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All In
Huge is the best way to describe the middle part of this finale arc, especially with it being twice the length of the average episode. This way, it has a lot of time to allow the audience to take in all the action that unfolds and the emotional depths stemming from major turning points in various character arcs. It’s factors like these that make it clear that this is the part of Season 3 the show’s crew was most passionate about, and the final product shows.
Like the prior season finales, the beginning serves to explore the background of Anne and her friends before they were transported to Amphibia through a flashback. This one stands out for how it highlights a major character obstacle that would define the main protagonist would have to work through for most of the series. On the day before the girls were transported during Anne’s birthday, they pulled off a prank involving puppies and K-Pop in the school hallway.
After being caught by the principal, the major weaknesses and virtues of the trio are notably reiterated. Sasha and Marcy were actually praised for their strengths albeit also advised to use them in areas more productive than that reckless prank. Anne, however, was given a sterner discussion, with the principal pointing out that she just went along with the prank instead of following her own sense of morale. Anne said that it’s because she’s more comfortable taking the easy way, but was told that the easy way isn’t always the right way.
She was ultimately given an assignment to write an essay about who she really is in hopes that it would inspire her to follow her own intuition and apply herself. This entire recount ultimately says a lot about the basis of Anne’s character journey, dissecting how she started out as flawed as she was before maturing from her experiences. It kind of works as a major precursor to how she was pressured into stealing the music box that started her and her friends’ current situation the following day. She let others walk over her and dictate them, but has become much more independent and morally correct in current day. It’s this major change in her character that goes on to drive the current final battle.
Speaking of said final battle, the focus is thrusted right into that following the flashback, already setting the stage for something exciting to follow through the whole of the finale. King Andrias’ invasion of Earth has been a long time coming, and now it’s actually happening with the big scope and legitimate threat level one would expect. However, that’s all the more perfect for an action set piece as part of a big finale and center for all the characters involved. Despite getting captured in the previous installment, Anne and her allies, the Plantars, Sasha, Grime, Frobo, Olivia, and Yunan manage to escape allowing themselves a good chance.
In addition, when the threat increases to the point that the local military aren’t strong enough forces, even more reinforcements are called in. This brings on the welcome return of Anne’s parents suited up and prepared for the task at hand as well as succeeded in getting agent Mr. X on their side. Once all the main forces are together and come up with a strategy, the final battle really gets going not just through exciting action, but shining moments for several characters.
Some of the most notable character moments belong to the Plantars, allowing them to really shine as a family as well as confront notable underlying issues as characters.
Outside of all the action is something that really hits hard regarding Sprig’s strong friendship with Anne. He insists that things will go right back to normal after this whole invasion business with him and the family going on the usual wacky adventures with Anne. Hop Pop, however, brings up a hard truth that things can change unexpectedly, particularly that it may be for the best for Anne to go back to her old Earth life after everything. Given how central the friendship of Sprig and Anne has been to the whole series, it’s understandably hard to stomach, especially from Sprig’s perspective. Nevertheless, he does hold onto the belief that Anne will always be a big part of his life, and more importantly, it doesn’t majorly distract from a strong performance in the battle.
They all stand strong against the army of Andrias’ robots with particular aid from practical and stylish upgrades Polly gives Frobo, a strong tie to her newfound skill in robotics.
However, their biggest contribution to the force for good relates to a very personal history for the Plantars. During the battle, they see that Andrias enlisted giant herons to serve him. These aren’t even just any giant herons; they’re the same ones who destroyed the Plantar family by devouring Sprig and Polly’s parents many years ago as recognized by Hop Pop. The fearful reactions to creatures who caused such devastation are all too believable, almost enough to stun the Plantars cold.
Impressively though, despite all the traumatic stress from the situation, the Plantars still hold onto their beliefs of what’s right, particularly with who the herons target. At one point, Anne’s parents are caught in their attacks, and with them being a strong tie to an honorary human member of their family, that’s when the Plantars know they must act.
