'Toon Reviews 19: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1 Episode 8: I Am Dendy

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I Am Dendy

A character getting a best friend has potential to add endearment and bring about a new interesting dynamic.  This cartoon introduces us to a potential best friend for K.O., and a whole cartoon spent on them hanging out already feels great and interesting. 

Her name is Dendy, and while K.O. hasn’t known her prior to this cartoon, she falls into a surprisingly relatable category.  She’s not very social and mostly focuses on researching others behind their backs.  Even if not many kids know her personally, she’s still present and it’s always possible to learn about her if they get to know her.  That’s what happens with K.O. when Dendy plays to his desire to help people by asking him to help repair her special backpack she uses to put code on devices called a hackpack. 

Their search for the required parts takes them all around Lakewood Plaza Turbo.  In the process, K.O. and Dendy take part in various activities that strengthen their bond, from getting haircuts from Mr. Logic that give them brief stylized anime appearances, to going to the arcade, to simply playing tag in an ally where all the remains of robots are tossed.  There’s a range of feels from K.O. and Dendy’s time together.  K.O.’s innocence, friendliness, and sense of fun is expected, and Dendy has a lot of likability too.  Her technological knowhow has her point out where all the parts she needs are, and even when she ends up breaking things, she fixes them easily.  Also, while she speaks in a monotone, intellectual tone, Dendy comes off as very charming as it slowly becomes clear that she enjoys K.O.’s company, especially as they play tag.  That’s a nice thing to see from an intellectual who could easily just explain scientific information and nothing more. 

Then when K.O. and Dendy finally get to the alley to retrieve a glowing power orb called a glorb, the final component to fix Dendy’s hackpack, her true feelings for K.O. as a friend are put to the test when he’s eaten by a robot fish.  While K.O. goes about with fruitless attempts to punch his way out, Dendy sits on the sidelines adding to an extensive research file on K.O. showing how interested she is in one common kid who up until now she’s only watched but never gotten to know.  It does get concerning that K.O. remains trapped in the fish when it gets dark, and not only does Dendy become too engrossed in her research to help, but K.O.’s other known allies, including his loving mom, don’t come looking for him.  While the latter characters have little excuse, Dendy’s fixation on research is made better when she’s snapped back into her bonding with K.O. who mentions his Pow card collection while discussing his will. 

Akin to most budding friendships, this turns out to be a common interest that officially brings Dendy and K.O. together as friends.  As a result of their shared interest, Dendy reveals that her hackpack was never broken and uses it to rescue K.O.  This means that for all her interest in research, coding, and being technical, Dendy is fully established as a cute relatable kid just looking for a friend, and her adding her name to K.O.’s list of allies at the end brings great satisfaction that she found one. 

This cartoon is just a fun-loving boy, and a lonely intellectual girl hanging out together as they grow closer, but that’s all it needs to be great.

A

The Ranking

1. I Am Dendy
2. Let’s Be Heroes
3. You’re Everybody’s Sidekick
4. Jethro’s All Yours
5. Let’s Be Friends
6. We Messed Up
7. Sibling Rivalry
8. You’re Level 100

The next OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes review is about Rad striving to prove that he knows everything about everything when the bodega employees are assigned to get something from a labyrinth of a storage room.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews from Star vs. the Forces of Evil is a review of "Starstruck" and "Camping Trip."

