The Troll Rock (Hilda Season 1 Episode 5) - 'Toon Reviews 26

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The Troll Rock

A strong sign that a show has a lot of effort to it is how its seemingly small scenes have bigger meaning later.  The last episode featured David show fondness of a small interesting looking rock, and its last scene revealed it to move around.  It was staged as a cute sight gag to show David getting easily distracted.  With this episode, there’s much more weight to that little scene as shown at the start with a troll frantically looking for something in the area where David found that rock.  Tensions grow when that troll gets into Trolberg. 

Then there’s the main plot as Hilda attends parent-teacher night at her new school.  While she and her mother think she’s adjusted well to school, there’s an all-too believable counterargument to that belief.  Although Hilda hasn’t noticed this, she’s been disruptive in class asking off-topic questions, pointing out flaws in teachings, and giving rambles about subjects even after class.  According to her friends, the teacher, Ms. Hallgrim, is seriously considering transferring her to a special needs class due to this.  Such a drastic move makes Hilda seem challenged, when in reality, her behavior should be expected from her upbringing.  With Ms. Hallgrim being overly strict and closed-minded, what Hilda’s faced with feels right at home with any kid with a disability like autism regarding school.  There’s nothing really wrong with their approach; they just do things differently.  That said, Ms. Hallgrim immediately blaming Hilda for problems during parent-teacher night is pretty harsh. 

Speaking of problems, Hilda’s unique approach makes itself known when she notices something off about one of the rocks in David’s rock collection.  In addition to looking peculiar, it’s also grown somewhat since David found it and has come alive.  Hilda’s knowledge of such creatures leads her to see that the rock is actually a baby troll who stays dormant in daylight and grows in the dark.  However, only she, David, Frida, and Alfur are aware of it and try to keep it secret from everyone.  I understand it’s to not make Hilda look bad in front of Ms. Hallgrim, but there’s so much awkwardness that doesn’t help Hilda anyway.  She especially doesn’t help herself as she chases the troll through the classroom and the hallways making everyone really think she’s crazy.  It’s clear they probably would have been better off telling the truth of what’s going on.  At least in the gang’s pursuit of the troll, there’s nice compatibility from everyone and occasional nice sight gags. 

Eventually, Hilda is caught, and she and her mother are called in for a private talk with Ms. Hallgrim.  In a pleasing turn of events, instead of immediately buying into the teacher’s claims, Johana vouches in favor of her daughter.  Not only does this show she greatly understands Hilda and how she benefits from her new friends, but it’s a nice implication that even those in the spectrum deserve a chance.  Hilda also shows the benefits of her mannerisms when the baby troll is discovered and the larger troll from earlier breaks into the school.  She realizes the large troll was just looking for her baby, she returns him, and they leave the school in peace.  The greatest thing about this is that after all her strictness, Ms. Hallgrim does see merit in Hilda from this event, and they both seem to be on good terms in the end.  It would have been nice if other episodes after this one showed more of Hilda’s school life to prove this though. 

In spite of some potentially discomforting plot points, this episode is a great one making the most of little moments and strong character bonds.

A-

The Ranking

1. The Bird Parade
2. The Midnight Giant
3. The Hidden People
4. The Troll Rock
5. The Sparrow Scouts

The next Hilda review is an interesting one of how people can get nightmares of the most unlikely things.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews there's noting to fear from a review of "Nothing to Fear" from DuckTales.

If you would like to check out other Hilda 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 12

