Soda Genie - (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 2 Episode 19) - 'Toon Reviews 40

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Soda Genie

The focus is now back on simple light-hearted escapades starring our main protagonists.  With this one, it certainly follows a very creative and self-aware premise, but doesn’t really nail the execution.  

It begins in the stock room when K.O., Rad, and Enid discover an old bottle of soda that’s been left behind for a long time.  Responsibly wanting to read the nutritional facts, K.O. gives the bottle a rub resulting in the usual results when it comes to genies.  A small literally bubbly genie comes up called Citrus Twisty.  She’s certainly a fresh take on the concept of genies, taking the form of an adorable little child others just can’t resist.  Also the fact that she’s a genie fills K.O. and Rad with excitement over the prospect of being granted anything they want.  

For that, it’s a very good thing that they’re friends with a witch, Enid.  She knows all the catches that come with magical setups, mainly how everything including expressions can be taken literally and ruin good intended wishes.  That’s a typical side effect with these kinds of setups, and they’re acknowledged before they happen.  Apparently a contract is what’s needed to make sure all wishes come out just right with no such catches.  Ultimately, the contract they write up ends up going nowhere when K.O. wants to help Rad by giving him a burger since he missed lunch.  However, he completely misses Enid’s warnings on misinterpreting wishes, so when he says he wants Citrus Twisty to make Rad a burger, Rad becomes a sentient burger.  

From here, K.O. and Enid could just wish for Citrus Twisty to turn Rad back into an alien, but they instead fight to take their wish back since it was worded wrong.  According to Enid, the only way to have a chance at that is to hit the genie with a lawsuit.  In this show’s style of suddenly changing scenes, the group is suddenly shifted to a courtroom with Citrus Twisty as the defendant.  Unfortunately for Enid, the judge turns out to be a very biased one with a known dislike for her, Wally the White.  

Through the witnesses of the trial, the cartoon’s quality starts to go down a frustrating route with nothing really accomplished.  The witnesses themselves are mostly really fabricated and don’t go anywhere, especially as they go on longer than necessary.  Citrus Twisty’s recount showcases her as cute and innocent while the three bodega heroes are thuggish brutes, which is clearly not what happened.  Enid’s claims have some substance as she points out the background of genies like Citrus Twisty, but it’s backed up with a sudden argument.  Rad puts the recounts back to fabrications as he talks about beating Citrus Twisty which couldn’t have happened since she’s still intact.  Things look like they’ll be constructive when K.O., who can never make things up, is called to the stand, but he can’t get a word in because of another fight breaking out.  The courtroom fights are at least fun to watch.  

The trial ends up completely meaningless when Wally sentences Citrus Twisty to jail time, rather anticlimactically.  Since the point was to turn Rad back to normal, K.O. decides to be fair and wish Citrus Twisty free.  However, she’s also free of granting wishes and opts to not do her liberators a favor, ending the cartoon with Rad still a burger.  With that, the question’s begged over what the point of this entire cartoon was.  Rad’s back to normal in his next appearance so unlike other strange effects, they mean nothing which is an issue along with the many meandering scenes.  The cartoon is still fun enough, but not a must-watch by any means.

B-

Season 2 Rankings

1.      Your World is an Illusion

2.      T.K.O.’s House

3.      Final Exams

4.      Dendy’s Power

5.      Lord Cowboy Darrell

6.      Bittersweet Rivals

7.      Red Action to the Future

8.      My Fair Carol

9.      Are You Ready for Some Megafootball?!

10.  Wisdom Strength and Charisma

11.  Mystery Sleepover

12.  Point to the Plaza

13.  Special Delivery

14.  Seasons Change

15.  The So-Bad-Ical

16.  Plaza Film Festival

17.  Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

18.  Be a Team

19.  Soda Genie

The next OK K.O. review features some good old bonding from K.O. and Carol as well as interesting backstory in some areas.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Mr. Universe" in Steven Universe Future.

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

Final Exams - (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 2 Episode 18) - 'Toon Reviews 40

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:

Final Exams

With everything that’s happened in the P.O.I.N.T. Prep arc, the conclusion is exciting and satisfying on all fronts.  

Working off of the discovery that there’s a secret class forcing students to be the best heroes of them all and her old friends coming to help, Enid is all set to take action.  In a solid way of allowing the story events to work in a sequence, one moment from the last cartoon of Rad throwing his antenna to stop the guards is followed up on.  The school’s scanners recognize Rad as the source of the antenna, and that’s enough to literally tap him and K.O. in a really cramped box.  

Enid tries to help, but Elodie combining her desire to be a good friend to her and loyalty to her school, bails her out to take her to the scheduled final exams.  Enid can’t think of that with her friends in trouble, but Elodie insists that being well suited for the school is what’s more important.  Her strictness on the matter is enough for Enid to contemplate turning her back on her again, for Enid knows that she has to help her friends.  Her ninja skills help her along and keep her aware of the guards, but even they’re not enough to keep her from getting caught.  They grab her in her clutches armed with a sentient paralyzer.  

In the end, Elodie’s friendliness turns out to be real after all as she too decides to bail on finals to help Enid.  Her perfectionism prevents her from being pleased with this, but she really doesn’t want to lose her best friend again.  With the very nice turn of events that Elodie and Enid’s friendship is truly retained, there’s a pleasing feel going into major reveals for the cartoon.  They easily find the imprisoned K.O. and Rad in the office of Chip Damage, but Chip Damage himself is acting weird and is almost unresponsive.  It turns out that he’s actually a robot, and his rump is on a charging bay as his only power source.  

