Amphibia - Season 1 - TV Review

I might talk a lot about live action films and show, but animation is one of my biggest pleasures in media. It's a genre that anyone can enjoy, no matter how old they are. Animation isn't just for kids anymore (nor was it always), there's now stuff for adults and for teens and even stuff for kids has a few themes that more mature than from a decade ago. These subjects include relationships, being gay, family, and more. Animation, for the most part, is getting better and better every year. Sure there are a few screw-ups like The Emoji Movie or The Playmobile Movie, but over the past decade I keep seeing better turnouts for animated movies and shows.

So this week I'm going to talk about a show that instantly caught my attention when it was first teased and that I finally got to watch thanks to Disney Plus: Amphibia. The show revolves around Anne Boonchuy (voiced by Brenda Song), who after discovering and opening a mysterious music box, is teleported with her two friends to Amphibia, a fantasy world full of talking, anthropomorphic frogs and toads, giant murderous insects, and with her friends nowhere in site. She is soon taken in by the Plantars, a small frog family consisting of Sprig, the young, silly adventurer of the family; Polly, the violent and rash younger child; and Hopadiah "Hop Pop" Plantar, the traditional grandfather of the two. All four go on adventures that might lead to something much grander than she ever imagined.

What instantly caught my attention with this show was Anne herself. First, she's a Taiwanese American, something we have not seen for a main character in a cartoon before. Animated characters have become more diverse over the past several years with more African Americans and Mexicans leading shows, but Anne's ethnicity appears to be something entirely new. The previews showed that this wouldn't just be a one-note trait, that we were going to see how it affected the characters and places around her. That's great, I love seeing new thing and it's great to show other cultures to new people!

Second is Anne's design, which was the big thing that caught my attention at first viewing. Most characters in animated shows are designed to be simple and clean. From Finn in Adventure Time, Dipper from Gravity Falls, Rick from Rick and Morty, designs are often very simple and clean. Now Anne's design is simple, but it's not clean. You see with her basically living in a fantasy world all her normal, modern clothes are often dirty and disheveled. There's dirt on her clothes, a twig and leaves in her hair, and she's even missing a shoe, which keeps making me flip out how can you living in such a dirty, swampy world with just one shoe?! It's incredible and I just really like how despite from another time and world, she fits very well in this old-fashioned fantasy village. That and with how she's first treated like a monster or a freak by most of the village (because of her appearance) gives her appearance a big part in the show.

Now there is more to her than design and ethnicity. Watching her on screen I feel she's going to be a great role model for younger kids (which is the intended demographic for this series). Plenty of female characters, not just in animation but in live action as well, are either complete feminine or total tomboys/ men. Now that's not entirely bad, I like badass women like Ellen Ripley, Brienne of Tarth, and Princess Leia. However if you give your character all these strong traits and make them beautiful, like Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy, you start to remove the realism of the character because nobody is that perfect. Characters should be flawed, no matter what gender/ sex they are.

Anne has the makings of a very good character. She's already got a great start with this first season because she's got her strengths and her flaws. She's often rash with her decisions, but she's very courageous and willing to help others out whether it's because of her mistakes or not. She's not always the sharpest tool in the shed, but she some talents to her like cooking, tennis (which was surprisingly useful in her situation), and a strong sense of adventure. But something more that I liked about her is her femininity. Relating back to what I said earlier, many female characters (or at least the ones that are liked) are either completely feminine or the complete opposite. Or maybe I just need to explore more media. Anyways, Anne, despite being an adventurous soul, doesn't like getting dirty, enjoys spa days and massages, and indulges things that a regular teenage girl would enjoy, including her world's version of Twilight (I'll mention more on that later).

Beyond Anne, our other main character is Sprig. He's kind of like a younger, less wild version of Finn from Adventure Time, very outgoing and fun and eager to prove himself. Though he's also a bit oblivious and is low on experience in terms of adventuring, he's got strong loyalty to his friends and family that'll cause him to do whatever it takes. Sprig and Anne work great together and from the first episode you immediately can tell they're going to work great off one another. There's just something about this curious frog that you can instantly fall in love with. Maybe it's his child-like demeanor or sunshine personality, his character is just fun to watch on the screen.

After him there's Hop Pop, played by the voice of Goofy, Bill Farmer. Almost every animated show needs a character who is a voice of reason that's Hop Pop's role with his elderly, strict nature attitude. Now that's not to say he and Anne never get along, they grow on each other and there were some great scenes between the two. He's always the old stereotype though because some of what Anne has opens his mind to new ideas, like movies and pizza. A relationship such as this demonstrates that older folk can get along with those younger than them and even learn a few new tricks and hobbies.