Using their abilities through combat, robotics, and even hunting skills, they not only save Anne’s parents, but even get the herons to help them in battle. Support like this from the Plantars show that even with the growing doubt of Anne sticking with them after everything, they’re doing what’s right by helping her anyway. It’s also a bonus that they overcome their own big fears and panics. This moment is small compared to other elements, but it definitely has a strong thematic tie.
Unsurprisingly, the theme is best shown through Anne and her friends, as well as the main antagonist. In fact, each of them bring a prominent arc to enhance both the actions and the emotions.
Starting with the friend seen the least this season, there’s a look into what exactly Marcy being stored in the mind of The Core looks like. Apparently, for more than half the season, all she’s been doing here is playing games and brainteasing puzzles and losing track of time.
Only now is she called upon by Andrias’ father to properly join The Core, which admittedly feels kind of abrupt and all too convenient that she wasn’t appointed earlier. Despite that factor, Marcy’s time here is very effective in bringing on her greatest change integral to help her do what’s right. The former king of Amphibia, having looked at her thoughts, memories, and interests, shows Marcy a huge amalgam of all these things. The most enticing special interest of all to Marcy though is a chance to go on her own fantasy quest inspired by her love for fantasy novels and RPG games.
Not only that, but she gets to do this quest with her two best friends in the world, Anne and Sasha, who are completely willing to do whatever she wants. On the surface, this seems perfect and very in line with why Marcy executed the plan that got all three girls sent to Amphibia in the first place.
However, after a while, as she looks at things closely, Marcy comes to realize that there’s something unsettling about Anne and Sasha doing only what she wants. The fact is that none of this is what THEY wanted, and all this time she was forcing that upon them.
Andrias’ father tries to convince Marcy to join The Core and keep living this fantasy so she won’t have to face the hardships of her reality. Even though it means her friends won’t share her interests and their bond will be broken with her moving away, Marcy shows her greatest change by admitting this fantasy is wrong. The reality of situation clearly hurts and isn’t easy for her, but it’s definitely for the greater good. For a character who hasn’t been seen a lot this season, it’s impressive that Marcy is able to come to this good an end to her arc.
At the same time, during the actual battle, this theme is further realized through the roles of Anne and Sasha. With Sasha, her directive in the fight is to get to Andrias’ floating castle to retrieve the calamity box and beat The Core to free Marcy.
For all her strength and formative calculating for these sorts of things, there are noticeable hurdles for Sasha to overcome through all this. For most of the show, Sasha has felt a major need to be in control of everyone and make all decisions, but has only recently seen the pain that mindset has brought. Her arc has been about changing for the better, but while Anne can see how much her friend has changed, Sasha struggles to notice that herself. As a result, when facing The Core, there are a lot of difficulties to give her best performance.
At one point, The Core even gets a huge advantage by dismembering one of Grime’s arms as he rushes to protect Sasha. Even in silhouettes, the pain of this action feels very real. While Grime is down, he does give Sasha strong words of encouragement that remind her how he changed for the better because of her. This does work for a while with Sasha putting up a much stronger fight more in line with her true strength, but it’s still believably hard to maintain.
At one point, The Core regains advantage by trapping Sasha in a vortex of floating heads of Anne and Marcy greeting her, resembling her old lust for control. It’s in line with the claim that The Core only knows Sasha for who she was, bringing proof to the suggestion that the only way to win is for her to show who she is now. Luckily, Sasha ultimately does so just as her friend puts up a strong performance of her own.
As Anne is the main protagonist and the only one with a connection to her calamity box powers, it makes sense that she gets the biggest battle, going against King Andrias himself. When she’s all set to take him on, the coming battle is even staged as closure to her series long arc.
She states how she just went along with what others told her even if it was the wrong thing to do because she didn’t love herself. Now, she’s grown strong enough to stand up for what’s right, trusting her own judgement all the way and not letting anything hold her back.
