'Toon Reviews 19: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1 Episode 34: Glory Days

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Glory Days

It was an interesting reveal that Carol and Mr. Gar were once part of the elite super hero team P.O.I.N.T..  Therefore, it’s very welcome to get cartoons that highlight that part of their lives.  This is the first cartoon to look into such an era, and it’s an insightful one which explains a lot about the characters involved. 

K.O. tells Carol about a report about teamwork he has to do for school. While he’s not supposed to get help from parents, Carol steps in to teach him everything she knows on the subject under her old hero name Silver Spark.  This is where the flashback of her and Mr. Gar’s, i.e. El-Bow back then, first day at P.O.I.N.T. begins. 

Right away, there’s a major contrast in approach to the first day.  Silver Spark was excited about starting out right down decorating her locker well, akin to how her future son would approach being a hero. El-Bow’s feelings on being at P.O.I.N.T. are very different from what you’d expect.  Rather than being confident, all-powerful, and authoritative like he is today as Mr. Gar, El-Bow was very nervous about starting out.  Apparently, unlike young K.O. who’s always trying to be notices as a hero, El-Bow never actually expected to be a hero.  He was only at P.O.I.N.T. because he was spotted fighting in a boxing ring at the time.  It shows that he never had such aspirations, yet he’s now one of the most ultimate heroes. 

Through it all, there’s an endearing charm to his chemistry with Silver Spark who encourages him to approach P.O.I.N.T. with confidence.  It adds depth to how he has a crush on Silver Spark, now Carol, for showing that he sees more in her than just simple infatuation to appearance.  She’s basically the reason El-Bow pushes himself to be the best hero he can, and from what we’ve seen throughout the season, this seems to have paid off greatly. 

The flashback is also a good one to nicely allude to history repeating itself.  In addition to Silver Spark’s optimism matching K.O.'s, the early days at P.O.I.N.T. for her, El-Bow, and a cute kangaroo-like creature Rippy Roo, involved them cleaning the facility.  It's just like what K.O. usually does at the bodega.  The cleaning was mostly used to exercise their powers which were put to the test when a rock creature bent on destroying P.O.I.N.T. shows up and the top members aren’t around.  Throughout the battle, Silver Spark’s encouragement to El-Bow helped him determine how to beat the creature more confident than ever.  Even when it didn’t work, Silver Spark was quick to understand teamwork. They both combined their powers to defeat the creature down to the eyeball that Silver Spark still has today. 

The junior P.O.I.N.T. members getting true recognition for how well they handled the fight is a fitting end for the flashback.  Still things remain interesting with Silver Spark showing more interest in a top hero, Laserblast.  It adds drama to this newly formed relationship by leading one to wonder if Silver Spark and El-Bow, or Carol and Mr. Gar, can really work out despite proving to be a good team.  The answer to that becomes clear later, but for now we’re left with a great story with interesting character reveals teaching that teamwork is just like math but much more fun. 

A+

The Ranking

1. Face Your Fears
2. You Have to Care
3. T.K.O.
4. No More Pow Cards
5. Glory Days
6. Legends of Mr. Gar
7. We’ve Got Pests
8. I Am Dendy
9. Let’s Have a Stakeout
10. You Get Me
11. Let’s Be Heroes
12. You’re Everybody’s Sidekick
13. K.O.’s Video Channel
14. Jethro’s All Yours
15. Know Your Mom
16. Everybody Likes Rad?
17. A Hero’s Fate
18. Plaza Prom
19. We’re Captured
20. My Dad Can Beat up Your Dad
21. Let’s Be Friends
22. We Messed Up
23. Presenting Joe Cuppa
24. Sibling Rivalry
25. Second First Date
26. Stop Attacking the Plaza
27. Just Be a Pebble
28. The Power is Yours
29. Do You Have Any More in the Back?
30. You’re Level 100
31. You Are Rad
32. We’ve Got Fleas
33. Rad Likes Robots
34. One Last Score

The next OK K.O. review covers K.O. competing in the Plazalympics with teammates even smaller and weaker than him.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is Episode 29 of Animaniacs.

