Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (The Great Bird Man/Simon & Marcy)

This episode begins with Finn and Jake walking in the Bad Lands. Finn call Princess Bubblegum on a Holo-pendant and she asks how their mission hunting for the Birdman is going. Finn asks why the Birdman is so dangerous and Bubblegum explains that everything about him is just rumors so far, but she needs Finn and Jake to ensure he’s not a threat. Finn then throws the Holo-pendant because I guess that’s how you hang up? What if he needs to call her or someone else again? Anyway, they eventually pass out from the heat and are rescued by a weird bird creature. I don’t know, they call it a bird but I’ve never seen anything that looks less like a bird.

Finn and Jake are woken up after being given some water. The one who woke them turns out to be Xergiok, the Goblin King who liked spanking his subjects. Holy crap, when was the last time we saw him? Season 2? Maybe Season 3? Add him to the list of things I never thought would come back but did. Xergiok explains that after he was driven away from the Goblin Kingdom, he changed his ways. He also tells them of how a wizard stole his eyes, but little does he know his eyes are stuck in his beard. Finn and Jake don’t tell him this, as they’re still unsure of whether Xergiok can be trusted. Later, Finn and Jake start to snoop around Xergiok’s things to find out more about him, but they don’t find anything incriminating. Then they accidentally break the leg of one of Xergiok’s birds, causing Xergiok to come rushing over. He performs some kind of spell to switch the bird’s broken leg with his own leg, healing the bird but giving himself an injury. This selfless act makes Finn and Jake think that Xergiok can be trusted, so they tell him where his eyes are. Xergiok puts them back in their sockets and is able to see again, but it also makes act strangely.

Xergiok says he wants to go back to the Goblin Kingdom because his new attitude would make him a better ruler. Finn and Jake think that’s a bad idea but Xergiok goes there anyway. It doesn’t take long for Xergiok to go back to his evil ways, but when he scares away his bird friends he realizes the mistake he made. He takes his eyes back out and tells Finn to bury them somewhere (Finn puts them back in Xergiok’s beard). As he leaves, Finn and Jake hope that he will find peace. Apparently he does, as he walks into the water and a few seconds later has a mermaid girlfriend.

All right, I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, so here’s just a few random thoughts:

• Bubblegum laughing at the mermaids being lonely at the beginning is pretty mean? Bubblegum usually kind of walks a fine line between nice and not-so-nice but that seemed really random. Is it just me?
• I liked how Xergiok’s eyes were in his beard, it feels very fairy tale-esque somehow.
• Xergiok’s “magic” (I know he says it’s not magic but whatever) is really cool, how instead of healing an injury it transfers it to himself. Again, it feels fairy tale-esque.
• The Goblin guards’ reactions to seeing Xergiok again made me laugh a little. Poor things are still so afraid of him.
• Xergiok giving up his eyes at the end is nice but I wonder why having sight changes him so much?

So, yeah, this an okay episode. It’s got some cool stuff in it but I think there’s some wasted potential here. It could have gone somewhere more interesting but it ended up being just okay.

Rating: 6.5/10

Oh man. This episode.

All right, so this one involves Marceline telling Finn, Jake and Ice King about something that happened 996 years ago to her and Simon, though of course Ice King doesn’t remember any of it. The story is about them in the days after the Mushroom War, where they appear to be the only two people around. Marceline was just a child. A demon child. I don’t mean she was a bratty kid, I mean she was a literal demon. Anyway. Simon at the time was human but of course with the crown he was slowly becoming less so. Basically, the two of them are just trying to survive together. I don’t know where Marceline’s parents are during this but I guess it doesn’t really matter. Marceline is aware of the crown’s power and how it affects Simon’s mind in this episode, which was a bit odd to me because in I Remember You I had gotten the impression that Marceline didn’t know what it did to his mind but maybe I was mistaken? She always asks him not to put it on because the way he acts with it scares her but he sometimes has to wear it to protect her from threats.

At some point, Marceline gets sick and Simon wants to find her some chicken soup, but there are very few supplies to be found. And wherever they are is infested with radioactive zombie-like creatures that I guess are the remains of humanity. Simon and Marceline try to escape them but Simon is eventually forced to put on the crown to fight them off. He does so while singing the Cheers theme, which he had sung to Marcy earlier, to try to force himself to keep it together. When it’s over he takes the crown off, but this time the effects of it don’t seem to go away completely, and there’s still the issue of Marcy’s sickness to take care of. Wads of bubblegum had been seen earlier, around the time that they ran into the zombies, and the stuff is everywhere. Suddenly some of it hands a can of soup to Simon, and when Simon looks closely at the bubblegum it appears to have a face that smiles at him. Whoa. Wait. Was that Princess Bubblegum?! Or some ancestor of her’s?! Well, anyway, Simon gives Marcy the chicken soup, but he also calls her Gunter, indicating that the last time he wore the crown has caused too much damage for him to come back from. The episode then goes back to the present as Marceline ends her story by saying that she and Simon lived happily ever after. Ice King has no idea that he’s the Simon she’s talking about.

Like I Remember You, this episode was spoiled for me, and I wish it hadn’t been because I think then it would have been stronger. Still, like I Remember You, it’s a powerful episode either way.

There’s nothing in this episode that’s really that big of a surprise, after I Remember You we know that Simon and Marceline knew each other during the early days of the post-apocalyptic world and that Simon took care of Marceline until the crown made him unable to do so anymore. What makes this episode is the relationship between Simon and Marcy, which is all kinds of adorable. Little Marcy is super cute and Simon is so sweet to her, he’ll do anything to protect her and make her happy despite the state of the world. Marcy and Simon have only each other, after all. Marcy’s parents are nowhere to be found and we know that Marcy’s home life wasn’t exactly great anyway. Simon lost his fiancee a while ago and now all of humanity has been wiped out, so nothing and no one he used to care about is still around and the world is completely different. Marcy needed someone to look after her and Simon needed someone to give his life purpose. I actually got a little teary-eyed when Simon was singing the Cheers theme song to try to keep his mind together for Marcy. It’s clear how much those two meant to each other and their relationship is really what makes this episode worthwhile.

Rating: 9/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (Bad Little Boy/Vault of Bones)

Another Fionna and Cake episode! YAAAAAAASSSSSSSS!!

Like the last one, this has Ice King reading his weird Fionna and Cake stories to some unwilling participants, this  time to four princesses in cages. The story he tells them involves himself saving Fionna and Cake from Doctor Prince and Fionna asking to be Ice King’s best friend. The story is interrupted by the princesses who say that the story is terrible. Ice King defends his story by saying that it has everything that could possibly want: action, adventure, and “hot older guys” (he points out Wildberry Princess in particular for having a thing for Silver Foxes, though she just looks horrified). The princesses suggest that the story would be better if it were more realistic, or if there was some romance added in to it. That’s when Marceline suddenly appears. She’s apparently been hanging around invisibly for a couple of hours. She opens the cages that the princesses are held in and says that she has a way better story for them, which they all want to hear.

Marceline’s story starts off with Fionna complaining about how the missions Prince Gumball gives her are often boring, when suddenly Gumball himself comes in with a plate of pink cream puffs. He says that he baked them as a reward for Fionna’s last mission, but she declines the gift. Suddenly a noise startles them and a blur passes by, stealing all of the cream puffs. Another noise is heard on the roof and Fionna wants to investigate. She, Gumball and Cake go outside (Cake is in her hat and Gumball has an umbrella because neither of them wanted to go out in the rain… Gumball is also on Fionna’s back for some reason) and find Marshal Lee on the roof. Marshal Lee is Marceline’s genderbent counterpart. He says hello to a flustered Fionna and says an exaggerated hello to an annoyed Gumball.  After being taunted and having a cream puff thrown in his face, Gumball decides to go back inside, telling Fionna to do the same if she wants some more polite company. Marshal Lee then invites Fionna to a party thrown by Lumpy Space Prince in the woods, and off they go.

When they get there, Lumpy Space Prince (who has the exact same voice as his female counterpart) has Marshal Lee perform a song. He and Fionna sing together, and these are their lyrics.

Marshall Lee: Good little girl, Always picking a fight with me. You know that I’m bad, But you’re spending the night with me.

What… do you want… from my world? You’re a good little girl.

Fionna: Bad little boy. That’s what you’re acting like. I really don’t buy That you’re that kind of guy.

And… if you are… Why do you want to hang out with me?

Marshall Lee: Don’t you know I’m a villain? Every night, I’m out killing Sending everyone running like children?

I know why you’re mad at me. I got demon eyes… and they’re looking right through your anatomy, Into your deepest fears.

Baby, I’m not from here, I’m from the Nightosphere. To me, you’re clear… transparent. You’ve got a thing for me, girl. It’s apparent

 

Hm. Fionna tells Marshal Lee that he isn’t so bad, and Marshal Lee replies “Not so bad? I’m the son of a demon… and the Vampire King. It’s not something I have to try at. You on the other hand…”. Fionna says that she isn’t trying to be bad, she’s just hanging out with Marshal Lee because they’re friends. Marshal Lee wonders if it’s the same as her friendship with Gumball and Fionna says it’s different.  The two then start to fight playfully but Cake breaks it up when it seems as though Marshal Lee is taking things a bit too far. Marshal Lee pushes Cake away and this angers Fionna. She takes Cake in her arms and leaves the party while Marshal Lee follows, telling her that he was kidding and she should lighten up, to which Fionna replies, “Look, I don’t care if you’re being a jerk to me… but nobody messes with Cake.” So Marshal Lee grabs Cake and takes off with her, telling Fionna to come and get her.

Marshal Lee takes Cake to a graveyard where he summons an army of undead for Fionna to fight. While she’s fighting them, Marshal Lee reiterates (in a rap) that he is bad. Disgusted, Cake enlarges herself and begins to fight him. Fionna eventually defeats that skeletons and pulls Cake away from Marshal Lee, which causes him to fall over onto a spear sticking out of the ground. To make matters worse, the sun starts to come up. Cake stretches herself over him so he won’t burn, but things aren’t looking good for him. He wants Fionna to admit she loves him before he dies, which just confuses her because seriously, why is he insisting on this now, after everything that he did?! Fionna is apparently of the same mind: “I-I get that you flirt with me all the time, and it’s funny or whatever, but you’re doing that now?! [Fionna’s voice begins to break and starts to tear up.] What are you trying to do to my head? You think I’ve got some little crush on you? Well, for however long we’ve got left… FOR ONCE, DROP IT, YOU FREAK!” I love Fionna. Marshal Lee then reveals that he wasn’t really stabbed, his shirt was just filled with cream puffs. So Fionna punches him in the face. Good call. Marceline’s story ends here, and the princesses all agree that this was a much better story, to Ice King’s annoyance.

