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:
Starcrushed
This
season closes with an episode that builds upon the drama two main subjects
making for a lot to look forward to.
First,
there’s Star and Marco’s friendship, which, with the secret of Star having a crush on Marco out, is very awkward with neither being comfortable around
each other. Taking place at an
end of the school year party at Marco’s house, adds to the drama. Nothing,
even a fun social gathering, can immediately make this better.
Star at least has friends she’s made on Earth
and Mewni to confide her problems to. It's a nice
mix of interdimensional friends, and they all have a clear desire to help
Star. They tap into her sense of fun by
taking her to a more aggressive end of the school year party. During this party, Star meets her old crush,
Oskar Greason. They talk about what
they’ve gotten up to since it really has been a long time since they last saw each other. Among what they discuss is how Star inspired Oskar to move forward with his music,
even if it meant completely dropping out of school.
It’s easily the most intimate moment Star has had with Oskar yet and an
appropriate thing to help her move on from the awkwardness with Marco. Marco himself even moves on from what
happened through realizing he won’t have to worry about anything while being
with Jackie.
As for the other subject
this season finale showcases, Moon further shows her adventurous side. She infiltrates Ludo’s new castle with the Magic High Commission to retrieve the
missing wand piece, the spell book, and Glossaryck. They catch him easily, but they, including
Ludo himself, are surprised that Glossaryck and the book aren't present. Out of this, we get a genuinely civil moment
from Ludo. He further tells Moon about his bad family life as she assures him that at
least one family member, his brother Dennis, misses him. This
part of the episode suddenly becomes darker following this civil talk. After the Magic High
Commission try and fail to find what they came for, they find Ludo once
again under Toffee’s influence and Moon lying lifeless with completely black
eyes. The dark part is that we don’t see
how this happened although we do get an idea of it in a battle where the
Toffee-possessed Ludo drains magic out of the commission members. All it takes is a simple
blast. As more magic is drained, he becomes more powerful right down to getting the wand piece embedded
into his hand. Lekmet, the goat-man, can conveniently
revive them by offering his own magic which wasn’t really hinted at before. Nevertheless, this turns him to dust, cementing the moment as one of the show’s darkest. Adding to the darkness, he only ends up reviving Moon while everyone else
is lifeless and inflated.
From the
darkness of the moment, the tone of the whole series makes a huge fresh
change. It’s really felt when Star
officially sets herself up to hang with Oskar more and patches things up with
Marco. What comes right after this ultimately makes the potential new path for her a waste, for despite the time setting it up, it goes nowhere. The moment is very much impactful anyhow. Without time to process things, Star is forced
to drop her life on Earth when Moon comes to take her home to Mewni with the
news that Toffee has returned. The tone
shift culminates with an emotional ending where Star tells all the friends
she’s made that she’s leaving Earth, possibly forever. This includes the hard truth
that she does have a crush on Marco after all.
The last shot of Marco running after Star as her room disappears makes
the ending truly emotional.
There have
been several instances this season that leave a lot to look forward to in
seasons to come. Even if it does set a few things up that go nowhere, this whole episode still ends up providing the most future potential with dark
undertones, shaken relationships, and stronger feels. The fact that it all unfolds in the season
finale makes everything stand out even more.
A
The Ranking
- Face the Music
- Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
- Ludo in the Wild
- Into the Wand
- Just Friends
- The Hard Way
- Hungry Larry
- Raid the Cave
- Starcrushed
- 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
- Crystal Clear
- Collateral Damage
- Gift of the Card
- Starsitting
- Star on Wheels
- Mathmagic
- Camping Trip
- The Bounce Lounge
- My New Wand
- Heinous
- Red Belt
- All Belts are Off
- Spider with a Top Hat
- Star vs Echo Creek
- Fetch
- Goblin Dogs
- Pizza Thing
- Trickstar
Final Thoughts
My overall impressions with Season 2 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil are that it has a fair share of ups and
downs. Thankfully, the viewing
experience is positive when all is said and done, but when factoring in all the
episodes, it’s clear that this show needed a good change of pace. That’s not to say that the old format was
bad, since I still fondly look back at Season 1 and enjoy it. However, after so much
time getting to know the characters living in a fantasy-driven world, I think
it’s high time they start delving into deeper stories.
The thing about Season 2 is that there are significant amount
of episodes about wacky magical adventures of Star and her
friends from the previous season. This
isn’t a bad thing, but so much of the random exploits stemming from Star’s
magic or lack of understanding of Earth can make the show not as interesting as
it could be. So many interesting
things were brought up in the Season 1 finale like Star’s wand losing half its power
and Ludo needing to start over after losing everything. It’s astonishing how
many crazy escapades show up, especially when most of them don’t really connect
to the deeper elements.
There are still some solid fun episodes of this category like Star
getting stuck on a runaway bike, gags from her and Marco’s babysitting methods, and an attempt to save a favorite party spot.
However, most shenanigan-based episodes are disposable not just
for having little connection to the main elements of the show, but having noticeable weak points. The stories
often feature overlong comedic scenarios,
annoying side characters, and suggestions that some characters haven’t really
developed much. One episode in particular shows that even now, the title character is as reckless
as ever. Even episodes with creative
scenarios turn out problematic. One has a creative look inside the wand that’s mostly uninteresting
and never needed to be seen. Another is outright bad with a confusing message and setup with very few likable
characters. The show is a lot of
enjoyable things, but as many of these episodes prove, it wouldn’t be wise for
it to be a light-hearted magic adventure series for long.
