Battle for BFB (season 4b)
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| Battle for BFB | ||||||||||||||
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 "What if I brought back the original BFDI, as a prize?"
— Four
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Battle for BFB (often shortened to BFB and nicknamed BFB post-split or BFDI Season 4B) is an American animated reality TV viewer-voting web series created by Michael and Cary Huang, who are most known by their YouTube channel name, jacknjellify. The series is about a competition between inanimate, anthropomorphic objects, specifically BFB after the split with it's sister show The Power of Two. It is the fourth installment in the Battle for Dream Island series. The first episode of this series premiered April 17, 2020.
Premise
Four and X continue to host for the remaining 14 contestants who decided to stay in BFB rather than battling for The Power of Two.
Qualities That Went Too Far
- Getting the elephant out of the room: Two unpopular characters Spongy and Loser rejoin the game instantly despite not being voted back in. Spongy was apparently too big to get sucked in the E.X.I.T., while Loser transported through his pores to escape Four's head, leading both to participate. Safe to say, they did not last long in the competition and were eliminated as soon as possible.
- It didn't help that Loser is the Huang brothers' favorite character.
- While the vote-to-save gimmick was an interesting implement, it also caused decent contestants to be eliminated because they aren't popular enough to sustain enough votes. On top of that, vote wars were also created which lead to Taco to lose to Flower by 1 vote.
- Balloony is a wasted character that should have never been competed in this season as he didn't get to do much before he immediately gets eliminated within an episode later due to him being put on a team with a bunch of fan favorites.
- Some characters are flanderized and others started to behave out-of-character:
- Four has been weakened to the point where he can't control his contestants at doing some tasks. While it could have worked to have Four be more empathetic and have him redeem himself, it goes against their characterization of being seen a chaotic and menacing character that is meant to be hated in-universe. Not to mention, Four's redemption feels forced, as they tried too hard to make the viewers feel sorry for him.
- Though at least this most likely applies to the post-split BFB contestants only, as they're back to their usual self in TPOT with the rest of the characters (which also includes the EXITORs inside them).
- X is constantly treated as a butt-monkey as per usual. For instance, in "How Loe Can You Grow?", when the sun is "improved" to grow his aloe vera garden, X catches on fire and Four does nothing about it, and the contestants act like idiots when they're given ice buckets, which they don't pour on him but go to the sun instead.
- Additionally, X himself was also being rude and annoying towards the contestants in "A Taste of Space" where he keeps standing on the sun and never bothered to move to the point where Lollipop and Taco called him out for it, only for them to lose more points.
- Firey (until "Who Stole Donut's Diary?") was insufferable towards Leafy for stealing his dream island 8 years ago while he was also at fault for not inviting her to dream island due to her not liking his Ferris Wheel with lava waterfall that killed her.
- Bubble was flanderized from a funny character with a bubbly personality to a pushover that's often mocked and ignored for cheap laughs. Along with this, she is barely present in episodes to the point where she was almost absent in "Who Stole Donut's Diary?", leading to her elimination.
- Taco, while she still can be strategic and a bit stubborn, has turned into a nitwit and complains a lot, which it can get annoying.
- In "Take The Tower" where she pushes her teammate, Flower, off because she thought she's Dora and that she's suppose to compete in TPOT, which it doesn't make sense since she saw Dora getting eliminated 3 episodes ago, and they never look similar at all since Dora is a stick figure. Even if it's played for a joke, Taco shouldn't be the one who is falling for this.
- In the next episode, Taco gets mad at Spongy for not wearing their friendship bracelet, despite that she clearly saw Loser cut off Spongy's bracelet to climb their tower and using it to make a bridge to the other's team tower.
- Thankfully, she got her old personality back in the last 2 episodes.
- Loser went from a humble character whom everyone liked to an egotistical who cared more about fame than his friends. It doesn't help that his personality has been retconned in TPOT to make it seem like he was like this all along.
- Gelatin, although he's tolerable here than his pre-split counterpart, suffered from inconsistent characterization as he acts and behaves differently in each episode. For example, he becomes annoying in one episode, then he acts mature in another, then he becomes hypocritical in another and so on. In fact, his characterization in “A Taste of Space” was supposed to be for Ruby as the storyboard was rushed out too early. Explained more in a later point.
