Lily Pad
Thai
A likable quality of Anne’s is that she’s very versatile when it comes to talents, and far more often than not, it shows. For that, it’s pleasing to get a cartoon centering on some of the skills she excels in. In addition, there’s a good hint of culture by working in the fact that she’s of Thai heritage. That was one of the most personal character traits for her from series creator, Matt Braly, whose family grew up in Thailand, and that he had spent many summers there. As you can tell, there’s promise for this cartoon cooking up something good, and it delivers.
Speaking of cooking, Anne’s featured talent is all about food, coming from working at a Thai restaurant her parents own back home. While in this world of frogs, she soon gets a chance to apply what she owns to the local restaurant owned by a frog named Stumpy. The food there is largely unappetizing, mostly consisting of slop, and the place is getting majorly slammed by a stuck-up newt critic named Duckweed. Applying her restaurant experience to this situation, Anne decides to help Stumpy protect his business by setting up a wager with Duckweed. They’ll refurbish the restaurant for him to come back in two days, and Duckweed must like their work for the place to stay open.
People bring up how Anne set up a stressful and seemingly impossible challenge that could kill a business, and they’re not wrong. However, it always feels like Anne knows what she’s doing.
She’s enthusiastic about the whole thing and is willing to put in the hard work that goes into refurbishment. The efforts show with how well she organizes cleaning the restaurant, setting up publicity, and giving the interior a whole new look. Even Stumpy, who starts off the challenge pessimistic about the situation, develops hope of pulling this off, and it feels earned. At the same time, you can see all this as an endearing way of Anne sharing her experience with the new world she’s staying in, the final touch fusing frog and Thai food for the menu. A good culture clash feels like a natural way to draw crowds, and the fact that the customers genuinely enjoy what the menu change offers basically finalizes her talents.
However, talent can’t hide the nature of critics. Duckweed arrives in the believable act of disguising himself as a common customer so no special punches are pulled for him, and he still plans on giving the restaurant a bad review. His irrationality fueling everything, Anne and Stumpy attempt to satisfy him with a big dish involving a kraken.
This backfires when they don’t
manage to kill it before cooking it, and it goes on a violent rampage. Once again though, Anne’s knowledge of food
proves helpful as she ends the beast’s rampage with the help of Stumpy’s hand
utensils, and a lemon for the monstrous calamari. It does feel contrived that Duckweed is moved
to call this incredible when he didn’t get to eat anything and the experience
proved dangerous, but it’s satisfying the restaurant stays open. Plus, for how far Anne may have went, it’s
clear that her intentions were noble, and ultimately ended up helping a
lot. I’d even like to imagine her Thai
touches to the restaurant remain in place, at least I hope so. Overall, the cartoon turns out to be one of her
proudest moments, and may even get you to want to try Thai food afterwards.
A
Plantar’s
Last Stand
When setting up backgrounds for characters, one good element is having them come from humble beginnings or raise a family in less-than-lavish upbringings. That in turn poses challenges to just get by and in turn grow as an individual.
That’s a major point of appeal for Hop Pop as he spends this cartoon trying to run his vegetable stand business to make a good profit as well as keep up its reputation. According to him, it follows a policy of how honesty comes first, and that’s been keeping it well-liked for so many generations, especially to old Mrs. Croaker. Then conflict arrives when it’s revealed that the rent has gone up, and if Hop Pop doesn’t make enough money in three days, the stand will be lost. Considering that this is his only source of income and that he has to act as the sole parental figure of two kids and a human visitor, anyone can feel the weight of this situation.
However, it’s here where Anne works in more of her human customs to help Hop Pop through bringing up the practice of marketing strategies. In other words, they’ll use what they have to create a new product, and carefully word phrases to make customers want to buy them. Through just squeezing vegetable juice into a jar, they create Plantar’s Potions, which certainly looks different from the typical produce despite coming from there. As for the marketing phrases, while they technically stray from Hop Pop’s honesty policy, they don’t feel like total lies. They relate to things like making people smarter, stronger etc., but vegetables do really tend to do these things, and all the marketing does is emphasize them. For that, there’s nothing virtually wrong with going this route to save the stand, and it makes for an entertaining show of Hop Pop as a salesperson.
The stunt only gets truly problematic when vegetables run out and Hop Pop loses care of the quality of the product, and instead makes Plantar’s Potions with garbage. Of all the unethical acts, this has got to be his most boneheaded because you can easily tell that people will taste something wrong with it when they try it. Also, it could have been avoided if they just checked to see how many vegetables were needed to reach their goal, or at least raise the price.
What’s more, Hop Pop actually goes through with selling the garbage potion, and only backs off when Mrs. Croaker praising his honesty guilts him majorly. While he still sees sense, it’s still off-putting that he’d even think this would work, as this is a case where total honesty is a better policy. There is at least a good climax out of this when giant flies come wanting the garbage potion, and in an ironic twist, start eating the frogs. Hop Pop settles the matter by pushing the garbage potion off a cliff, saving everyone.
It’s now clear that he’ll have to work to
re-earn everyone’s trust, but they’re actually not as hostile as you’d think,
though the real consequence is losing the stand. The cartoon ends with such a reflection of
everyone thinking of how they’ll make it before suddenly cutting to the hard
fact that Hop Pop’s unemployed. Obviously
dumb plot-driving decisions aside, this is still an overall cartoon of Hop Pop
facing the challenges of parenthood.
Along with a pleasing sales-pitching atmosphere and legit lasting
consequences, this may not be the best story, but its impression is still good
as it is.
B+
The Ranking
1. Anne vs
Wild
2. The Domino
Effect
3. Contagi-Anne
4. Best Fronds
5. Family
Shrub
6. Lily Pad
Thai
7. Dating Season
8. Anne or
Beast?
9. Stakeout
10. Taking
Charge
11. Flood,
Sweat, and Tears
12. Anne Theft
Auto
13. Hop Luck
14. Plantar’s
Last Stand
15. Girl Time
16. Breakout
Star
17. Cane Crazy
18. Sprig vs
Hop Pop
The next Amphibia review officially introduces the frogs' relationship with the toads and Anne try to gain their respect, and even looks into their dynamic as law enforcers from the perspective of one of Anne's friends, Sasha.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we begin the home stretch of OK K.O. with "Carl."
If you would like to check out other Amphibia reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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