If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:
Raid the
Cave
An
admirable quality about this episode is that it wastes no time in following up
on the big events of the one before it.
With Star’s spell book, along with Glossaryck, stolen by Ludo, this is a
dilemma of utmost importance.
Star has to venture after him to retrieve
these pieces of her family’s history before they’re used for evil
purposes. Right there, it’s great to see
Star take initiative in a bad situation, even if she’s mostly doing it so her
parents won’t have to find out. Going by
a map and letters from Buff Frog written in monster as their only lead, Star
and Marco slowly figure out the information on Ludo.
The raid through
Ludo’s hideout makes for great uses of spells against all the monsters they
come across, impressing through how far Star has come. It's just too bad the monsters
present aren’t meant to do any fighting. Among the spells, the desperation of the
situation and determination to not inform her mom about what’s happened leads Star to enact the dark All Seeing Eye spell. She uses it to look for where Glossaryck
and the spell book are. It makes
for a much larger use of such a big spell with a sequence of Star looking on
the business of random figures she knows illustrating its true power.
Following these laughs comes Star’s whole
point of summoning this spell. Focusing on just Glossayck
gives her a vision of where he is. The episode even sets up Star’s big advancements
leading to the greater good as she pushes through the eye to just grab
Glossaryck. However, just as
Star is about to do that, Glossaryck refuses to go because he and the
book now belong to Ludo. This doesn’t make sense because Ludo
never owned the book and he clearly stole it from who its true owner, so that wouldn’t mean the spell book belongs to him. Not only that, but when Star tries to allow
Glossaryck to leave Ludo and come back to her as a friend, Glossaryck flat out
ignores her which is kind of a jerk move.
At least him claiming that Star could possibly benefit from carrying on
without him is what she really needs has some weight to it. I mean, it is believable that people don’t
really grow until they solve issues on their own.
Still, Glossaryck refusing to escape Ludo with Star is a sad and
unfortunate outcome for the adventure.
It may seem like nothing was accomplished with Star and Marco going to
Ludo’s cave for nothing, but in the end, we do get something of substance. For one thing, Star realizes she can’t hide
what happened anymore, and does her only other option, calling her
parents. It leads to a pleasing scene
where both Moon and River are understanding of what happened. They comfort her by
letting her know that she has nothing to worry about and being thankful that
she’s safe. It’s one of the best and
most believable reactions you can hope for from telling parents you messed up.
For a proper and elegant character like Moon to be this understanding is
especially pleasing. Equally nice is
Star still deciding to take initiative on the matter by acting as the rebel
princess she is and continuing her family’s legacy by writing her own
spells.
Even if the conflict is
partially fueled by unreasonable actions, this episode is
still strong for many more great character moments including those where they
forge new beginnings.
A
Trickstar
The
beauty of entertainment through fiction is that it impresses with creative
interpretations of life and abstract ideas we can only dream about. That’s what makes animated works so appealing,
and the same can be said through little things in life like magic shows.
This episode is about Star finding a magician
at Marco’s Sensei’s birthday who does real magic, but the results are not very
good. The magician, Preston Change-O makes
an impressive entrance through Sensei’s grill and then through doing magic acts
you’d normally expect from party magicians. He also sucks energy out of everyone
whenever he says his name, causing his hat to get bigger and everyone else to
get sad. Somehow, only Star notices
something odd about what Preston is doing while everyone else claims that it’s
fake as magician magic should be.
Since what Star sees from Preston is very real and no one else believes
her, the situation becomes very frustrating.
Then Star notices Preston suck a lot of
happy energy from Sensei and learns that Preston’s a joy sucker who sucks out
joy and stores it in his hat because he can’t produce his own.
The concern just gets worse with no one else around to see the hard truth that she
was right. It also begs a big question
why Marco acts normal despite getting his joy sucked out with the
rest of the party. Star has Preston do
his grand finale for Sensei who has longed to see the
famous magician in action while threatening him to strike him with her wand if he
sucks more joy. It’s nice that she’s
concerned for Sensei’s safety, but another issue arises when she shows no
consideration for potentially ruining his childhood desire.
She gets her chance when Preston sucks up the audience’s joy anyway.
She forces him to reveal his true identity as well as the fact that all his
birthday magic is fake. Despite finally
being proven right, somehow the guests are madder at Star for exposing
Preston’s birthday magic as fake. Not
only does this portray them as annoyingly closed-minded for not caring about a clear threat to them, but their anger is also confusing. They already
knew that the birthday magic was fake and were able to enjoy it. Why can they suddenly not enjoy it now?
At least the last few moments of the episode
show that Sensei himself does have some acknowledgement that Preston was
actually a joy-sucking creep. While he’s bummed now, he’s sure he’ll be
joyful again at his next birthday, which is a more mature and respectable
response to what happened. That said,
the ending scene where everyone discovers that Preston disappeared after Sensei
locked him in his car closes the whole episode with conflicting feelings. It disregards a good opportunity for a
message that things can be enjoyed even if they’re not real and makes Star look
smug. However, Sensei feeling happy that his childhood hero really
was magic. It’s trying to be a good
ending, but it has very strong unfortunate implications.
Aside from a few enjoyable moments, this
episode’s confused writing, uninspiring messages, and difficulty on siding with
any character make this one of the rare bad episodes for the series.
F
The Ranking
- Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
- Ludo in the Wild
- Into the Wand
- Hungry Larry
- Raid the Cave
- Game of Flags
- On the Job
- Sleepover
- Is Mystery
- Naysaya
- Mr. Candle Cares
- Wand to Wand
- Page Turner
- Starstruck
- Girls’ Day Out
- By the Book
- Friendenemies
- Gift of the Card
- Starsitting
- Star on Wheels
- Camping Trip
- My New Wand
- Red Belt
- Spider with a Top Hat
- Star vs Echo Creek
- Fetch
- Goblin Dogs
- Pizza Thing
- Trickstar
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil episode features a flying cat creature coming to evaluate Star, and the first starring role of a Magic High Commission member Heckapoo.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "One Last Score" from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes.
If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment