Why So Blue? - (Steven Universe Future Episode 8) - 'Toon Reviews 41

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Why So Blue?

The prospect of more Steven Universe gave the suggestion of seeing much more of other Gems outside of the main ones.  However, even in this epilogue series that’s open for more fan service, the main Crystal Gems remain the most prominently featured.  That said, this series does still provide noteworthy closure for the character arcs of certain supporting Crystal Gems.  One of them, the focus of this cartoon, is Lapis Lazuli, a popular Gem with a troubled past who blossomed into a true powerful force near the original series’ end.  Along the way, this cartoon shows a lot of benefits of showing how she’s changed as well as where she’s come from.  

In accordance with the new Gem order, she and Steven head to a planet that other Gems are destroying and terraforming.  As a lyric in an earlier song suggested, it turns out that this is just what our Lapis used to do on a regular basis.  These days, she’s much more appreciative of nature and organic life and would never want to destroy it.  That’s only the first demonstration of her change and growth.  It contrasts greatly with the true terraforming culprits, two other Lapis Lazulis who know destroying planets isn’t allowed anymore, but do it because they like it.  As an aside, while these Lapises are the same, they stand out with things like physical characteristics and personalities.  One is aggressive and closed-minded to finding new things to do, while the other is more innocent and open, but still follows her partner’s push for destruction.  

Speaking of change, Steven and our Lapis go with a peaceful approach promoting creative forms of self-expression as substitutes for destroying.  Art or meep-morp offers impressive craftsmanship our Lapis has grown to own, while the two Lapises still use it to get on with destruction.  

Then after expressing through dance doesn’t work, our Lapis shows her growth in the pleasing form of song which in classic Steven Universe fashion is moving and poetic.  It nicely shows where her dark past came from as well as how she’s now all about exploring what other planets have to offer.  That’s a stark contrast to her other song about her past constantly holding her back, and the fact that what she’s learned is sticking now is refreshing and rewarding.  

When even this doesn’t move the two Lapises from their mannerisms, our Lapis decides it’s time to get aggressive like she always planned.  That quality is arguably what led to her development sticking looking back, so it’s fitting that unleashing all her water power intimidates the other Lapises to listen to her.  Still, our Lapis feels that the powers she showed were not strength, but weakness as they went against things like restraint and patience.  When you think about it, she kind of has a point in a time where strength is always measured physically.  

In the end though, things feel accomplished when Steven openly acknowledges Lapis’ growth, and one of the two Lapises comes to enroll in Little Homeschool.  That said, questions are also raised on what happened to the other Lapis, and we never see what this one does at the school later on.  Also, the whole cartoon turns out to be an outlier to the rest of the series with little connection to Steven’s arc of losing his touch in helping others and questioning his purpose.  I guess it counts with Lapis solving the problem instead of him, but maybe there could’ve been more focus on how he’s personally effected.  

While these are drawbacks, this cartoon is still a strong character driven work, especially for Lapis fans.

A-

The Ranking

1.      Volleyball

2.      Little Homeschool

3.      Bluebird

4.      Why So Blue?

5.      Snow Day

6.      Rose Buds

7.      Guidance

8.      A Very Special Episode

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

The next Steven Universe Future review deals with the emotional toll of Steven seemingly losing his connection with his Beach City friends.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "The So-Bad-Ical" from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes.

Snow Day - (Steven Universe Future Episode 7) - 'Toon Reviews 41

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:

Snow Day

It’s often the case that characters growing and maturing is something to be proud of.  However, this cartoon makes a point of showing that some characters growing up means they leave behind a lot of the charm of their youth.  

It follows Steven endure the stress of his newfound responsibilities now that he’s grown up and taken up running Little Homeschool, all amidst a backdrop of a snow day.  His schedule is completely booked of nothing but work, and he's constantly doing errands to get ready for the day.  He’s also taken up mundane practices like having protein shakes for breakfast, being a vegetarian, and most notably, moving away from trademark elements of his younger days.  

This steers us to how Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl approach Steven’s new demeanor.  There’s a pretty stark contrast to how interested in Steven’s mannerisms they were when they were introduced in the beginning of the original series.  With the possible exception of Amethyst, the main Crystal Gems were too concerned with their responsibilities to really take interest in what Steven introduced to them.  This meant they rarely had time to hang with Steven and this in turn probably led to Steven growing to be more concerned with Gem matters than anything else.  Now, the opposite is true.  They’re all interested in what Steven introduced to them in the past, but he distances himself from them all.  He forsakes his cheeseburger backpack, claims together breakfast has too much sugar for him, and shows little interest in the Dogcopter movie the Crystal Gems picked out.  

The biggest instance comes the next day when the snow forces Steven to close Little Homeschool for the day, and the Crystal Gems try to get him to play Steven Tag.  That’s a game where Gems have to shapeshift into Steven when tagged, but not just Steven.  It has to be the way Steven looked back in the original series.  Obviously, with Steven trying to take up more adult matters, he doesn’t want any part of this and wants to get to his schedule planning.  Nevertheless, the Crystal Gems won’t let up when trying to get him to join in.  Along the way are some notable highlights.  A big one is Pearl joining in on shapeshifting when she’s tagged, mainly because of how her past of helping to fake a shattering made her hesitant to shapeshift at all.  

The rest of them are more for spectacle, but do have a point to them.  For the Gems to hold their shapeshifted forms, they fuse while looking like Steven, making for Steven variations of Sugilite, Sardonyx, Opal, and Alexandrite.  As an extra measure, they’re introduced with big informative onscreen text like this is a wrestling match or something.  This is all fun, but after a while, it becomes harder to shake off how childish these revered Gems are acting.  How they escalate this whole Steven Tag game is pretty ridiculous to see so much of.  

Eventually, Steven is tagged, and only then all this playing around becomes especially poignant.  As Steven turns into his younger self, he expresses frustration that the Gems don’t seem to appreciate what he’s grown up to be.  They see they went too far with wanting to spend time with him, and there’s an endearing compromise when as the snow melts next day, they go do errands together.  So both sides reach an understanding where one lightens up, and the other appreciates true growth.  It may be too silly for its own good, but the results are meaningful.  

Too bad there are still many issues for Steven to work through.

A-

The Ranking

1.      Volleyball

2.      Little Homeschool

3.      Bluebird

4.      Snow Day

5.      Rose Buds

6.      Guidance

7.      A Very Special Episode

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode serving as closure for Lapis Lazuli as she's faced with other Gems of her kinds. 

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

Your World is an Illusion - (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 2 Episode 7) - 'Toon Reviews 40

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:

Your World is an Illusion

Animated shows that embrace the fact that they're cartoons are among some of the most fascinating to me.  It’s like a dissection to see what can be done with what may be the most versatile film and TV medium of them all.  This show has embraced that feel a lot with several extreme gags and expressions, and in this cartoon it goes a step forward.  It completely breaks down the makeup of the show’s world while also leaving a believable heavy impression on the principal character of the tale.  

It all begins after a round of stopping Boxmore robots with K.O. hearing a call for help.  The hero in distress is called Holo-Jane, a hologram with mass.  It’s through her where K.O. slowly starts getting the idea that he’s living in a world that isn’t even real.  Holo-Jane’s problem is that she feels lost in the world, down to pointing out things that don’t feel right from black lines around characters to rocks that are part of the setting.  

These are only a few examples to start things out, but under his own power, K.O. starts noticing a lot of things that don’t make sense about his world.  Some characters just stand in an awkward pose when they’re not the focus of the scene.  When expressing how he and others feel, certain parts of their body are shown while others mysteriously disappear for a few scenes.  Nothing changes about the amount of lightning nachos he has in a container no matter how much of them he eats.  When walking, he’s actually gliding along the ground.  Things like high-fives and punches are represented by single black sheets with a white flash.  In other words, K.O. is witnessing a plethora of animation tricks at once revealing the harsh truth that he’s living in a world someone else created.  There’s no reality to it all and nothing makes sense.  

It’s all a very clever breakdown of a familiar animated world right down to stripping it to its inner workings as a product of animation.  However, what really makes it work is how K.O. himself responds to it.  While breaking down his world into its basic components is funny in itself, to K.O., he’s lost and afraid knowing he’s in a nonexistent reality making for very genuine internal drama.  It soon gets to the point where he hops out of his second dimension into a space of storyboards, character model sheets, and other things necessary to make a cartoon.  As the audience remains fascinated in how willing the cartoon is to show what really makes its world, K.O. is still very much lost in this unreality.  

