Battle for BFB (season 4b)
Battle for BFB | ||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
"What if I brought back the original BFDI, as a prize?"
— Four
| ||||||||||||||||
|
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.
Big Rotating Building Qualities That Are a True Blue Enemy and Need to EXIT
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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?".
- 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.
- 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.
- The characters continuously state the obvious, especially at times when they recall past events.
- 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) 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.
- Despite the character development, it can inadvertently make them one-dimensional and forgettable as they are now just reduced to being generically nice characters. Flower and Blocky, two of the biggest bullies in the first season, are now much nicer here.
True Blue Friend Qualities
- Despite the flaws, it’s still considered a decent season by many and is not a total flop.
- The show quickly 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 very spot-on, having improved alot thanks to new animators being recruited.
- Everyone is 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), "The Hidden Contentant" (BFB 26)
- Well-created and enjoyable character development for pretty much everyone:
- 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.
- "I put a block around all of the Earth."
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.