Also, giving him a shred of humanity after a few little suggestive moments earlier in the arc, Dr. Greyman appears to explain everything about Chip’s creation.  After the demise of Laserblast, Chip was created to convince all of P.O.I.N.T. and the whole world that they were strong as ever.  However, even Greyman has noticed Chip acting weird and doesn’t seem like he approves of using glorbs to force students to be amazing heroes.  This is a great reveal to make P.O.I.N.T. more multilayered than outright bad.  In addition, it leads into an exciting action scene where Enid, Elodie, and K.O. and Rad who use friendship to break free from their box fight to break Chip’s power source while falling.  They ultimately succeed, and while Enid and Elodie missed finals, they’re appropriately seen as heroic enough to get an A+.  

As pleasing as this is, Enid decides that P.O.I.N.T. Prep’s practices are too much for her so she goes back to her old life at Lakewood.  Elodie is saddened by being separated from her old friend, but respects her decision, and while she stays at the school, she promises to be a real example of what they promise.  So all ends well for the main stars of this arc and they retain likability by the end as well.  However, Dr. Greyman is fired from his position at the school since he disapproves of the practices that were shown through Chip Damage.  The real mastermind of all this, Foxtail, continues on with them though, and leaves something big to look forward to as she sets her sights on Lakewood Plaza Turbo.  

With more grand reveals and fun action sequences as well as heart at the center, the P.O.I.N.T. Prep arc ends with great satisfaction.  Yet, there’s still more grandness to come from this organization…

A+

Season 2 Rankings

1.      Your World is an Illusion

2.      T.K.O.’s House

3.      Final Exams

4.      Dendy’s Power

5.      Lord Cowboy Darrell

6.      Bittersweet Rivals

7.      Red Action to the Future

8.      My Fair Carol

9.      Are You Ready for Some Megafootball?!

10.  Wisdom Strength and Charisma

11.  Mystery Sleepover

12.  Point to the Plaza

13.  Special Delivery

14.  Seasons Change

15.  The So-Bad-Ical

16.  Plaza Film Festival

17.  Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

18.  Be a Team

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode returning to a slice of life tone involving the antics of a genie in a soda bottle.

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

 

Mystery Sleepover - (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 2 Episode 17) - 'Toon Reviews 40

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:

Mystery Sleepover

There’s been a lot of great surprises and sequences throughout the P.O.I.N.T. Prep arc, and with the arc’s cartoons paired in sequence, you get a sense of an interesting story unfolding.  This is where it reaches its turning point coming right off of Enid declaring something weird is going on with the school.  That said, her time at P.O.I.N.T. Prep isn’t just about being suspicious.  

She’s legitimately happy that she’s made amends with Elodie, while Elodie appears to have improved a lot after betraying her in their youth.  These feelings are highlighted in a simply adorable sequence of them reliving the old days by having a sleepover in their dorm.  The activities they do are fun to watch, though the story is still given edge with Enid still holding true to her suspicions about the school which Elodie doesn’t really get.  While getting a pizza delivery, she uses her ninja knowhow to uncover that the P.O.I.N.T. Prep deans are concerned over the capabilities of some of the students.  Despite this being her biggest red flag of all, Enid comes across her old friends K.O. and Rad as the guys delivering the pizza, and her excitement of seeing them is too cute to pass up.  That said, I must wonder if it’s appropriate for her to be this excited since she saw them both literally just one cartoon ago.  

There’s still great fun at Enid and Elodie’s sleepover with K.O. and Rad in on the affair, but then that feel stops sharply.  K.O. expresses a great desire to enroll in P.O.I.N.T. Prep some day and study among all the elite heroes.  Elodie, however, sternly looks down on him saying that it will never happen.  Just as Enid is about to admonish her for apparently relapsing to her old ways, Elodie is suddenly called for an afterhours class for elite students.  All these events are enough for her, K.O., and Rad to finally do some investigating around the school.  There’s proof to their impeccable team dynamic as they face scanners who judge heroes based on how much of the three major disciplines they have.  Selling their dynamic is how they fail to get past it on their own, but make progress by combining their powers.  

Then comes the moment to confirm Enid suspicions.  The gifted honor student program is actually a meeting by Chip Damage who forces them to be the best they can be by shooting them with glorbs.  This explains the strange power surges of Elodie and Sparco in the previous two cartoons.  It’s among one of the shadiest moments of the series and shows a major crack in how P.O.I.N.T. works.  To cap the reveal off is one last exciting sequence of K.O., Rad, and Enid getting busted and fighting to beat back the P.O.I.N.T guards while racing back to their dorm.  

So, apparently K.O. and Rad are now here to stay by Enid’s side to help her face the darkness of P.O.I.N.T. meaning she won’t have to miss her old friends anymore.  There’s a mix of game changing reveals and cute bonds with this cartoon, and while it’s a lot of things at once, the results are still very positive. 

A

Season 2 Rankings

1.      Your World is an Illusion

2.      T.K.O.’s House

3.      Dendy’s Power

4.      Lord Cowboy Darrell

5.      Bittersweet Rivals

6.      Red Action to the Future

7.      My Fair Carol

8.      Are You Ready for Some Megafootball?!

9.      Wisdom Strength and Charisma

10.  Mystery Sleepover

11.  Point to the Plaza

12.  Special Delivery

13.  Seasons Change

14.  The So-Bad-Ical

15.  Plaza Film Festival

16.  Let’s Watch the Boxmore Show

17.  Be a Team

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Enid finally confronts P.O.I.N.T. Prep during Final Exams.

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