Interdimensional Field Trip

When you take Star’s powers and the common school event of field trips, you can bet that you’ll get a memorable and creative experience out of that.  In the case of this episode, we also get some decent character building as well.  The field trip starts out with a large chorus of complaints when the kids of Star’s class dread taking a field trip to the boring paper clip factory.  As Ms. Skullnick, being more of a downer than ever before, counteracts this by stating that life is boring, Star is led to prove her wrong by taking charge of the class.  As the leader, Star changes the field trip location to an extraordinary dimension, which is never given a name, filled with creative spots like magic portals that put kids on a horse’s body, stingrays to surf on, and upside-down buildings kids can walk on.  Now, it is easy to predict that a reckless character like Star will realize that being in charge is a lot harder than it looks especially when the kids feel the need to do dangerous stunts which Star has to prevent.  Granted, there’s a lot of humor and enjoyment from the dangerous stunts they attempt to pull, but this plot convention has been around long enough to let you know how everything will play out.  However, a subplot involving Ms. Skullnick helps make the cartoon stand out as something all its own.  We know that she was turned into a troll and there’s no way of turning her back to normal, but in this other dimension, she learns about positives that come from being a troll such as living longer and having extra strength.  This gets her to feel more positive about her permanent troll state, and she gets a grand shining moment through fixing the mess Star’s leadership caused.  It’s her newly-discovered troll strength that helps her save her class from a creature said to be the universe’s deadliest that may not seem threatening at first being made of thread.  In an ironic turn of events, she ultimately uses the boring old paper clip that started this whole plot to take the creature down.  So, Star learns the expected lesson of the importance of discipline and rules, but what Ms. Skullnick learns about herself is really worth a mention.  On another note, little moments throughout the episode show some nice progression of Marco’s relationship with Jackie as he has many scenes of texting her cute cat pictures, then after helping to save her and the class, they’re both sharing a seat on the bus with Star’s support helping make it happen.  Basically, predictable as it may be at times, in addition to being fun and creative, this episode strengthens itself on character development. 9/10

Marco Grows a Beard

With a title like this, you might not think that this episode would have a lot to offer, but in execution, there’s a decent amount of character development and game changing elements.  The central plot is Marco wanting to grow a beard to impress Jackie, but it’s Star who becomes the focus character where she gets one of the most beneficial lessons she could learn.  We’ve known since the beginning that Star values her wand a lot, and it was involved in almost everything she’s done.  This episode exaggerates her using her wand for everything a bit, but when you think about it, Marco’s claim about her habit makes sense given her attachment.  She uses her wand to help Marco’s beard grow faster, but that’s where the habit further shows how problematic it is when the beard grows so fast that it covers the house.  However, this sets up a challenge for Star when her wand gets lost in the beard, and she has to rely on non-magical means to shave the beard off.  Of course, it’s hard for Star to get confident enough to fix everything at first, but through her own dream, she recognizes how strong and capable of adventure she was before she got her wand.  Star basically figures out she can solve the problem without magic by herself, really showing how mature and self-aware she’s become.  So, she puts on a great display of ingenuity as she gets through the beard, finds Marco, and even takes out Ludo and his monsters all with normal means of brute force, sheers, and her own laser-shooting puppies.  For stepping out of her comfort zone, this is easily Star at her most respectable.  As for game-changing elements, it all has to do with Ludo’s role here.  As he and his army look for Star’s wand in the beard, he bullies and orders the monsters to brave the beard when they’re hesitant to do so.  Yet, when he has the perfect chance to grab the wand, he lets memories of a tickle monster get to him, and is thrown into a laughing fit by the beard leaving Star to grab the wand and beat everyone, making Ludo look like a huge hypocrite.  In fact, his hypocrisy is later called out by Toffee who was shown to be more respectful to the army.  He ultimately convinces them that he’s the better leader and tosses Ludo out.  Up until now, Ludo, while enjoyable for his comedic high temper when attempting to get Star’s wand, was rather one-dimensional for wanting to get it solely for power.  Being kicked out of his domain and army brings a lot of potential for development from him.  With everything stated here, this is easily a great example of how so much can come from a simple story if you have the right execution. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses
2. Blood Moon Ball
3. Mewberty
4. Mewnipendence Day
5. Diaz Family Vacation
6. Marco Grows a Beard
7. Fortune Cookies
8. Sleep Spells
9. School Spirit
10. Party with a Pony
11. Interdimensional Field Trip
12. Freeze Day
13. Quest Buy
14. Monster Arm
15. Cheer up Star
16. Star Comes to Earth
17. Brittney’s Party
18. Matchmaker
19. The Banagic Incident
20. Lobster Claws
21. Pixtopia
22. Royal Pain
23. The Other Exchange Student

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the epic season finale, "Storm the Castle."

