Escape to Amphibia - (Amphibia Season 3 Episode 10) - 'Toon Reviews 53

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Escape to Amphibia

This is the point where this season reaches a turning point in its focus, serving as a culmination of the time spent on Earth and setting up the next big things to be done.  It knows its intentions and it’s pulled off in a very impactful and endearing manner. 

As clearly indicated by the title, the main goal is for Anne and the Plantars to finally make their portal to Amphibia and save the place and Anne’s two human friends.  They have the best support from the humans they met during their time in this world with Anne’s parents and two of the biggest tech experts, Terri and Dr. Jan.  Even with all these efforts and support, the best their portal can bring is a small look into the Plantars’ world including a giant praying mantis.  This means Anne and her family have to get more supplies to successfully pull off their portal attempt, and in their shopping spree is a huge instance of endearment. 

Seeing Anne and her parents having fun with the supplies while shopping shows how much closer they’ve become since Anne returned.  In addition to being big on family love, it shows a mutual understanding of each other making for clear connections between them all.  Though it can understandably be off putting to see Mrs. Boonchuy playfully stab Anne and Anne laugh along with it given recent events.  Anyway, the connections are so big, it awakens a hidden feeling of dread in Anne.  In going back to Amphibia, she’ll have to leave her parents behind all over again, and such a thing turns out to be very painful for her and brings a lack of confidence she goes on to carry. 

These feeling intensify when they once again run into Mr. X who is more serious than ever in catching the Plantars.  Even their simple wacky adventures are getting the attention of the whole FBI, making for a stronger push for success.  He unleashes a whole squad on his targets and it isn’t long before he has the Plantars in his clutches.  What’s more, when Anne tries to stand up for them, Mr. X belittles her for just being a kid who can’t do anything.  Of course, anyone following the show can tell this isn’t true, but given that Anne is already put down by the pain of leaving her parents again, her feelings are believable. 

Speaking of her parents, they’re once more very supportive and understanding as they’re quick to give chase to Mr. X in a very thrilling sequence.  They ultimately catch the Plantars being taken to a compound, meaning they’ll need more people to help, and this is where the new characters introduced at this point pay off.  In addition to Terri and Dr. Jan, Anne’s team consist of various humans connected with certain Plantars; Ally and Jess for Polly, Molly Jo for Sprig, and Humphrey for Hop Pop.  The only characters who don’t really make sense to be here are some of the elderly patrons of the local Thai temple. 

Anyway, everyone’s talents and stealth make for a good effort in infiltrating the compound, but Mr. X, being ever charismatic and intuitive, successfully imprisons them.  

Once more, this does no favors for Anne’s low self-esteem which she opens up about when in the cell with her parents.  However, in finally being open with her feelings, Anne gets great reassurance from her parents as they remind her of all she’s accomplished and how much she’s grown.  This seals the deal on this family growing such a strong understanding of each other and supports the idea that reassurance from loved ones can go a long way in building confidence.  Later events further prove this when Terri and Dr. Jan’s passions for tech lead them to steal the compounds generator, allowing everyone to escape via another exciting action sequence.  They retrieve the Plantars and Mr. X sets out to chase them down, but with Anne having a confidence boost and many friends around to help, they’re free of his grasp once on the road. 

Still, the climax keeps building even as the portal is just about ready to go and Anne is ready to leave for Amphibia with the Plantars, complete with a nice sendoff from her parents.  That said, it is disappointing that they don’t even consider going with Anne; that would be a good way to ensure their stronger bonds seen throughout all of this.  Then, just as the portal still isn’t powered enough after everything, Mr. X shows up to try and stop Anne’s efforts again.  This time, Mr. X’s condescending remarks of Anne just being a kid do no good as Anne declares that, as learned from her experiences here, if she's with the right people, she can do anything.  With that, she gives the portal all its power as she taps into her glowing blue powers, turning herself into a human battery and serving as a major sign of character growth.  It makes the portal big enough, and brings about a distraction for Mr. X’s agents with the praying mantis from earlier. Anne and the Plantars seize opportunity and head in to do what they must for the other world.  Plus, even if Anne’s parents don’t join their daughter, them interrogating Mr. X does lead to a notable support from them revealed later on.  

