MC 'Toon Reviews: July 2019

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Letters to Lars (Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 16) - 'Toon Reviews 29

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Letters to Lars

The lore side of the show and the slice of life side of the show really start feeling connected this season. This is huge considering how clashing in tone they really are. At the same time, it does something about how inconsequential a lot of Beach City cartoons end up being. Rather than having them as their own stories, they’re put together in an anthology brought together with an interesting framing device.

With one of Beach City’s residents, Lars, out in space, this alone is a great way to bring the tonal connections together. While he and his crew are still looking for parts to fix their nova thrusters in an asteroid mine, a letter from Steven comes out of his hair describing what’s been going on back home. Some events in the letter tie to Gem events the town gets hit with. The Crystal Gems and a few human residents brainstorm on a plan to keep the citizens safe in future attacks. There’s talk of shelters, food rations, and ways to get the warning across. This not only shows how better off the town really is with Nanefua as mayor, but also features a few setups for big events to come. The biggest ones include Pearl suddenly having a cell phone, and a telescope being purchased to look out for anything in space. It should be noted that the latter event gives Ronaldo something useful to do for once especially following an uncalled for jealous outburst over Lars being in space instead of him.

As for other events, they further show Gems and humans getting together in various activities. We have a few human residents and Gems like Amethyst and Peridot joining them for improv hosted by Jamie the mailman, and Garnet and Greg playing tennis on weekends. Things like these don’t mean much, but are telling of how open to interacting with Earth’s populace the Gems have become compared to the show’s early days. The rest of what the letters tell like updates on wrestling and Peedee getting his own food truck aren’t big, but fit the theme of major changes in town well.

Through these recounts, there’s one common thread which also displays a noteworthy strength to this season. There have been times where some things brought up in one cartoon and never anywhere else. If Sadie starting a band getting followed up on wasn’t telling enough, it’s further surprising that Dewey losing his position as mayor is expanded upon here. In all parts of the letter, he’s showing up trying to fit into a new position and failing miserably. For the most part, this is all funny in a sympathetic kind of way since he legitimately feels lost. However, Dewey is at his most sympathetic when he says that one thing he loved about being mayor was seeing the people’s smiling faces every day. He may have never been good at his job, but it's in this scene that fully confirm that he really cares for his people anyhow. Fortunately for him, he gets a chance at making the town happy when he finds a good new career path by filling the void in the Big Donut. He runs the place well and seems happy enough with where he is, finally showing him adjust to the major changes too.

Going back to Lars, this whole recount ends with a funny moment of the narration from Steven turning out to be him speaking out loud the whole time. There’s also an innocent explanation for why he wrote all this and a funny in-joke of how he’s never met half the people mentioned. It does get kind of awkward when he specifically mentions Peridot, yet they never meet afterwards. Maybe this will happen in future seasons.

For now, as far as Beach City cartoons go, this is easily one of the best with establishing connections with major lore elements and relatable themes through a plethora of events.

Season 4 Ranking

1. I Am My Mom

2. Storm in the Room

3. Mindful Education

4. That Will Be All

5. Steven’s Dream

6. Last One Out of Beach City

7. Are You My Dad?

8. The Zoo

9. The Good Lars

10. Gem Heist

11. Gem Harvest

12. Three Gems and a Baby

13. Adventures in Light Distortion

14. Buddy’s Book

15. Know Your Fusion

16. The New Crystal Gems

17. Lion 4: Alternate Ending

18. Doug Out

19. Kindergarten Kid

20. Room for Ruby

21. Future Boy Zoltron

22. Tiger Philanthropist

23. Rocknaldo

24. Onion Gang

Season 5 Ranking

1. The Trial

2. Jungle Moon

3. Off Colors

4. Stuck Together

5. Pool Hopping

6. Lars’ Head

7. Letters to Lars

8. Lars of the Stars

9. Your Mother and Mine

10. Raising the Barn

11. Sadie Killer

12. Back to the Kindergarten

13. The Big Show

14. Gemcation

15. Kevin Party

16. Dewey Wins

In the next Steven Universe review, the biggest reveal of all is set into place starting with Steven finding out what happened to Lapis ever since she left Earth.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Dawn of the Eds" and "Vert-Ed-Go" in Ed Edd n Eddy.

If you would like to check out other Steven Universe reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Sir Ed-A-Lot / A Pinch to Grow an Ed (Ed Edd n Eddy Season 1 Episode 3) - 'Toon Reviews 33

Sir Ed-a-Lot

Typically, spoiled brat characters are very unpleasant for their unwarranted anger and selfish thoughts. This cartoon has the Eds’ conflict be driven by such a character, and yet the whole thing turns out pretty entertaining.