So, it’s pretty clear what this episode is trying to do. Marshal Lee is the archetypical “bad boys” and Fionna is interested in him because of that.

First, let’s talk about this “bad boy” thing. This belief that girls are into bad boy is a common one, but the thing is, it’s not really true in the way people think it is.

I always feel a little uncomfortable when people say things like “girls love bad boys” or “girls always go for jerks” and  not just because it’s a generalization. I don’t like the condescending tone it’s almost always said in, like we girls are just too silly to know what’s good for us. I don’t like how more often than not the ones perpetuating this idea are petulant “nice guys” who aren’t actually that nice themselves but need something to blame for why they can’t get laid. I don’t like how people are implicitly putting the blame on girls for “going for jerks” instead of putting the blame on the guys who are acting like jerks. I don’t like how it manipulates girls into thinking that guys being jerks is what they’re supposed to find attractive, and how it allows guys to think that being jerks to girls is fine because it’s what they want anyway. There’s just a lot that’s wrong with this mentality, so I don’t really like the constant perpetuation of it.

Do girls like bad boys? Some of us, sure, but like I said, it’s not in the way that most people think. It’s not that we actually like bad boys, we just like the fantasy of a bad boy. That’s a very important distinction and one that seems to go over people’s heads a lot. That’s why the whole bad boy appeal applies almost exclusively to fictional characters. Most of us know deep down that we wouldn’t want someone like this in real life (those who haven’t will hopefully figure it out), but that doesn’t mean we don’t like the idea of it. You’ll notice that villains and antagonists in stories tend to have a lot of fangirls, but how many girls do you know in real life who honestly are attracted to bad people? It’s important to realize that what’s attractive in a fictional character is not the same as what’s attractive in a real person. An appealing fantasy is not necessarily a desirable reality.

So why is the bad boy an appealing fantasy at all? Well, there’s a couple of reasons, and it can vary from person to person, but here are some of the more common reasons.

1. The “I Can Change Him” Mentality. This is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the idea that even if the guy in question is horrible, you can be the one that fixes him. You can be the one that makes him come out of his shell, you can be the one that gets him to see the light, you can be the one that changes his view of the world, you can be the one that makes him reform. He’ll change just for you, because he loves you that much. It’s a stupid mentality, yes, and one that would be extremely dangerous in real life. But it does make for a nice fantasy. The idea of being the center of someone’s world and the one special thing in it is a powerful and romantic one, but it’s not something that’s applicable to reality, and deep down we know that. We know it won’t happened this way and we probably wouldn’t really want this anyway, but it is nice to fantasize about.
2. The Draco in Leather Pants. You’ve probably seen the term “Draco in Leather Pants” before, especially if you’re familiar with TV Tropes. This trope got its name from Harry Potter fan fiction. A few years back, it was extremely popular for HP fan fic writers to romanticize and woobie-fy Draco Malfoy (maybe it’s still popular, I haven’t red HP fan fic in a while). It was also popular to make him him wear leather pants for some reason, hence the name. Anyway, the trope refers to a character who, in canon, is antagonistic or evil, but has been given an inappropriate amount of sympathy from fans, who interpret them as “not all bad”. They’ve come up with all kinds of reasons to feel sorry for the character and explain away their bad behavior, whether or not these reasons have any basis in canon, and basically think that the character really is a good person deep down. This usually goes hand-in-hand with the I Can Change Him Mentality, it’s this idea that the bad boy isn’t really bad, just tragic and tortured (“tragic/tortured” is also attractive to a lot of girls for similar reasons as the bad boy archetype), and they just need someone to guide them to the light.
3. Forbidden Fruit Angle. Once again, this is exactly what it sounds like. There’s a certain thrill to guys who are dangerous and even a bit intimidating (remember: in fantasy, not reality!), and this comes out in interesting ways in fandom culture. Just like there’s a thrill in doing something that’s forbidden, there’s a thrill in being with someone who’s supposed to be bad for you. It’s rebellious and dangerous and exciting, but, it bears repeating, it’s not applicable to real life.

Obviously a lot of this also depends on how the character is written but generally these are the more common reasons. Now let’s take a look at Fionna’s relationship with Marshal Lee.

Marshal Lee is clearly playing the role of the bad boy and even refers to himself as such. Gumball, though he doesn’t have a huge role in the episode, is cast as the nice guy – not in the Nice Guy (TM) sense but like a guy who’s actually nice. The thing is, though, Fionna just isn’t interested in Gumball that way. He doesn’t excite her, and for someone as adventurous and active as her that’s hard to get around. Nice isn’t always enough. Marshal Lee, on the other hand, is not nice at all, but he is exciting. He’s not the sort of boy who will bake you cream puffs, he’s the sort of boy who will take you on wild adventures, and right now that’s what Fionna wants. She wants the danger and thrill, but she also wants to think that Marshal Lee can be more than what he is. She’s convinced that he’s not all bad, but he’s given her no reason to think so and actually insists that she’s wrong. Of course, Fionna eventually learns that Marshal Lee is bad news and a relationship with him really isn’t what she thought it would be.

Basically, the episode got it down perfectly. There is a certain charm and allure to guys like Marshal Lee, but they’re not the kind of guy you’d want to be with in the long run.

Bless this show.

Also, can we just get a Fionna and Cake spin-off? I would watch the hell out of a show about them being awesome and spreading positive messages to girls.

Rating: 10/10

This episode begins with Finn and Flame Princess hanging out inside the Tree Fort. Jake is making tea on the stove, when suddenly Flame King appears from the fire and starts to whisper to Flame Princess that she’s evil. Then he realizes that Finn and Jake are there and that he was mistaken in thinking that Flame Princess was alone, so he leaves. Flame Princess tells Finn that her father has been doing this to her for a while, and she’s worried that she really is evil as he says. Finn reassures her that she isn’t, but she’s still not totally convinced. So he suggests they find a dungeon, since going through them always help to clear his head.

They find a dungeon and since this is Flame Princess’ first time in one, Finn does his best to show her the ropes. He gets a torch, even though Flame Princess points out that she’s made out of fire so the torch is pointless. The two of them soon come across a skeleton, who Flame Princess is keen on burning, but Finn stops her. He tells her violence should only be used as a last resort, and they should first try other methods of getting past it. He incapacitates the skeleton by intimidating it and then forcing it to do the splits. The skeleton points out a treasure chest in the corner, but when they investigate they find that it is locked. They continue on and eventually do find a key, so Finn insists they go back to the chest despite Flame Princess’ protests. The key doesn’t work. Finn isn’t discouraged but Flame Princess is starting to get bored.

Have you ever shown someone a game you love only to have them find it boring or just not get it? Or made someone listen to a song you love and they don’t like it? Or shown someone a video or movie you thought was hilarious but they don’t laugh once? And the whole time you’re telling them that it’s about to get great, that the good part is coming up, that you swear it’s awesome, damn it, but you’re slowly realizing that this was a huge mistake. This episode reminds me of situations like that.

Anyway, Flame Princess and Finn keep going and they come to a vault with a keyhole. Finn had Flame Princess open it with the key and a winged skeleton comes flying out and attacks Flame Princess, demanding that she take its place in the vault. Flame Princess burns it and the vault. Finn chastises her for doing so but she tells him that he keeps forcing her to do things his way and it’s boring. So Finn agrees to let Flame Princess do things her way from here on out. Flame Princess’ way involves burning everything. Finn is uncomfortable with this but doesn’t say anything. At one point, Flame Princess is attacking a large skeleton that has Finn trapped in its arms. Burning the skeleton would hurt Finn as well, so she uses his tactic to defeat it. Finn is relieved and tells Flame Princess that he was afraid she would burn him, but she says that she would never do that to her boyfriend.

Later, after they’ve exited the dungeon, the two are trying to open the chest they’d seen earlier with a bunch of keys they found inside the dungeon.

• Flame Princess: Ha, thanks Finn. That was a really awesome experience.
• Finn: Dungeons totes clear your head, right?
• Flame Princess: [Agreeing] I forget how good it feels to destroy stuff.
• Finn: [Confused] Uhhhh…..
• Flame Princess: I mean, like evil stuff.
• Finn: Oh yeah, cool.
• Flame Princess: We should go again sometimes. Do you know any other dungeons?
• Finn: Maybe next time we should just go to like… a farmer’s market.
• Flame Princess: And burn it.

They finally find the key to open the chest and inside it is… I actually don’t know what it is. Maybe we’ll find out, maybe we won’t, who knows with this show.

Flame Princess needs more episodes.

What’s funny to me about this episode is that Finn seems disturbed by Flame Princess’ violence, but Finn can be violent himself. He loves to fight and he has no qualms about killing when it’s necessary, like with monsters or anything evil. Flame Princess loves to destroy stuff, evil stuff in particular, yet something about her methods is more off-putting.

Part of it may just be that Finn has never doubted that he’s good and that what he’s doing is good, Flame Princess can’t say the same. She doesn’t want to be evil but she’s not totally sure that she isn’t, and as much as Finn says otherwise he doesn’t seem sure about her himself. Flame Princess also probably doesn’t completely understand the differences between good and evil yet. When she got out of the Fire Kingdom, one of the first things she did was try to burn down an innocent village. That obviously wasn’t good, but I don’t think she knew that at the time. She was just thinking about what she needed and wanted. Finn seems to have influenced her a bit, as she’s now more concerned about good and evil, but she’s still confused, and she’s not the same type of person Finn is.

Another part of it is that Flame Princess is a lot more volatile and less disciplined than Finn is. I mean, Finn isn’t exactly the most levelheaded individual and he can definitely be impulsive, but he does try to find nonviolent solutions to things when he can. If it’s not necessary for him to use violence he’ll avoid it, and he spends a lot of time thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong. Flame Princess doesn’t care. If something poses a threat, her first reaction is to burn it. She revels in it and she isn’t exactly concerned about who gets caught in the crossfire (pun not intended). Her violence is more chaotic and less controlled than Finn’s.

So, what does this mean for her? Can she really be good?

