Friday, June 24, 2022

The First Temple - (Amphibia Season 2 Episode 14) - 'Toon Reviews 49

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 TwitterNow on with today's review:

The First Temple

At this point, progress can really start being made with the main goal of the series.  Anne and the others have ideas about getting her home with the music box that brought her to Amphibia in the first place, as well as getting it to work again.  It involves adventures to three different temples to bring color back to the gemstones that give the music box its power.  This in turn opens up the promise for exciting adventures with creative scenarios, and this voyage to the first temple delivers on all that and more.

Anne and the Plantars are joined by Marcy for this temple who shows that she’s more than up for the challenges it’s said to come with.  Now, each of the three temples is said to highlight specific virtues, and the first one is all about intelligence.  It comes with puzzles that have been attempted and failed by many throughout the years, but given her established intellect, Marcy is confident enough to actually make it.  With knowledge of the temple’s location and her own giant bird to make travelling much faster, she leads the way throughout the adventure.  In the process, the entire escapade stands out not just through the temple’s puzzles, but also through the characters going through everything.  

In Marcy’s case, the creative challenges and her established character traits go hand-in-hand.   They tie into one area of Marcy’s character that seemed clear right from her introduction, but is much more prominent here.  Like most people in the spectrum, she gets very fixated on specific things and tunes out the rest of the world around her.  This is emphasized by a set of flashbacks where she’d get into certain interests to the point of ignoring everything else, including Anne in uncomfortable situations.  Marcy may have reasons to be proud of this as her talent of being in the zone, but despite the humor of these flashbacks, it does bring up a legit problem to her as a friend.  

As a result, the challenges of the temple she leads everyone through are a perfect fit for her and helpful to the cause, but raise the stakes for everyone’s safety.  Covering the first two challenges, they present the kind of brainteasing and intense knowledge that Marcy would easily connect with well.  However, through getting deep into the intellectual area of the challenge, she’s once again unaware of the danger that comes with it.  For the first challenge, she finds a rubik's cube she has to put together, but all her moves change the orientation of the chamber, sending Anne and the Plantars in all directions.  Then the next challenge with a room full of tiles has her try to find the meaning to a riddle about hue.  There are only two tiles with the correct hue, and while Marcy can step on one of them, someone else is at risk of missing the other and facing death by flames or crushing.  Each challenge already lives up to their intrigue with their setup and creativity which is always great to see.  However, with how easily everyone is put into danger from Marcy getting into solving them, they stand out more for featuring something for one of the characters to work through.

Of course, Marcy isn’t the only character to stand out since this is Anne and the Plantars’ adventure too.  While Sprig and Polly are mostly observers here standing out with witty remarks of the temple’s dangers, Anne and Hop Pop have an interesting thing to work through.  This adventure coming right after Anne discovering that Hop Pop buried the music box behind her back and lied about it, their role brings in most of the drama.  It could be argued that Anne forgiving Hop Pop for what he did was too abrupt and didn’t last long enough to match the weight of the action.  In a way, it feels like that was the point because that course of action is clearly not forgotten.  When everyone starts the adventure thinking what happened is behind them, it comes as a shock that there’s a lot of awkwardness and discomfort when it’s brought up.  Of course, Anne and Hop Pop face the most of it whenever they interact, though they do try to not bring it up directly.  It’s not until the second challenge when they start getting more direct with it still being on their mind.  Anne is willing to help Marcy complete the challenge largely because she feels like Hop Pop is mainly concerned of protecting his family.  To her, that means just Sprig and Polly while she, an outsider, is less important.  This is clearly not true, though it does add depth to Anne’s established hurt feelings over Hop Pop’s actions.  Understandably, Hop Pop is upset by Anne’s way of thinking, especially after believing that she forgave him.  It soon becomes clear that Anne forgiving Hop Pop was just her attempt to keep peace and have things remain the way they were, but really she was ignoring her issues with him.  The fact is they’re still there building up inside her, and the debate over how to get through the tile challenge only results in an explosion of arguing that lasts for an hour.  To say the least, this is an interesting approach to the concept of dealing with a close one disappointing a fellow comrade.

Both the character moments and what the temple has to offer reach their climax at the last challenge.  It’s a giant game of flipwart, basically this world’s version of chess, where Marcy controls pawns via a smaller board while Anne and the Plantars are roped in as game pieces.  With the main board being huge though, it’s open to getting destructive with how it takes out opposing pieces.  Everyone rightfully fears for their lives, but Marcy, said to be a champ at flipwart, just sits back and enjoys the fun of the game.  To be fair, she does make a good attempt to keep everyone safe, but their worries are still ever-present.  The one thing to snap her back to reality is when she’s close to winning, but the game itself doesn’t play by the rules.  As a result, her applied knowledge doesn’t work, so she’s put in a panic over what to do.  

