Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Future Boy Zoltron (Steven Universe Season 4 Episode 5) - 'Toon Reviews 29

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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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