Friday, January 25, 2019

The Bird Parade (Hilda Season 1 Episode 3) - 'Toon Reviews 26


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The Bird Parade

The series has placed Hilda in an all new lifestyle, and now it’s all about her adjusting to it.  This episode brings a relatable start to her seeing appeal in this different place.  There are pretty huge lengths to how challenging this is for Hilda. 
At the insistence of her mother, Hilda goes through the difficult yet beneficial act of going out into the real world to get used to Trolberg and make new friends.  Hilda’s approach to this is pretty closed-minded through trying to find things wrong with the town.  However, it feels believable to anyone so used to things being a certain way.  Plus, Hilda balances out her negative traits with positive ones through trying to befriend a group of kids despite not being on the same page as them.  Later on, she turns out to not follow their morality when they throw rocks at birds.  When one of them, an abnormally large raven, is hit, she rescues it and bring it home.
Then the episode gets more creative.  This raven is actually a supernatural one who can talk though he can’t remember anything about himself.  He’s a sympathetic yet highly entertaining character through his forgetfulness and his overdramatic outbursts about it.  Hilda tries keeping the raven secret to make her mother think she’s moving past the supernatural and adjusting to the city which ends up causing Johana to put the raven out. This fuels an age old convention of parents being unaware of what their children are up to. 
Giving the episode, and by extension the series, a fresh edge, Johana becomes an active player in what happens.  At a parade for a bird called the Great Raven who blesses Trolberg by flying over every year, Johana informs Hilda of all the mythos of the ritual.  Among them is a dark year that resulted when the raven didn’t show up. Hilda acts fast to find the raven she took in after learning he was put out.  The thing is when Johana hears Hilda explain everything, instead of brushing off the claims, she actually trusts her daughter and they work together in the search.  Along the way, they make for an endearing mother-daughter bond.  Johana eases Hilda’s disdain of the city in by showing that virtually everything about it has something distinctive.  Another nice scene happens as they bond while looking for the raven against a beautiful view of Trolberg.  Among what’s discussed is Johana saying that as much as she wants Hilda to make new human friends, she also values her talent of befriending creatures.  For how different they think, it says a lot about this relationship’s strength when there’s room for understanding on both parts.  It’s the nicest set of scenes to lead into the episode’s highlight.
Hilda, applying what she picked up from her mother, tells the raven she found that he’s the Great Raven.  This gets him to grow in size and give Hilda an exciting flight over Trolberg.  His memory restored, the Great Raven also brings interesting reveals that he’s actually a mystical thunder bird, given a different title for seemingly honoring a god Trolberg worships.  The sequence of greatness ends with the parade lighting up and commencing for the waiting crowds.  As for the episode, it ends with more endearment to the show’s family values as Hilda finds more joy in simply watching the parade on a wall with her mother than in the sky.  This may be an exaggeration, but I’m hard-pressed to find more meaningful family love than that. 
Through strong bonds, creative moments, and sweeping sequences, this episode is a great demonstrations of this show’s true greatness.
A+

The Ranking
  1. The Bird Parade
  2. The Midnight Giant
  3. The Hidden People

The next Hilda review features Hilda make friends with two members of the Sparrow Scouts.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the finale to Steven Universe Season 3, "Bubbled."
If you would like to check out other Hilda reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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