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Baby
Through
reviewing this season, I’ve noticed that when episodes focus on Star getting
into mischief on Earth, the quality is either pretty good or weak and
unsatisfying. However, an episode
focuses on the underlying story of what’s at stake for her and the people of Mewni, they’re almost always much
stronger. That’s the case with this
episode starting with some genuine concern from her parents.
Moon especially has genuine worry for Star’s
safety with Glossaryck and the spell book gone at a time when Star’s training is
very crucial. She even feels regret for
the possibility of having her daughter come home because of this. These
moments bring her much more likability and genuine conflicting feelings than
your average over-protective mother. In
order to determine if Star should come home, Moon calls upon a creature to go
to Earth and evaluate Star to see if she’s skilled enough with her wand to
stay.
You’d think that the creature
would be big, demanding, and threatening, but it’s actually a small,
soft-spoken flying kitten creature named Baby.
Even with her cute non-threatening appearance, like any teacher, Baby is
still a pretty hard judge of skills.
Star is hard-pressed to please her with a clean room and nothing too
weird laying around. Unfortunately for her, things keep going wrong with constant oversights and
misplacements all while Baby casually writes her findings down. In addition, Baby constantly keeps Star
on her toes. She judges every weird thing she finds and what Star shows her,
such as her own spell book, as “interesting” never specifying if she finds them good or bad. The same
could be said for the audience trying to evaluate how good or bad things are
going, making for a strong sense of mystery.
Then the time comes for Star to test how well she is with her wand in
basic spells, specifically using her wand to bring Baby an apple. However, Star only knows complicated spells, and tries to use them to bring over the apple, all of
which backfire. This is honestly
something I can relate to when mastering the complex way of doing certain
things that I forget the basic ways. As
for the evaluation, even after sounding positive and never moved by Star’s
wild use of the wand, Baby’s
reports on Star turn out negative. This
is both to be expected but also kind of harsh for never letting on that Baby’s
disappointed in what she saw at any point.
The thing that gets Baby to rethink her evaluation is Star giving full attention to perform a spell to bring Baby that
apple. Star grows a tree and having one of its branches reach out to her
evaluator. It’s a bit contrived since
there was never a hint that Star could do a spell like this before and begs the
question why she didn’t do it in the first place. It’s still emotionally
satisfying that she can stay. It also
brings interesting new details to her skills as the episode ends with Baby
telling Star’s parents that their daughter’s magic levels are as strong as
those of Eclipsa. This leaves them to wonder whether or not this is a good
thing.
In addition to bringing a relatable
exam environment for much of the plot, this episode stands as an interesting
perspective of how skilled Star truly is.
A
Running
with Scissors
This
is one of the show’s more creative concepts standing out more for focusing on
Marco. Most episodes about him feature
him at a more mundane pastime like karate. This one is far more interesting
for being his own magical adventure.
Through trying to find a place to take Star’s laser puppies for a walk,
Marco uses the dimensional scissors to cut a hole in the fabric of the planet
and solve the problem. He also takes
advantage of the scissors by cutting a lot of holes for little things. This feels like an efficient move for how
Marco is able to do so much without leaving his room.
However, it is technically a misuse of a
magical object, so it makes sense that the many holes lead to a
consequence. That’s what happens when a
flaming hole drags him in. It comes from
a member of the Magic High Commission, the flame princess Hekapoo. We get background on her character that she’s the maker of all interdimensional
scissors for people who earn them. Marco
is set to prove himself worthy of scissors by blowing out Hekapoo’s flame, the
following attempts being creatively constructed.
Hekapoo is so fast, she levitates ahead of
Marco as he chases her. Along with the use of interdimensional
scissors to transport Marco to random locations, you never know where the
challenge will lead. She’s also big on
mind games. After Marco blows out her flame, it turns out to be a
vision of her, and he has to search through many visions to find the real
Hekapoo. In addition to the challenge,
there’s also some strong instances of willpower from Marco. Since he knows the scissors belong to someone
else, he stops at nothing to get them back even when he has the chance to go
back to Earth.
With this willpower comes
the interesting aspect that Marco spends 16 years catching Hekapoo clones and
blowing out flames. He also adopts a hunky adult physique and his own motorcycle creature,
building himself up as the fighter he always dreamed of being. Although we’re only told about how he got
this good instead of shown it, this is a believable route to take this story.
It really does take time to build yourself up to greatness. That’s not even mentioning Marco madly
impressing Hekapoo with how skilled he’s become which grants him his own
scissors.
The set up becomes more
interesting when Star catches up with Marco after learning that Pony Head, who
originally gave her the scissors, stole them from Hekapoo. Marco’s
in trouble for using them excessively.
Even more interesting is that while Marco really has been training for
years, the dimension he’s in measures time differently from Earth. In Earth time, he's only been gone for eight minutes. Following a reminder of his friends and
family back home, the new chapter in Marco’s life is fully established as he
goes home with an option to keep returning to the new dimension. He remains youthful while on Earth though. The last scene of Marco reflecting on how much he's changed while his old life stayed the same brings a strong impactful tone. It lets Marco know that he can now approach life differently and has a chance to do that now that he's returned to his home time and dimension.
Teamed with a creatively staged story with interesting character moments,
this is an episode worth running to see.
A
The Ranking
- Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
- Ludo in the Wild
- Into the Wand
- Hungry Larry
- Raid the Cave
- Running with Scissors
- Game of Flags
- Baby
- 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 review follows Star trapped in an endless time loop of a math problem she can't solve, and the interdimensional gang gets together to save the Bounce Lounge.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is Xiaolin Showdown's "Night of the Sapphire Dragon."
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.
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