Rating: 7.5/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (All Your Fault/Little Dude)

This episode begins with Princess Bubblegum getting a letter from the Lemongrabs, which says that they’ve run out of food in their kingdom and are somehow blaming her for this. Bubblegum had given them a lifetime supply of food. She decides to send Finn and Jake with Candy Seeds to the Lemon Kingdom so that the Lemongrabs can grow their own food. That’s a much better idea than just sending them food.

When Finn and Jake get to the Lemon Kingdom, however, they’re greeted by a horrifying sight. The Lemon Kingdom is filled with deformed, starving Lemon creatures who try to eat Finn and Jake. They manage to escape into another part of Lemon Castle where they find Lemonjon, a giant Lemon creature who tells them about the food crisis in the Kingdom. Apparently the two Lemongrabs have locked themselves in the dungeon, so Finn and Jake make their way there. They look in a few different cells but can’t seem to find the two, they only find… organs. Giant ones. And when I say “organs” I mean like hearts and intestines and stuff like that. Eventually they do find the two Lemongrabs and bust them out of the cell, but they don’t want to leave. They had locked themselves in the cell with the remaining food, which has now been depleted.

The Lemongrabs say that it’s all Bubblegum’s fault that this happened. Apparently she left behind the formula for creating life in the hopes that the Lemongrabs would be able to create more citizens if they wanted or needed to, but the Lemongrabs were way too into the idea of creating life. They kept making citizens out of the food they had, which led to the Kingdom being overpopulated and food-less. Even when given the Candy Seeds, all they do is use them to make another Lemon citizen. Finn suggests that they go see Bubblegum and the Lemongrabs like that idea, but not for the reason Finn was hoping. They want to destroy the Candy Kingdom and all of the kingdoms in Ooo and take their food. They send Lemonjon, who it turns out is even bigger than we thought, to attack the Candy Kingdom.

Lemonjon is too big for Finn and Jake to fight directly, but they realize that the internal organs they came across before must have been Lemonjon’s, so they go to attack his heart. Strangely enough, the heart is completely still when they find it, but after kicking it a few times it starts to beat. The new sensation causes Lemonjon to have compassion for all lifeforms, so he sacrifices himself by dissolving into a pile of lemon candy for the Lemon Kingdom to eat.

Later, we see Bubblegum erasing (literally) the formula for creating life from the Lemongrabs’ brains. Jake asks if Bubblegum can do something to their hearts to make them less selfish, but Bubblegum says that their hearts are fine. The Lemongrabs are just like this.

Just when I’m starting to like Lemongrab, we get an episode that’s full of Lemongrabs. The Lemon Kingdom (or would it be Earldom?) is actually pretty interesting to me, in the same way that a train wreck is interesting. The Lemongrabs are awful rulers due to their own selfishness and inability/unwillingness to understand other people, and the Kingdom looks like such a miserable place. It’s a good contrast to the Bubblegum and the Candy Kingdom. Bubblegum at least tries to be a good ruler and truly cares for her subjects, and the Kingdom seems happy and prosperous by Ooo standards.

I also found the Lemongrabs’ fascination with creating life interesting. As we’ve seen already, Lemongrab (the original one, I mean) seems to really want subjects that he can rule over, albeit for selfish reasons, and he also wants people to be exactly like him. The fact that he and his clone would be so obsessed with making Lemon citizens makes a lot of sense, but I like how their obsession is also what brought about their troubles, to the point where Bubblegum had to literally erase the formula from their mind so they wouldn’t run their Kingdom into the ground. Their narcissism is literally dangerous to themselves, but of course they don’t see it that way. They blame Bubblegum for all of it, which also makes sense based on what we’ve seen from Lemongrab before.

The imagery in this episode is cool. I liked the idea of Lemonjon’s body literally taking up the entire Castle, with his insides spread out across different rooms. It’s creative and creepy. The Lemon creatures had appropriately creepy designs too.

Rating: 7.5/10

We open with Finn and Jake going swimming, which means Finn has to take off his clothes. While they’re swimming, a flower touches Finn’s hat and when Finn and Jake leave the pool to go home, they find that the hat has come to life. Finn names the hat “Little Dude” and head back to the Tree Fort where BMO is cooking supper for them.

At first Little Dude seems harmless and cute, but it quickly becomes apparent that he’s… untamed? Let’s just call it that. He attacks BMO on sight and eats all of their food. Well, he doesn’t actually eat it. He kind of just passes through it but then when they examine the food again more closely they realize that Little Dude has turned it into feces. Gross. That should have been their first clue that Little Dude needs to be gotten rid of. They go to bed without eating anything (thank goodness), and that’s when the Ancient Sleeping Magi of Life Giving (who is the reason for Finn’s hat coming to life and who followed them home) breaks into the Tree Fort and tries to get to Little Dude. Finn and Jake stop him, but the ASMLG explains to them that Little Dude isn’t safe to be around. ASMLG’s magic brings things to life, but it also imbues them with an evil spirit. He needs to touch Little Dude again to get it back to normal. While this is being explained, Little Dude escapes and heads to the Candy Kingdom. It’s always the Candy Kingdom. That place needs a break.

When they get to the Candy Kingdom, they discover that Little Dude can possess people by placing himself on their heads, and of course he possesses a Gumball Guardian. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, those things are useless. While the Gumball Guardian is wreaking havoc, Finn and Jake are trying to get the ASMLG to do something about it, but he’s suddenly too frightened. He says that the reason everything he touches becomes evil is because he is always thinking of his father, who was always mean to him. Jake suggests he think about something more positive, so he starts to think about his mother, who was always extremely kind to him. Now everything he touches is imbued with good spirits, so he touches a bunch of objects and has them fight the possessed Gumball Guardian. Once it’s defeated, the ASMLG takes back their lives so they become inanimate objects again. Finn starts to feel sorry for Little Dude, since it wasn’t really his fault that he was bad, and asks the ASMLG to bring him back good. The ASMLG does so and Little Dude stays with him, which means Finn has to get himself a new hat.

Well, I was not expecting to see the ASMLG so soon. Or ever again. That seems to be a common thing with me and this show. A lot of the things that I think will be significant and important end up never being brought up again, and a lot the things I think are easily ignorable or forgettable end up coming back. But I guess now we know why exactly Ice King’s book came to life the way it did.

This episode. It’s, well, it’s…

Ah, there we go. Perfect. I haven’t used that in a while, I need to start bringing it back.

Seriously though, this episode is okay. That’s it. I remember laughing a couple of times but I can’t actually remember anything I laughed at. The story is all right, I like how the quality of ASMLG’s magic changes depending on what he’s thinking about and his frame of mind, but there’s not a whole lot that stands out about it. It’s a fine episode, but far from great.

Rating: 5.5/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (Davey/Mystery Dungeon)

In this episode, Finn’s obsessive fans start to get out of control, so much so that he’s afraid to leave the Tree Fort. He comes up with a disguise to allow him to go out unrecognized. He shaves most of his hair, dyes what remains of it black, gives himself a fake mustache and changes his voice. He calls his new alter ego Davey. The disguise seems to work, as when he goes to visit the Candy Kingdom nobody can recognize him. He even manages to get a job as Davey.

• Davey: [He enters the broom store] I need a job!
• Broom Store Owner: Can you sweep a broom?
• Davey: You betcha!

I wish it was actually that easy to get a job.

Anyway, Finn likes pretending to be Davey and he starts to get a bit carried away with the act. The next day, he seems to want to forget about being Finn entirely, going so far as to build a log cabin to live in with someone named Randy and ignoring Jake. So, Jake comes up with a plan to snap Finn out of it. He pretends to be a criminal and attacks “Davey” and Randy, hoping that Finn will remember he’s a hero and beat him. “Davey” just calls the police, however. As Jake is being dragged away, he shouts at Davey about the dragon he defeated at the beginning of the episode, and his words cause Finn to suddenly remember who he is. Finn uses his Davey disguise one more time to break Jake out of jail, and then gives up his alter ego.

I’m not sure exactly what to think about this episode. I think that Finn wanting to be a different person for a while is something that’s very relatable, but something about it seems off too.

I sort of found the whole thing out of character, and not just because Finn was literally pretending to be a different character. I mean his reason for doing so seemed out of character. I get the idea of wanting to be a different person, that’s something everyone feels now and then, and Finn’s life isn’t always easy. However, Finn loves being a hero and he seems to have a compulsive need to be one, and while it’s definitely understandable that he may want to take a break, the way he got so wrapped up in his Davey persona doesn’t quite feel right. Would Finn really want to give up being a hero for long?

Though I think we’re supposed to see Davey as a completely separate entity from Finn, one that he has very little control over. So it’s sort of like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of story, except without the tension, drama and horror because Davey isn’t “evil”, he’s just an average boring dude. So what we’re left with is kind of a boring story.

Rating: 5/10

This episode is so weird.

I don’t mean that weird things happen in the episode. Weird things do happen but that’s standard for Adventure Time. It’s just, this is one of very few episodes where neither Finn nor Jake play a significant role. Instead, the major characters of this episode are Ice King, Lemongrab, Tree Trunks, Neptr, and Shelby the worm. That is such an odd group of characters to focus on, and it’s especially odd since only one of them is actually a main character, the other four are less frequently seen and they’re definitely never seen together. Did they just draw names out of a hat to decide which characters to use in this episode? None of these characters have any kind of relationship or connection (except Ice King and Neptr but it’s been ages since that was brought up and Ice King has forgotten it anyway) that we know of, there is really no reason for any of them to be together, it’s all very random.

In terms of plot, this is a pretty typical Adventure Time episode. There’s a dungeon filled with traps and the characters need to find their way out. The difference is that usually the characters in the dungeon are Finn and Jake, and they usually enter by choice because they love adventure. This time, Lemongrab, Ice King, Tree Trunks, Neptr and Shelby were brought there by some unknown force, and none of them are particularly known for having a love for adventure. Tree Trunks did at one point but she hasn’t since returning from the Crystal Dimension. Anyway, as the five of them go through the dungeon, they realize that each of the rooms seemed to have a trap that was made for one of them. In one room, Tree Trunks has to bake a pie to open the door to the next room. There’s one where one of them is needed as bait to attract a monster, which should have been Shelby but she decides to use Tree Trunks instead (Tree Trunks then cuts herself out of the monster’s belly). Another room has a monster that is defeated by having Lemongrab’s juice sprayed at it. The last room has a door that can only be opened by BMO. Except BMO isn’t there, Neptr is because Ice King fucked up. Ice King was the one who brought all of them there because he needed them to help him get through the dungeon so he could reach the Ancient Sleeping Magi of Life Giving, a being that can supposedly bring things to life. Unfortunately for Ice King, he accidentally brought Neptr along instead of BMO. It turns out all right, though, because Neptr opens the door anyway. Poor thing really wants to impress Ice King.

