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

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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 8: I Am Dendy

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:

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 6: Steven Universe Season 1 Episode 11

Arcade Mania

When it comes to cartoons that center on Steven doing a fun, kid-friendly activity in Beach City, he’s a perfect fit for the type of plot considering his personality.  As for the Crystal Gems, with the possible exception of Amethyst, they don’t really seem like a good fit given how seriously they take their job of protecting Earth.  Plus, as this cartoon makes perfectly clear, because the Gems are a race of aliens, they don’t have as good as an understanding to the things Earth provides unlike their half-human asset.  The plot has Steven offer to take the Gems out for a fun time at Funland Arcade, which is a very nice and thoughtful move on his part.  However, given the Gems' lack of understanding of Earth things, including fun stuff like arcades, they seem confused by how to operate the various games Steven sets them up with.  That said, their confusion makes for some funny scenes and reactions.  My personal favorites involve Pearl struggling with a driving game that requires her to crash into stuff.  Then there’s Garnet who’s set up to play a rhythm game called Meat Beat Mania.  It’s a tough game for most people, but Garnet becomes so entranced by the game that she advances very easily.  As the cartoon goes on though, Garnet’s attachment to the game becomes an issue when she not only stays and plays it overnight, but the next day she’s so engrossed with it that she doesn’t even notice that Steven, Pearl, and Amethyst are being attacked by Gem monsters called Drill Parasites.  She’s so engrossed that Steven actually has to try and snap her out of it.  He tries taking off her shades (which reveals that she has three eyes, one of her many unusual traits), and beating her at Meat Beat Mania, but doesn’t snap her out until he destroys the system.  Relating to what I said about how the Gems don’t feel like a good fit for fun activity plots, Garnet getting so attached to a frivolous arcade game is very hard to believe.  She’s proved herself as the wisest and takes Gem work seriously, so she shouldn’t get so wrapped up in something like this, especially when her comrades are in trouble.  She doesn’t even use her attachment to the game to teach Steven a lesson or even to defeat the Drill Parasites, so there’s really no good excuse for Garnet’s portrayal here, and since it takes up most of the cartoon, the whole experience is pretty frustrating.  Not to mention Steven ends up paying for the mess she caused in the end.  While it’s sad that this cartoon really doesn’t do justice for Garnet’s character, it has enough charm and humor to make it enjoyable enough to sit through. 7/10

The Ranking

1. Bubble Buddies
2. Laser Light Cannon
3. Steven’s Lion
4. Gem Glow
5. Cheeseburger Backpack
6. Serious Steven
7. Cat Fingers
8. Tiger Millionaire
9. Together Breakfast
10. Frybo
11. Arcade Mania

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where we're finally introduced to fusion in "Giant Woman."

If you would like to check out other reviews on this blog, click here for the guide to all the reviews posted so far.