- Speaking of hypocrisy, in "The Game Has Changed", Gelatin gets disappointed at Teardrop because of how she killed him in her comic, and killing him while they're inside Purple Face's stomach and for throwing him into the bush, and in "Chapter Complete" where he, of all people, rants to Four about how he treated them harshly and tortures them. Even though he hurt and killed his teammates several times with no remorse such as pushing them from Puffball, killed some of his former employees and turned into consumable eyewear back in BFDIA, throwing forks at people, pushing Naily from Puffball, and using Bomby to make him explode as a plan in pre-split, and never cared about Bubble's feelings in this season.
- Also the reason why Teardrop killed Gelatin back where their team inside Purple Face's stomach was because it was part of her plan as Four recovers Gelatin in a place where Four is jailed so Gelatin can free him.
- Woody's development was reset in this season as he came back to being a scaredy-cat, before turning to an cheap near-copy of Blocky that was used as his replacement to cope with his elimination in "The Game Has Changed" until "SOS (Save Our Show)".
- Four has been weakened to the point where he can't control his contestants at doing some tasks. While it could have worked to have Four be more empathetic and have him redeem himself, it goes against their characterization of being seen a chaotic and menacing character that is meant to be hated in-universe. Not to mention, Four's redemption feels forced, as they tried too hard to make the viewers feel sorry for him.
- Abysmal and awful voice acting, which is at one of its most horrendous states in the series, particularly when any character is screaming. This is mostly from Michael's characters like Firey, Leafy, Bubble, Flower, and Four as Michael heavily overdoes and forces the accents compared to past seasons where the accents were more mild.
- Many bad or mediocre episodes:
- X Marks the Spot (BFB 17, which started the post-split era on a sour note)
- How Loe Can You Grow? (BFB 19)
- A Taste of Space (BFB 20)
- In fact the storyboard was made out too quickly, with the team believing Ruby would survive over Gelatin. At the last second, Gelatin survived, which lead them to have to alter the storyboard heavily. A PNG of Gelatin was plastered over Ruby every time she spoke. To add even more to this, Ruby made a cameo on the Sun as an error.
- Fashion For Your Face! (BFB 23)
- The Tweested Temple (BFB 25)
- Awkward and inconsistent animation in earlier episodes that it felt more like a MAP or a fan-made animation due to Jacknjellify hiring as many animators as they can. Although it later improved, it is still noticeable at times.
- Quantity over quality: While the point of this season is to be made quicker and more light-hearted as a way to bring back what BFB was originally planned for, it tries too hard to be like season 1, the season that was written back in 2010 when Cary and Michael were kids, instead of having its own identity, which resulted in poor and rushed writing, and dull and childish humor. Not to mention they barely bring up anything that happened back in pre-split expect for a brief EXITors scene in the start of "Chapter Complete" where Four makes a hypothetical season.
- Gross-out humor, like Lollipop's disgusting idea to spit from the sun back to Earth to cool X down in "How Loe Can You Grow?".
- Like pre-split, it tries to be "hip" and "trendy" such as Lollipop's "sus" joke, Announcer's rap, and most of the shorts of this era.
- Many challenges did not get executed very well, such as the aforementioned "How Loe Can You Grow?" where the episode's challenge involves growing X's aloe vera plants.
- The recommended character cameos were very infamous among Patreon supporters, some even demanding refunds. In fact, one of them, Profily (while likable), claimed they were a contestant from the start and even went as far as to be counted as an official contestant, despite immediately getting "eliminated" after "joining".
- Many of the recommended characters that made a cameo are one-dimensional and easily forgettable after a few minutes.
- Not to mention, Cary confirmed that Profily's history with competing in BFDI off-screen was non-canon, making their scenes even more pointless.
- Portable Music Player's voice actor, David Brown, would later be accused of pedophilia and abuse.
- Before he was outed and his name has been removed, he was mentioned next to the title of "Fashion For Your Face!", thinking that he might have a role or at least getting attention in some scenes, but in reality, he only shows up after 11 out of 16 minutes just to have 2 lines, then gets killed in 10 seconds. That's not how you do a guest appearance.
- The character interactions are very boring, and not as entertaining as the original BFB series due to it's shorter cast.
- A lot of challenges are boring to watch.
- Tons of unnecessary filler.
- The characters continuously state the obvious, especially at times when they recall past events.
- Despite the character development, it can inadvertently make them one-dimensional and forgettable as they are now just reduced to being generically nice characters and losing what made them special.
- It created more plot holes and continuity errors:
- In "X Marks the Spot", Ruby says that Pencil gave her box that has Freesmart Supervan inside right before she got eliminated, before Pencil claims that Ruby stole the van in TPOT 15. However in BFB 2, Pencil got sucked by Four almost immediately before she even gets a chance to do something. When and how did Ruby have the time to take it from Pencil without her noticing?