The reason why Ice King wanted to find the Ancient Sleeping Magi of Life Giving is so that he could give it his Fionna and Cake stories and bring the characters he’s imagined to life. Well, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some fictional characters I’d try to bring to life if I could. It doesn’t go as planned, however. Instead of the characters coming to life, the book itself comes to life. And it’s quite annoying. Not going to lie, when Ice King approached the ASMLG, my first thought was that he was going to ask it to bring Betty back. Of course I realized immediately that made no sense.

This episode is hilarious. That’s really all that can be said about it, there’s isn’t much to say about the plot or anything else. It’s just really funny. All of these characters work off of each other surprisingly well. I got a lot of laughs from the Tree Trunks-Lemongrab interactions and I enjoyed Shelby’s snark, she makes a pretty good Straight Man.

Lemongrab was actually the funniest character in the episode, and I’m actually starting to like him? Which is weird because I really disliked him in his first episode. Guess he won me over somehow.

And omg, Neptr. I love Neptr but I always forget he exists until he shows up. I just can’t help loving him because he’s so pathetic and he’s constantly getting forgotten (even by me… whoops) or just getting the short end of the stick, but he just tries so hard and he’s still so sweet and optimistic.

So, yeah, weird choice of characters that surprisingly turned out to be a really great episode.

 Rating: 8/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (All the Little People/Jake the Dad)

Hey everyone, when you’re done reading this go watch Agent Carter if you haven’t already. And then, even if you don’t like it, tell everyone you know to watch it too. I know this is random but seriously, you must watch it.

Kay, now on to the review.

The episode begins with a Finn and Jake at a cliff side looking at a sunset, while they talk about relationships. Finn is wondering whether or not it’s better to date someone with a personality similar to yours or someone who is your opposite. Jake says that love isn’t about compatibility or science, it’s about the “pumps-n-bumps” in your heart. It’s a cute conversation, actually. Finn then asks Jake whether he thinks BMO and Ice King would be a good couple, which perplexes Jake and makes me think that Finn is a shipper. I guess that’s something we have in common. As they’re talking, Magic Man is spying on them. He pulls out a bag and says an incantation: “Do as thou’st will be the whole piece of law”. He then says “I’m not coming back” and slips the bag into Finn’s pants.

Finn and Jake walk home, still jokingly debating whether or not Finn’s ship could be canon, when Jake notices the bag and asks Finn what’s in his pants, which causes Finn to say, “What?! Not again!” Hm. Finn then sees the bag and reaches inside it, pulling out a miniature version of himself, Jake with his viola, Princess Bubblegum, and some other characters. The miniatures appear to be alive, which makes Jake suspect some kind of dark magic, but Finn thinks the miniatures are fun and wants to take them home.

At home, Finn removes the important characters from the bag and leaves what he calls the “C-list” people in the bag. He starts playing around with the miniatures, and you know what they remind me of more than anything? The Sims. The way Finn plays with them is reminiscent of the game, and the miniatures even speak in gibberish like Sims do. Finn has the mini!Ice King and mini!Jake play their instruments together, which upsets the real Jake but he does admit that they have chemistry together. The word “chemistry” makes Finn start to think as he watches the miniatures interact with each other.

That night, he starts experimenting with the miniatures. He tries putting two together and watching romance blossom between them, then switching out a character to see the drama unfold. That’s pretty messed up, but anyone who has played The Sims knows that messing with your Sims in awful ways is a lot of fun. Then again, these miniatures are actually alive, aren’t they? Though I’m not sure how much control Finn has over them. It seems like all he has to do is put two of them in front of each other before they start making out. Well, anyway, the next morning, Jake comes over to see what Finn is doing with the miniatures, and he finds out that mini!Lady Rainicorn and mini!Jake have broken up, and that mini!Lady and mini!Finn have started dating. Jake is freaked out by how much Finn has been messing around with the miniature’s relationships, and he announces that he’s going to stay at Lady’s until he can get over all of this.

Finn continues playing with the miniatures, making mini!Finn start a relationship with mini!Flame Princess, which breaks mini!Lady’s heart. Then he adds mini!Bubblegum into the mix, who starts a relationship with mini!Finn as well and results in a fight between her and mini!Flame Princess. Girls, don’t get mad at each other, get mad at the guy who cheated. For the first time, Finn actually seems disturbed by what he’s done.

Jake returns sixteen weeks later to find the Tree Fort a mess and Finn still in the same spot. Finn is distressed because he thinks he’s ruined the miniature’s lives and wants to explain to them that he was the one responsible for everything that happened to them. However, he’s not even sure if the miniatures are aware of him or their surroundings. The miniatures seem to exist on a level different from Finn and Jake. They can be seen by Finn and Jake, but they can’t see or hear Finn and Jake themselves, and the world as they see it looks very different from their actual surroundings. That’s interesting. Finn starts trying to reach his miniature somehow and he discovers that he can be heard if he speaks to the miniatures while shaking them. Kay. So he shakes the miniatures and explains what he did to them and tells them that he’ll never mess with them again. He tells them “I’m not coming back”, just like Magic Man did.

Oh yeah, and mini!Ice King and mini!BMO start hitting it off without Finn’s interference, so I guess that answers Finn’s question.

This episode can be interpreted in a couple of different ways.

There’s the obvious connection to The Sims. I’ll assume that everyone reading this has played the game or is at least familiar with it. It’s one of those games that I don’t think I would describe as fun, but it is definitely addictive. It’s a great game for wish-fulfillment purposes. It allows us to create different scenarios and characters and personalities, we can experiment with it, we can create anarchy with it, we can do anything we want. It’s basically letting us play god, but there are no real-world consequences. Still, I wonder why a lot of the time all we end up doing is finding creative ways to kill our Sims or to mess with them in some way. Does that say anything about us?

There’s also the connection to fan fiction and shipping. I think shippers get a bad rep, but it is undeniable that there are certain elements of shipping that can be… problematic, let’s just say. First of all, it’s noteworthy that shipping is the main cause of drama and fighting within fandoms, which is kind of funny to me. People will fight about which ships are better, people will fight about which ships are canon, people will fight about whether or not ships should exist for that fandom at all, and all of these fights are completely ridiculous. But there are also some legitimate concerns in regards to certain types of ships. Incest ships are generally considered taboo and yet they still exist. Then there are ships that realistically would just be unhealthy or abusive, and there are often discussions about whether liking these ships is unethical and sends a bad message. I’m not going to go into the politics of shipping too much because we would be here for hours, but let’s just say it’s all very complex.

Another way to interpret this episode is as Finn’s sexual awakening. Finn is around fourteen now, right? That means he’s probably starting to go through puberty, or will be soon. Finn has shown interest in romance already, of course. He had a crush on Bubblegum for a long time and now has a relationship with Flame Princess. However, Finn has always expressed his interest in “innocent” ways. He has a very idealistic view of romance and has never shown much interest in physical intimacy. This episode shows him wanting to explore relationships more, particularly physical aspects of one. He experiments with the miniatures, putting them together and watching their interactions that usually end in physical intimacy, and he seems fascinated by what he sees. I can remember being around Finn’s age and having a similar fascination with romantic and especially sexual relationships, but since I was still quite young the subject also made me very embarrassed and giggly, and there was a lot that I didn’t really understand. Still, I was curious, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what I thought they were like, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was around this age that I started to get really into shipping and fan fiction. Hm.

I think this episode may be a combination of all of these things. A combination of Finn enjoying playing god and of him wanting to explore relationships and romance and sexuality, and him doing so through what is essentially shipping. There’s nothing wrong with curiosity and at Finn’s age it’s totally normal, but he also gets too carried away with his ideas and experiments and ends up doing some damage both to himself and to the miniatures. I think it is just a result of Finn’s immaturity, and how having interest in romantic and/or sexual relationships isn’t the same thing as understanding them and it definitely isn’t the same thing as being able to handle them in real life.

Rating: 8.5/10

In this episode, Lady Rainicorn gives birth to her puppy-Rainicorn things.

They’re pretty cute, I have to say. Their names are Charlie, Jake Jr., T.V., Viola, and Kim Kil Whan. Jake Jr. is the one with no eyes, but it’s not really explained why she doesn’t have eyes. I’m going to assume that the damage was caused when Ricardio tied Lady in a knot and threw her against a wall while she was pregnant. Anyway, it’s cute how much Jake loves his puppies. He tears up with happiness just looking at them. Aaaaw! He also decides that he should live with Lady and the puppies now that he’s a dad.

Jake is extremely protective of his puppies. He won’t even allow himself to sleep at night, he insists on watching the puppies all night, and then wakes them up just to make sure that they aren’t already dead. The next day (when the puppies have already grown significantly), he reads them a book, his childhood favorite, “Baby Eating Fox and the Baby”. The book is apparently about a fox eating some babies. Presumably the babies escape in the end (at least I hope so??), but we don’t find out because right around the part where the babies get eaten, Jake starts to get freaked out by the contents of the book and says to himself, “This is a lot darker than I remember!”

That line made me laugh pretty hard, and it’s something I can relate to. Story time! Two years ago, my aunt adopted two kids. They’ve just turned three and four. Since I’m a huge fan of Disney movies, my aunt asked me a while back if I could recommend some good movies for her kids to watch. The thing is, though, these kids have been through a lot and while they’ve been making a lot of progress, they can still be scared and triggered quite easily. So basically, any movie that has a character death or anything dark that might scare them was out of the question for now. I didn’t think that would be a problem, but then I started thinking about it and I realized that I literally couldn’t think of a single Disney movie that didn’t have a character death and/or something “dark” that might scare them.

Although, even before then, I had noticed that a lot of things I liked as a kid impacted me more when I watched or read them again as an adult. Like when I read A Series of Unfortunate Events about a year ago for the first time since I was a kid, and I found Count Olaf scarier than I remembered him being. I think it’s because I have a better understanding of certain things as an adult. As a kid I knew Count Olaf was the bad guy who was after the Baudelaires’ money, as an adult I really understand the extent of his cruelty and depravity. And it’s not just about finding things “dark” or scary, it’s just… everything seems to mean more to me as an adult. SpongeBob is much funnier to me as an adult. Harry Potter is more complex and less black-and-white to me as an adult. Though sometimes having a better understanding doesn’t make it better. As a kid Eowyn from Lord of the Rings seemed like a feminist hero, as an adult I was disappointed to find that there’s a lot that’s problematic about the way her story is written and she isn’t exactly what I thought she was. Nothing is ever the same as an adult, for better or worse.

