Day Three Hundred and Fifty-nine - Phineas and Ferb: Season 2, Episode 21, "It's CHRISTMAS! But where's Vanessa?"

Yup, Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation special (a whopping eleven minutes longer than their regular episodes) is one of my favorite holiday episodes along with Futurama's "Xmas Story." It and a third completely awesome episode from another series... that I will talk about in a bit... make up my Triumvirate of Holiday Cheer!

Set atypically for the series during Winter Vacation, Phineas and his step-brother Ferb set out to organize the town of Danville in a giant undertaking to thank Santa for all the cool presents he's given them over the years. In a giant montage of industriousness, the whole town (minus Candace) decorate the Tri-State area with all the trimmings and the boys, themselves, create a full-service rest stop for Santa to enjoy up on their roof.

Meanwhile, Agent P is snooping after Dr.Doofenshmirtz in the B-story. It seems Doof just can't get up enough apathy to ruin Christmas with his brand new Naughty-inator and has a grand musical number to relay that fact to the typically entrapped Perry. Some annoyingly persistent carolers push him over the edge, though, and he turns on the Naughty-inator, which tells the elves at the North Pole that the entire city shouldn't get any prezzies.

Booooo.

The third act of the special is all about Phineas and the gang rallying together with the help of two elves to save Christmas by creating, wrapping, and delivering every present... in a giant rocket sleigh! In the end, everybody's happy, even Doof, and things return to normal just in time for the kids' parents to arrive home with the grandparents who were flying in.

First, I should acknowledge that Phineas and Ferb is always, always cheesy, but it's a forgivable cheese. Their universe of flexible physics and convenient plot devices is so earnest and innocent, something that can't really be said in other, more Whovian universes that I've become familiar with. There's also really good comedic timing with all of the bits and musical sequences. Even if they stretch and break their own rules, it all snaps back in the end and is done in a spirit that makes the breaks not only forgivable, but hilarious.

Second, while I like the special, I do have to admit that it's not the strongest episode of Phineas and Ferb ever. For one thing, there's no Vanessa, and if you remember our previous visits to P&F for Couchbound, Vanessa is one of the main draws for me (played by Olivia Olsen who also voices Marceline on Adventure Time). For another, both the Doof story and Candace's freakouts over gifting for her boyfriend are boring as all get out, even if some of the accompanying gags (like Candace's metaphor explanations and the carolers) are fun.

I want to give a quick shoutout to Clancy Brown, who guests as Santa Claus and another hearty "I miss you" to Olivia Olsen whom was absent from this episode. Almost everyone else makes an appearance, though, from from Meep to P&F's stalker. I just wish I could've heard Olsen's beguiling tones. Oh, well. Make sure you stick around for the credits. Like Futurama before them, the P&F crew homages A Charlie Brown Christmas in a very cute way.

Now, since it's not on Netflix (at least, this year), I think I should mention what my favorite Christmas Special of all... Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas from Community. A stop-motion favorite reminiscent of Rankin and Bass animated classics like Rudolf. It's hilarious, but also poignant, as it covers a major character's holiday nervous breakdown and his friends' attempts to snap him out of his partial psychotic break with reality. It's cute, it's funny, it's animated... and darn near perfect. Too bad I have to rely on my DVDs and can't share it with you. Still, I have all my ornaments from the episode sitting next to my TV, so it sort of works.

Happy Holidays, Potatoes~

6!

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-seven - Fairy Tail: Pilot, "SHONEN FIGHTO!"

Much like GIJOE, Transformers, and the like, Japan has it's own staples of kid's anime aimed at the elementary set but finding fans of all ages. Naruto, One Piece, and Fairy Tail are all examples of such. They're light on depth, big on action and fan service, and seem to stretch on into infinity as the adventure never ends.

While I've seen (and grown bored with) both Naruto and One Piece, Fairy Tail was one of the few manga/anime titles that I never even tried. Not that I think I was missing all that much as the pilot doesn't impress, really, but it's a rarity to find a title make it over the Pacific that I haven't seen or read a little of... cause, trust me, I read A LOT of manga.

A LOT.

Anyways, Fairy Tail's opening episode follows a similar rubric as many anime (and that we've seen here on Couchbound before), a one-off intro episode that introduces several of the main characters without really plumbing their depths but definitely establishing their street-cred when it comes to powers and combat skills... as well as providing a small amount of background data on the fantasy world that they inhabit.

The more I think about it, the more Fairy Tail feels like a cross between One Piece and the Dragon Quest series of video games... and I don't just say that because the lead character Natsu seems to be on a quest to find an actual dragon. There's something about the art and character design that really reminds me of Dragon Quest 8. It definitely has a vibe similar to that universe, but with a few over the top characters that are vaguely similar to One Piece.

Being a Shonen Fight-o anime, though, it has quite a few annoying tropes that it studiously follows. There's the annoying talking animal sidekick, the über-powerful hero who initially presents himself as weak, and the easily influenced female lead (Lucy) who, despite seeming competency, quickly falls into a position where she needs to be rescued.

Take THAT, feminism!

Sadly, there's a lot of endemic misogyny in anime, and Fairy Tail is no exception. One of the other side characters (who you don't meet in the episode) is shown off as a bikini centerfold, so kudos to progress there... Lucy tries to ply her feminine wiles on a shopkeeper for a discount (and is angry that her antics only shave off a small percentage)... and, hell, the eventual plot of the episode revolves around slavers kidnapping dozens of buxom women from the town to sell off and, no doubt, ravish... though, it's never really said, just heavily implied by the date rape spell the main villain tries on Lucy.

