Thank you! Somebody knows what they're talking about.
I like how the WB article makes a big deal about the new series being anime (just because it's being animated in Japan), as though the original was not. Really pretentious, if you ask me.
Thundercats IS ANIME!!! It was animated in Japan, thus, it's anime! Lots of people never quite realize that Rankin-Bass frequently used Japanese animation studios for much of their hand-drawn work (I think there were a couple of exceptions; their
Wizard of Oz cartoon series, and
Tom of THUMB; those might be their only non-Japanese stuff). All of their stop-motion "Animagic" work was from Japan as well.
In fact, Rankin-Bass were the pioneers of American anime. (The stop-motion TV series,
The New Adventures of Pinocchio from 1960, was the first anime series commissioned by an American studio, with the first hand-drawn series being
The King Kong Show in 1966.)
And I agree, the
Thundercats intro is one of the most incredible sequences ever seen in Japanese animation! Dynamic, fast & furious, with plenty of camera movement as well. That, along with the opening for (and some episodes of)
Mighty Orbots.