Then, as a way to effectively change the tone for the rest of the season, the last scene shows Anne and the Plantars looking over Amphibia now reduced to an apocalyptic wasteland.  They’re now witnessing what’s become of this world since they last saw it, and with their devastated reactions, the stakes are higher than ever to save it, as are the emotions behind its state.

In the end, this is a grand way to transition from one atmosphere to another this season.  Major characters introduced get a good sendoff, there’s solid heart and character growth, exciting action enhances the events, and the ending makes the tone shift clear.  There’s visionary care going into this part of the show, and that can only enhance the appeal. 

A+

Fan Art

Series Ranking

1.      True Colors

2.      Hopping Mall

3.      Reunion

4.      Marcy at the Gates

5.      Anne-sterminator

6.      Olivia and Yunan

7.      Toad Tax

8.      The First Temple

9.      Froggy Little Christmas

10.  Turning Point

11.  Battle of the Bands

12.  Barrel’s Warhammer

13.  Escape to Amphibia

14.  Anne vs Wild

15.  The Domino Effect

16.  The Third Temple

17.  Toadcatcher

18.  Prison Break

19.  The Second Temple

20.  Temple Frogs

21.  A Day at the Aquarium

22.  Mr. X

23.  Anne of the Year

24.  Contagi-Anne

25.  The Shut-In

26.  Best Fronds

27.  After the Rain

28.  Family Shrub

29.  Fixing Frobo

30.  If You Give a Frog a Cookie

31.  The New Normal

32.  The Dinner

33.  Hop-Popular

34.  Anne Hunter

35.  Wally and Anne

36.  Children of the Spore

37.  Fight at the Museum

38.  Friend or Frobo

39.  Sprig’s Birthday

40.  A Night at the Inn

41.  Bessie and MicroAngelo

42.  Handy Anne

43.  Scavenger Hunt

44.  Lily Pad Thai

45.  Dating Season

46.  Anne or Beast?

47.  Combat Camp

48.  Little Frogtown

49.  Cursed!

50.  Thai Feud

51.  Snow Day

52.  Civil Wart

53.  Maddie and Marcy

54.  Stakeout

55.  Croak and Punishment

56.  Taking Charge

57.  Flood, Sweat, and Tears

58.  Bizarre Bazaar

59.  The Plantars Check In

60.  The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers

61.  Wax Museum

62.  Return to Wartwood

63.  Sprig Gets Schooled

64.  Swamp and Sensibility

65.  Trip to the Archives

66.  Toad to Redemption

67.  Anne Theft Auto

68.  Adventures in Catsitting

69.  Hop Luck

70.  New Wartwood

71.  Ivy on the Run

72.  Night Drivers

73.  Quarreler’s Pass

74.  Hop Pop and Lock

75.  Plantar’s Last Stand

76.  Fort in the Road

77.  A Caravan Named Desire

78.  The Big Bugball Game

79.  Fiddle Me This

80.  Hollywood Hop Pop

81.  Truck Stop Polly

82.  Family Fishing Trip

83.  Hop ‘Til You Drop

84.  Spider-Sprig

85.  The Ballad of Hoppediah Plantar

86.  Girl Time

87.  Breakout Star

88.  Grubhog Day

89.  Cane Crazy

90.  Lost in Newtopia

91.  Sprig vs Hop Pop

92.  Cracking Mrs. Croaker

Be sure to stay tuned for the next review where Anne and the Plantars meet up with Sasha and the Wartwood citizens in this wasteland, and there's major devotion to Sprig and Ivy as a couple which has been surprisingly underplayed a lot of the time.

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

The Great Dime Chase - (DuckTales 2017 Season 1 Episode 4) - 'Toon Reviews 51

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:

The Great Dime Chase

So far, a notable strength with this reboot has been its use of characters.  They’re very broad in how they develop and give a fresher perspective of the setup to the original series.  This is especially prominent of in the events of this episode. 

Louie, who wants to take the easy way in achieving riches and live it up while staying with his rich uncle, is taken to Scrooge’s money bin to learn the meaning of hard work.  On this particular day at the bin, Scrooge is thrusted into a meeting with vulture investors who have come to criticize his alleged reckless spending.  Louie is meant to be taking notes on how Scrooge goes about business affairs like this, but unsurprisingly, he has no patience for such things.  