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 19: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1 Episode 19: Face Your Fears

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 Twitter. Now on with today's review:

Face Your Fears

One of the best ways to utilize animation is to give creative interpretations of common virtues.  A big virtue explored in media is facing fears, and this cartoon has a very interesting way of showing it.  In the process it further develops characters and brings an imaginative environment. 

There’s an arcade game where heroes see how good they are at facing their fears. It reflects their status by adjusting the fear resistance on their Pow cards.  The game is a catalyst to the plot which reveals that for all his impressive heroics, Mr. Gar’s fear resistance is not very high. K.O., Rad, and Enid convince him to try the game out to update.  Hooking up to a virtual reality helmet and setting the level to Super Extra Hard, Mr. Gar ends up trapped within his biggest fears.  If that's not enough, the game can’t just be unplugged or he’ll go into a coma.  The best chance K.O. and the others have to help is to go into their boss’ psyche and face his fear for him.  This instance also gives Dendy a chance to shine through making a surprise entrance through the console, and hooking up extra helmets to make it happen. 

The creative aspect to the cartoon comes into full force from here when Rad and Enid get stuck while helping Mr. Gar face his fear. K.O. must help them all, with the challenges he has to face creatively staged as a video game map.  Going into the minds of his friends, there’s lots of potential for imaginative occurrences, for the mind is where literally anything can happen.  Also, everyone’s fears reveal a lot about the characters and their presentations shine with creativity.  Enid’s fear is a shrine of portraits from her “dorky” phases, showing that she’s self-conscious about her appearance as they proceed to attack K.O. when he calls them dorky.  The fear is conquered when K.O. says what’s good about all the phases, which feels like a logical thing for people who go through this fear in real life to do.  Rad’s fear is confusing at first as it leads K.O. and Enid into an enclosed area of Rad faces acting cool.  They have to point out what they already know about Rad, which makes the area an interesting way of showing that he’s acting cool to hide that he’s vulnerable and nice.  It takes getting emotional to get the Rad faces to break and cry K.O. and Enid to the exit.

 

Then comes the big challenge of facing Mr. Gar’s fear.  At first, it feels very standard, appearing to be a single person, a former hero named Laserblast.  It gives an opportunity for K.O. to show his biggest fear, by unleashing a terror from within to face Laserblast. It’s amazing that this kid is so resistant of such a fear.  As for Mr. Gar, his fear turns out to be more complicated than this.  He really cowers over the sight of Carol in her Silver Spark getup, berating him and attacking him with sandwich content.  It brings a lot of references to what we’ve learned so far, indicating that Mr. Gar went to P.O.I.N.T. with Carol and has something to do with that vague sandwich flashback.  These reveals bring bigger reasons why Mr. Gar is so nervous around Carol, as well as mystery about what she was so mad at him for.  K.O. faces the fear by showing the vision of Carol that he loves her, but Mr. Gar still shows growth from the experience through saying a normal sentence to her for once. This gesture means a lot more for happening outside the game. 

This leaves the cartoon as one of the most creatively staged with an interesting atmosphere and world’s to get through, and intriguing ways to conquer fears and develop characters.


A+

The Ranking

1. Face Your Fears
2. Legends of Mr. Gar
3. We’ve Got Pests
4. I Am Dendy
5. You Get Me
6. Let’s Be Heroes
7. You’re Everybody’s Sidekick
8. Jethro’s All Yours
9. Know Your Mom
10. We’re Captured
11. My Dad Can Beat up Your Dad
12. Let’s Be Friends
13. We Messed Up
14. Presenting Joe Cuppa
15. Sibling Rivalry
16. Just Be a Pebble
17. Do You Have Any More in the Back?
18. You’re Level 100
19. You Are Rad

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Rad teaches about the importance of living for your art while experiencing the burden of typecasting.