It’s only when he finds Holo-Jane again who offers a fresh insight of how even animated worlds can be so engaging.  Her monologue basically says that even though this world has things that don’t make sense, the way people interact in the world make it very believable.  The way K.O. and the heroes of Lakewood Plaza Turbo go about their lives and form solid healthy friendships with each other make the world feel as real as it needs to.  That alone is precisely why animation is such an engaging art form in general. No matter how fanciful and ridiculous the worlds are, the character relationships and how they feel are what keep everything engaging and believable.  This holds true for this show as K.O. comes to his senses and gets a comforting hug from his mommy.  

At that moment the cartoon comes full circle as this show at its most engaged in animation as a medium staged as believably as possible.  It’s an impressive thing from a show that asks if it’s amazing when you know every second that you see is 24 connected pieces.

A++

Season 2 Rankings

1.      Your World is an Illusion

2.      Lord Cowboy Darrell

3.      My Fair Carol

4.      Seasons Change

5.      Plaza Film Festival

6.      Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

7.      Be a Team

The next OK K.O. review features fun times with K.O. and Dendy as they investigate why their teacher has gone on sabbatical.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Snow Day" from Steven Universe Future.

If you would like to check out other OK K.O.! reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

Let's Watch the Boxmore Show - (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 2 Episode 6) - 'Toon Reviews 40

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:

Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

It soon becomes clear that the intent of this cartoon is to satirize how obsessive people can become when watching a favorite show.  However, it’s hard to really immerse oneself in that feel with the given context and how far the characters go with their obsession.  

After a round of beating the Boxmore robots, K.O., Rad, and Enid are taken to an important room in Gar’s Bodega.  There are several monitors set up around the plaza that Mr. Gar uses to observe every little thing happening.  The bodega employees are assigned to watch over them in case there’s any suspicious activity coming from Boxmore.  What ends up happening is that they find a lot of entertainment coming from watching what happens at the enemy robot company.  

Put together, the events at Boxmore play out just like something out of a reality show.  Darrell, the robot in charge of everything, has a position for any of his robot seasons to be his deputy if they can successfully destroy the plaza.  It’s also marked by a special award called a bipple which, unsurprisingly, all the robots covet.  Add in a few random interviews about their feelings on the circumstance and competition, and the feel the security measures are going for is fully realized.  It’s practically convincing that K.O., Rad, and Enid start treating their job like it’s an actual show right down to never moving from the monitors for a week just to see how it all unfolds.  That there is an interesting take on the idea of binge-watching.  

Slowly though, their obsessions with what they’re watching makes itself known as they eagerly anticipate certain moments.  The biggest one is a comedic blowup from one of the simpler robots, Ernesto, at all of his siblings.  This is all innocent enough, but then this approach to responsibility becomes very problematic.  K.O., Rad, and Enid become so attached to their security watch on Boxmore that they start taking sides on who gets the spot of Darrell’s deputy.  Sometimes they don’t show any care about what they’re targeting.  At one point, Darrell assigns them to attack the Fitness Dojo where K.O.’s mom works.  K.O. nicely sees the horrific implications of this attack coming to pass and begs Rad and Enid to do something to stop them.  Knowing how much they care for K.O., and how much he loves his mommy, they really should have seen the issue with this long before.  

However, even after talking the robots out of going after the dojo, the bodega employees abuse their positions just as badly.  There is at least one funny scene where, with the aid of a special walkie-talkie and solid Darrell impressions, they trick Ernesto into melting himself in the incinerator.  The rest of the moments though are hard to excuse as each employee sides with one Boxmore robot, and tricks them into going after different areas of the plaza.  Some of them offer unwarranted destruction of personal property like Rad’s van and Enid’s favorite counter.  The most disturbing part is that they all forget the Boxmore robots are the bad guys and try to help them.  Soon Mr. Gar has to come in and take care of everything and later rightfully berate the bodega employees.  Also, when he shows some admiration for the alleged Boxmore Show, it feels more reasonable since, unlike the employees, he doesn’t let it interfere with responsibilities.  It makes it all the more disappointing that turn out to not be ready for such a game-changing position.  

There are some laughs from the show and relatable premise, but it could have been better in context of the story.

B

Season 2 Rankings

1.      Lord Cowboy Darrell

2.      My Fair Carol

3.      Seasons Change

4.      Plaza Film Festival

5.      Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

6.      Be a Team

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where this show honors the animation medium by breaking it down and explaining how to find believable substance in illusions.

If you would like to check out other OK K.O.! reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.