'Toon Reviews 20: Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 2 Episode 12: Into the Wand/Pizza Thing

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Into the Wand

This episode starts out as another escapade of Star learning to better handle her wand.  It turns into one of the show’s most creative experiences adding to the background of this show’s world. 

Continuing with the confusing state of Star’s wand, this is an episode where it being cleaved is a problem with Star’s spells not coming out right.  She asks Glossaryck for help, and he tells her to fix it by going inside the wand and remove what doesn’t belong.  His instructions are as vague as usual, so it make sense that Star gets separated from him. 

It’s a very mind-boggling experience to navigate the inside of her own wand, which by the way bears little resemblance to how it looked in the previous episode.  I, for one, don't consider that a bad thing as the wand's interior in this episode is much more interesting as it changes by the minute.  First it looks like she’s in her room, but it’s a vision of it.  Then she loses focus of Glossaryck’s voice and ends up in a completely different location.  From there, even more strange occurrences appear.  Her school showing up wherever she turns.  She finds her mom’s pig-goat creature named Chauncey who was supposed to be killed in battle in a random burger factory.  The principal’s chair becoming her father’s throne.  The royal castle appearing on the football field.  The freakiest thing of all is that the longer Star stays in her wand, clones of herself appear existing as their own beings.  They threaten to replace the Star that’s been around the longest.  This unsettling feeling follows Star through the rest of her mission with not just a big job to do, but her existence on the line. 

While being followed by several other Stars, the real Star ends up in a special room of all the queens of Mewni.  It’s here where the show’s world gets more interesting than before as we uncover pieces of its backstory.  Each queen portrait has a plaque with a passage about them, but two queen portraits are of major significance.  One is of Eclipsa, a queen specializing in dark magic who ran from her husband to elope with a monster.  This is huge because while all the other queens have fought monsters, Eclipsa was in a relationship with one.   This begs lots of questions if the morality of Star, and her lineage, towards monsters has ever been justified.  Also, a queen who disappeared from the throne existing in her royal bloodline leaves Star with something big to deal with. 

As for the other big portrait, it’s of Star’s mother, Moon, defeating Toffee, who’s revealed to be immortal.  This reveal leaves more shocking truths for Star to take in knowing her elegant mother fought a dangerous monster, as well as something to safeguard.  It’s Toffee’s single finger, the only thing remaining from when Moon shot him.  Deducing the finger as the thing that doesn’t belong, there’s one last intense moment in the wand. Glossaryck rushes in to get Star through his eye just as she’s about to get beaten by her many clones. 

After dumping the finger into her closet, the episode ends with an actual wholesome scene between Star and Glossaryck as they take in the craziness of their adventures.  It’s a genuinely nice calm down after such a huge adventure.  Standing out for big reveals in the show’s lore and history with a creative aesthetic shining all the way through, this is one of the show’s best ways of leaving a strong impression.

A+

Pizza Thing

Not only is this just another episode of Star hanging out and doing an activity with Marco, it’s also one that involves Pony Head.  Just like with her appearance earlier this season, she’s too much with her arrogant attitude, and this episode encourages the trend. 

She and Star exchange gifts with each other for Friendship Thursday. While Star appreciates her gift, Pony Head shows little gratitude for what Star gets her since she can’t party in it.  She also doesn't accept that the planned entertainment is watching TV.  It’s moments like this that make you question why Star is even friends with her.  This impression on Pony Head is made more concerning.  She ditches Star and follows Marco who’s out getting pizza just to check out the “Earthian nightlife.” 

It gets worse when Pony Head whines her way into letting Marco invite her along, and she doesn’t even keep her promise to not force in distractions.  To be fair, there are some enjoyable moments from Pony Head’s distractions.  There's an impromptu rave with everyone involved wearing skinny jeans, and she drives a car with her magic after mistaking it for a taxi and scaring its driver away.  Since these moments are enjoyable enough and even exciting in parts, Pony Head doesn’t seem all bad and instead seems like someone who just wants to have fun.  However, her general rude behavior and weak reasons for her actions don’t make her very good either.  That's why it's concerning when Pony Head crashes the car into a junk yard, and it gets crushed and compacted, and this is a big deal because she stole it.  She does make up for it by using her magic to make a new car though, even though it drives off by itself.  That way, it can be argued that the episode does start working out in her favor. 