After a random scene of Eddy impressing everyone with a cool car he somehow has, he and Double D leave it behind to check on Ed. It turns out he’s been roped into looking after his little sister Sarah, and as a deviation from his usual positive outlook on life, is aware of how bad the situation is. Before his friends have a chance to get away though, they’re roped into babysitting too.

All the way, Sarah doesn’t let up on her bratty ways, offering plenty of loud-mouthed demands to get what she wants with no consideration for what others think. She also resorts to practices to intentionally make Ed looking after her difficult such as holding her breath and not stopping until Eddy agrees to dress up for her tea party. The rest of the cartoon is also fueled by this loud, boisterous, difficult behavior as the Eds are forced to cater to her every desire as the queen she masquerades as. They act as horses for chariot races down the hall she has with her friend Jimmy who suddenly arrives as a prince. Eddy is thrown in a dungeon (an upside-down crib) when he loses the race, and keeping with the child-like atmosphere, he doesn’t easily get out via a lack of floor.

Then when he hears that Ed is getting paid for looking after his sister, Eddy suddenly becomes more engaged in helping him as the thought of money typically does for him. However, even when he does put in effort to entertain Sarah, she seems to willingly not enjoy him as if she’s one of the worst critics out there.

It’s only during a juggling spree with anything in the house when Ed accidentally throws Eddy a cactus and everything falls as Eddy yells in pain when Sarah finally enjoys him. Her bratty ways prove to not only relate to anger issues following this. She also goes mad with power of her queen role as she and Jimmy run from place to place breaking things for the intent of getting her brother and his friends in trouble.

So far, it’s been discussed of how much the Eds are put at the mercy of an unfair uncontrollable little brat like Sarah. Deliberately making Ed look like a bad babysitter only makes it worse. This could make the whole cartoon bad, but despite Sarah’s attitude, it’s still a lot of fun. Eddy’s attitude to being roped into this before learning Ed’s getting paid is nicely reflective of what most would think of the situation. Even if the Eds are forced into joining Sarah’s activities, there’s a lot of energy through well-timed music and fast-paced animation to them. The chariot races through the halls are exciting that feel like a real race complete with Sarah giving her own form of road rage. Eddy trying to entertain Sarah as a fool has solid comedy out of pathetic jokes and his juggling is grand-scale entertainment. The fun and high energy also makes the climax of the Eds rushing all over to stop Sarah from making messes very exciting. Plus there’s a good payoff to all this when Eddy takes over as king, gets Sarah mad, and them puts her in the ‘dungeon.’ Making this moment more special is how it’s one of the rare times the Eds come out on top over Sarah. I have to question how putting a picture of a clean room in front of the mess will fix anything, but I suppose the ending shows it’s a good thing adults aren’t seen in this show.

It may be hard to deal with a brat, but it’s impressive that this cartoon is as fun as it is regardless.

B+

A Pinch to Grow an Ed

When making a story about a short character who wants to be big, the proper direction is to make the drive for said short character to be a compelling one. That’s the route this cartoon following this convention goes which works in its favor. At the same time, it turns out to be a solid exercise of this show’s talents of extreme visual gags and staging of backfires.

In what may be the only time it’s addressed, Eddy is faced with frustration over being the shortest kid in the cul-de-sac. There are apparent hardships in literally everything he does. He has to jump up just to look at himself get dressed in a mirror. The neighborhood kids keep bombarding him with minor taunts about his height, although Rolf feels just as considerate as he is competitive at basketball. Despite pulling off a few decent playground stunts like jumping from swings, there are others Eddy just struggles at such as doing chin ups on monkey bars.

The worst treatment he gets for his size come from relentless taunts from the Kanker sisters. When he runs into them, they don’t just bombard him with unwarranted infatuation. They completely talk down to him, treating him like a cute little child they can smother with love against his will. It’s completely believable that this is the final straw for him when it comes to his self-conscious issues of his size. As a genuinely friendly gesture, he doesn’t even have to say anything to get Double D and Ed to want to try and make him tall.

It’s here where the cartoon’s direction starts getting interesting. The first attempts are simple ones on Ed’s part through simply pulling Eddy from a tree or making him eat a raft and then inflating it. These don’t work, but are highlighted by funny drawings and well-timed launches into the air, especially as a result of what’s done with the raft.