This is getting way off topic now. All this to say I relate to what Jake was feeling. Moving on.

Jake throws away the book because he finds it too inappropriate, and then Lady suggests that he take the kids outside for some fresh air. The idea scares Jake, but he does it anyway. He puts the kids on leashes to take them outside. The whole putting-kids-on-literal-leashes-when-outside thing has always seemed super weird to me, but I’m not a parent so maybe I shouldn’t judge. Also in Jake’s case his kids are actually puppies (ish?) so it makes more sense. ANYWAY, Jake won’t let the kids stray too far and they basically aren’t allowed to do anything but walk straight ahead with him. However, Jake is so tired from staying up all night that he falls asleep, and the puppies (who are magic just like their parents), are able to teleport out of their leashes (I’ll assume teleportation is an ability they got from their Rainicorn parent).

Lady calls the babies back inside but Jake, still asleep, gets left behind. Some foxes show up and think that Jake is a baby, so they decide they want to eat him. Jake wakes up as he’s being dragged off but is too tired to fight back. The puppies show up again wanting to help, they ignore Jake when he tells them to go back inside to safety and they quickly defeat the foxes together. Jake realizes that he’s been way too protective of the kids and decides to loosen up.

A few days later, Jake returns to the Tree Fort. Turns out the puppies have grown incredibly fast. Okay then, I sort of figured they’d find a way to have Jake live at the Tree Fort again anyway.

So, this episode’s point is obvious. You can’t be too protective of your children. You need to let them have some freedom and independence. I think that’s a pretty common mistake that parents or anyone can make. It always feels like kids need to be protected from everything, but shielding them forever is only going to do more damage than good in the long run. There needs to be a balance. You need to know when to protect and discipline your kids and you need to know when to let them be free and possibly get hurt. Kind of a weird lesson to have in a show for kids, though I guess parents will likely be watching along with their kids?

I do think it’s a cop-out to have Jake and Lady’s kids grow up so fast. I understand why they’d want to do that, as keeping the puppies around would change the dynamic of the show too much and writing in characters that are babies or really young kids tends to ruin shows, but then again, why have Lady get pregnant in the first place if it’s only going to impact one episode?

Rating: 6.5/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (Five More Short Graybles/Up a Tree)

This is another episode with five short stories, all connected by a certain theme that we’re supposed to guess. I was actually spoiled for the theme this time so I didn’t get a chance to try and guess. Not that I would have guessed the theme anyway. Did anyone guess the theme on their own when they watched this?

Anyway, the first story is about Finn and Jake trying to activate a spell that involves sticking their thumbs into random objects, including a pie. Not sure what the spell does. The second story is about Marceline looking for a certain music store to buy a guitar that plays “the most savory looks in Ooo”. She meets a giant who points the shop out to her, but his arm is so long that she can’t see where he’s pointing. She grabs onto his finger and tells him to point again, which he does, and she rides his finger to the store. The third story is about Tree Trunks meeting someone who makes a rude gesture to her, so she goes to the police for help. When they prove to be useless, she takes matters into her own hands, but then discovers that the person she’d seen was a statue, and Shelby the worm was sitting on its middle finger so that it looked like… yeah. The fourth story is about Ice King marrying his foot. No comment. The fifth story is about BMO talking to zir reflection again, teaching it how to sip tea.

The theme that connects these stories? The five tastes. Finn and Jake had the pie that was sweet, Marceline wanted a guitar that played “savory licks”, Tree Trunks says that incident left a sour taste in her mouth, Ice King cries tears that are salty, and BMO says that the tea is bitter. I would definitely not have guessed that theme. Interestingly, there’s an alternate theme for this episode that gets brought up: the five fingers. Finn and Jake use their thumbs, Marceline rode the giant’s pointer finger, Tree Trunks thought someone was holding up their middle finger at her, Ice King puts a ring on his ring finger, and BMO holds zir pinky up when drinking the tea. I wasn’t spoiled about the alternate theme, and it’s one I actually might have guessed if I hadn’t already known what the theme was supposed to be. Oh well.

So, I guess Season 5 is following in Season 4’s footsteps, by having a dramatic premiere and then following it up with an episode that’s essentially about nothing. It’s just a few of the characters going about their day and that’s pretty much it. It’s actually a pretty good way to balance out the drama from the previous episodes.

Like the last episode like this, there isn’t really a whole lot to say. I like episodes like this, where we just get to see characters doing stuff without there necessarily having to be a bigger story. It’s not something I’d want to see all the time but I would be fine with maybe one once per season or something. But things like this also aren’t something that lend themselves that well to reviewing. It’s just… cute. Yeah, that’s a good word for episodes like this. They’re cute. There’s just not a whole lot to say about them.

Kudos to this show for getting away with the middle finger joke, though. This show really does get away with a lot.

Rating: 7/10

This episode begins with Finn, Jake and Lady Rainicorn (who is visibly pregnant now) going on a picnic. Finn and Jake decide to play a game of Frisbee, and when Finn tries to make the “perfect throw” he accidentally tosses it onto the top of a very, very tall tree. Jake offers to stretch up and get it, but Finn refuses and tries to get it himself.

He starts trying to climb the tree but can’t get a good start on it. He meets a porcupine who suggests that Finn sit on him and that the shock will cause Finn to jump to the top of the tree. Finn thinks that’s a terrible idea and that it wouldn’t actually work that way, so the porcupine tries it by force. It doesn’t work, of course, but Finn is able to use the needles lodged in him to climb up the tree. As he’s taking a rest about half way up (it’s a very tall tree), he meets a squirrel. The squirrel suggests that Finn eat an apple to regain his energy, but Finn says no. The squirrel stuffs it in his mouth by force and it turns out the apple was cursed as it causes Finn to shrink. Finn continues to climb and eventually has to take another break. Jake stretches up to check on him but Finn still says that he doesn’t need help. Jake tells Finn that he’s going to walk Lady home and that he’ll be back for Finn later. After Jake leaves, Finn meets another squirrel and follows him into the tree after the squirrel ignores him.

Finn catches the animals in the tree whispering to each other about how they’re going to stop the human, and he also finds a pile of objects with his Frisbee at the top. Finn gets caught by the animals, who knock him out and lock him up, all while chanting “In the tree, part of the tree”. That’s just a little bit creepy. Finn wakes up in a cell that really doesn’t look like it should hold him, the bars are so far apart. Outside his cell is a squirrel.

• Finn: What are they gonna do to me?
• Squirrel: What?
• Finn: [Louder than before] What are they gonna do-
• Squirrel: I’m not allowed to talk to you. [Finn looks down] [Pause] Anyone and anything that winds up in the tree becomes part of the tree forever and ever. In the tree, part of the tree.
• Finn: So does that mean I’m a prisoner forever?
• Squirrel: Well yes. And no. Are you a prisoner? Yes. Will you ever be free? No. In the tree, part of the tree. It’s very simple.
• Finn: Doesn’t that mean that you can’t leave the tree either?
• Squirrel: No I- Well yes and no. Am I allowed to leave the tree? No. Have I already left the tree? Am I miles away from the tree right now flying around like the flying squirrel that I am? Yes! In my mind! In- my- mind! [Turns and looks wistfully out the window at the clouds]
• Finn: [Looking concerned] Do you like it here?
• Squirrel: Yeah! [Shrugging] Well, yes and no. Do I like the nuts and acorns? Yes. Do I like it when they put me down and say mean things like “You’re not a flying squirrel, you’re just a regular squirrel! Nyaah!”? No. Do I wanna fly away from this place now? Yes. Would I make a break for it if I had a buddy to break out with? Yes.
• Finn: Hey buddy.
• Squirrel: What?
• Finn: [Steps through the somewhat wide bars] Let’s get outta here.

So, Finn and the weird squirrel who can’t just say what he means clearly take off, grabbing Finn’s Frisbee back on the way. They manages to get outside the tree, where Finn throws his Frisbee, thinking that he and the squirrel can just jump on it and fly away. That doesn’t work. So, as the other animals begin to catch up to them, Finn pushes the squirrel off the branch and jumps. Turns out the squirrel isn’t actually a flying squirrel, but just as it looks like they’re about to hit the ground, they land on the still-flying Frisbee and are able to glide to safety. Though Finn is still tiny. I hope he gets that fixed somehow.

I really wasn’t sure where this episode was going, if it was going anywhere.

At first, I thought maybe there would be some moral Finn about accepting help when he needs it. Then when the porcupine and the first squirrel (is it the same squirrel throughout the episode?) forced Finn to take their help with disastrous results, I thought maybe there would be some moral about how good intentions are not always helpful and how literally forcing your help on someone may not be appreciated. Then the episode kind of just… went nowhere.

Basically, this is a filler episode. It doesn’t go anywhere, there’s nothing that remarkable about it, and it feels pointless even as you’re watching it.

As far as filler episodes go, I didn’t find this one too bad. I found the squirrel that Finn escaped with pretty funny, and the animals in the tree were generally amusing. It’s an okay episode. Forgettable and probably not one I’d watch again, but it’s okay.

Rating: 5.5/10

Adventure Time Reviews: Season 5 (Finn the Human/Jake the Dog)

Ah yes, good old Adventure Time! Taking a break from it was nice but it is great to be back. And the titles of these episodes are interesting! They’re named after the characters… Finn the Human and Jake the Dog. That seems really significant. That said,

WHAT DID I JUST WATCH

It’s been a while since an episode has made me react that way.

We open with Finn and Jake just entering the portal the Lich disappeared through, where they then follow him into Prismo’s Time Room. Prismo, I suppose, is another diety of sorts, like the Cosmic Owl? I find it pretty cool that Prismo appears as a shadow against the ground. A pink shadow, which is even better. His Time Room exists outside of time and every being that reaches it gets one wish granted by Prismo. The wisher gets sent to an alternate world that is based on that wish, also changing its timeline. Anyway, the Lich wishes for the extinction of all life, but it has no effect on Finn or Jake because they’re safe in Prismo’s Time Room until they make their wishes. Finn wishes that the Lich never existed and is then sent to “Farmworld”, which is where we saw him at the end of the Season 4 finale.

