Villain Retrospect - Saw Boss

Saw Boss and the Monster Minds.  Now those are some cool names.  But would you ever expect them to be plant-based vehicles?

Monster?  Maybe.  Mind? I doubt it.

Instead we get a story about sentient plants that can turn into angry-looking vehicles.  Their leader, Saw Boss, is able to become one of these vehicles, but mainly uses clones of himself that he controls telepathically.  So usually, he sits on a throne, pointing at stuff.  Maybe he's where they got the Monster Mind name - his head is huge!  Still, there's no sign of an actual saw, so his name, and all of the others make no damned sense. 

Anyway, enough with the names - Saw Boss had a pretty impressive power to control all plantlife connected to his system of vines and instantly transport his base.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of instances of Saw Boss doing anything himself.  He's another example of a villain that just leads his minions from his chair without engaging the heroes at all - he's like Dr. Claw, except Saw Boss has actual power he doesn't hardly ever employ.  In the first episode, the most he does is swear to follow Jayce across the universe after teleporting his base a few seconds too late.  For having this huge vine system that spreads across galaxies, it's amazing that he can't follow Jayce into space.


It brings up a strange point that Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors follows a different formula that many of the other cartoons have.  Many of the other shows had the villains trying to pull off some scheme or destruction and the heroes only get involved to stop them.  IF the villains weren't active, neither would the heroes be.  But this cartoon specifically has the villains going after the heroes - bringing the fight directly to them.  There are no ridiculous plots perpetrated by the villains, they just have one singular mission - catch Jayce - even if they fail every episode.

Let's go to ratings:  Coolness - 1.  I mean look at the guy up there.  He looks like an idiot.  His vehicle design is an improvement, though not by a huge amount.  At least his name makes more sense.  I still can't tell how a vine can hold the saw blade though - if he moves the blade even the slightest degree, wouldn't it cut through the vines?  Oh well.  I also find Saw Boss's voice to be very underwhelming.  It's loud with an echo-y filter over it, but there's no character there.  It could be just about anyone, but it doesn't scream "villain" to me.


Effectiveness - 2.  Saw Boss does have some plans, but they all center around killing Jayce to get his root.  So they're really limited to how much he can try to do.  In any case, they're easily escapable traps most of the time and just followed up with a boring chase.  Yawn.