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 19: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1 Episode 17: Know Your Mom

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 Twitter. Now on with today's review:

Know Your Mom

One of the most heartfelt aspects of the series is K.O.’s relationship with his mom, Carol.  Everything about this mother figure is a joy to watch.  She’s protective of her son's well-being, but is also very supportive of all his goals, and always makes time for him after work.  Along with a great personality and sense of fun, it shows that K.O. should be proud to have a mom like Carol.  Like what most people would do for any great mother, K.O. is willing to show how much he appreciates all that his mom does for him.  This cartoon gives him an opportunity at that with Mother’s Day coming. 

Since K.O. is a little kid, his gift ideas for Carol are simple macaroni art.  Despite being perfectly acceptable for his age, he feels self-conscious about his unspectacular gift.  This is especially the case when Brandon and A Real Magic Skeleton, subtly allude to giving a pasta art picture to his mom to giving her trash.  Actually, it’s really Brandon who convinces him; he ends up getting a karma-fueled subplot where RMS insists his actions have consequences. 

Even if K.O. really doesn’t need to worry about this, him looking for of a more fitting gift for Carol is amiable. Not to mention it fits his goal to go above and beyond as a great hero.  He questions how much he appreciates what his mom does for him when the best answers he has for what she likes are what she does every day.  They aren’t exactly the same as interests or character traits.  Out of this setback is an endearing gesture from K.O. as he researches about Carol.  The information  he finds is solid character development.  She was a member of a highly revered hero squad P.O.I.N.T. under the name Silver Spark.  This gives a new insight to K.O.’s upbringing through being raised by a talented hero and wanting to be one himself.  Plus, P.O.I.N.T. is a prominent elements of the series, serving as the main focus of many cartoons to come. 

Out of these reveals, there’s believable emotional value to what K.O. is trying to do since Carol quit P.O.I.N.T. 6 to 11 years ago, which is how old he is.  Even if this is technically an overreaction, it’s not too inaccurate that K.O. could be the reason Carol quit her job. K.O. believing that is especially heavy.  That said, his idea of resolution by inviting an old villain Carol used to fight for a battle is a little boneheaded due to the clear problems it can cause.  It’s still enjoyable through K.O.’s calls to some of them revealing that most of the old villains are too old or not even alive. 

He finally convinces a villain to come, an aging rapping cactus called Succulentus.  While Succulentus rocks out while fighting, Carol questions how he was brought over.  There’s a nice moment where Carol’s good nature wins out as she comforts Succulentus when he gets tired, and they civilly get coffee.  Then we end with one last show of mother-son love as Carol tells K.O. that he’s all she needs for a great life now.  She also lets him know that he didn’t make her quit P.O.I.N.T. which offers further context to the vague sandwich flashback from an earlier cartoon. 

It’s a typical trait for a parent to be satisfied just with raising a nice kid, but the way this piece of family love plays out makes it impactful anyhow.  Along with insightful moments of how meaningful relationships can be and interesting character development, this is an endearing cartoon for anyone who loves their families.

A

The Ranking

1. Legends of Mr. Gar
2. We’ve Got Pests
3. I Am Dendy
4. You Get Me
5. Let’s Be Heroes
6. You’re Everybody’s Sidekick
7. Jethro’s All Yours
8. Know Your Mom
9. My Dad Can Beat up Your Dad
10. Let’s Be Friends
11. We Messed Up
12. Presenting Joe Cuppa
13. Sibling Rivalry
14. Just Be a Pebble
15. Do You Have Any More in the Back?
16. You’re Level 100
17. You Are Rad

The next OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes review shows Lord Boxman as a civil citizen trying to impress a client on top of a diabolical villain who's captured K.O. and his friends.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews from Star vs the Forces of Evil is a review of "Hungry Larry" and "Spider With a Top Hat."

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