baby rabbit in a cute motherly like fashion in the Holiday Special.

Finally, the biggest thing that's gotten my goat is that I saw the hour long special Enter the Dragon which features Po defeating the villain with Hero Chi and I was like, where was that when he was facing Lord Shen in the second movie?

I know they're just movies and tv shows (I'm a writer so i'm developing a keen eye for story details, although it probably sounds excessive/obsessive but still, plus they are some of my favorite movies) and tv shows have different formats and a shorter amount of time to tell stories but it still could have been a bit more faithful to the stories and characters in the movies. I mean Penguins of Madagascar has done that beautifully and that's like two eleven minute shorts in one episode. They were able to stretch the logic a little bit but it still worked whereas they stretched it a little bit too much with the Kung Fu Panda series. I don't know. Perhaps I'm thinking too much about this (little story details like that drive me nuts sometimes) and I may have misinterpreted some of the information given in the series. What do you guys think