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 2

Matchmaker

As a being from another dimension, it’s only natural that Star doesn’t have that strong of an understanding of how Earth works even little things such as life at her high school, Echo Creek Academy.  This is the source of this episode’s comedy and it’s not just fun to watch, but also makes for an interesting center in a story that brings about a change that actually lasts for the entire series.  It happens during a humorous moment of Star learning that the F she got on her recent test means she failed, and she thinks that she can simply ask the teacher, Ms. Skullnick, to change it to a better grade.  When she hears her lament about being dumped by some guy, Star decides to play matchmaker in exchange for a better grade by casting a spell to get Ms. Skullnick the perfect date.  However, in keeping with her recklessness with magic, Star ends up turning Ms. Skullnick into a troll.  As one might expect, the main focus on the cartoon turns to trying to change Ms. Skullnick back to normal which is a challenge since Star doesn’t know how to simply undo her spell her only being a beginner with her wand at this point and all.  Adding to the challenge is her fear of her parents finding out and getting her sent to St. Olga’s Reform School which eliminates calling them as an option.  Ultimately, they don’t find a way to change the teacher back to normal, but there does seem to be another way around the issue.  When Ludo and his men attack to get Star’s wand again, amidst another fun fight scene with cool and at times creative combat moves from Star and Marco including a humorous bit where Star and Ludo debate over whether Star killed one of his henchmen or not, Star notices some intimate ties between Ms. Skullnick and one of the monsters.  She convinces Ms. Skullnick that the monster likes her and they leave for another dimension together.  It seems like a solid conclusion to Ms. Skullnick’s story even if she’s still a troll, but she soon ends up back to her miserable self when she gets the impression that the monster dumped her.  While it is technically a problematic conclusion where nothing was accomplished, it’s worth noting that Star praising Marco for the fight to her class gets his crush, Jackie Lynn Thomas, to say a few words to him, which Marco feels is a step in the right direction towards winning her over.  In other words, Star did somewhat succeed as a matchmaker because of this.  Plus, since Ms. Skullnick is still a troll, this cartoon does have the benefit of consequences that affect the show, even if it is in a small way thus giving it some edge.  On the whole though, this is a basic episode made entertaining by Star’s interpretation of how Earth things work and little effects on the status quo (emphasis on little). 9/10

School Spirit

The last episode gave us a taste of how Star doesn’t fully understand how things work on Earth, and this one shows off that concept in much bigger proportions.  The final result is one crazy and hilarious watch.  The main subject of the episode is a football game against Echo Creek’s Opossums against the opposing team, the Warriors.  Everyone talks about how the Warriors are going to destroy, slaughter and do other horrible things to the opossums, and Star, as anyone from another dimension probably would, doesn’t get that all this means the Warriors keep beating the Opossums in football games every year.  In her mind, different teams of Opossums actually get killed in battles every year around this time and her showing sorrow for the many teams at one point is both hilarious due to her misunderstanding, and somewhat emotional if you view the scene with her mindset.  Her feelings for the team and all the advice she picks up to prevent another “tragedy” all add up to the night of the big game where she rigs the football field to take down the Warriors with booby traps.  It comes with a lot of crazy and exciting events with bombs setting off sparkling explosions, and other traps that release monster cats and birds, and Star putting on an awesome display of magic to beat them all back, though at this point it shouldn’t be surprising.  It even leads to a satisfying conclusion for the Opossums when the Warriors become so freaked out by what occurred that they forfeit, giving victory to the other team.  While all this clearly shows that Star still has a lot to learn about Earth and self-control, her being able to fix everything and have things turn out good for who she’s trying to help in the end keep her likable and the story entertaining which is good because of how fun the antics are.  There’s also a subplot of Marco attempting to do something about the Warriors constantly kidnapping the Opossums mascot, who this year is played by his friend, Ferguson.  Through it all, you can really admire Marco’s devotion to keep his friend safe but also see his obsession through the crazy strategies he teaches him, which appears to set him up to learn to not worry so much.  In the end though, the Warriors do kidnap Ferguson, which is a bit anti-climactic.  However, it does lead to Ferguson, who’s been seen as a total wimp the whole time, get a moment to shine by breaking free on his own and even surviving one of Star’s traps, so I can at least say the subplot has a humorous conclusion.  This is easily one of the most entertaining episodes so far mostly fueled by Star’s literal take on life on Earth. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. School Spirit
2. Party with a Pony
3. Star Comes to Earth
4. Matchmaker

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Marco gets a "Monster Arm" right before an important karate match, and Star is shown to enjoy the Diaz family's hospitality a little too much when "The Other Exchange Student" comes to visit.

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.