So, Farmworld!Finn is called in by his mother, who tells him that he needs to take their mule, Bartram, to town and sell it. Finn protests but his mother tells him they have no choice, they need the money desperately. Outside, Finn’s father is being bullied by the “Destiny Gang”, a group of ruthless thugs who terrorize the people of “Junktown” (sorry but that name is hilarious). Finn goes off to find Bartram, who is missing, and finally spots him in a tree, because mules are known for climbing trees. While trying to get Bartram down, Finn falls into a hole. Jake (who is just a normal dog in Farmworld) follows him in and they see the skeleton of Simon Petrikov (!!!!) with the Ice King’s crown on his head (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and a frozen bomb over him (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Finn thinks he can sell the crown instead, allowing him to keep Bartram, and we all know why that is literally the worst idea ever but of course Finn doesn’t. Luckily (sort of?), a decrepit old woman stops him, saying that the crown is hers and she’s been guarding it for centuries. She’s actually the Farmworld version of Marceline. No, really.

• Farmworld Finn: Who are you?!
• Marceline: I’m a thousand years old and this is my crown!
• Farmworld Finn: Okay, okay! But, um, maybe I could just borrow it for a little while. [Finn reaches for the crown again]
• Marceline: Noooo! No! No! This crown is magic. Bad, terrible magic. Too dangerous for mortal fingies like yours! [Marceline has a flashback of Simon walking onto a hill to watch a squad of bombers.] One thousand years ago, my beloved friend Simon Petrikov gave his life to save this foolish, unworthy planet from annihilation. [A scene shows a mushroom cloud amidst a decimated city and a gang of demons surrounding the Lich walking away from it] A frightful bomb was poised to bathe the land in mutagenic horror, [Simon is show directly below the bomb using his not yet complete powers to freeze the bomb in midair] but using his mastery of ice and snow, Simon froze the bomb in mid-flight only inches from the ground, where it remains to this very day. [We see Marceline in the cave again] Today, ever ripe and ready to blow. [We see Simon being crushed by the bomb] But he alone was not saved. Trapped under the giant weight of the enormous bomb, poor Simon perished!
• Simon: [In the flash back] Little help?
• Marceline: [Simon is seen dead and the crown is firing laser-like beams of energy] And the horrible crown, grieving its lost master, loosed a spasm of magic so wild and crazy the entire earth was buried in ice for four hundred boring years. [First we see a city being frozen almost instantaneously and then we see the earth covered in ice. The flashback ends.]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bomb is what unleashed the Lich! And probably all kinds of monsters and creatures that are in Ooo! HOLY FUCKDSAKLDAL

ALSO WHAT THE CROWN CAN GRIEVE FOR ITS MASTER WTF

Ahem, anyway, Finn doesn’t believe anything Marceline says because he doesn’t believe in magic. Oh, Farmworld!Finn, you precious thing. He tries to get to the crown again but turns out Marceline has a gun… which doesn’t work, so while she’s distracted Jake attacks her and Finn grabs the crown and runs off. Marceline hears a voice in her head that presumably is coming from Simon’s body… or it’s in her head? Whichever. The voice tells her to go get the crown back.

Meanwhile, Finn has reached the market and is looking for someone to buy the crown, but someone from the Destiny Gang steals it. Marceline shows up insisting that the crown is hers and that she’s half-demon. The Destiny Gang knocks her down and they steal Bartram as well, taking him to their mansion.

Finn is given a sword by one of the other villagers in the market, one that attaches to his mechanical arm – oh yeah, have I mentioned that Farmworld!Finn has a mechanical arm? Farmworld!Finn has a mechanical arm. I don’t know, just go with it. Anyway, Finn feels natural with the sword, and he immediately goes up to the mansion. After a short fight with the leader of the Destiny Gang, the leader gives Finn the crown and Bartram back as his “final possession”. Turns out that the leader had ordered his gang to burn down the town. Harsh. Finn rushes back home, picking up Marceline on the way. She still wants her crown back and Finn intends to give it back to her, but he says they needs to save his family first.

When Finn reaches his burning house, the Destiny Gang is there as well. Even the leader. I’m not sure how he got there before Finn but okay. Finn asks Marceline if the crown is really magic and she confirms that it is, but extremely dangerous magic. Finn. Finn I know where you’re going with this. Don’t do it, man.

Finn puts on the crown. The effects are immediate. The episode ends there.

AKSHDALKSDHASLKHDFUCK

This was a great episode to come back to.

I really loved this one, but I wonder if that’s partly because of the break I took from the show. I mean, it was only a month, really not that long, but considering I left at a cliffhanger and it was the holidays which were somehow both way too busy and not busy enough, it does feel like it’s been longer. When the episode started, I realized that I was really glad to be watching Adventure Time again, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed the episode quite as much if I had watched it after finishing Season 4.

Yeah I don’t care though, this episode is fucking great.

The fact that everything about this alternate world is so different is really interesting to me. I love the idea of parallel worlds or alternate realities, and how one different detail can completely change everything. Finn wished for a world without the Lich, and he got it, but that also means Ooo itself is gone. All of the good and bad that came with Ooo no longer exists to him. Is it worth it?

In a way, yes. In this reality, Simon stopped the bomb from going off, but he didn’t stop the apocalypse. The crown created an ice age that set humanity back hundreds of years. It still resulted in a post-apocalyptic world, but a different one from Ooo. The Lich is gone. Finn has loving parents and a baby brother, he’s not the only human anymore. But he’s never known Princess Bubblegum and LSP and Tree Trunks and many of the friends he had in Ooo. Jake and Marceline are still there, but they’re not the same. Finn himself is not the same. And the world isn’t really that much better off anyway, because there are still threats like the Destiny Gang.

Plus, just like the Season 4 finale makes you feel like something is very wrong with what you’re seeing, there’s something very wrong about Farmworld too. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s so unlike Ooo. By now we know that Ooo isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it can be dark and scary and dangerous, but it’s also bright and colorful and full of life. Farmworld is dreary and muted and bleak. There’s nothing welcoming or fun about the place. Even the art style is different, so that it looks totally unfamiliar. It should be better, the Lich is gone, after all. Yet somehow Farmworld feels completely wrong, and even without the Lich there’s still danger and misery, so all we want is to see Finn get back to Ooo whether the Lich is there or not. It creates this weird dichotomy: the Lich is the biggest threat to any world, but a world without the Lich is still not right or safe.

This episode isn’t one to watch if you’re looking for comedy, but I think it’s a really interesting episode. It’s thought-provoking and touches on some really interesting ideas. I could understand if people didn’t care for this episode but I really enjoyed it.

 Rating: 9/10

Since this is a two-parter, this episode picks up right where we left off. Finn puts on the crown and immediately responds to it, saying that he can feel the crown’s promise of power in his mind. He uses his ice powers to put out the fire and then freezes the Destiny Gang, but he’s still out of control. He continues hurling ice bolts in every direction and accidentally hits the frozen mushroom bomb. It explodes, sending out green smoke and screaming skulls. Finn turns toward the explosion, realizing what damage he’s caused.

Suddenly, we’re back in the Time Room with Jake and Prismo. Jake still hasn’t made his wish, but he wonders where Finn disappeared to. Prismo says that they can watch Finn in his alternate world on his TV wall. The TV shows Finn after the bomb exploded. Jake is shocked and says that everything looks nuts. Prismo replies, “Yes, sometimes a well intentioned wish can lead to… nuts.” That’s my new favorite quote. Prismo reminds Jake that he gets a wish as well, and Jake wishes for a sandwich. Luckily Prismo is kinder than most wish-granting deities, because instead of letting Jake waste his wish, he offers to just make a sandwich for Jake. He tells Jake that his wish should be used for something important, and for some reason the whole exchange kind of reminds me of this:

Jake is about to waste his wish on a sandwich. This fate could have been avoided if he had a Sassy Gay Friend.

Anyway, back in Farmworld, Finn is breaking his family out of their ice-encased house, and luckily they’re all safe.

• Mom: What, what on earth did this?
• Finn: I did this.
• Mom: No, that’s not possible. I raised you better than that!
• Finn: It’s true…[Begins to laugh then cackle]
• Mom: [Gasps loudly and hugs the baby.]
• Finn: I put out the fire… but I… also made the bomb go off. Urgh! The crown it compels me to- ice up everything!
• [A lighting bolt hits the ground frightening everyone, with Bartram rearing.]
• Finn: [Laughs manically and stops once he hears the cries of his sibling.] Urghah! I’m sorry mom, dad, little sibling. [Sighs] [He walks over to his family and picks them up to place them on Bartram]. I’m too dangerous… to be around.
• Mom: What are you doing?
• Finn: Take them… far away Bar Bar. [Smacks Bartram’s hindquarters.] Leave me! Leave me…

Prismo and Jake are still watching on the TV wall, and Prismo points out that Finn is going through a rough time, which is putting it lightly. Jake says that it’s Finn’s wish and they should see how it plays out. “I got confidence in my boy!” That’s nice, Jake, but I don’t think seeing how it plays out is the right choice here.

While Prismo and Jake are bonding over pickles, Finn is breaking the Destiny Gang out of the ice, seemingly trying to recruit them? They’re all terrified of Finn, though. How the tables have tabled. The gang runs off with their leader still trapped, to which the leader simply says, “I’ve taught you well, my traitorous gang.” I probably laughed too hard at that. Suddenly Finn hears Jake barking in the distance, which seems to bring Finn back to himself if only for a moment.

He runs to where the bomb went off and finds Jake half submerged in a pit of goo. He tries to rescue Jake, but Marceline, now a skeleton, is holding him from inside the pit. She tells Finn that she had warned him about all of this. Disturbed, Finn kicks her away so he can pull Jake out of the pit. However, Jake has been effected by the goo. He advances on Finn, growling and snapping ferociously, while Finn backs away. From inside the Time Room, Jake, Prismo, and the Cosmic Owl (who is a friend of Prismo’s and has joined them) can see what’s going on and Jake finally starts to be concerned. He tries to tell Finn that the Farmworld!Jake isn’t really him, but of course Finn can’t hear him. Farmworld!Jake starts to grow larger and more grotesque, transforming into the Lich. Finn shoots some ice at him and the screen goes static.

Jake, the one in the Time Room, starts to panic. Prismo asks if he’d like to use his wish.

