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Future Boy
Zoltron
The light-hearted cartoons of this series tend to get a bad
rap, and while I understand the frustrations, I don’t think they deserve the
scorn they get either. Now, the show is
arguably at its most interesting when it’s developing its exciting plot and observing
its creative world and history. As a
result, a cartoon about Steven doing something fun around Beach City wouldn’t
be what people want to see the most.
However, many of them do a lot of good by developing major supporting
characters or leading up to later huge events.
That said, this cartoon does not have any such huge developments to
those major areas. It’s just Steven
getting up to a funny situation and the only character development goes to a
character who doesn’t play a big role in the series at all. Admirably, it’s still at least a pretty good
story.
It starts with Steven finding Mr.
Smiley, the head of Funland amusement park and arcade, set up an old fortune
telling machine called Zoltron, and Steven accidentally breaks it. I give credit for Steven approaching the
situation maturely instead of brushing it off like all the other times he broke
Mr. Smiley’s property. Since he does a
decent robot voice, with a little makeup, he becomes the new Zoltron to get
enough quarters to pay for the damage.
All the while, his predictions bring happiness to everyone passing by as
well as good moral guidance, which is very much in line with how Steven typically helps people. At the same
time, you really have to wonder why no one can figure out that the robot
fortune teller isn’t actually a robot. It can’t be that hard to get a familiar
voice or distinguish flesh and blood from metal.
After a while, Steven gets a challenge to bring
happiness with his predictions when he meets up with a perpetually sad man
named Mr. Frowney. All the questions
this customer asks about seeing Mr. Smiley are major signs of depression,
thinking he makes everything worse and is only good for driving others
away. These are the kinds of questions
Steven just can’t answer, and he’s initiative enough to realize he needs
Garnet’s future vision to have a chance at helping. If you know Garnet, then it comes as no
surprise that she suddenly appears to give Steven a special kiss to pass over
her powers to him. This leads to an
interesting visualization where all his possible answers shown like bars in a
slot machine, though all of them bring sadness to Mr. Frowney.
As this reveal drives him to leave, Steven
lets Mr. Smiley know about him where we get a reason for all this
depression. Mr. Smiley and Mr. Frowney
used to be in an act where their extreme emotions clashed for comedy’s sake,
but Mr. Frowney was still all sad even when not in the act. In his usual fashion, Steven brings both
former performers to talk things through.
They both get a better understanding of each other with Mr. Frowney
feeling he made things worse without realizing while Mr. Smiley just wanted
them both to be successful. This leads
to one act for old time’s sake that seems to have Mr. Frowney get the act. Even though he leaves town afterwards, it
still feels like something was accomplished, except for Steven implied to still
need to put up his Zoltron routine that is.
Since we never see this afterwards, that shows how little importance
this cartoon has on the series. You
could argue it’s a bit of foreshadowing for major Gem characters who make
things worse without noticing or just want others to be happy. Even with that, the foreshadowing is really not
prominent enough for average viewers to notice.
Plot-relevant or not though, this is a nice feel-good story if
you’re in the mood for something fun.
B
Season 4 Ranking
1. Mindful Education
2. Buddy’s Book
3. Know Your Fusion
4. Kindergarten Kid
5. Future Boy Zoltron
The next Steven Universe review is light-hearted, but much more relevant for how it helps Pearl, a major supporting character, in her development by having her learn to be more of a rebel than she already is.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews are two Loud House cartoons "Selfie Improvement" and "No Place Like Homeschool."
If you would like to check out other Steven Universe reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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