- In "Take the Tower" where Balloony tells Four to suck him to EXIT because he's eliminated but Four says that the EXIT is full, although there are 2 empty seats left since Spongy and Loser were escaped and rejoined the game.
- In "How Loe Can You Grow?" where Taco gets mad at Spongy for not wearing their friendship bracelet, while she clearly saw that Loser cut off Spongy's bracelet to climb their tower and using it to make a bridge to the other's team tower an episode ago.
- In "Fashion For Your Face!", Bubble says that she ordered a bubble transformer from Yellow Face all those years ago, either meaning that she wasn't always a bubble or she just wanted it to remove her yoyle metal effect.
- In "Uprooting Everything" when Flower gets her prize for being safe, which is a bug, she's doesn't seem to be scared at all like she was in the first season.
- While she said in "SOS (Save Our Show)" that she has been working to overcome her fears to bugs, nobody has questioned or mentioned about that at all 2 episodes prior, possibly because the writers forgot that she's used to be afraid of bugs and wanted to do something to fix that.
- In the flashback of "SOS (Save Our Show)", it's shown that the Announcer used Gelatin to disguise himself, although Gelatin was dead at the time of the flashback.
- How can Woody form full sentences in "SOS (Save Our Show)" and "Chapter Complete"? He never learnt to speak in full sentences as he always speaks in gibberish, and he needed Four as a translator so everyone can understand him.
- It still didn't explain what happened to dream island and how it got destroyed since it never appeared again after Leafy stole it from Firey back in season 1 finale, yet Firey and Leafy decided to search for a new island so they can make it their own dream island at the end of "Chapter Complete".
- Overall, this is exactly why you should never make a season with 64 contestants, especially since it can be hard to give them time for developing or appearing them talk or compete in challenges, even if everyone got their shine in BFB 1, 13, 14, 17, 22, 29 and 30 the rest of the season had some of the characters either not talking, not competing, being there for filler, or even not appearing at all.
- While the decision to split the seasons into two shows (this and BFDI:TPOT), while very flawed, was a good decision. It didn’t help matters that the original idea was to kill off the contestants competing in BFDI:TPOT, topped with the fact that this post-split era of BFB ended up the way it did, which has been explained above.
True Blue Friend Qualities
- Despite the flaws, it’s still considered a decent season by many and is not a total flop.
- The show improved in later episodes and became great again with it's sister show, Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two (with many fans considering that the best season of the series).
- The animation is still decent, having improved a lot in later episodes thanks to new animators being recruited.
- The backgrounds are very good and detailed, especially the Pillary Ruins.
- They go to new and different places more often instead of usually competing in one place, which it can be interesting and entertaining.
- Some contestants are still likable and enjoyable, thanks to them not suffering from flanderization.
- Despite Sam Thornbury's claim of Profily being an "official" contestant, Cary has confirmed that this isn't true, and that were actually 64 contestants instead of 65.
- "Who Stole Donut's Diary?" (BFB 22), "S.O.S. (Save Our Show)" (BFB 29), and "Chapter Complete" (BFB 30) are the best episodes, the latter ended this half season, and the season overall, on high regard.
- There's also some alright episodes as "Take the Tower" (BFB 18) and "The Hidden Contentant" (BFB 26).
- The humor can still be funny at times, such as:
- "Care to give me some air? No straw needed." - Lollipop
- "I put a block around all of the Earth." - Blocky
- Well-created and enjoyable character development:
- Flower is more kinder here than in BFDI and even shares her prize with Gelatin.
- Firey and Leafy finally make up in this series and become close friends again (though they learn the hard way to never hug). In the finale they even sail out to find a dream island of their own.
- After going on an emotional rampage in the finale, Four learns that despite the mistakes he made, the contestants who stayed to battle for his prize still care about him and enjoyed battling for the rest of the season. Four apologizes and redeems himself of most of his bad traits.
- Blocky is no longer a bully and even went as far as to befriend Woody, one of his first victims in the early episodes.
- "Message to Loser" is a great song.
- The Announcer comes back to host for the first time in over 9 years.
- Jacknjellify apologized and gave refunds to the Patreon supporters who were upset about the recommended character cameos.
Reception
Battle for BFB was met with mixed reviews among fans. "How Loe Can You Grow" is the lowest rated episode on IMDb with 4.7, following would be "X Marks the Spot", "A Taste of Space", and "The Tweested Temple" with ratings of 5.0, 5.1, and 5.3 each.
Videos
Trivia
- Cary later admitted on a livestream that he hates the season[1] and the way Four was handled.
Reference
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