• Jake: [Panics and inflates his head] Make Finn okay! I wish for a safe Finn!
• Prismo: Wait, dude! Look, I like you, so you should know my wishes always got an ironic twist to them. It’s like a monkey’s paw kind of thing.
• Jake: [Shrinks back to normal] What?
• Prismo: You just gotta be really specific. Say your wish is: “I wish for a back rub.” Who’s gonna give it to you? A dirty man? A bear? And where does this “masseuse” come from? Do I zap some guy away from his family dinner? Leave some kid traumatized?
• Cosmic Owl: Woo!
• Prismo: [Nasal voice] Mom, where did dad go? [High pitched voice] Oh, I don’t know son he just disappeared from the table… sorry.
• Jake: [Looks shocked.]
• Prismo: You see, Jake there are rules to this stuff, wishing an event to be changes elements before and after it. Memories will be destroyed, babies will not be born. Potential worlds could be evaporated by-your-wish!
• Jake: [Vomits.]

Honestly I don’t even blame Jake for vomiting in response, that’s a totally understandable reaction to all of this. It’s nice of Prismo to warn Jake that having your wish granted almost always comes with an awful twist, but that is a lot of pressure to put on Jake. I like the bit that follows, where Prismo tries to kind of nudge Jake into figuring out the answer for himself. It’s kind of cute because you can tell Prismo really does want to help Jake as much as he can but he can’t outright tell him the answer because he’s already broken his own rules by giving Jake the warning. Jake eventually puts together that he’s supposed to change the Lich’s wish, so he wishes that the Lich had wished for Finn and Jake to go home to Ooo. Prismo says he can work with that, and the wish is granted.

Finn and Jake are sent back to Ooo, right by the Candy Kingdom where a very bewildered Princess Bubblegum tries to find out what happened to them. The jewels are all sent back to their crowns and the Lich… what happened to the Lich exactly? Is he still in the Time Room? Some other alternate world? He’s gone for now, in any case. Jake is the only one who remembers everything that happened.

This episode has more comedy than the previous one, and even so it manages to be even more epic and dramatic.

Of course, the comedic parts come mainly from Jake and Prismo’s interactions in the Time Room, while Farmworld!Finn’s story is still mostly drama. I didn’t think the two blended well here. The Time Room scenes had a completely different tone that clashed with what was going on in Farmworld, so whenever there was an interruption I felt pulled out of the story. Still, what happens in Farmworld is pretty amazing.

The previous one makes you realize that a world without the Lich isn’t the perfect world that Finn probably thought it would be, it makes you wonder if it was worth making the wish at all. This episode though? It tells us that it doesn’t even matter, because everything that went wrong before will just go wrong here. Finn puts on the crown and becomes the Ice Prince. Jake becomes the Lich. They become their worst enemies and everything falls apart anyway. Simon didn’t become the Ice King, but someone else does. The Lich’s creation wasn’t prevented, it was just delayed. None of it can truly be fixed, it can’t truly be stopped, it’s inevitable.

Finn putting on the crown and becoming the Ice Prince is both fascinating and horrifying (funny how those things often go hand in hand). When Finn puts on the crown, the effects of it are instantaneous, unlike Simon whose sanity deteriorated gradually. I wonder if this has something to do with the kind of character Finn has or with his age, or maybe it’s because Finn put on the crown knowing about the powers and dangers that came with it. Simon didn’t know what he was getting himself into and tried to fight it as much as he could. Finn embraced it, though only out of necessity and it didn’t do him any good in the end.

Yet Finn isn’t completely gone. He responds to his brother crying and to his mother’s fear, and he responds to Jake’s distressed barking. He’s still able to send his family away, because as painful as it is for him he knows that he’s too dangerous to be around. He can’t trust himself around the people he was trying to save, so now he has to save them from himself. How’s that for irony?

Seeing Farmworld!Jake become the Lich is of course as horrifying as you would expect, but the way it happens was especially so for me. I have a pet dog who I love more than anything, so when Jake’s distressed barking broke though Finn’s insanity for a moment and made him run to his rescue, it really got to me. Seeing or hearing dogs in pain is just hard for me to stomach even in fiction. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Finn had actually saved Jake, but that’s the horrible part. He doesn’t. He gets Jake out of the pit, but it’s too late. Jake has been irrevocably altered to something terrifying, and as if that wasn’t bad enough he literally becomes the Lich. Finn has no choice but to try and destroy his dog. This is some Old Yeller shit but a thousand times worse.

Just like the episodes that came before it, everything that happens here feels so wrong. Finn becoming the Ice Prince is wrong. Jake becoming the Lich is really wrong. Watching everything fall apart and knowing that it couldn’t be stopped is wrong. Ooo isn’t perfect but it’s better than this, right?

I’m just glad we went back in the end.

Rating: 9/10

RWBY Reviews: Volume 2 (Characters)

It’s 2015! Good riddance to 2014, that was a terrible year. The only good things I can think of off the top of my head that were good about 2014 are Korrasami being canon (for which I am still singing my praises) and Taylor Swift openly being a feminist and not giving any fucks (for which I am also still singing my praises).

You’ve probably noticed that it’s January 2nd and the titles still says “RWBY” not “Adventure Time”. Yeah, sorry about that. I got thrown off schedule. This will be the last RWBY review (until Volume 3, probably) and then it will be back to Adventure Time.

Now, let’s get to it.

This last review will be going over the (way too many) characters in RWBY, because ultimately they are what keeps me interested in the show aside from its set-up. It’s extremely rare that you have a show with an abundance of female characters, let alone four female characters as leads, like RWBY does. So even if they’re poorly-written the majority of the time, I can’t help being drawn to this show.

There was a great post on Tumblr about how Jaune is framed as the main character more than anyone on Team RWBY. I suggest reading that post because though it is slightly dated now, it still points out something very important about the treatment and framing of RWBY’s characters. In relation to that Tumblr post, I’ve come to realize something else about our team leader and titular character, Ruby. There is nothing about her that makes her seem like a main character. The only thing that marks her as such is the fact that the show is named after her. As the Tumblr post points out, there are certain trends and tropes that come attached to main characters and Ruby has none of them. Jaune has most of them.

What do we really know about Ruby? We know that she’s fascinated by weapons. She’s quirky and energetic and innocent. She wants to be a Huntress. Okay, cool. We know of one of her interests, we know what her personality is like, and we know what she wants to do. But for that last one, that’s one of the most important things about a main character. We need to know what they want to do, and even more importantly we need to know why they want to do it, how they’re going to do it, and what obstacle (whether physical, mental or emotional) is in their way. Ruby wants to be a Huntress. Cool. Why? What’s her reason? Why should I care? Because she wants to help people? Okay. That seems too simplistic, but fine. It’s something. So how is she going to become a Huntress? She’s going to train to be one? Great, she needs to start somewhere. What next? That’s it? Well… is there anyone trying to stop her from training? Is there any reason she can’t complete the training? No? Does she have any lessons to learn? Any obstacles to overcome? Anything that would make us interested in her story? No? She’s just a cute girl with a cool weapon who can fight well and wants to help people? Huh.

I actually like Ruby as a character. She’s cute, and she’s funny, and her childlike innocence is endearing. She’s a perfectly likable character, but she just isn’t an interesting protagonist. There’s nothing about her to make her interesting. No reason to care about her or her story. Her ambitions are vague, we know next to nothing about her history, she has no challenges to overcome, she has no real connection to the villains (she’s met and fought Roman and Cinder but she has no relationship with them aside from the fact that she knows they’re bad guys). Yeah, sure, when the show began, they tried to give Ruby a story. Yang wanted her to break out of her shell and make her own friends but Ruby didn’t want that. Ruby accidentally made an enemy of Weiss. Ruby tried to make friends with Blake. Ruby ends up with Weiss as a partner and they bicker a lot before eventually agreeing to work together. Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang become a team and Weiss won’t accept Ruby as a leader which makes Ruby insecure until the two make up and Weiss apologizes. That’s where Ruby’s character development ends, it seems. There was a story being set up for her, a cliche one but a story nonetheless. Ruby is an introvert who has a hard time making friends, she becomes a team leader but struggles with the responsibility. But that story is over by the halfway point on Volume 1. Ruby has made friends and she seems to be doing fine with her responsibility as leader, even the fact that she’s two years younger than the rest of the classmates isn’t an issue anymore. What else is there to care about?

Weiss’ character ended up being a surprise to everyone, I think. Ruby’s was a bit of a surprise too, but I think Weiss’ was even more so for a lot of us. In the White trailer, we see Weiss alone on a stage, performing in front of a huge crowd as she sings about how she’s the loneliest of all. So we all thought Weiss would be this quiet, soft-spoken, modest girl.

Boy were we wrong.

Weiss is cold. She’s hostile. She’s spoiled. She’s arrogant. She’s intimidating. She’s nothing like what we thought she would be. And yet, her trailer still makes perfect sense for the character. Weiss’ history and life outside Beacon, for the most part, has been told in pretty subtle ways so far. Her father so far has not been painted in a positive light, we know he runs the Schnee Dust Company in an unethical manner and there’s implications that he was abusive. Weiss mentions having grown up in the public eye and how this has caused her to get attention similar to the kind Pyrrha gets. When Weiss is in the communication tower about to make a call to her father’s company, we see her literally practicing smiles and preparing herself for the happy face and performance she’ll have to put on when she makes the call. When you watch the White trailer again knowing all of this about Weiss, it starts to make much more sense. The trailer isn’t about the way Weiss presents herself or her personality, it’s about how Weiss feels. Her life is a performance, she always has to act like everything about her life is perfect because she is constantly in the public eye. She is always on a stage for everyone to see, and she can’t tell anyone how she really feels or what her life is really like behind closed doors. It’s a lonely existence for her.

Most of Weiss’ character development is about her learning to open up to people and, you know, be nicer. Her characterization in Volume 2 follows up on a lot of this. She’s nicer to Ruby, but she’s still a bit reluctant. From the way she speaks, you can tell she still hasn’t let go of her desire to be team leader, but she is less of an ass about it. She’s the first to notice that there’s something wrong with Blake and brings up the promise Blake made to Weiss about coming to the team for help. In general she seems to be more openly friendly to Blake than she is to Ruby or Yang, showing concern for her feelings and giving her the Dust in a later episode to help with her fighting. But she also dismisses Blake’s feelings a few episodes after the one where she showed concern for how she was feeling. Inconsistency on the writers’ part.

