Dating
Season
A telling sign of the quality of the series is how it executes certain plots that have been utilized innumerable times. Even if you can guess what’s going to happen, the story can still leave its own distinct impact and keep you engaged. That’s why this cartoon turns out as good as it is through how it handles trying to bring two characters together as a couple.
It all begins when Anne and Sprig come across a childhood acquaintance of Sprig’s, Ivy Sundew. Right away, Ivy shows a lot of appeal. In addition to her own form of cuteness and charm, she’s energetic and active through her talents of ambushing people when they least expect. You can see why she and Sprig would be good friends. Anne sees the sight of two kid frogs with a good connection as the basis for romance.
Word spreads and the story is taken over by characters doing everything in their power to make Sprig and Ivy a couple. In most cases, this plot would not be very pleasing. Forcing love instead of letting it happen naturally is something you can easily see will not work out, and instead of enjoying things, you just wait for things to fall apart. Fortunately, the story turns out to be very pleasing, mainly due to the show’s comedy and versatile cast.
The players have their own ideas of bringing Sprig and Ivy together, and they’re all well-defined. Anne wants to do it for the sole reason of creating romance based on her magazines, and her readings are overly-pronounced to great comedic effect. It’s like a satirical take on the idea of teen gossip. Hop Pop and Ivy’s mother, Felicia, see the potential romance more for business reasons, and expect their kids to follow a stuffy romance ritual to finalize their union. It’s funny how they don’t even try to hide their greed, but you can also see productive reasons to provide for the family from their perspective, at least Hop Pop’s. The most standout character is Polly. She’s the most self-aware, not making a big deal of Sprig and Ivy’s dating, and having frequent spurts of anger to capitalize on how ridiculous everyone’s being. It’s hilarious to see so much anger built up in a tiny tadpole as usual, though that also means no one listens to her.
As for Sprig and Ivy, they also bring freshness to the setup. While forced to dance in front of a crowd in uncomfortable old-time clothes, they’re soon upfront and honest about how they really feel. This way, they maintain their charm and don’t make things uncomfortably awkward. In fact, their charm is more prominent than ever when they abandon the ritual to enjoy themselves. Their moments of watching fireflies and talking together shows more chemistry than any dance.
This is also true for when they have to save their families. When following the kids, they’re captured by beautiful yet predatory birds called love doves. While they’re held captive, Polly finally lets herself be heard through calling everyone out, Sprig and Ivy compatibly save everyone, and the love doves are beaten but still majestic. They also claim they don’t want to date, and all seems settled. However, we literally end with Sprig giving one long gaze at Ivy as she’s taken home, and he and Anne are humorously blunt with this meaning he’s fallen in love with her. I mean, they nonchalantly say Sprig just fell in love with Ivy, and the cartoon ends. You can enjoy the humor of how this conclusion is reached, but also be glad it was formed through natural chemistry with no meddling.
Above all, you really got to appreciate how
this show brings good entertainment out of a typically flawed setup.
A
Anne vs
Wild
A good mark of quality in certain works is getting the audience to rethink initial perceptions on certain elements. In this cartoon’s case, it brings a whole new perspective to the show’s episodic nature. So far, the cartoons have been largely self-contained and can be viewed as solely stand-alone stories. As fluctuating in subjects as the material has been, all the adventures are given a new light when attention is given to a prominent trait of Anne’s.
She hears that the Plantars are heading off on an annual camping trip, and they don’t hold back on how they don’t expect Anne to come along. They know that she’s not into being dirty or enduring the tense wilderness, and the show even highlights this with her excitement over a bath bomb from back home she finds. However, Anne, visibly effected by the claims of the Plantars going off to do something without her, insists that she comes along on the camping trip. As a result, she sets herself up for one harsh wilderness experience after another, and unlike the Plantars who have been there before, she endures nothing but misery.
Normally, it wouldn’t be enjoyable to watch someone willingly put themselves through things they don’t like at all, but then you consider the basis of all this. It’s been established that Anne doesn’t know what to make of herself without friends. Being separated from her human friends and living with this frog family sets her up for new companions to follow, and you can see that she wouldn’t want to lose them. Plus, there’s solid physical comedy from her failed attempts at camping. Under these circumstances, you can also get why Anne would set herself up for even more extreme camping when the Plantars start to see that she’s miserable with regular camping.
A mysterious tough frog called Soggy Joe leads them into a moody, scary looking part of the woods for the Plantars to do such extreme hardcore camping. There’s not even the slightest bit of exaggeration to the danger with sights of frog skulls, and everyone freaked out about a story of carnivorous mud men. It isn’t long before the consequences of Anne’s fake desire for hardcore camping are known when Soggy Joe is struck by an ax and the mud men appear. Luckily, Anne is quick to stop them with the help of an earlier claim that mud men hate being clean, and that bath bomb from the cartoon’s beginning.
Then following the action as well as comedy from the mud men’s true form, there’s heart where Anne is upfront about why she’s acted the way she has. Despite her misery, she just wanted to hang out with the Plantars, claiming that she truly has grown fond of them. As an extra heartfelt measure, they all understand where she was coming from, and it’s clear that their connection has become stronger than ever. There’s even explicit proof of this as we end with Anne showing the Plantars the music box that brought her to this world now that they’ve been through a lot. They don’t seem to know anything about it, but it does its part to advance the underlying plot. However, one huger layer is added with the last scene of Hop Pop actually seeming quite knowledgeable about the music box, recognizing it as a dangerous artifact, the Calamity Box.
So now the show is set up for really
interesting storytelling, but after this cartoon, the heart and character
moments of the episodic stories should also be appreciated.
A+
The Ranking
1. Anne vs
Wild
2. The Domino
Effect
3. Best Fronds
4. Dating
Season
5. Anne or
Beast?
6. Stakeout
7. Taking
Charge
8. Flood,
Sweat, and Tears
9. Anne Theft
Auto
10. Hop Luck
11. Girl Time
12. Breakout
Star
13. Cane Crazy
14. Sprig vs
Hop Pop
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