Thanks to a dialed-down Snarf and amped-up animation and action, the 21st-century version of ThunderCats is quickly dating Rankin/Bass’ original ’80s TV series.

Check out the clips above and below from Friday night’s episode, “Old Friends,” in which the presumed-dead Panthro and his kickass Thundertank join the young king Lion-O’s growing band of outcasts. They offer a cool glimpse into a smartly rebooted ThunderCats that leans hard on Japanese anime and the films of Hayao Miyazaki, whose magical meditations like My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke were felt strongly in last week’s episode, “Song of the Petalars.”

That influence was expected, given that the new series is animated by Japanese Studio 4°C, which stunned geeks with East-West mashes like The Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight. That stylistic crossover is also evident in executive producer Sam Register’s excellent comics-based toon Teen Titans and producer Ethan Spaulding’s work on the indispensable Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The fact that Cartoon Network has been able to pull off the reboot is refreshing. Now that the subversive Batman: The Brave and the Bold — whose Michael Jelenic is now a ThunderCats producer — and Genndy Tartakovky’s criminally underrated Sym-Bionic Titan have been canceled, the cable channel is running out of quality series faster than the original ThunderCats‘ whiny mascot Snarf ran out of sympathy.

Screen the reels and let us know in the comments section if you’re feeling Cartoon Network’s remodeled sci-fantasy felines, or if you’d rather watch The Last Airbender’s sequel, The Legend of Korra, like, right now.

ThunderCats airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m./7:30 p.m. Central on Cartoon Network.