Kung Fu Panda – Secrets of the furious Five

Kung fu panda is an awesome movie and i thoroughly enjoyed it with my family. I’ve seen it with my friends and loved it everytime I saw it.

It’s a story about a panda names Po (Voice: Jack Black) who goes on to fight against the ods to become the ultimate ‘The Dragon Warrior’ the extreme superior Kung Fu Fighter with the help of Master Shifu (Voice: Dustin Hoffman).

However this blog post is not about Kung Fu Panda. I happen to see a short (~24 mins) bonus film “Secrets of the Furious Five” which came with Kung Fu Panda.

This short mostly 2D anime talks about the origins of each of the Furious Five and mentions what virtue they had to learn in order to become the Kung Fu Warrior.

The movie starts with few cute little bunnies fighting with each other and refusing to listen to Panda.

In an attempt to teach them that kung fu is more than only kicks and punches; in this 24 minutes movie Panda tells them the story of each warrior and virtue they had to learn to become super warrior:

• Mantis  :  Patience
• Viper    :  Courage
• Crane   :  Confidence
• Tigress :  Control/Discipline
• Monkey : Compassion

Kung Fu Panda - Secrets of the Furious Five -- Image taken from IMDB

It teaches some nice lessons in ways that are simple to understand.

Synopsis (from Wikipedia. I chose to paste entire content here along with giving link.)

Po is assigned by Master Shifu to teach an Introduction to Kung Fu class for a group of rambunctious bunny children.

After some initial difficulty bringing the class to order, Po finally begins his lesson emphasizing to the kids that combat is only part of Kung Fu, while its true meaning is “Excellence of Self”.

To illustrate the point, he uses the stories of the Furious Five’s individual pasts and the basic philosophical concepts they learned that enabled them to be great kung fu masters.

Mantis

In his youth, Mantis was a petulantly impatient warrior who was prone to jumping to conclusions and making impulsive decisions.
When that habit gets him captured, the long wait he was forced to endure in his cage allowed him to find the patience to play dead long enough to ambush his captors.

Viper

Viper, the daughter of Great Master Viper, was born without venomous fangs.
Her father, who relied on his venomous bite (referred to as his “Poison Fang Technique”), was despondent she could never succeed him as a warrior.
However, upon reaching adulthood, her father encountered a bandit who wore armor hard enough to shatter his fangs when he tried to bite him.
Seeing her father in peril, Viper found the courage to fight the bandit and defeat him with her ribbon dancing skills.

This story also makes a slight retcon – in the main film, Po bemoans the fact that he’s “not like the Five. I’ve got no claws, no wings, no venom“,
but of course in this story we find out from Po himself that Viper doesn’t possess poison, a contradiction at odds with Po’s encyclopedic knowledge of Kung Fu and its heroes,
though it could be possible that he recently found out that Viper doesn’t have venom.

Other brief shots from the main film shows Viper to have tiny fangs that don’t stick out, but fangs nonetheless, posing an alternative theory that viper did gain
slight poison capabilities, but that her ribbon dancing skills still formed the basis of her kung fu style.

Crane

Crane was an unconfident janitor of a martial arts school until the star pupil, Mei Ling, encouraged him to try seek enrollment in the school.
Although his nerve failed him at the try outs, he accidentally found himself in the intimidating challenge that determined eligibility.
Suddenly, he found the confidence to take the challenge and his skinny body proved to be an asset that enabled him to succeed.

Tigress

Tigress was an orphan whose status as an apex predator and her destructive lack of control of her strength left her feared and
isolated with no hope of anything better.
Master Shifu came to teach her the discipline to control her movements until she could perform delicate tasks with ease enough to allay the concerns of the
orphanage.
When she was still rejected for adoption by the adults who still feared her, Master Shifu took her in as his student and foster daughter.

Monkey

Monkey was a troublemaker who tormented his village owing to him being publically humiliated in his youth.
He defied all attempts to force him to leave until Master Oogway confronted and defeated him, but
also deduced the cause of his anti-social behaviour.
As such, Oogway encouraged him to stay in the village while encouraging his compassion.

At the end, Shifu returns to see Po’s anticipated lack of progress teaching and is surprised he underestimated Po’s talents yet again
considering how much the panda’s students have learned.

However, the bunnies ask Po how his first day was, the unpleasant memories prompt him to lie through his teeth at how wonderful it was.