(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Amphibia)
Doug (vo): It's Adventure Time 6...I mean, Amphibia! Okay, before you kill me, no, I don't think this is a rip-off of Adventure Time, but you know what I'm talking about. This is another series in that genre that I don't really think has a name yet, but we're all familiar with what it is. It's a goofy, comedic show where a lot of the episodes are very silly, but in the grand scheme of things, there's a big, grand, epic, serious story that's being told that's slowly but surely gonna try and make you cry several times. Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Star vs. Evil, you know these shows. And as that style of shows goes, this one's pretty damn good, even if it takes a really, really, really, really long time to get there. Like, maybe just skip Season 1 to get there...okay, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Premise[]
Doug (vo): In the land of Amphibia, a world ruled entirely by frogs, Uncle Hop Pop and his nephew and niece, Sprig and Polly*, suddenly discover a human named Anne. She's a teenager from Earth who doesn't know how she got there, and, well, they don't know how she got there either. In order to survive, she has to befriend this family and convince all the frogs that she isn't some sort of evil monster, while also looking for her other two human friends, Sasha and Marcy, who are transported there as well. As you'd imagine, a lot of this show is her getting used to this weird frog world, seeing the similarities and differences between them and the human world, and all sorts of silly but also mysterious characters are revealed with a lot of twists and turns and backstabbing and all that good stuff...but like I said, though, eventually.
*Hop Pop is actually Sprig and Polly's grandfather, not uncle.
Review[]
Doug (vo): I'm noticing this strange trend in animated shows recently where Season 1, for whatever reason, mostly just stays put. They introduce this giant fantasy world where, oh, my God, it'd be so cool to go to different places, and they mostly just stay in one spot. Tangled, Star vs. Evil, Disenchantment, DuckTales, all their first seasons introduced really cool places they could go, and they don't go there. The only thing I can figure is, maybe the production values on the show are so high that it cost a lot to create new worlds and new characters, and they want a proof of concept. So, Season 1 is seeing if they can get an audience, and once they do, the budget is raised and they can have them travel to wherever. With that said, Season 1 isn't bad, but it is definitely kid-focused. I would argue maybe up to 11 is the kind of humor that this show is trying to hit in the first season. The delivery of the jokes is good and the characters are good, but what's being said almost never made me laugh, and because they never really journeyed anywhere and they just stayed in this one frog town, it didn't really hook me in that much.
(Several clips focusing on Sasha are shown, while more clips from the first season are also shown)
Doug (vo): Okay, so here's my thoughts if you're a newcomer. If you watch the first episode and you're not getting into it, I would say skip all of Season 1 except for the two episodes that have her friend Sasha in it. That's when the story starts to move forward and gets interesting. Yes, there's stuff that happens in between that's gonna come back later, but it's all stuff they catch you up on where you can follow along fine. However, if you watch the first episode and you like the jokes and you like the characters, stick around. You're gonna have a good time. Just don't expect the big, epic story to really be woven in that much yet. I remember one episode where Anne just says, "This is the box that transported me here." And there's no reason for her to do it. I guess the idea is, like, she trusts them now and she shows them this treasure chest that transported them, but you can tell she trusted them a lot earlier than this, and nothing happens in this episode that's like, "Oh, now she can finally show them this." No, it's not like that at all. It really doesn't tie in that well.
(Footage focusing on the show's second season is shown)
Doug (vo): On that note, Season 2 changes gears almost immediately. The writing is better, they leave the town, they go and discover all these different worlds. More characters are introduced, more secrets are revealed, there's a lot of twists and turns that I legitimately almost didn't see coming. The story flows very naturally and feels fittingly big and funny at the same time. I feel like it really starts to get an identity here, too. Not that the first season didn't have an identity, but, again, you kind of see this frog neighborhood, and maybe for one episode, it would be interesting, but, again, you spend a whole entire season there, and...I don't know. It didn't do much for me. But in Season 2, you see sort of all the influences and satires and parodies of things that these people obviously grew up with, and they both pay homage but playfully mock these shows and games and everything, too, and it's fun. But they do so in a way that also gives this world much more of an interesting vision. Now I kind of look at this and say, "All right, now I get where this frog town kind of is in this world", and you see these giant castles and kingdoms and kind of these weird robots that have a little bit of a Castle in the Sky feel to them, but that's a little bit the idea. You can see references to Zelda, Lord of the Rings, even Avengers sometimes. But they change it just enough in a way that you say, "Yes, this is still its own unique world that I like watching, and I like seeing these unique characters travel through this world."
