Monday, August 5, 2019

A Single Pale Rose (Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 18) - 'Toon Reviews 29

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A Single Pale Rose


One of the boldest things a show with an underlying plot can do is make the audience think they understand everything, only to hit them with a huge game changer later on.  That’s a major thing that turns this cartoon into such a huge event.  Working in its favor is how well it works as a show of character and especially the emotional undertones that grow all throughout. 

Like many of the best works of this show, it starts off very simple, at least as far as what’s known of the basic story goes.  Steven, who’s constantly heard of how his mother Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond, is thinking hard of every little detail he’s heard.  However, it’s the most recent detail of Pearl having involvement in the shattering that gets him going.  He goes to ask Pearl, who’s getting used to a new cell phone, about this, only she’s once again drawn to cover her mouth and not say anything about it.  The many appearances of this gesture, and the peculiar focus on it in “Gemcation” do their part to make Pearl unable to talk about this subject the start of a true break in things.  It’s like a culmination of ongoing strange behaviors that lead to the deep reasons behind it, and the way to them really makes the cartoon. 
Later on, Steven receives texts from Pearl about how she wants to tell him something but can’t, only to learn that they didn’t come from Pearl, but someone inside her gemstone.  From there, Steven has to go inside the gemstone to retrieve the phone.  It makes for a highly interesting bit of lore where Pearl has several versions of herself inside her, each one reflecting an aspect of her personality.  That's an ingenious way of showing all the phases of a character and makes me wonder if all Gems are like that.  Anyway, this is where the emotional build-up really shows.  The first Pearl inside the gemstone is very upbeat and happy as she organizes everything alphabetically. 
From there though, the other Pearls are very messy in a variety of ways.  The second one is on a never-ending surge of crying over the loss of Rose when she decided to have a baby.  The third one is all her contained memories of the Gem War and regret over doing something that caused the shattering and corruption of many innocent Gems.  This leads to the fourth Pearl that explains why she’s been so hesitant about shapeshifting. It seems like she’s Pink Diamond’s real shatterer as she shapeshifted into Rose to do it.  That’s not necessarily so when Steven finds one last Pearl who has the phone and brings this character exploration to a grand finish. 

She and Rose are somehow on Pink’s palanquin talking about a strategy Rose feels will end everything immediately.  Pearl is hesitant but is driven to go through with it by the thought.  Then comes the moment that changes everything as Rose makes an odd remark that she can’t exactly shatter herself. 
Rose shapeshifts, her gemstone manages to rotate into a new shape, and when the light settles, it turns out that she was actually Pink Diamond the whole time.  In turn, Pearl was her servant, and through following her Diamond’s orders, she accepted a seal that prevented her from revealing ‘Rose’s’ true identity for eons.  This means that there’s far more to the underlying story than the war starting because someone didn’t like what the Diamonds were doing to Earth.  The Gem responsible for it was the one in charge of the planet’s colonization.  This in turn makes for a whole new way of viewing the War which, along with the mass destruction of so many Gems, pretty much happened for nothing.  It also surprisingly makes for a lot sense considering how inexplicably powerful ‘Rose’ seemed to be when other Gems don’t have the amount of abilities she supposedly had.  This alone explains how she’s able to change her gemstone shape and hold her fabricated form for such a long time.  Plus, her constant arsenal of pink items and abilities to resurrect people turning them pink instead of flesh color like Rose was is also very telling. 
Above all is the fact that many of the Gems we know were following a Diamond, the beings they’re totally against.  You don’t even have to think hard to determine that this reveal is taxing for Steven.  I mean, his mom was actually a Diamond, so he’s therefore related to those horrible galactic dictators while living with the group fighting against them.  In the end, the main Pearl’s tearful reaction for not being able to tell anyone about this is fully representative of the sorry sight of the news.  Though if you ask me, Amethyst’s comical cry of disbelief that officially ends the cartoon is a far more appropriate reaction for anyone watching.

Ultimately, this show reaches true animated greatness with this cartoon.  In addition to a well-utilized cast, creative world building, and interesting ways of showing character layers, it brings a lot to unpack with just one little scene.  For how smoothly it all flows and how big the play on emotions is, the show enters a freshly huge change to marvelous effect.

A++

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.      A Single Pale Rose

2.      The Trial

3.      Jungle Moon

4.      Off Colors

5.      Stuck Together

6.      Pool Hopping

7.      Can’t Go Back

8.      Lars’ Head

9.      Letters to Lars

10.  Lars of the Stars

11.  Your Mother and Mine

12.  Raising the Barn

13.  Sadie Killer

14.  Back to the Kindergarten

15.  The Big Show

16.  Gemcation

17.  Kevin Party

18.  Dewey Wins

The next Steven Universe review is on somewhat of an addendum to this big reveal by attempting to show how Pink Diamond can still be considered a good character despite causing the destruction of innocent Gems for nothing.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is a much simpler episode in Ed Edd n Eddy with "Read All About Ed" and "Quick Shot Ed."
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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