Anne then faces Andrias who sports a new even bigger suit of armor in a battle over the city of Los Angeles with a huge crowd cheering her on. So even when the battle starts off difficult, Anne gets a good hold of her glowing blue powers, putting up a strong fight against Andrias all the way all set to background K-Pop music. To add to the excitement of the fight, Anne’s strong performances against Andrias even match the time Sasha gains the advantage in her battle. However, like Sasha, Anne isn’t able to put up a strong fight forever, but in her case, it’s because she the power of her calamity box stone is limited. This makes the battle very exciting, but also brings it to reality by preventing it from being one-sided.
Even if there are times when Anne loses her advantage in the fight, the main theme of this whole event ends up applying to Andrias just as much as her and her friends. With much information obtained over the course of the show, it’s made clear that Andrias, like Anne, was manipulated into acting on the dark side by others, in this case The Core.
A previous look into his past exemplified this, and it’s further expanded on here with another flashback of when he first met Marcy.
It’s made clear that her really did take a strong liking to her, but because of his influences, he couldn’t really enjoy it, and was told to use her in The Core’s dark intentions. This is just one of many examples of how far in the dark side Andrias’ reign has fallen as proven by the entirety of the series.
In the present, Anne can see right through Andrias and can tell that his bad actions are a result of letting others walk over him, as if like her, he doesn’t love himself. She calls him out at some points during their fight, but they pose little effect.
However, when Anne is down, relevance is given to a supposedly blank piece of paper recently found in the Plantars’ basement. Thanks to special decoding glasses from Mr. X, Sprig, who always believed the paper was actually important, discovers a hidden message.
He heads up to Andrias and reveals it to be an endearing message from Leif who wrote it just after initially sending the calamity box to Earth and settling in Wartwood. It’s about how even after she betrayed Andrias and started a new life, she truly does treasure the good times she shared with him. Her biggest wish is that Andrias doesn’t shut out his heart for others.
Such a message proving that his old friend still cared for him really gets through to Andrias leading to a remarkable conclusion to the fight.
Just as Anne gets another wind of her glowing powers, when facing Andrias again, Andrias finally starts expressing love by flat-out not defending himself. He just lets Anne get in a hit allowing himself to be defeated.
Interestingly enough, the remains are a bunch of cyborg parts which is the only believable explanation for how he was so huge and able to stay alive for a thousand years.
At the same time, to add to the feel of the tide changing, Sasha is able to muster enough strength to finally beat The Core with a simple slash of its wire. Such a simple mood brings quite a dramatic takedown of The Core as they frantically react to what happened and lose control of Marcy’s body.
With all of this, the battle is settled, complete with a long awaited reunion of the three human girls.
Anne and Sasha rush over to Marcy letting her know that despite what she caused, they still love her and their friendship will remain strong no matter what. It’s a final moment to showcase the power of the core theme of this show where even if changes for the better can be hard, friendships can still be maintained and stay strong. As a result, for everything this friendship between Anne, Sasha, and Marcy has been through, there’s still strong endearment to make it worth getting behind.
Speaking of the friendship, together along with their amphibian allies, they return to Amphibia just to make sure everything is all right over there.
As it is the end of one longer than usual episode, it feels like it is all over with one scene of Anne and Sprig reiterating the idea of friendships changing like it did for Anne and her human friends.
However, the last scene shows there’s even more to come even after all of this. Following up on a previous scene of the helmet of The Core crawling away on its own, danger persists as the moon appears to be falling towards Amphibia. Yes, even after the intensity of this battle has calmed down, a new one has suddenly taken its place. Luckily, that’s just a way of saying that there’s more to cover with this finale arc, and if things are already this big and grand, something better is yet to come; as a preview for the next Amphibia review, this pretty much is the case.