Fortunately, the show’s true potential is felt in the
episodes that do cover the plot points. They build upon the end of Season 1 and
have many other important elements on their own. Time is devoted to Star adjusting to her new
wand now with only half of its power. It
is sloppy writing that there’s few consistency with how big a deal the loss of
power is. Sometimes the wand needs to be better handled and has
notable inconveniences. Other times, it works just about as well as it did before it lost
its power.
However, the wand subplot does bring some useful moves for Star to use in battle, and more use for the character
Glossaryck. It’s true that there are
times where he becomes very vague and irrational whenever people need
legitimate help. There are also moments where he feels little sympathy when saying
disappointing news like him and the spell book he lives in changing ownership. Most of the time, he's helpful to whoever he’s teaching, showing he knows what he’s
doing when it comes to basic spells and working the wand through dipping down.
The latter helpful teaching is especially effective in leaving a memorable
impression in the season premiere that mostly pales compared to the previous
season’s finale.
As for the other half of the wand, it connects with another
major plot point of what became of Ludo.
In the beginning, Ludo was seen as a basic cartoon villain seeming to
want power and nothing more, so he needed help from a clearly more competent villain. However, much of the episodes
this season make him more compelling by needing to work hard to rise to
power. He raises his own army of a spider, a bird, and a bunch of rats to do his bidding. On his own accord, Ludo also advances in working
his half of the wand by stealing Glossaryck and the spell book, and successfully
advancing with it. To add to this, his
progress happens before he’s possessed by Toffee. Background to his villainy is also revealed, which not just makes Ludo better
developed as an antagonist, but also more in depth.
There’s actually quite a few characters that
get a fair share of depth this season.
Buff Frog comes a long way from being a simple devoted henchman to a
building to someone learning to balance work and running a family. Star’s ex-boyfriend Tom is shown to make
genuine efforts to control his temper and even form somewhat of a bond with his
sworn enemy, Marco; now they’re friendenemies.
While most classmates fail to amount to anything interesting, this
season allows former background character Janna to step into the forefront. Now she's easily the most enjoyable student companion to Star and Marco. Love interest characters like Oskar and
especially Jackie Lynn Thomas open up with pro-active qualities
that make them feel like good companions for their respective partner.
This really rings true for how much Marco benefits from being with Jackie, which makes
what becomes of them for the rest of the series all the more unfortunate.
Among the best developed characters are in the royal
Butterfly family. While River mostly retains the
same development he had before, Queen Moon really impresses with what’s seen of
her this season. Back in the beginning,
she appeared to fit an archetype of authoritative parents wanting their children to fit a
certain proper mold they don’t agree with.
However, Moon’s moments make her better than that through mostly being
firm with Star to keep her safe as opposed to keep her away from her true
self. In addition, she’s very
understanding of her daughter’s ambitions and personality and is genuinely
proud whenever she does the right thing.
Moon is also shown to have more depth than just being a prim and proper
queen. A few times, she's adventurous and willing to throw herself into danger for the greater good, even as far back as her youth when she originally took out Toffee.
She also runs a commission of magic protectors, all of which have
interesting designs and each get their own episode to properly
introduce them. To top it all, Moon takes it upon herself to fix Star’s mistakes in a mission
to the Forest of Certain Death. Clearly, Moon is a perfect example of characters being
more than they seem.
When she’s not
being reckless, Star has a couple of great moments for her character that
play into the inevitable fate that she’s going to be queen someday. She starts realizing the consequences of her
actions, such as losing her spell book and Glossaryck, and doing what feels
right by her through letting her whole kingdom know it. It’s these moments of maturity as well as
learning about her mom that give Star hope to improve as a character and
develop as a queen.
In addition to the character development, this season also
frequently sets up more plot points to look into for
the future. They do their part to
broaden the appeal of the show and allow it to move past the light-hearted fun
series it started out as. From the
moment Ludo starts manning his new wand, the seeds for something bigger are
planted. Then we have the reveal the Magic High Commission who look into
magic on the fritz. This builds up to the return of Toffee as he takes over Ludo’s body and demands his missing finger. The standard dynamic for the main characters
is also shaken up with Star needing to leave the new life she’s adjusted to
behind to come home to Mewni. This is appropriate considering we see a lot more of her home
kingdom from hereon.
While to a much
smaller extent, Star’s bond with Marco is also thrown out of whack when her
last moment with him is revealing that she truly does have a crush on him. This leaves
a lot of potential of how things will be between them because of this.
We even get potential from reveals about the
past, mainly from those about a former queen of Mewni, Eclipsa, and how
notorious she is. We find out more about
her in Season 3, but all I’ll say about her is that of all the things this
season builds up, what's revealed about Eclipsa is well worth the wait. While these moments are simply build-up to
what comes later, they make the show’s world much vaster. In spite of being
put in between a lot of the lighter, fluffier, and usually unrelated episodes,
they make you want to stick around to see where it goes.
Season 2 is slightly weaker than the first one through
frequently showing signs of faltering as a fun and light-hearted series. Still there are
instances of building to something bigger,
allowing you to keep watching and see what it has to offer. I look forward to talking about where
the show goes from this season, but that will wait until some other
time. For now, so long as you’re willing
to sit through frequent noticeably weaker material to get to the great stuff,
you’ll be in for quite an experience following that shining Star.
Recommended
Although we're putting Star vs the Forces of Evil on the side for now just as it's entering it's big change, there are still many great animated material to look forward to. Here's the updated schedule:
- Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: Animaniacs Vol 2 DVD
- Tuesdays and Thursdays: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1
- Saturdays and Sundays: Steven Universe Season 3
Also, with October coming, there may be a special MC Toon Reviews Shorty for Halloween, so look out for that. The animation review fun will just keep going on, but until then:
Stay Animated Folks!