He ditches the meeting, finds a dime Scrooge happens to have on display, and uses it to buy a soda.  However, by chance, he later learns that this dime is Scrooge’s Number One Dime.  As was the case in the original DuckTales, this dime was the first bit of money he ever received from shining shoes in Scotland, ultimately leading to his great fortune of today.  While this episode doesn’t explore the deeper meaning behind the dime the way a great original episode did, it’s enough to get Louie to realize his mistake.  

Now he has to scramble to get the dime back, and in the process, there are smart ways of him learning the hard work that goes into getting great fortune.  It’s especially felt in a running gag of him needing to climb flights of stairs to get to where the vending machine coins are collected.  Then there’s Louie’s idea of recovering the dime without actually doing any work himself, relating to this reboot’s introduction to its version of a familiar DuckTales character.  Gyro Gearloose is known for being a skilled inventor in spite of his creations mostly just escalating problems, but despite all that, he’s still a general nice guy.  In the reboot, Gyro has more of an edge and defined personality of being egotistical and easily frustrated.  Other than that, the general nature of his character is similar to what came before albeit to a more drastic extent.  Louie plans on using his latest invention, a sentient lightbulb Lil’ Bulb, to find Scrooge’s Number One Dime.  

While Lil’ Bulb completes the job at first, it goes on a rampage taking control of the coin collector and sucking up all dimes, essentially going evil like most of Gyro’s inventions do.  Louie ends up with a bigger mess to fix chasing down the bulb and making sure he gets the dime all without Scrooge knowing.  He even ends up living the dream of swimming for money in ways he never expected, something Scrooge claims to need basic training for.  

By the end of it all, it does feel like Louie learns a good business lesson from all this, really gaining more than he would have from listening to Scrooge’s meeting.  The fact that Scrooge had the real Number One Dime on him the entire time and the one Louie was after was a decoy further proves this.  Louie getting a dime of his own is also a solid starting point to his own business as further indicated by that being a recurring goal for him through the rest of the series.

Relating to this show’s talent with characters, this episode also has a significant portion featuring Dewey in a significant plot development arc.  As previously seen, he has a deep fascination with the mystery of what happened to his and his brothers’ mom Della, which in turn is one of the biggest Disney mysteries to exist.  With the help of Webby, a well-known fan of the Duck family, he aims to learn more about Della by accompanying Scrooge to the money bin.  

Within the bin is a huge archives on the family in question, but getting the information isn’t so easy.  Information on Della is so secret that a mailman who once delivered something with her name on it is banned from the mansion. As for the archives, Dewey and Webby have to deal with its secretary Ms. Quackfaster whose love for knowledge is so huge, she actually has the kids battle to see it.  This approach to getting information along with how the archives seem to magically clean themselves up is certainly a challenge.  That’s not even mentioning that the journal of Della is completely blank.  All the while, like his brother in his own subplot, Dewey is too impatient to go through the hard work practice and just wants to reach the results.  

During the fighting though, he ends up using the seemingly tedious information by the end of it when he finds a code related to Della he saw in an earlier scene with a card catalog.  With this newly obtained information, a whole chamber devoted to Della is revealed, but there’s one thing of substance that stands out from everything else.

There’s a message from Della apologizing to Scrooge that she took something called the Spear of Selene.  As the audience knows that the Spear of Selene was a notable issue in a past episode of this reboot, this message enhances its importance.  While the truth about it is fully revealed later on, for now, the mystery to what this spear is leaves a lot to ponder as well as Della’s nature.  It also sets up another arc of Dewey hiding this reveal to his brothers out of fear of hurting them with what may be a disturbing truth.  Little does he know, he’ll just end up hurting them in an even worse way.  On the whole, this portion of the episode not only connects to the other one in terms of morals, but still leaves major emotional investment.

The strengths of this episode come from the character portrayals and development and the clever ways they connect through the message on the importance of hard work.  For all their similarities they stand out in their own way by starting their own personal arc or coming to a break in major reveals.  And as all these characters stand out, they ultimately help this reboot shine as its own product.

A

Series Ranking

1.      The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest

2.      Daytrip of Doom

3.      The Great Dime Chase

4.      Escape To/From Atlantis

5.      Woo-oo

The next review shows Webby make a new friend for life and gain further insight on the nature of the Beagle family.

Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we escape to Amphibia.

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

The Good Muddahs - (DuckTales Vol 4 Part 4) - 'Toon Reviews 50

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:

Happy 2023! After a long holiday break, MC Toon Reviews is happy to get back to business by picking up where we left off in our regular scheduled reviews, starting with this new one for DuckTales:

The Good Muddahs

Since a huge selling point for this show is exciting globetrotting adventures, a warning sign for weaker material is when an episode stars Webby as the main character.  Unlike her active, adventurous and energetic incarnation for the reboot, here she’s very saccharine as a standard cutesy little girl archetype which can really throw off the tone.  Now, to be fair, while these traits don’t allow her the best underlying conflict for this episode, she still endures a rather interesting situation. 

The inciting events that start everything are very standard little kid fare.  Webby wants someone to play with her, but they’re all too busy with their own plans to give her any attention.  This is meant to have the audience sympathize with her, but from a more mature perspective, Webby’s peers have good reason to give other matters more attention.  Technically, the young boys, Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Bubba have the weakest excuse as they actively exclude Webby for being a girl, but there’s more legitimacy to the adults.  Scrooge and Mrs. Beakly actual work to do which understandably doesn’t give them time for young Webby.  Those matters make her claims that no one loves her a clear exaggeration and something hard to get behind. 

As to what this work is, Scrooge is given special gems to display at the Duckburg museum, and having them on loan means he has to make sure nothing happens to them.  His biggest precaution is making sure his biggest enemies, the Beagle Boys, are given extra security so they can’t break out of prison and rob them.  However, no one accounts for their female cousins, the Beagle Babes, whose existence is very convenient for this episode due to no prior mentions; though that’s kind of true for all newly introduced members of the Beagle family.  Anyway, like their male counterparts, they also target the special gems, and since they weren’t accounted for, they have a chance to rob them.  Instead, they end up snagging Webby to hold her hostage in exchange for the gems.  As opposed to stubborn pride, Scrooge doesn’t go through with paying the ransom because the gems don’t belong to him. 

So Webby has to adjust to living with the Beagle Babes which is where things get interesting.  After apparently literally spending 12 hours crying, she calms down by unlocking a different side to the Beagle Babes.  Through her sweet cutesy ways, Webby shows them how she wishes to be cared for through things like telling her a story.  From there, the Beagle Babes become moved by having a little girl to look after which gives them more depth as characters; they stand as more than just female counterparts of familiar enemies.  Their attention then goes from robbing riches to providing for young Webby including getting her special toys.  However, they care enough for her interests by returning them on account that they got the toys for her by stealing them. 

It seems that Webby has brought out real soft sides to these antagonistic characters, and it gets to the point that she sees them as more of a family than her real one.  It certainly doesn’t help that Scrooge and the others have ridiculously incompetent cops to work with in trying to get her back.  Soon enough, the boys track Webby down with Bubba as a bloodhound, and it’s fitting that they convince her to come back since they were the most out of line in neglecting her.  However, Webby insists she can’t just leave the Beagle Babes since they’re so nice and want her around.  The solution to that is to intentionally act bad so she’ll be too much for the Beagle Babes.  It’s certainly out of the ordinary to see Webby in a crime boss get up, as is the boys attempting to drive a car to make their escape.  It’s also very unexpected for the Beagle Babes to deal with given how much their soft sides developed.  In the end, Webby’s escape brings her back to McDuck Manor where the car crashes through the wall and she’s welcomed back with everyone agreeing to give her more attention.  As for the Beagle Babes, what becomes of them can be mixed where they’re given an option to run a McDuck Daycare division as punishment, but they’d rather go to jail.  It’s not exactly the best direction for their newfound caring sides, but at least they’ll never forget Webby. 

This episode ultimately doesn’t have the best background or execution, but the intrigue of innocent Webby bringing out the good in a group of criminals is something to take note of.

B

The Ranking

1.      Allowance Day

2.      The Land of Trala La

3.      The Good Muddahs

4.      Bubbeo and Juliet

The next review shifts focus to Fenton Crackshell and his relationship with his mother who gets psychic powers from a TV signal on the fritz.

Next time from the reboot is "The Great Dime Chase."

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