And lastly for the Plantars we got Polly. For me she was the least developed character of the family because it's most just her shouting or being the wild child of the Plantars. Often in the show she's yelling or trying to go for something like a mace and chain to smash something with, but to me that's not much of a character. We need to see her grow and develop more to make her feel solid. I do get what they were trying to do, but there needs to be more than just being a wild little kid. Yes she's just a tadpole, but you can still give her more personality than that.

Beyond our main four, there's a good cast of characters with voice actors to match them. These include Stephen Root as Mayor Toadstool, Jack McBrayer as his assistant, Kevin McDonald (from Purple Tallest from Invader Zim) as a food critic, Troy Baker as Captain Grime, and more! Their performances fit their characters and I could tell they were putting in great emotion into their lines. With their designs you can instantly tell who is who, something well designed characters in TV shows, movies, and video games all have in common. Any silhouettes from these character and I can immediately tell who is who and that's great! They also got distinguishing personalities and traits that make them instantly recognizable, from the greedy mayor to the town fool to the old crazy lady.

Now there is a problem I do have with the characters and it relates a lot to the stories in this season: There is not much consequences for the actions of our main crew. Yes, this is a show for younger audiences, I can understand that, we can't have big fights or drama like in shows such as Steven Universe or Rick and Morty or Adventure Time. However, even shows for younger audiences like Ed, Edd, n' Eddy and Hey Arnold had stories where the characters occasionally had bad ends to their actions that couldn't be solved by just admitting they messed up. For Amphibia there were a lot of episodes where Anne or Sprig make a big mistake, it damages the Plantar farm or the townsfolk, and they say they're sorry, learn their lesson, and everyone forgives them. Now they genuinely feel bad about their mistakes and that's great, but you got to show kids that mistakes they make don't always go away by saying, "I'm sorry." And this type of resolution is used quite a bit in this first season of Amphibia it got to the point of being repetitive. Now it's okay to have some of these types of storylines, lessons are good, but in future seasons of the show I want to hope more episodes that are just adventures that don't have to have a lesson to them, especially with the direction the main story is heading.

The season finale for this first season was excellently done because we finally get some of that real conflict I was hoping for. In fact it went pretty dramatic a few points and I got pretty tense at some of these moments. Anne has a big conflict with another character and we learn a lot about her before being transported to this new world. This, along with a well-crafted and important fight scene (which surprisingly had a bit of blood in it), brings a lot of emotion out of a Anne and many of the other characters. There's a number of shots that are also well animated and convey great weight to them, which lead me a few times to lean forward, enchanted by what was happening. It's just an very well done season finale.

Another major plus to the show is the visuals. With something attuned to nature you're going to have to make a lot of greenery. For this show the environments look great, they appear full of life with tons of stylized looking vegetation. Additionally the housing of the characters is creatively designed to blend in with the world with moss and plant life molding with the wood and bricks. It feels like the creators took their time planning what everything would look like. It almost feels like a real world you might want to see for yourself. If it wasn't for all the giant insects I definitely would love to travel to this world for a while.

Now the comedy of the show is pretty good. There were multiple moments that I had a good laugh. There's great jokes with the Plantar's now understanding modern day technology, though some of this modern tech often has some cartoon logic to it like how a phone being zapped by lightning can be 10,000% charged. There's also an episode that is basically the town, after seeing this universe's version of Twilight, becomes the fandom fighting over which boy/ male the movie's girl hooks up with. At one point Anne compares what's going on to an internet message board to which Hop Pop asks if any conflicts on this "internet" was ever resolved in peaceful, civilized ways. To which Anne says, "See for yourself," I laugh so hard at that because... oh HP, you sweat summer child. Now saying that some might find this joke cringy and there are definitely some jokes that were misses for me. Early on there's joke about pineapple on pizza and I'm like, "Wait, pineapples don't grow in swamps, so how does Sprig know about pineapples?" Most jokes in anything hit for me because I laugh easily, but still, even with my perspective, I think there's a good amount of humor in this first season that works pretty well, especially for the intended audience.

This first season of Amphibia seems to be a pretty good start for this cartoon. The visuals and characters look great, the characters are very likable, and there's a great story ready to come out in the next season. However if this show is to keep gong strong it needs more adventure" episodes and less "lesson" episodes. Anne was a breath of fresh air for female characters and I'm excited to see where her journey takes her in this froggy world.

Tentative Score: 7/10

Tentative Score: 7.25/10

Overall I had a good time and it's great to see Disney is continuing to pump out well done animated shows. Now if only they got their live action movies right...