'Toon Reviews 20: Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 2 Episode 19: Heinous/All Belts are Off

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Heinous

A good way to make antagonists threatening enough is to have them come back at some point.  Ms. Heinous, the former headmistress of St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses, was seen earlier in the season sending a henchman after Marco and Star. This episode marks her true return where she tries to get even with the cause of the demise of her school by ratting him out to his parents. 

She first appears in a ridiculous condition through living with her assistant in a car with a chainsaw strapped in front, and treating the hand of her bounty hunter Rasticore as her child. Then she quickly escalates things through aiming to kill Marco with that chainsaw.  However, when Star and Marco see what’s going on, they’re shocked to find that Marco’s parents, Rafael and Angie, let Ms. Heinous in despite her threatening disposition.  They seriously don’t see anything suspicious about her.  If that’s not enough, they don’t bother listening to their own son as he tries to explain who this strange visitor is. Marco has every right to do so too since, unlike them, he knows Ms. Heinous.  They instead listen more to what this estranged threatening-looking teacher they never met before has to say while pushing Marco to resolve his issues with her. 

Ms. Heinous proceeds to twist the story of how her school fell apart, intending to make Marco look bad since he’s the one who took charge of the uprising.  On an unrelated note, an interesting thing about her side of the story is that it explains how Marco always seems to have $650 on hand.  As for Marco’s parents, it’s a huge concern that they focus more on one side of the story as opposed to hearing what both Ms. Heinous and their son have to say.  It’s a solid break from the norm of them just being happy parents at best, but they also seem very dense.  Even the law is too dense during this situation when Marco and Star arrange bring the police, and the cop does nothing about their claims that certain things in the scene are evil.  To be fair though, Marco already acts unintelligent through failing to explain the evil well. 

Thankfully, when Ms. Heinous suggests punishments for Marco, his parents aren’t too dense to point out how extreme her ideas are.  In the end, it’s Marco who steps in to stop the nonsense. He agrees to apologize for spreading his revolutionary ideals to the current generation of princesses, fancy dress, sign contradicting his individuality mantra, and all.  The fact that Ms. Heinous buys into Marco’s clearly apathetic tone when apologizing makes the scene pretty anticlimactic though. At least it feels like nothing inspirational about the episode where the uprising occurred will be lost.  Rafael and Angie promise to be more active in their son’s life which is good, although it would’ve been better if their change in approach to parenting wasn’t caused by denseness.  That’s not even mentioning the last scene of Ms. Heinous revealing that she has club marks on her cheeks.  This relates to how Star has hearts on hers and how Moon has diamonds on hers.  It's an interesting reveal giving further promise for a fresh new direction to the series. 

This episode shines for having Ms. Heinous as a stronger threat than ever before in what she does in the present and what she’s set up to do in the future.  All the same, it doesn't change the misfortune of held held back by a few questionable character moments.

B-

All Belts are Off

This is another episode centering on the karate aspect of Marco’s life, and like most of them, they don’t stand as the show’s best.  With this one, while it’s not all bad, a large dose of flaws really prevent it from being very enjoyable on the whole. 

A karate master is coming to the Echo Creek dojo, and the Sensei is prompted to find his top student for representation purposes.  Marco has shown great dedication to karate many times and has even befriended Sensei to some extent. Sadly, all the signs pointing to him being named the top student mean nothing when Jeremy Birnbaum is inexplicably named top student instead.  As a result, the rest of the episode leaves many conflicting feelings. 

As was established in his very few appearances prior to this episode, Jeremy is not a very pleasant character at all.  He does nothing but act like a heartless relentless jerk for not good reason at all, the kind that hardly ever come off as enjoyable.  The fact that this is a little kid acting like such a psychotic bully adds to the unpleasantness. His high scratchy voice makes his moments annoying as well as flat out mean and wrong.  It also doesn’t feel right for Marco to feel so sore for not getting what he wanted. It doesn’t make him very mature.  After all, he may be dedicated to karate a lot, but it did take him a long time to just become a red belt. There could be a good reason Jeremy was chosen that he’s not considering, and Marco’s supposed to be really good as a voice of reason.  Because both Marco and Jeremy are seen to be in the wrong, the subsequent scenes of Marco trying to expose Jeremy as a jerk to spite him are not pleasing to watch.  That doesn’t quell the fact that Jeremy is a jerk thus leading to several unpleasant moments. They include berating his parents and conning people into picking up a $100 bill under some questionable scatological material. Coming from a small child, these moments are very disturbing. 

At the very least, even if Marco isn’t very mature on the matter, there’s plenty of proof that he does have a point in saying that Jeremy does not deserve to represent the dojo. This makes the fact that Sensei hypes up the arrival of the karate master with statues and flags of Jeremy kind of unsettling since he’s giving into a brat.  However, since Marco’s grudge was petty on the whole, he forgets exposing Jeremy and lets the visit continue as planned no matter how much he doesn’t like it. 

The ultimate presentation goes on as planned with Jeremy giving his skilled moves, but has to tell the audience to cheer for him instead of letting them do it themselves.  In fact, they hate him as much as Marco does, showing that Marco really isn’t as dense as he was frequently letting on.  Speaking of Marco, he expresses his frustration privately to Sensei, and ends up learning that Jeremy was chosen to represent the dojo because of his money.  That's the weakest excuse for getting away with bad behavior you can think of. 

Still, the ending is satisfying on many fronts with Sensei, as someone who genuinely wants to be a friend to Marco, learning to be more open when explaining things to him.  Adding to the positive vibes of the ending, Jeremy’s performance getting brushed off by the grand master who wasn’t paying attention.  It makes the episode a perfect example where the story has noticeable problems and unpleasant moments, but make up for everything with a solid ending.  It may not be the best from this show, but it is at least passable.