When she and Marco finally do get to the pizza place, he has her sit in the corner while he gets the pizza. Just as he’s about to buy it, for some reason, Marco points out that there aren’t as much mushrooms on the pizza, and the chef throws it away.  The fact that Marco later says it doesn’t matter begs the question why he even brought it up in the first place.  This just doesn’t seem to be a very good payoff to the hard time he had. It gets even worse when the chef proceeds to chastise him for criticizing about the mushrooms and unreasonably quits. 

The plot tries to make it seem like Marco was wrong to shut Pony Head out, and they could’ve gotten the pizza if she was involved.  However, for all the trouble she caused, Marco had very good reasons to not trust her, so the end result of her bad behavior being rewarded isn’t a good one.  At least the ending is fairly cute when a random little kid talking about why he likes pizza gets Marco and Pony Head to make up and cook their own.  It’s debatable if the pizza truly comes out good, but them coming together is still nice. 

However, Pony Head still brings the episode down quite a bit for her overbearing unruliness and the story making it seem like her attitude was necessary doesn't help.  There are some good funny moments and the payoff with her and Marco is very satisfying though. Nevertheless, an episode mostly consisting of what’s wrong with her character is not worthy of being called great.

D-

The Ranking

1. Ludo in the Wild
2. Into the Wand
3. Hungry Larry
4. Game of Flags
5. On the Job
6. Sleepover
7. Is Mystery
8. Mr. Candle Cares
9. Wand to Wand
10. Starstruck
11. Girls’ Day Out
12. By the Book
13. Friendenemies
14. Gift of the Card
15. Starsitting
16. Star on Wheels
17. Camping Trip
18. My New Wand
19. Red Belt
20. Spider with a Top Hat
21. Star vs Echo Creek
22. Fetch
23. Goblin Dogs
24. Pizza Thing

The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review features Glossaryck deal with nonsense on his way to a meeting, and a growth on his neck threatens Marco's chances of asking out Jackie.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we meet "Katnappe" from Xiaolin Showdown.

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 13: The Loud House Season 2 Episode 10: Fed Up/Shell Shock

Fed Up

Back in my Season 1 reviews of this show, I’ve mentioned that one of its biggest themes was that even though siblings are usually very different, you can still easily relate to them which can let you know that you’re not alone when dealing with a particular issue in the family.  With this season starting to frequently feature all the kids work as a team as opposed to mostly Lincoln or a sister working separately from the rest of the siblings, this theme is stronger than ever before.  This cartoon here is proof of this.  The Loud kids all share the concern that Dad makes the same meals for dinner every week.  While this seems hard to believe at first since this was never an issue before, as well as the fact that Lincoln mentions that Friday’s meal is fried fish, but for the rest of the cartoon franks and beans are said to be for Friday, the entertainment and portrayal of the kids’ dynamics allow me to overlook those points.  The teamwork aspect of the kids makes itself apparent the moment Lincoln decides that something should be done about their monotonous dinners and forms a plan to sabotage Dad’s planned dinner so they can get pizza instead.  We’re so used to seeing the kids fight with each other or shutting down someone’s idea when there’s an issue, so the following sequence where every kid plays a part in sabotaging Dad’s planned goulash for the night is especially pleasing.  Even when Dad comes up with ways to improvise on a bad situation, the kids never give up and always find new ways to prevent the same meals from being made again.  That said, it’s still impressive how Dad finds ways to work around the lack of food or proper cooking equipment.  It’s a good display of his prominent character trait of his talent for cooking.  The kids ultimately win with their sabotage and get their pizza, but given how hard Dad was shown to be working to try and make his dinner under the circumstances, he still earns the audience’s sympathy.  This is why it’s good that the time remaining in the cartoon is spent on a forming a compromise between him and the kids when Leni’s lack of intelligence leads him to find out about the sabotage.  Dad’s ways of making the same meals every week are explained to exist due to the pressures of making something good for a lot of people on a budget.  This is a solid, believable reason for the methods, but since the kids feelings are also understandable, it’s worth watching them try to prove the menu can be mixed up by cooking dinner themselves.  However, since they lack cooking skills and common favorite foods, they simply can’t make something edible.  That’s when the compromise is reached when Dad turns out a new tasty dinner out of the kids’ mess.  In other words, the conclusion satisfies both sides of the issue instead of one proving right which is really the best way conflicts between characters should be settled.  Thanks to its strong use of conflict staging and resolution along with pleasing moments from the characters involved, this cartoon amounts to another strong entry of this season. 9.5/10