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

'Toon Reviews 7: Hey Arnold Season 2 Episode 6

The High Life

No matter how old you are, it’s not uncommon to want to do whatever it takes to get a lot of money so you can buy what you want.  Of course, in my case, I’m trying to earn enough money to afford that and the true necessities of living, but personal desires are more in line with the ages of the kids in the cast.  However, this cartoon goes through the somewhat frustrating motions of kids getting cocky with money when they get a lot of it.  The story is that Gerald wants to buy a snazzy looking set of roller skates, but doesn’t have the money for them.  He gets a clever idea of raising the money not by the common methods of kids his age such as lemonade stands or lawn-mowing, but by working as a salesman for a watch company.  As a salesman, Gerald seems to be very good at selling the products, even giving an honest demonstration of how the watches really are as great as they sound.  So, he gets his money, and you think that means he’s all set to get his skates.  However, that’s when the cartoon turns frustrating with some decisions that didn’t need to be made.  First of all, instead of doing the sensible thing of getting what he set out to buy in the first place, Gerald just blows his earnings on frivolous things like arcade games and ice cream for his friends leaving him with nothing.  Talk about boneheaded.  This means he has to sell more watches, but he’s already sold one to everyone in the city, and his house is left filled with boxes of the products.  You know, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if Gerald just agreed to sell the watches necessary for what he needed instead of agreeing to sell so many shipments and acting like a bigshot businessman about it while frittering away his earnings.  On another thing, somehow, his boss knew he would do this and seeks complete pleasure in that making him a one-dimensional villainous boss which is not the best decision to be made for a story.  I mean, who can relate to someone who intentionally causes misery to someone else for malicious intent?  Thankfully, Gerald sees sense and cleverly sells his watch surplus back to his boss getting him the money he needs for the skates he should’ve bought in the first place.  However, even after Gerald clearly learned his lesson, the cartoon, for some reason, ends with a downer when he loses his money to pay his bill-paying dad and cute little sister leaving nothing accomplished.  If you know me, I feel that downer endings after a lesson’s learned really hurt a story entertainment-wise.  Even with that ending, and unnecessary and stupid moments from Gerald, some enjoyable moments and what Gerald goes through giving a strong warning to be conscious of your money make the cartoon worth at least a few looks (but that’s my final offer). 7/10

Best Friends

Friend pairings are a common occurrence with this series, which is not surprising considering the size of the cast.  We have Arnold and Gerald, Helga and Phoebe, Harold and his gang mostly including Stinky and Sid, but one friend pairing that only makes sparse appearances and even rarer centers for a cartoon is of Rhonda and Nadine.  According to Arnold, they’ve both been friends for a long time and can easily get along with each other despite their major differences with their interests.  However, just as this statement is made, the plot is thrown into the common convention of best friends splitting up over petty differences. Both Rhonda and Nadine disagree on the topic of a school project they’re doing with Arnold, declare that they’re no longer friends, and Arnold is roped into the middle of the bickering as the girls convince him to join them for their own projects.  Normally, I’d find a plot fueled mostly on friends who are so close mostly arguing and complaining grating and painful to sit through, but here it’s tolerable since this is really the first time we see what Rhonda and Nadine’s relationship is like, and there aren’t really any nice moments between them from past cartoons to work off of.  Plus, even as we go through the tropes of Arnold going through both their projects at once and putting up with their constant complaints about each other and returning of things they borrowed from each other, there are some appealing traits to both Rhonda and Nadine.  They both have a keen passion for what they value in life, Rhonda with fashion and Nadine with insects, and show potential for making great projects.  Though in Rhonda’s case, her passion shows more of her judgmental side which makes for some strong cartoons for her down the line (one coming later this season).  As for Nadine, since her passion for insects is all we see of her character, it’s not surprising that she never gets any other starring roles after this cartoon.  Back to their conflict, the way Arnold gets them to make up is pretty insightful.  He goes about it by interviewing his friends about what caused them to fight eventually coming to the mature conclusion that their tensions were because of their inability to compromise.  Then, when he brings them both together to explain his findings, they finally put their disagreements aside and make up.  They even show appreciation for what Arnold did by doing most of the project work which combines their interests into an insect fashion show.  As ridiculous as it must be for Arnold, I’d say it’s an interesting and pleasing way to end for the cartoon.  Even with the basic premise that can get on one’s nerves at times, this cartoon has its own ways that make it work, so I can call this a good one. 8/10

The Ranking

1. Harold’s Kitty
2. Monkey Business
3. Save the Tree
4. New Teacher
5. Ms. Perfect
6. Big Caesar
7. Ransom
8. The Big Scoop
9. Best Friends
10. The High Life
11. Hooky
12. Arnold Saves Sid

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode which features a long thrashing of fourth graders from fifth graders in "Longest Monday," and the lovable jinx, Eugene, is put through the harsh event of dealing with death in "Eugene's Pet."

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