Cartoon/Western Animation General

As much as I feared, I get the feeling what they’re doing with Rayla in season 4 is them being afraid to write her and Callum as a couple. That if there’s no conflict whatsoever, that there’s nowhere to go from here. Maybe this is just me speaking as a Brooklyn Nine Nine fan and loving what they did with Jake and Amy, but I feel the whole running away stuff wasn’t necessary and you could’ve done season 4 without this air of conflict. Or at the very least, do something where Callum doesn’t get mad at Rayla for long and they’re still very much at the same page.

This is just like Moonlighting where they didn’t know how to write David and Maddie together so they had Maddie leave to create some form of conflict. It feels unnecessary. And again, this wouldn’t be much of an issue if it wasn’t for the fact we’ve waited three years for the new season. If season 4 came out a year after season 3, I would probably find it less egregious.

I will say, there hasn’t been a fart joke in season 4 since episode 3, so I’m happy they cut down on them.

I kinda like what they’re doing with Viren and Terry. I could see possibly Terry being the key to redeem Viren, much like how Melog helped redeem Catra. Maybe you could even do a thing where Viren sees Terry as a son more than his actual son.

Just finished episode 7 of the fourth season of The Dragon Prince. This season has been so hot and cold for me. There are moments where I say to myself “This is in tone with the first three seasons”, and then there are moments where it’s like “What are we even doing here?” I also feel like we’ve been stuck in a holding pattern since episode 4. It felt like we were building to something truly meaningful, but now it’s like we’re spinning our wheels.

I just finished watching Dragon Prince season 4. Here are my initial gut reactions.

I think on the whole it’s a pretty decent season, one that falls short because of the manner in which it was released. If this season came out in late 2020 or early 2021, I probably would be more enthusiastic about it. But because it’s been three years since season 3, it couldn’t live up to the hype, which I don’t totally fault the show for.

A lot of people complain about the body humor in the season, and in the first couple of episodes it is overabundant. But once we get to episode 4, it doesn’t become as prevalent. I will say my biggest critique of the new season is that it feels dumbed down compared to the first 3 seasons, which is especially disappointing considering how season 3 ended. With how dark and action heavy the season 3 finale was, I thought season 4 would be in the same vein as that. Instead, it’s like we went back to the early episodes of season 1 in terms of tone, which I’m not a fan of that type of regression.

I like Terry. I didn’t at first, but the stuff between him and Viren won me over. I think it would be great to see Terry maybe become the son Viren always wanted, further cementing the wedge between him and his actual son. There’s a lot of potential there.

Overall, I’d probably rate the season a 6.5 out of 10. I think there’s a lot of good to be found in this season. However, there’s also a lot of questionable decisions. Not outright bad perse, but definitely questionable. I thought the season at the very beginning was actually building up quite nicely. Episodes 3 and 4 were particular highlights and in my opinion the best of the season. But after episode 4, it’s like the rest of the season is killing for time, not knowing what exactly it wants to do. Honestly, it felt more like a preamble to the actual season 4 yet to come, which wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for the fact this is the first season in nearly 36 months.

I compare this season 4 to like season 4 of Princesses of Power and how in that show, each season builds the plot further and further. Not once do you feel like the plot is regressing. It is really masterfully done. I feel like after season 3 of The Dragon Prince, the show should’ve took a more serious, somber tone to reflect the intense battle that just transpired. Instead, it’s like season 3 is the end of the first half of the story and we’re starting anew with season 4, which I don’t feel is the right move. The pieces are there to tell a phenomenal, engaging story. And while I enjoyed it and wouldn’t say it’s bad, it did feel at points they were flying by the seat of their pants.

Kevin Conroy has died.

Wait a minute, there was a Kitsune in Hotel Transylvania 3 and I didn’t even notice?

@Cyborg_pony
NOT ANOTHER VOICE ACTOR DEATH!!!

RIP Kevin Conroy.

R.I.P

@Cyborg_pony
Oh come on!

Terrible day for rain…

@Cyborg_pony
R.I.P.

If you guys haven’t seen the comic he did about being a gay voice actor and getting the Batman job right about the time his friends were dying of AIDS, you should. It’s really moving.

Here are my thoughts on the last two episodes of The Dragon Prince Book Four:

Puppy Zym is adorable and something that I didn’t know I needed in my life. He actually kind of reminds me of Ava from the first two seasons.

I swear to you, when it was panning over Rex Igneous’s collection of treasures, Aang’s glider and Sokka’s boomerang were among the collection. I shit you not.

