'Toon Reviews 19: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1 Episode 40: Villains' Night Out

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:

Villain’s Night Out

At his core, Lord Boxman is a laughable comedic villain with a petty goal in life to constantly attack Lakewood Plaza Turbo with little weight behind his mindset.  However, this aspect of his character has interesting catches to it for being called out as the obsession it is and visibly showing how it’s getting in the way of what’s important.  There’s also this cartoon that’s a great example of how Lord Boxman falls flat compared to other villains. 

At the start, it might not seem that way with a reminder that Professor Venomous has turned to him for weapons.  This time he needs them to take out P.O.I.N.T.  Lord Boxman, for all his Plaza obsessions, reveals he’s been targeting P.O.I.N.T. via an ingenious project specialized to take the organization out.  It's purpose is to process the frequently discussed glorbs.  This shows that he has the capability of being a focused, competent villain, but what follows seems to devalue all his potential.  During his talk with Professor Venomous, Lord Boxman hears about a villains’ party on a fancy yacht, except he’s not invited because he’s not taken seriously among villains.  He gets to go anyway through posing as Professor Venomous’ plus-one in place of Fink who hilariously shows bratty retaliation as he dumps her off to be babysat by the Boxmore robots. 

At the party itself, Lord Boxman has the perfect chance to prove himself that he belongs with the serious thinking villains. Most of his time is taken up through posing as an outlier of a fancy party.  That’s the kind of character who runs around causing havoc through stuffing himself with snacks and doing embarrassing dance moves and doesn’t fit in at all.  There doesn’t even seem to be any effort to try and be taken seriously by everyone else at the party. 

That said, from a normal standpoint, Lord Boxman’s antics are really funny.  My personal favorite antic of his is when he shows a video of one of his attacks on the plaza staged as an homage to Looney Tunes cartoons right down to the title cards.  The gags, the timing, and the references being recognizable and not overly blatant make the video a comedic highlight.  That said, it begs the question why Lord Boxman would show a video of a failure to villains he wants to establish a connection with. 

He does get a chance to make himself look better during an explosion contest, and what he has in mind has some bearing to it.  While the other villains perform explosions in the surrounding area, Lord Boxman instead targets P.O.I.N.T.  This seems like a logical thing for villains to do since P.O.I.N.T. is a huge organization of heroes.  It isn’t obvious that P.O.I.N.T. would retaliate or that Lord Boxman should know they can do such a thing, so this can be written off as one of his smarter moves.  Regardless, retaliating is just what the hero organization does which ends up sinking the party.  This kind of shows that he could’ve made a mark for himself if he discussed the glorb processing plant from earlier, begging the question why he didn't do that right at the start. 

As the head of the party belittles Lord Boxman as everyone evacuates, you’re most likely be unmoved by this because of the fool he was throughout the party. That doesn't change that his genuine efforts with his last move do give him some sympathy.  For that, it’s meaningful that Professor Venomous still wants to be partners with him. The cartoon’s last moments show him interested in Lord Boxman’s secret project and offering a chip to help him with it. 

For the most part, this cartoon is conflicting on whether you should take Lord Boxman seriously or laugh at his pitiful attempts to fit in.  Despite this, it’s enjoyable as it is, and even leaves promise for something bigger to look forward to.

B

The Ranking

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

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where we see what Fink was doing all this time for her villains' night in.

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 36: Parents Day

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:

Parents Day (not to be confused with the Hey Arnold cartoon of the same name)

I’m always up for looking into backgrounds of interesting characters.  This includes exploring their families.  This cartoon on Parents Day at Lakewood Plaza Turbo, gives a good opportunity to look into many families though only one pair of parents truly stands out. 

When asked about her parents, Enid says that they’re ninjas who can’t come.  K.O. and Rad decide to go to her house to bring the fun of Parents Day to her.  Lots of cartoons have given believable reasons for Enid’s prominent apathy, and we continue the trend with a more personal reason. 

K.O. and Rad are surprised to learn that she lives in a haunted house.  Fitting for the setting, it turns out that Enid is a witch.  This explains a lot about her main powers of fire kicks and turning into a stump which can attribute to witch spells.  As for Enid’s parents, they add to the feel of the haunted house with a vampire mom and a werewolf dad, two monsters so different yet make a charming married couple.  They give a tour of their home, and as someone who sees haunted houses as a great setting for creative animated storytelling, exploring the house is a highlight for the cartoon. There’s a hall of paintings with moving eyes, legit answers to Rad’s questions of “bats in the belfry” and “skeletons in the closet”, and are aided by their goblin sons.  They may be typical for the setting, but I can’t imagine anything else to capture the feel of a spooky place.  Enid’s parents, despite being spooky themselves, add wholesomeness to make it stand out. 

However, their good qualities can get a little much when they embarrass Enid with an album of her youth.  Also, when word gets out that Enid calls herself a ninja, and her parents disapprove of that because ninjas aren’t spooky.  For how charming they are, it’s hard to buy that Enid’s parents would be this adherent to conformity. 

This attitude doesn’t last long though when two ghosts, who bring to mind old-school cartoons design and voice wise, have some fun of their own possessing K.O. and Rad.  Enid combines her witch self and ninja skills to summon a tornado creature and capture and stop the ghosts.  She impresses her parents so much that they grow more accepting of her being a ninja.  That said, their change of heart has less weight to it since they put more emphasis on how spooky they find her ninja skills to be.  Still, it’s nice that Enid is more willing to bring her parents to the next Parents Day even though they still embarrass her.  She shows that for all the problems she has with them, they’re still her family and nothing will ever change that. 