In the process, Anne and Hop Pop confront each other over their issues about what happened with the music box.  Under the control of the flipwart game, Anne, on the enemy side, is forced to aggressively attack Hop Pop.  She maturely says that even if she’s still mad at Hop Pop, it would be going too far to try and hurt him, especially like this.  In response, Hop Pop explains precisely what it’s like for people to be on the receiving end of other’s anger.  He’s emotionally hurt by Anne constantly rubbing it in that he let her down and not moving on from it, like his mistakes are all there is to him.  It’s a perfect showing of why it always hurts a story when anger, justified or not, goes too far.  Confronted by his feelings, Anne responds by saying that she understands and knows Hop Pop isn’t bad, but still needs time to get through the pain of his actions.  This in turn brings what may be the most fitting conclusion for these types of situations, and it’s all highlighted by strong emotions and characterizations.  

Further enhancing the moment is an epiphany of Marcy where upon seeing Anne and Hop Pop’s moment, she decides that it’s not worth trying to win at flipwart.  She throws the game, meaning she failed the temple’s challenges, but at least everyone is safe.  

Then in a twist, this move turns out to be rewarding after all.  The temple leads everyone down a path to the outside to what seems like a common outhouse.  The truth is, this is actually a reward for Marcy showing humility by losing flipwart for the sake of her friends, a sign that there’s depth and maturity despite her inherent flaw.  Within this outhouse, Marcy takes one of the music box’s stones and charges it, visualized by a green glow in her eyes draining as the stone itself becomes green.  Such an occurrence gives a good idea of what to expect from the rest of the recharges, and foreshadows a truly major playoff later on.  A break between now and the next temple adventure is called for going forward, but after how well this one turned out, this feels warranted to make them feel like special events.

However, before wrapping up, there’s one more scene over in Newtopia staged to build up events to come. It’s also one to further build up King Andrias as a total enigma.  It starts with a report from General Yunan on how some political situation has escalated to the point where a lot of disruptions to natural order have occurred.  Among them is a report on toads meeting up to discuss something big and a reminder of Grime’s new status as a traitor.  All of this begs a lot of questions for future events, especially since they tie a lot into what will come next for Sasha in the main story.  That said, the biggest thing to this scene comes after Andrias gets a message from Marcy informing that one of the music box’s stones has been recharged.  He nonchalantly dismisses the report and then heads down to the castle basement.  Slowly dropping his laid-back and light-hearted mannerisms, he addresses someone about a prophesy being undone and that revenge will soon be obtained.  He says all this to a dark multi-eyed creature, and it’s here where we come to an end.  The biggest points to this scene are how suggestions to Andrias’ true nature are very strong and can go either way.  His good friendly attitude is convincing, but dark moments like this as well as earlier talks of pieces of a plan and his proposition to Marcy bring a prominent darkness.  There’s also a lot to ponder with who this creature is and the meaning behind the prophesy which is no doubt related to the stones being charged, all of which will become known come Season 3.  Nevertheless it’s a sign of a strong story when it delivers long awaited events and leaves a lot to look forward to all at once.

As a work designed to signal a major turning point in the show, the passion gone into it is clear.  There’s imagination in the featured challenges, many characters stand strong, and there’s strong build-up for major future events.  It’s an all-around package of greatness only the best and most visionary storytellers can deliver.

A+

Fan Art

Series Ranking

1.      Hopping Mall

2.      Reunion

3.      Marcy at the Gates

4.      Toad Tax

5.      The First Temple

6.      Anne vs Wild

7.      The Domino Effect

8.      Toadcatcher

9.      Prison Break

10.  A Day at the Aquarium

11.  Anne of the Year

12.  Contagi-Anne

13.  The Shut-In

14.  Best Fronds

15.  After the Rain

16.  Family Shrub

17.  Hop-Popular

18.  Anne Hunter

19.  Wally and Anne

20.  Children of the Spore

21.  A Night at the Inn

22.  Handy Anne

23.  Scavenger Hunt

24.  Lily Pad Thai

25.  Dating Season

26.  Anne or Beast?

27.  Combat Camp

28.  Little Frogtown

29.  Cursed!

30.  Snow Day

31.  Civil Wart

32.  Stakeout

33.  Croak and Punishment

34.  Taking Charge

35.  Flood, Sweat, and Tears

36.  Bizarre Bazaar

37.  The Plantars Check In

38.  The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers

39.  Wax Museum

40.  Return to Wartwood

41.  Sprig Gets Schooled

42.  Swamp and Sensibility

43.  Trip to the Archives

44.  Anne Theft Auto

45.  Hop Luck

46.  Ivy on the Run

47.  Night Drivers

48.  Quarreler’s Pass

49.  Hop Pop and Lock

50.  Plantar’s Last Stand

51.  Fort in the Road

52.  A Caravan Named Desire

53.  The Big Bugball Game

54.  Fiddle Me This

55.  Truck Stop Polly

56.  Family Fishing Trip

57.  The Ballad of Hoppediah Plantar

58.  Girl Time

59.  Breakout Star

60.  Grubhog Day

61.  Cane Crazy

62.  Lost in Newtopia

63.  Sprig vs Hop Pop

64.  Cracking Mrs. Croaker

The next Amphibia review covers Marcy's first day in Wartwood, and the robot finally catches up with the Plantars and befriends Polly.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Them's the Breaks, Kid" from The Owl House.

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

No comments:

Post a Comment