It’s very clear that this part of the season is what the crew of this show wanted to showcase the most. Everything with the exciting action, milestones in character arcs, and presentation of the main theme is on display to an extent of high grandeur. Much of it feels like a culmination of what the series has stood for with a feeling that brings a satisfying payoff all around. Again though, the fact that there’s even more to see and pay off after all this excitement leaves a promise for something just as good if not better. The answer as to what exactly lies ahead is coming in the next review for this show and with it directly continuing what this had to offer, it’s enough to ready audiences for a grand finale.
A+
Fan Art
Series Ranking
1.
True
Colors
2.
All In
3.
Hopping
Mall
4.
Reunion
5.
Marcy at the Gates
6.
The
Core and the King
7.
The
Beginning of the End
8.
Anne-sterminator
9.
Olivia
and Yunan
10.
Toad Tax
11.
The First Temple
12. Froggy Little Christmas
13.
Turning Point
14.
Battle of the Bands
15.
Barrel’s
Warhammer
16.
Escape
to Amphibia
17.
Anne vs Wild
18.
The Domino Effect
19.
The Third Temple
20.
Toadcatcher
21.
Prison Break
22.
The Second Temple
23.
Temple Frogs
24.
A Day at the Aquarium
25.
Mr. X
26.
Anne of the Year
27.
Contagi-Anne
28.
The
Shut-In
29.
Best Fronds
30.
After
the Rain
31.
Family Shrub
32.
Fixing
Frobo
33. If You Give a Frog a Cookie
34. Commander Anne
35.
The New Normal
36.
The Dinner
37.
Hop-Popular
38.
Anne Hunter
39. Fight or Flight
40.
Wally and Anne
41.
Children of the Spore
42.
Fight at the Museum
43.
Friend
or Frobo
44. The Root of Evil
45. Grime’s Pupil
46.
Sprig’s
Birthday
47.
A Night at the Inn
48.
Bessie
and MicroAngelo
49.
Handy Anne
50.
Scavenger Hunt
51.
Lily Pad Thai
52.
Dating Season
53.
Anne or Beast?
54.
Combat Camp
55.
Little Frogtown
56.
Cursed!
57.
Thai
Feud
58.
Newts
in Tights
59.
The
Three Armies
60.
Snow Day
61.
Civil Wart
62.
Maddie and Marcy
63.
Stakeout
64.
Croak and Punishment
65.
Taking Charge
66.
Flood, Sweat, and Tears
67.
Bizarre Bazaar
68.
The Plantars Check In
69.
The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers
70.
Wax Museum
71.
Return
to Wartwood
72.
Sprig Gets Schooled
73.
Swamp and Sensibility
74.
Trip to the Archives
75.
Sasha’s Angels
76.
Toad
to Redemption
77.
Anne Theft Auto
78.
Adventures in Catsitting
79.
Hop Luck
80.
New
Wartwood
81.
Ivy on the Run
82.
Night
Drivers
83.
Quarreler’s
Pass
84.
Hop Pop and Lock
85.
Plantar’s Last Stand
86.
Fort in the Road
87.
A Caravan Named Desire
88.
The Big Bugball Game
89.
Fiddle Me This
90.
Hollywood Hop Pop
91.
Truck Stop Polly
92.
Family Fishing Trip
93.
Mother of Olms
94.
Olm Town Road
95.
Hop ‘Til You Drop
96.
Spider-Sprig
97.
The Ballad of Hoppediah Plantar
98.
Girl Time
99.
Breakout Star
100. Grubhog Day
101.
Cane Crazy
102. Sprivy
103. Lost in Newtopia
104. Sprig vs Hop Pop
105. Cracking Mrs. Croaker
To recall, the next Amphibia review will be the final one, covering how Anne and the others deal with The Core's new plan and where everyone goes following all these events which is the hardest thing.
Before that though, MC Toon Reviews will present the next review of Ed Edd n Eddy Season 4 on "Little Ed Blue" and "A Twist of Ed."
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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