When talking to Amaya, Janai mentions that Lux Aurea has the saying, “You cannot have your cake and eat it too.” We have that saying here on Earth as well, but it wasn’t until I heard it in this show that I actually thought about how dumb that is as a saying. I mean, unless you run a bakery, the only reason one would have a cake is so you can eat it. Nobody just wants to have a pretty cake to look at and not eat.

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Soren literally awakens Rayla from Claudia’s sleeping spell by stuffing his stinky feet in her face.
I know I joke a lot about things being people’s fetish, but I legitimately don’t know why this (and the farting, in hindsight) was inserted in here if not for somebody’s fetish. And if it is, then whatever, I don’t kinkshame, BUT holy crap, there is a time and place to indulge in a fetish when creating art, and this is not one. It reaches the point where the entire sense of tone is out of whack because of this.
As a cursed remark: Did working for Nickelodeon influence Aaron’s fetishes that much?

Speaking of fetishes, apparently Rayla’s fetish is throwing herself head-first into the middle of dangerous, life-threatening situations without thinking it through. Because she certainly does that a lot.

On that note, I call bull on Rayla being able to survive|| being buried under a rockslide without a scratch. Unless Moonshadow elves have titanium skin, at the very least, she should have half of her bones broken||.

I did like Claudia’s story intersecting with the Dragang’s at Rex Igneous’s lair. Only thing I do wish is that we could’ve had more insight into Soren’s thoughts about seeing Viren alive. I mean, Soren is the guy who saw his dad get so corrupted by dark magic and Aaravos’s influence that he morphed into a villain, and who actually killed his dad (or so he thought) to stand up for what was right. He believed Viren was dead for literally two years, for fuck’s sake. He’s got to be shaken up by that, and it would’ve been nice to actually show that instead of, say, focusing on the stinky feet stuff…

The subplot with Amaya, Janai, and Karim was… okay, I guess, I don’t know, I kind of predicted Karim’s entire character and subplot the second he first appeared on screen. We’ve seen the “trusted advisor/family member dislikes how new ruler is leading, tries to betray them” plot before in other media and we’ve seen it before in this show, just last season. The problem is, this doesn’t do much with it. The most I can say it did with it that’s actually original was the stuff with Amaya and Janai being judged for their interspecies relationship, but honestly I feel like that subplot should have been with Rayla and Callum instead. Would’ve at least given those two something original instead of just falling back on breaking up for no reason like every other main couple on TV since Friends.

I have thoughts on the season as a whole, but I’m gonna wait until I’m finished with my household work to post them.

Very sad about Kevin Conroy. He was THE VOICE for animated Batman.

Alright, so. My final thoughts on The Dragon Prince Book Four. (I’m going to be making a video review of this where I’ll get more into my feelings about the season but here’s a quick summary.)
I… really thought this season was mid. Unfortunately a lot of the problems that plagued the first episode of the season continued through the rest of it. One of the big issues was that it felt rushed, and admittedly that was a problem with a lot of the rest of the show due to the relatively short seasons–nine episodes with 24 minute each isn’t the best length for a show that’s supposed to tell a large, epic story. If the show wants to continue in the future, it needs space to breathe, because right now, everything feels rushed and underdeveloped. The episodes really feel like they need to be substantially longer—anywhere from 10-20 minutes more.

But at least in the previous seasons, the scenes were cut in such a way that we could still immerse ourselves into each one. There were some really wonderful moments in Book Four, but the show needs more screen time to let us enjoy them properly. The episodes in this whole season were constantly switching between points of view. Some scenes wouldn’t even last two minutes. It comes across as the directors being scared to fully immerse us in any one scene, like they want to create cheap and artificial tension by constantly leaving us on minor cliffhangers without actually letting us enjoy the scene and characters within it for the tension to build up naturally and the cliffhangers to feel meaningful.

Series creator Aaron Ehasz said that he wanted this season to be darker than the previous ones and continue the trend started by Book Three, and there were elements here and there where I could see that. But for as dark as it was, it fell back way too hard on the humor , which has taken a downturn. Not like humor was ever the high point of the show, but far too much time gets spent on very juvenile jokes like the farting and feet jokes I’ve already complained about when the episodes don’t have enough time to show us the interesting things as it is, which makes it doubly frustrating. The show as a whole feels much more juvenile, in fact. Group laughter and sighs and reactions after every minor event, combined with the bad jokes, all contribute to making it feel like it’s aimed at a younger audience than seasons 1-3.