The one thing that does work are a pair of boots Double D designs that allow Eddy to instantly increase his height with the push of a remote control button. Now, this would be the part of the story where you’d expect Eddy to end up much bigger than desired, things get worse instead of better, and he wants to go back to normal. With that remote control though, this doesn’t happen. Eddy knows exactly how he wants to manipulate his height, and getting too tall is never a problem, meaning this change is a complete success for him. That said, he does really misuse the boots on the other kids by crushing them or their property. They may have insulted him before, but this is pretty disproportionate if you ask me. Since Eddy legitimately thinks people will respect him for this, these actions feel more like social misguidedness than just being mean.

Still, he’s open for some karma, but it doesn’t exactly come in the best places. The characters actually deserving of major retribution, the Kankers, come back and take control of the remote control in the name of humiliating Eddy than flirting with him. At least the visual gags of the boots rising and falling fast are funny to see. When the remote breaks, there’s one last gag as the boots send Eddy and his friends to space. They’re broken down, making for a major fall towards Earth. Thank cartoon logic they survive this, although Eddy ends up in a baby getup.

Overall, the structure of this story puts a fresh spin on the idea of short characters becoming tall. The motivation is sympathetic, the backfire is appropriate, and there’s solid animated fun highlighting the whole affair.

A-

The Ranking

1. The Ed-Touchables

2. A Pinch to Grow an Ed

3. Pop Goes the Ed

4. Sir Ed-a-Lot

5. Over Your Ed

6. Nagged to Ed

The next Ed Edd n Eddy review has the Eds believe they're trapped on a robot rebel planet as space outlaws, and then try to build their social status by building a clubhouse.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Letters to Lars" in Steven Universe.

If you would like to check out other Ed Edd n Eddy reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Pool Hopping (Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 15) - 'Toon Reviews 29

Pool Hopping

Whether this show is handling development to the underlying plot or slice of life adventures in Beach City, it always manages to leave a positive experience. The only issue with these topics is that tonally, both types of stories feel like two different shows at once. One has much more emphasis on drama and tends to raise the stakes more, while the other is mostly light-hearted escapades. This is why it’s admirable that with the town getting as affected by the attempted abductions at the end of Season 4 as they are, the plot types start feeling much more connected. This cartoon is one of the best ways to connect them while also providing one of the show’s best emotional experiences.

After recounting how much has changed in his home town, Steven is surprised to find Garnet suddenly working at the Big Donut. This unusual occurrence is the first thing to develop a prominent lore element of Garnet’s future vision. Connecting to its first appearance where she described time as a river, this is more or less what she’s trying to create. Everything she or others do creates streams of different possibilities to explore. For that, Garnet is setting out to try many off-the-wall actions to see what alternate realities she can create. Suddenly taking a job position at the Big Donut is just one of them and makes for a pretty humorous sight and they continue from here. Through ordering a bunch of pizzas just to give them away to bystanders or posing for one of Vidalia’s paintings, these activities certainly are random.

With so much focus on these events, the cartoon is so far as light-hearted as the standard Beach City fare. The unusual events don’t just apply to humorous occurrences though. At one point, Steven spots a baby kitten which is something people can really never expect to see every day. Through continuing to act unusual, he and Garnet follow it, and come across several homeless kittens alone in a bush in the woods as it’s about to rain. At this sorry sight, Garnet begins to panic, her future vision doing nothing to help her decide what to do.

All of this frivolity around Beach City leads to something big about what she’s been going through with there being a reason for her wanting to do this in the first place. Her future vision has been so off, even she’s been surprised at every big Gem event that occurs. This mainly applies to the recent one where Steven did the unthinkable through giving himself up to Homeworld and finding a way back through Lion. Because of this, she feels totally lost which is a big deal since she has all the pressures of leading the Crystal Gems. Adding to the emotion, she’s visibly burdened by the role since all she wants to do is enjoy existing as a fusion. Even with her plan of creating alternate possibilities, she still has no idea what to do, and that includes helping the kittens.

It’s here where Steven helps Garnet in his own form of leadership, giving advice to work towards the outcome they want to see happen instead of waiting for it to happen. It’s remarkable that we’re at the point where after Steven looking up to Garnet so much, she’s now looking up to him. She ultimately concludes that her future vision can turn out better if she factors in that Steven’s grown up a lot. This is actually telling of how she’s often surprised by outcomes that occur throughout the series, and paves the way for what becomes of her in a big reveal coming soon.

For this particular cartoon, I consider it a true marvel for how it brings genuine emotion and character growth out of a fun day in Beach City.

A+