Amphibia
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Amphibia is an American animated television series created by Matt Braly and produced by Disney Television Animation for Disney Channel. The series features the voices of Brenda Song, Justin Felbinger, Bill Farmer, Amanda Leighton, Anna Akana, Troy Baker, Haley Tju, and Keith David. It premiered on June 17, 2019, following a preview of the first episode on DisneyNOW and YouTube three days earlier, and the show's first season concluded on July 18.
The second season premiered on July 11, 2020, and concluded on May 22, 2021.
Amphibia was also renewed for a third and final season, which premiered on October 2, 2021, and concluded on May 14, 2022.[1]
Plot
The series chronicles the adventures of a self-centered 13-year-old Thai-American girl named Anne Boonchuy. After stealing a mysterious music box on her birthday at the advice of Sasha, she is magically transported to Amphibia, a wild marshland-themed lilypad-shaped island full of talking frog-people and giant versions of smaller animals. She soon meets and befriends an adventurous 10-year-old frog named Sprig Plantar who will guide her to be a true hero while discovering the first true friendship of her life as she lives with the Plantar family. In addition, she also must help the frog-people of Wartwood deal with the toad-people of Toad Tower led by Captain Grime.
Why It Makes Us Jump To It
- Well-written and likable characters that get a lot of development. For example, Anne starts as a selfish and lazy teenager, but it's gradually revealed that she was manipulated into being like that by her toxic friend Sasha. She also becomes more responsible, kind, noble, and brave as the series goes on, helping tons of people and even rejecting an offer to become the multiversal guardian after destroying the Core in the finale.
- Despite her toxicity, Sasha is shown to genuinely care about Anne and see her and Marcy as actual friends.
- Attractive and fun plots.
- Absolutely beautiful and fluid hand-drawn animation and art style, and nice-looking background artwork with eye-catching colors, original and fresh character designs, in addition, the backgrounds are very beautiful and have a lot of attention to detail. Each of the title cards was whittled from wood, How impressive is that?
- One of the best examples of good animation on the show is the Sasha vs Darcy fight on "All In".
- It has a very adventurous vibe to it.
- Great music, such as the theme song or "Its no Big Deal".
- Has a very good cast of supporting characters, such as Maddie Flour, Ivy Sundew, Loggle, or One-Eyed Wally.
- Many funny and comedic moments in all three seasons.
- The shows are known when it is time to be serious, comedic, light-hearted, etc.
- It takes heavy inspiration from Thai-American culture, especially in the episode "Lily Pad Thai" where Anne prepares Thai food.
- Has a lot of world-building and continuity from the get-go, instead of just lazily jumping onto it at the last minute like Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
- A great example of this is many of season 1 characters and plots that get brought again in season 3, like Domino 2 or Aphotecary Gary.
- If some people considered the first episodes of the show to be a little weak or slow, everything comes together perfectly in the season 1 finale.
- Superb voice acting, such as Brenda Song as Anne and Bill Farmer (known for voicing as least versions of Walt Disney's Goofy) as Hop Pop.
- At the Season 2 finale, when Sprig falls to the sky and Marcy tries to save him, we can see Anne in her flashback with Sprig since the day they met, have their friendship, which is very powerful character development for her.
- Hell, as much as the animation as the design is so awesome when she cries and transforms into a Saiyan (cuz you know, blue hair.) to fight King Andrias and besides, he even gave Goku from Dragon Ball a run for his money and also not to mention that the fight is exciting and cool.
- Surprisingly enough, like Fist of the North Star, the filler episodes are entertaining, like the Gravity Falls-themed episode, Wax Museum, which has good horror vibes of the aforementioned show.
- The series finale was very good and wrapped up the entire show with a positive send-off, with some people comparing it to the ending of Gravity Falls.
Bad Qualities
- Before her character development, Anne Boonchuy can come across as selfish and lazy since she doesn't want to do any work and even pretends to be sick to get out of work in one episode. Though justified because Sasha Waybright made her this way and to be fair, we still love Anne both before and after her character development starts.
- Before her path to redemption, Sasha Waybright is a bit toxic to Anne and Marcy Wu and even wanted revenge on Anne for "betraying" her. Though it is justified because her parents are divorced.
- The plot twist that reveals King Andrias Leviathan as the true villain of season 2 is way too predictable and is a repeated use of the overused Disney twist villain cliché. It also creates a plot hole that starts when he helps Marcy find the hidden switch that reveals the location of his secret basement where his most sinister secrets are kept, including his master, the Core. Although to be fair, the next season establishes the latter as the show's true main villain, and Andrias has a nice redemption in the last two episodes where he finally stands up to his master after having suffered centuries of emotional abuse at its hands.
- The "lying is bad" moral is used constantly in certain episodes which can be annoying.
- This, however, can now be seen as a retroactive foreshadowing for the season 2 finale, "True Colors" on two accounts:
- Sasha reveals she still plans to take over Amphibia with Grime, despite spending a few episodes before reconnecting with Anne and Marcy. This causes Anne to become so angry that she gives up on being friends with her. This comes back to bite both of them when Sasha tries to warn Anne about Andrias' true nature, but Anne thinks she's crying wolf.
- When it was revealed that everything happened because Marcy didn't have control over her emotional issues back in LA with her parents when they were planning to move soon. And then later lies to her two friends after learning about the music box at her favorite place, the library, by grabbing the music box, hours later, she ends up stranding the titular location.
- This, however, can now be seen as a retroactive foreshadowing for the season 2 finale, "True Colors" on two accounts:
- Some episodes and scenes try to be "modern, hip or cool" like Anne's dab and Game Boy, (somewhat) a product placement for Nintendo Switch, (but luckily it's for flashbacks only during the scene about Marcy and don't feel out of place).
- Despite having good episodes such as Olivia and Yunan, Adventures in Catsitting or Fight at the Museum, season 3A is considered the weakest part of the show by many fans alike.
References
Trivia
- Brenda Song, the actress who returned to Disney and played Anne Boonchuy, previously portrayed London Tipton from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck.
- There was an episode called "True Colors" that was once infamous for contaning a content warning that alerted viewers about the intense fight scenes in the end. This was very uncommon in a lot of Disney shows.
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