Even aside from all that, the writing is not as good as previous seasons. In addition to the series itself feeling rushed in-universe, Book Four feels like it was rushed to be released. It took three years to make, but still feels like it needed another pass. Characters feel awkward and stilted and do things that make no logical sense. The season also has a very bad habit of telling the audience about things, not showing us. The biggest example of both of these is Rayla and Callum’s arc. The fact that Rayla ran away is something fans would only know if they had read the side comic Through the Moon, and without that knowledge, throughout the season their bickering just feels really awkward and stupid. The timeskip is a fine concept, but we need to be shown the important things, not have them relegated to subpar comics. Way too much important context is relegated to them. Apparently the whole thing with Ezran’s crown and Rayla’s blades came up in side comics. Ditto for the Orphan Queen, who plays a not insignificant part in the season. Some really critical information that’s never explained in the show, and leads to it feeling much more lacking. The comics are nice for the superfans, but not for more casual viewers. It would have been far more interesting to actually see what happened in Through the Moon, Claudia’s journey through Xadia, her meeting Terry, as well as have the main characters make the discoveries of Aaravos and Umber Tor themselves. As it is, they just feel insignificant.

Speaking of, as someone who was a fan of Rayla and Callum in previous seasons, I really disliked this one. Fans were talking about looking forward to Rayllum angst before this season dropped, and having seen it, if this is the angst people were talking about… I don’t get it? I was really hopeful about Rayla and Callum after Book Three, because they got together at the end of it and I was excited to see what would happen with them already a couple this early on. I wanted to see them be a badass power couple who fought evil together… instead, the show just turned them into every other TV couple. The couple that gets together and then breaks up, and that the show still spends a lot of time trying to convince us that they need each other, but we come away from it thinking that they need counseling? (So in other words, Peter and MJ from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy.)

I don’t even know why this show feels the need to fall back on cliched relationship drama when it already has enough sources of tension within the plot. Aaravos is rising up and tensions between the humans and Xadians are rising again, I don’t want to focus on Callum’s squabbles with Rayla. But nooo, they need a forced conflict! They need to have something to do this season! They could’ve had a conflict about duty, with Rayla being opposed to Callum being so interested in the same mirror that corrupted Viren, or Callum being frustrated or afraid (which turns into anger) at the fact that Viren’s corpse or Claudia weren’t found and Rayla gave up on looking for them, or even their societies frowning upon the elf/human romance and them having to power through it. But no, they need a forced romance fight where they break up even though it’s clear they’re going to get together again in the end.

The result is a season that’s not awful, but doesn’t come close to living up to either the expectations we had of it, or more importantly, the potential of all the pieces it has to play with. So it gets a 6/10.

Anyone know that Starscream was in Transformers Earthspark?

@TheHappySpaceman
oooh i look forward to seeing you do a review of it.

I’m sorry, I’m still not over this. Do you guys want to know how much of a mess Book Four of The Dragon Prince was?

In between Books 3 and 4, Rayla left Callum in the comic Through the Moon to go search for Viren, and that plays a huge part in the new season. However, the fact that Rayla had left Callum on the morning of his birthday—another huge element that the new season hinges on—was something that was only confirmed in a Reddit AMA with the creators and was not in any official material.

So apparently to understand the new season, fans are not only expected to have read all the offshoot comics and stories, but to have followed the creators’ social media posts.

What even.

@TheHappySpaceman
pfft your just mad you’re not a real fan like…whatever loser follows reddit ama’s and bad comic spin-offs.

Does anyone here collect Powerpuff Girls books? I’m trying to find a full or nearly complete list.

Parents must’ve complained about the “Sonic Says” segment in the first episode of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”, when Tails tells Sonic to call 911 when they were surrounded by the badniks, but Sonic says that’s not a good idea since it should be for real emergencies; in his defense, Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts are pretty stupid and easy to deal with as cartoon henchmen, but apparently that lesson must’ve made kids think it’s okay to fight bad people who are likely armed; as a result a later episode had Tails yell for the police when Scratch and Grounder grabbed him in “Road Hog”.

To be honest, I imagined a nonexistent rivalry between Haruhi Suzumiya and Sonic the Hedgehog, all because of a Sonic Sez from an episode of AOSTH called Lovesick Sonic.

Can’t believe I remembered thinking that when I was younger.

I finally bit the bullet and started watching The Owl House. And yeah, it is fantastic.

I just finished watching episode 3. I can’t say enough good things about the show. The animation looks great and the humor is pretty infectious. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

I mean, I already kinda know because I’m not going in totally spoiler free, but still. You know what I mean. This show seems like a lot of fun.

@Holofan4life
Gotta love those loli lesbians.