(Footage focusing on the show's third and final season is shown)
Doug (vo): And as things get more and more serious, we wrap up in Season 3, where there's kind of a really big change that surprisingly works. The frogs now go to the human world, which, at first, I thought, "Oh, man, this isn't gonna be fun. I mean, they couldn't even make the frog world that interesting in Season 1. How are they gonna make the human world that interesting?" Well, again, they got some damn good writing here. This reminded me of the early seasons of Simpsons. These are good jokes. Two that come to mind are, at some point, they get this clown balloon that's flying through LA. You see this guy with this therapist, and there's a giant window there, and he's saying, "Thank you for your help." And you know what it's gonna be, a fear of clowns. But, no, it's a fear of eye contact. And, of course, the clown flies by and scares him. That's a good spin on that joke. It's immediately followed by another one where a guy's proposing, and he has, like, this air message that's done by this plane, but the clown gets in the way, and he looks and he says, "No, I won't clown face you." That's... (Laughs) ...really inventive and funny! And again, there's kind of a playfulness with it. I guess the creator of the show got his mother to actually play the mother in the show, and at first, I thought, "Oh, man, this is really obvious and kind of painful, 'cause she's not that great an actress." But it's kind of like Jerry Seinfeld or Mike Nelson. You can feel the fun behind the performance, and I eventually really grew to like her. I honestly look forward to whatever strange, unnatural way she was gonna say a line.
(Clips focusing on Mr. X are shown)
Doug (vo): They also introduce you to probably my favorite character in the whole show, Agent X, played by RuPaul. This dude is just so weird, so flamboyant, and so full of himself that he makes every joke work. I forgot how funny RuPaul could really be.
(Clips focusing on the episodes where the main characters return to Amphibia are shown)
Doug (vo): But they do something interesting. They return to Amphibia in this season, and, okay, you kind of expect that's gonna happen near the end, but it happens halfway. I have a theory they originally wanted one more season, because as soon as they enter Amphibia, it's like a different season, to the point where there's actually two finales, one on Earth, and one on Amphibia immediately after. They're both fine, but it feels like one of these was supposed to be the big finale, and instead, because they only have one season, they kind of squished them together. With that said, you do get the proper epic finale you would want to see with a show like this. Honestly, every season has a really good, intense finale that also works in a lot of good jokes. Like with the other shows I've mentioned, there are sort of some bigger themes being talked about. The main one in this, I would say is about friendship, when friends fight, how much do you trust them, how much do you not trust them, how much do you give in, how much do you hold on to. It's done well, and again, there were some legit surprises in there, but they're all surprises I could say, "Oh, yeah, like when this series did that or when this movie tried this."
(Several clips focusing on the show's series finale are shown)
Doug (vo): The only time where I felt like they were really doing something different is in the last episode, I'd say, maybe the last 10 minutes, where something major happens to a character, and kind of after that major thing happens...if you see the series, you'll know what I'm talking about. That was a little different, you could play around with some of the interpretations of it, though, yes, it is definitely a "getting your cake and eating it, too." It's a little bit of a cheat, but not quite. I think it just works out within the ethics and logic of the show.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): I guess I'm just saying, I never got that same feeling when I saw Adventure Time or Steven Universe, where I'm like, "Wow, not only am i really engaged in this, but this is different, this is new." Amphibia is taking elements that worked in the past, bringing them together, and doing it all very well. It's effective, I wanted to know what was gonna happen. But, yeah, whenever you see a giant army is coming into Earth and you have to fight a bunch of robots and there's a friend that you have to save and somebody has to sacrifice something...you've seen all of this. But this is the advantage of it being a family show. A lot of kids watching this maybe haven't seen a lot of the shows and movies this is referencing, and this might be their first time being introduced to it. And it's honestly not a bad introduction of that. You feel the passion behind everybody working on this, from the character designs, to the acting, to the storytelling. Like I said, even that woman voicing the mother, it never feels like she's half-assing it, it always sounds like she's giving it her all, and you feel that, it comes across, and it's really enjoyable. So, yes, I do highly recommend this show if you are a fan of those other series like Steven Universe and Adventure Time and so forth. Just keep in mind, if Season 1 isn't doing it for you, you can skip ahead, and while there's nothing too new to it, it is very effectively done, both on an epic scale and a comedic scale.
(Several clips focusing on Hop Pop are shown)
Doug (vo): Oh, one more side note. I really think it's great that Bill Farmer is allowed to both do a comedic and serious performance in this. This is a guy who's played Goofy for years, and everybody knows him as that part. And, yes, there's some similarities here, but it's not the same character. (An image of A Goofy Movie is shown) I feel like this guy has surprisingly brought some real drama to such a silly character, and he's doing it again here, and I think he is really a great talent, and I'm glad the show really lets him shine even more. If this looks like a show you might be interested in, it probably is. Hop on in and take a look.
(A scene showing Anne bracing herself for something about to happen as the screen fades to white is shown)