Shell Shock

Whether you want them to get together as a couple or you like them just fine as friends, there’s something fascinating to the relationship between Lincoln and Ronnie Anne.  Considering that they started getting on each other’s nerves through Ronnie Anne’s constant pranking on Lincoln and Lincoln calling her out at the worst times, it’s astounding that they’re still able to bond over some shared interests and slowly develop a respect for each other.  Even with the pleasing moments we’ve seen between them, the fact that we’ve only gotten so few of them and that Ronnie Anne is shown to be one of the school’s tough kids, it makes sense that not everything would be perfect between the two.  This is shown when this cartoon’s plot has them assigned to look after an egg for the week as if it’s their baby.  Since Ronnie Anne is, as I just stated, one of the tough kids, Lincoln is extremely hesitant to let her have the egg, so he plots to keep it all to himself all day.  To illustrate Lincoln’s fear of Ronnie Anne potentially handling the egg we get a comedic highlight for the cartoon which is a series of quick scenes of Lincoln imagining Ronnie Anne comically and monstrously breaking the egg.  They’re cool to see, but after a lot of them happen, you’d probably be left wondering why Lincoln is this mistrusting of Ronnie Anne after all the genuinely nice moments they’ve had together.  I mean, if Clyde can be trusting of a girl he hardly knows named Penelope while they look after their egg baby, surely Lincoln can do the same for a girl he has some knowledge of.  She may be rough, but she’s not dumb enough to act that way during a school project.  Thankfully, this is just what Lincoln discovers when after making a rubber cement twin of his and Ronnie Anne’s egg and accidentally giving her the real egg, he winds up at her house where he discovers what she’s really like.  Through some nice moments of helping Bobby get ready for work and helping her mom with chores, it’s revealed that Ronnie Anne can be careful and trustworthy.  It’s a sweet eye-opening moment for Lincoln, but since he should’ve been more trusting of her in the first place after all this time, when Ronnie Anne discovers his egg swap trick, her anger is understandable, though it does result in the real egg baby breaking.  Fortunately, rather than letting the cartoon end on a downer note for both Lincoln and Ronnie Anne, we close with Lincoln getting them both another chance at caring for an egg baby, now more trusting of Ronnie Anne and knowing what she’s really like.  She may prank him and can be rough with her friends at school, but when it comes to serious matters like family and school projects, she’s one of the most reliable friends he could ask for.  With newly revealed layers to flesh out Ronnie Anne’s character, strong comedy, and a relatable message on the importance of getting to know someone, this cartoon effectively continues this season’s trend of expanding the show’s world by developing side characters and being a strong cartoon in general. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. 11 Louds a Leapin’
2. Frog Wild
3. Party Down
4. Lock n Loud
5. Fed Up
6. Baby Steps
7. Shell Shock
8. Suite and Sour
9. Back in Black
10. Patching Things Up
11. The Whole Picture
12. The Old and the Restless
13. Kick the Bucket List
14. Intern for the Worse
15. Cheater by the Dozen
16. Making the Grade
17. Vantastic Voyage
18. No Such Luck
19. Brawl in the Family

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Lincoln's day gets a superhero edge to it in "Pulp Friction" and the Loud Pets take the spotlight in "Pets Peeved."

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