Volume 2 also had that horrible subplot with Jaune and Neptune where Weiss really got the short end of the stick, but that’s already been talked about in detail. What I haven’t talked about in detail yet is how out of character Weiss’ crush on Neptune is. Seriously, that is really out of character. Weiss talks about how her whole life boys have only been interested in her for her name and place her on a pedestal, sort of like Pyrrha, and therefore she understandably has difficulty trusting them. So why does she fall for Neptune after two seconds of flirting? Is it because, like Pyrrha with Jaune, she likes him because he didn’t know who she was? I have a really hard time believing that. I seriously doubt no boys (or girls? she only mentions boys) have ever pretended that they didn’t know who Weiss was as a pick-up attempt. The only reason Weiss has to like Neptune as far as I can tell is that he’s good-looking. Okay, I’m not going to pretend I’ve never had a crush based primarily on looks, but given Weiss’ history with boys and flirting wouldn’t she be more weary? And a crush based on looks isn’t really something I can root for in terms of shipping and I think we’re supposed to ship Weiss/Neptune, but how can I when the only on-screen conversations they’ve had lasted no more than a few seconds and weren’t at all significant?

Weiss’ writing in this volume is pretty shaky. There are some great moments for her but there are also inconsistencies and out-of-character-ness, and sometimes she was just treated horribly in the narrative (coughthejaunearccough)  so by the end of the volume I wasn’t totally sure how I felt about her anymore. Weiss was my favorite character in Volume 1 and I still think of her as such and name her as such when asked, but Volume 2 wasn’t good to her. I think Weiss is the best written main character so far (which isn’t saying much but still), which is partly why she’s my favorite, but I really hope her treatment and writing improves in Volume 3.

Blake, on the other hand, has improved this volume, which isn’t difficult because she got barely any attention in Volume 1 until the end. Volume 2 seems to be Blake’s story more than any other character’s. She’s the most motivated and driven one and has the most reason to be so. Unlike Ruby, Roman actually knows her by name and knows a bit about her, making Blake the only character who really has a connection to one of the main villains. Plus her history in the White Fang gives her a connection to them (thought I suppose you could say Weiss has somewhat of a connection to them), and Adam has come into the story now and Blake has a complicated relationship with him that I’m sure would be very interesting to explore. Really, Blake and Weiss are the most main character-ish of all of the main characters. They have the most motivation and the most room for growth.

Blake had a good moment in Volume 2, during the scene where she, Weiss and Yang are talking about why they want to be Huntresses. Yang describes Blake as “not one to back down from a fight”, but Blake says that she is. She ran when she realized how far Adam was willing to go for the cause, and when her teammates found out she was a Faunus. She even talks about how her Semblance allows her to leave behind an empty copy to take the hit for her while she runs, which I thought was kind of an interesting metaphor. Blake sees herself as a coward, but I think she’s very brave. I love her passion and her dedication to social justice, but I think she also puts too much responsibility on herself. She wants to change the world for the better and end inequality and injustice, but she doesn’t seem sure of how to go about doing that, and if she expects to do it on her own she’s not going to get far. Everyone should be like Blake, everyone should have her dedication to social justice, but not many people do and she’s overwhelmed. Blake is great, everyone aspire to be Blake.

Yang is a weird character for me. I want to like her, and I do like her, but her writing is so inconsistent and she’s gotten so little screen time and development that sometimes it’s hard to. One minute she’s like Team Mom, showing support and concern to everyone and being a pillar of strength for them, the next minute she’s dismissing Blake’s feelings when she was clearly stressed out and anxious or she’s encouraging boys to harass Weiss. Sometimes she has outbursts that just don’t make sense. I get the feeling that the writers aren’t totally sure what to do with Yang. They’re not sure what her place in the team or in the story should be and they’re not sure if they should be writing her as Barbara in animated form or as her own character. They did seem to make an effort in Volume 2 to give Yang more presence and make her feel like more of an actual character, at least. Barbara’s voice acting has improved too, which definitely helps. Still, it’s hard for me to decide how I feel about Yang a lot of the time.

What I do like about Yang… well, she oozes confidence and I think that’s wonderful to see in a female character. She’s both fun and funny, which is also wonderful to see in a female character. I liked finding out about her mother, and Yang’s search for her. I liked what she said about how she never lets the search control her, I think that says a lot about Yang’s character, how her happy-go-lucky party girl persona isn’t ignorance or because she’s never faced hardships, it’s because she knows she can’t let those hardships take over her. She stays optimistic and while she is driven she also knows that she has to give herself a break now and then.

The frustrating thing about Team RWBY is that all of them are likable and interesting, but they get so little attention in their own show. All of them are in desperate need of more development and screen time, individually and as a team because their relationships to each other are also underdeveloped. They’re supposed to be great friends but they don’t act like it a lot of the time, but I think that partly comes from the writers not knowing what girls are like with each other in general.

That covers RWBY, and I don’t really have that many thoughts on most of the other characters beyond “I like them” or “meh”, but I’ll go over them quickly.

Penny is just adorable, and so far the most like the character she’s based on. She’s an android who wishes she was a real human, she fights with swords attached by strings that she controls like a puppeteer, and she hiccups when she lies (which is the cutest thing btw). Unfortunately Penny is one of those characters that just reeks of death. I don’t know if any significant characters in RWBY will actually die at any point, but if there are any I would bet Penny is one of them, either by sacrificing herself or because she’s so powerful that she needs to be destroyed.

Jaune I’ve already talked about and I don’t want to spend any more time on this entitled shitbag. I hate how the narrative is constantly rewarding him for his shitty behavior and that’s all that needs to said.

Pyrrha, as I’ve also already mentioned, is a character that I really like. There’s not much to say about why, she’s just really nice and I like that. I don’t like how so far her character revolves almost entirely around Jaune and any development she does get only serves to further his. I’m also really afraid that they’re setting up some possible danger for Pyrrha that Jaune will end up saving her from. God, I hope that doesn’t happen. I just want Pyrrha to be a character in her own right, not just an extension of Jaune’s.

Nora and Ren are… there to fill up the rest of Jaune’s team? They don’t have much of a point, but they’re pretty fun characters. They have such an unlikely friendship but something about it just works. There have been hints that a romance between them could happen some time in the future and that Nora may have romantic feelings for Ren right now, but I really hope there is never anything romantic between them. I want them to just stay close friends without a romance having to be forced in there.

Sun and Neptune are entirely pointless characters. Sun was introduced only as a plot device, so that we could get the White Fang backstory out of Blake and so that Blake has a Faunus friend to hang out with, and then for some reason he was featured in the finale of Volume 1 more than the rest of RWBY. Now Sun is being forced into the show even more as a love interest for Blake and I don’t like that either. I’m not a fan of Sun in general. The way he was introduced wasn’t a good start and I don’t like how he’s getting more attention than he needs. Neptune I thought had potential to be an okay character, at the very least he could have made decent comic relief, but he was ruined in the dance plot and I don’t know if he’ll ever recover from that.

Most other student characters haven’t been seen enough for me to have an opinion on. Team CFVY looks really cool and I’m already in love with Coco (and considering cosplaying her) but there isn’t really anything I can say about them. They’re just cool.

Ozpin is being set up as the Dumbledore of this show. He basically is Dumbledore, except hotter and more useless. Okay, maybe calling him useless is a bit mean, but, you know, he hasn’t exactly been useful. He’s been the wise mentor with a calm disposition and strong morals that everyone either trusts and admires or dislikes and misunderstands. It’s been hinted that he has a complicated past and has made many mistakes, but every teacher at Beacon loves him and trusts him wholeheartedly because, apparently, he’s never let them down. Now they’re setting up a conflict between Ozpin and Vale’s government where we can assume that Ozpin’s capability and sanity will com into question by them which will cause even more distrust to come his way even though he’s really working for the greater good as much as he can… yeah, he’s totally Dumbledore.

Even Glynda is sort of similar to McGonagall. She’s Ozpin’s strict, tough right-hand woman. Glynda also hasn’t done that much yet, which is a shame because I thought they were setting her up to be much more important than she has been so far. She appears in the first episode, which is usually an indicator of a character’s importance, and in that episode she fights Cinder and is the one who brings Ruby before Ozpin which leads to her being accepted into Beacon. It makes it seem like Glynda will be an important character, maybe a role model for Ruby or a rival for Cinder, a kind of good witch vs bad witch thing, but after that episode she never really does anything big again. I love Glynda, mainly because she’s voiced by Kathleen Zuelch who I adore, but as the only adult female character on the show so far (I’m not sure how old Cinder and Neo are supposed to be), I wish that she had more importance.

Ironwood is one of those characters that I’m “meh” toward. I get the feeling that we’re not meant to like him very much. I’m guessing he’ll end up playing a similar role to Solovet from The Underland Chronicles or Coin and Plutarch from The Hunger Games, where he’s ultimately doing what he thinks is best but his motivations and methods are questionable to say the least.

Dr. Oobleck is a really fun character and probably my favorite adult character aside from Glynda. I like how even though he’s a capable fighter, he’s more interested in intellectual pursuits and would rather be a teacher because he thinks passing on his knowledge is the best way to help the world. I also like how his coffee mug is also his weapon. And he also drinks out of it. Never change, Oobleck.

As for our villains, Emerald, Mercury and Neo are my favorite ones so far and Neo hasn’t said a word yet. I actually hope she never does say a word, I headcanon her as mute and we should have some disabled characters in here? Emerald and Mercury are just fun. I like their dynamic and I’m interested in finding out how they got involved with Cinder. Cinder is bad ass but so far I don’t find her particularly interesting, and her voice actor is… not very good. I feel bad for saying it because I really like Jessica Nigri but voice acting is just not her thing. Roman is okay, he’s not a very threatening villain and for some reason he always dresses like he’s doing a Clockwork Orange cosplay, but I kind of like him anyway for some reason. He just tries so hard to be a bad ass but he’s so clearly out of his league with Cinder. I get the feeling Roman will try to double-cross Cinder at some point and that will lead to his downfall. Either that or he’ll get some kind of redemption arc.

So RWBY is full of underdeveloped characters and one who has gotten more development than he needs or deserves. Part of the problem is that there are way too many characters to begin with and another part is that the writers do not know how to prioritize or what to prioritize. And it’s such a shame, because animated shows with this many significant female characters are seldom seen and it’s the reason a lot of us were interested in the show, but we’re not getting what we were promised.

Maybe things will get better, but sometimes I think it may be too late. Let’s hope I’m wrong.