C

The Ranking

1. Bon Bon the Birthday Clown
2. Ludo in the Wild
3. Into the Wand
4. The Hard Way
5. Hungry Larry
6. Raid the Cave
7. Running with Scissors
8. Game of Flags
9. Baby
10. On the Job
11. Sleepover
12. Is Mystery
13. Naysaya
14. Mr. Candle Cares
15. Wand to Wand
16. Page Turner
17. Starstruck
18. Girls’ Day Out
19. By the Book
20. Friendenemies
21. Crystal Clear
22. Gift of the Card
23. Starsitting
24. Star on Wheels
25. Mathmagic
26. Camping Trip
27. The Bounce Lounge
28. My New Wand
29. Heinous
30. Red Belt
31. All Belts are Off
32. Spider with a Top Hat
33. Star vs Echo Creek
34. Fetch
35. Goblin Dogs
36. Pizza Thing
37. Trickstar

The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review finds Star struggling to reason with the school after accidentally throwing away their opossum statue, and she also continues to find it hard to accept that she and Marco are better off as "just friends."

Next time on MC Toon Reviews in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, "Let's Have a Stakeout."

If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

'Toon Reviews 9: Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 1 Episode 3

Monster Arm

It’s interesting how a safe kid like Marco has proven to be useful in the fights we’ve seen so far not to mention turn out to be so skilled in karate.  Because of this, it’s great that we get an episode dedicated to these talents of his.  He’s shown to be competing for a karate competition against Jeremy Birnbaum who, in an amusing turn of events, turns out to be a bratty little boy.  Star’s magic is worked into the issue when Marco breaks his arm while practicing.  Using a spell book that came with her wand, which was never used before this which brings some unfortunate implications to Star’s personality, Star finds a spell to heal Marco’s arm, but it instead turns the arm into a monster tentacle.  Although this further shows Star’s tendencies to get reckless with spells as shown with a collection of scenes of Marco’s life being inconvenienced by the monster arm, it’s cool to see how Marco actually grows to benefit from what’s happened.  He not only beats a school bully with it and obtains more popularity than ever, but he also becomes stronger than ever for his karate competition.  As for Star, she also shows off a lot of admirable qualities when she takes it upon herself to fix Marco’s arm, literally staying up for hours to get the spell right before jumping in to use it.  She also points out that while Marco is benefitting from the arm, it could be a bad influence on him, especially when it talks to him and convinces him to take out all humans.  While Marco doesn’t get this at first, when the arm tries to actually destroy Jeremy Birnbaum, he finally sees sense just as the arm starts destroying the karate stadium.  Everything’s resolved with another battle with a creative magic display from Star where she turns a lot of random things into arms, and they prove helpful in getting her to finally defeat the monster arm, and turn Marco’s arm back to normal.  Ultimately, it makes the story kind of just come and go aside from a slight hint that this isn’t the last of the monster arm, but we are still left with a well-told story for Marco and Star making a significant step towards getting a better control of her wand.  So, there are some significant benefits here. 9/10

The Other Exchange Student

While Star’s friendly and loyal side has made her a likable character to get behind, with this episode, we learn of an unfortunate catch to this part of her character.  She’s so loyal to the Diaz family letting her stay with them while she’s on Earth, that she becomes possessive of them and their hospitality.  What’s more, as the beginning of this episode shows, she takes the Diaz’s treatment of her way too well which is a problem due to how excessive the treatment is involving them literally throwing a party for her every day.  It’s like Star thinks she’s the most important being in the world which is not a very likable trait to get behind.  This really comes to a head when an exchange student called Gustav from Scandinavia arrives.  He almost instantly wins over his hosts with his hospitality, thoughtful gifts, and especially his meatballs.  While Gustav seems like a really nice guy, Star completely dreads his presence the moment he arrives all because he’s getting a lot of attention from a family who don’t get to see him all that often.  It not only makes her come off as jealous, but also highly inconsiderate.  What’s more, it isn’t long before she starts making wild accusations about Gustav without any proof all for the purpose of making him leave so she can have her precious Diaz family to herself even if it would cost them the genuine happiness they’re getting from the visitor.  Granted, there are some suspicions that are justified such as her getting that Gustav’s faking his Scandinavian background after going through his bag, and catching some strange actions from him in the dead of night.  Still, her irrationality comes clear when she comes to the ridiculous conclusion that Gustav wants to cook the Diazs into meatballs making her still open to put a damper on their fun when Gustav invites them for a meatball picnic in the woods.  It does lead to a nice revelation to flesh out Gustav’s character.  Star really was right that he had something to hide.  He’s from a small unpopular town who wants to start his own meatball business to stand out, and Gustav isn’t even his name.  Everything else Star suspected about him is proven false as everything he did the previous night was related to the making meatballs…though we never get an answer of why he measured Marco’s parents.  This is welcome depth to Gustav’s character as opposed to him just being a happy visitor, but Star STILL is inconsiderate by being happy that he's leaving in exchange for her keeping his identity secret and even goes back to enjoying the unnecessary parties for her.  She really isn’t at her most likable here, but she’s still enjoyable for how funny and over-the-top she is, even when she’s acting jealous.  That good humor, Star being right in some instances and Gustav proving to be a likable guest character save this episode from mediocrity even if the issues are hard to ignore. 7/10

The Ranking

1. School Spirit
2. Party with a Pony
3. Monster Arm
4. Star Comes to Earth
5. Matchmaker
6. The Other Exchange Student

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where see more heart to Star and Marco's friendship in "Cheer Up Star" and when they go on a shopping spree and find Ludo at "Quest Buy".

If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.