Adding to the heart of the ending is Rad actually having a nice moment with Enid after teasing her for the whole cartoon. He confides in her since he also has embarrassing parents as seen in the beginning and also says he likes Enid’s parents overall.  This tender moment means a lot coming from a usual egomaniac like Rad.  It presents the cartoon as a good display of heart as well as enjoyable atmosphere. It's not perfect, but it's still very interesting, creative, and fun to experience.

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. Parents Day
24. Plazalympics
25. Presenting Joe Cuppa
26. Sibling Rivalry
27. Second First Date
28. Stop Attacking the Plaza
29. Just Be a Pebble
30. The Power is Yours
31. Do You Have Any More in the Back?
32. You’re Level 100
33. You Are Rad
34. We’ve Got Fleas
35. Rad Likes Robots
36. One Last Score

The next OK K.O. continues the spooky trend when Lakewood Plaza Turbo is put through a hack straight out of a horror movie.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is Animaniacs Episode 32.

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 4: The Loud House Season 1 Episode 2

Heavy Meddle

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can definitely say that the Loud sisters really care for their brother after watching this cartoon.  However, you can also say that they care for him a little too much which makes the viewing experience a bit frustrating.  The main premise is that Lincoln is annoyed by how his sisters always seem to barge in on his personal problems in an attempt to help him, but they only make things worse, (which is uniquely personified as a tornado of sister heads) and now he’s trying to prevent that by keeping them from finding out that he’s being picked on by a girl named Ronnie Anne.  After a set of pretty enjoyable moments of Lincoln covering the truth, the sisters eventually find out, and we see first-hand why their meddling is such a problem to Lincoln.  They may have good intentions of helping their brother in his time of need, but they never take to time to listen to him and figure out the right way to deal with the issue.  As a result, the rest of the cartoon features the sisters grabbing any random boy without listening that it’s a girl who’s picking on Lincoln, and when they find that out, they seek no ill-intention in the situation and stick to the conclusion that Ronnie Anne likes Lincoln.  The fact that these girls have such a one-track mind of not listening in on the whole story or assuming one possible reason for the bullying instead of all reasons gives the feeling that nothing is being accomplished which costs the cartoon a good amount of entertainment.  That said, the payoff is pretty decent where after getting a black eye when kissing Ronnie Anne, Lincoln finally snaps and tells his sisters to stop with the meddling, but later gets an apology note and things to heal his eye from Ronnie Anne, showing that she really does like Lincoln.  This ends the cartoon with the sisters learning to not butt in when they’re not wanted and Lincoln learning that sometimes meddling can help you.  Plus, it’s a good start to Lincoln and Ronnie Anne building a strong friendship later in the season. We’ll see a lot of stronger moments of helping from the sisters later on too.  As for this cartoon, it’s all right with some strong enjoyable parts, but much of its frustrating qualities do not make it one of the show’s best works. 7/10

 Making the Case

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cartoon follows a convention that makes me feel very uncomfortable.  The convention follows normally good characters managing to intrude the privacy of people he/she is very close to, exposing them to the public, and are then treated like they’re evil and deserve to be shut out from life despite making one mistake.  I never like good characters getting treated like that.  It all starts out sympathetically when Lincoln desires to get a trophy for the family case like most of his sisters after many failed attempts.  He gets the idea of entering a video contest, and after a talk with Luan, he goes on to keep the camera running whenever he sees his sisters do something funny.  Some moments are funny, but a few of them are kind of cringe-worthy, especially a set of moments of Lori farting.  Anyway, following the convention I talked about, Lincoln posts the video of his sisters’ moments, it becomes the most popular, but his sisters end up hating his guts because of the humiliation it causes them.  It’s not just the sisters hating Lincoln that’s the problem, they also go way too far with their hatred considering that Lincoln clearly shows them that he regrets what he did, but they won’t give him a chance to fix his mistake even though he’s usually a good kid.  This point is driven in so hard, it makes the cartoon kind of painful.  However, there are some things that don’t make this cartoon as painful as others that follow this convention.  The sisters allow Lincoln to explain why he did what he did, Lincoln did kind of bring the hatred on himself by ignoring Luan’s tip to not post the video without permission (even though they later say she didn’t say so because it’s the unspoken rule), and at least Luan is willing to help Lincoln fix everything by providing him with embarrassing moments of him.  As for how this ends when Lincoln posts himself in an embarrassing video to replace the old one, it’s not as satisfying as it can be since after all that trouble, he loses to a hamster video and has to make do with a makeshift trophy from his sisters, but I guess it’s rewarding enough that his sisters genuinely love him again.  This cartoon’s heart is in the right place and does have some good parts to it, but its painful factors prevent it from being one I’ll want to see again anytime soon. 6/10

The Ranking

1.      Left in the Dark

2.      Heavy Meddle

3.      Get the Message

4.      Making the Case

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where we follow Leni, the dumb blond, take up driving in "Driving Miss Hazy," and discover what a heavy dose of authority does for the Loud House when Mom and Dad are out in "No Guts, No Glori."