There's not much to like about Fairy Tail aside from its generic boy's action anime tropes and devices. If you're a fan of shows like The Slayers, you'll probably find something to enjoy here, but it's all so much overpowered fluff to me. The character motivations seem a bit more grounded than the utterly ridiculous plots of One Piece, but not by much.

That said, shows like this are often immensely popular... One Piece being a prime example of extremely wide reaching in terms of its audience and fanbase. I guess I'm just an anime snob, though, as neither One Piece nor Fairy Tail are doing much for me.

At the very least, it's a plus that the series is presented with its original Japanese Dub, even if some of the jokes are lost in the English subtitles' translation (like the fireworks Tamaya shout).

My final verdict is that it's probably fun (and fine) for the older elementary and younger teen set, but don't look for depths to plumb, complex action, or witty dialogue. Fairy Tail is upper tier LCD... but still just LCD.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Ninety-five - Justice League: Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, and 3, "We go from Bruce Timm's Batman/Superman to THIS?"

To say that the Justice League cartoon started off on shaky legs is a bit of an understatement, I think.

Hot off of the Bruce Timm era of Batman: The Animated Series, which returned the animated DC universe to glory after years of cheese and fluff with the likes of Superfriends and Scooby-Doo teamups, Justice League promised to keep the feel of the late 90's cartoons.

It did this, in part, by retaining Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly as the voice actors for Batman and Superman respectively. That alone guaranteed a return audience as they were fan favs from their respective series.

Unfortunately, the production team wasn't quite sure how to bring DC's top team together without things getting awkward. It tries by lampshading everyone with a pair of tights coming together to back Clark and Bruce up via an off-screen telepathic suggestion by J'onn, the Martian Manhunter, in a similar way to how he reached out to Clark throughout episode 1.

I'd almost believe it, but we never see J'onn make contact with the other Supers we were treated to with brief sequences early in the episode, Wonder Woman and Flash, for their little intro bits. I find this to be very lazy writing on behalf of the team.

There's also the problem of the enemies being too strong in the beginning and too weak at the end. This happens several times in later episodes, but it's never more obvious than here and in the next mini-arc with the Manhunters.

All throughout episodes one and two, we're shown just how indestructible the shapeshifters who destroyed Mars are... even so much that Superman cannot easily deter them. Then, all of the sudden, most of the destruction they've wrought has been reduced to a tiny area around their factories (when it was city-wide just a few minutes previous) and they're vulnerable to just about everything... and this is BEFORE it's revealed that they're SUPER-vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation.

Let me tell you, that's an amount of cheese that even I find hard to swallow.

Graphically, I'm not all that pleased with the subtle stylistic changes they made for both Supes and Bats. The cowl's ears in particular and Clark's sunken cheekbones really annoy.
 
Eventually, once the series morphed into Justice League Unlimited and started telling smaller, more personal stories instead of grand, multi-episode punch fests, I really started to enjoy it... especially when they went with the minor leaguers like The Question. But we'll get there eventually.

For now, I can't really recommend these episodes for anything other than backfill for JLU... and that's a bit sad. They didn't even have Lois Lane doing the reporting on the invasion! Ugh.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Forty-nine - Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension, or "Epic (Made for TV) Movie Time!"

With 80's week over, I felt the need to bring back an old favorite to the Blog in order to not necessarily purge that New Wave taste from my mouth, but return me to some sense of post-millennial normalcy.

To do so, I decided to queue up the P&F made for television movie, Across the 2nd Dimension, which has the boys inadvertently helping Dr.Doofenschmirtz create a portal to an alternate dimension. Not really clear on why Doof wanted to do so, but that's generally the case with most of his Inators.

Anyways, since Perry the Platypus couldn't break cover in front of the boys to stop it, they all are transported along the great dimensional circle to a reality where Doof is an actually competent evil scientist and has taken the Tri-State Area over and everyone and everything is Doof branded and miserable.

Of course, things go wrong when the more-evil Doof decides to invade the boys' reality and dooms them all to, well, doom!

I really like this super-extra-long episode as it fulfills quite a few fanboi dreams of the show: the boys finding out that Perry is a secret agent, their ultimate human/platypus teamup, a Candace that actually participates in the shenanigans (which happens occasionally in the series, but I just like alt-Candace's attitude)... and Isabella finally lays one on Phineas.

Sadly, there are quite a few things missing or that are awkward in their implementation. For one thing, there's no alt-Vanessa. I would've really have liked to see her either more-evil version or have her show up as a resistance mole or something. At the very least, there needed to be a moment for her and either alt-Ferb or regular Ferb.

Plus, it was weird having Major Monogram as alt-Doof's butler or aide de camp or swami or whatever he was in the 2nd dimension... especially when he showed up post-thwarting with the alt-dimension Fireside Girls to arrest alt-Doof. Made no sense.

I did like the climax, though, where a deus ex device that Major Monogram introduced at the beginning of the movie is used to recreate every cool invention the boys have made all summer in order to fight the invasion of Norm-bots from the portal. It was a fun way to remind us of the good times and allow the kids and townspeople (with musical accompaniment by Love Handel!) take up arms against the overpowered Norm-bots.

Fun times, I just wish they didn't have to rely on a memory-wipe to reset everything at the end of the episode. For one thing, they could start cross-polinating the A and B stories of the regular show more often... and for another, Isabella and Phineas could finally stop the whole "one's ignorance to the love rays of the other's" bit. Sure, it's a tried and true sitcom gag, but it's run its course over the years. Need some development!

If you're a fan of P&F, I heartily recommend it. It's a quadruple long episode with tons of fun... and its tie-in game isn't that bad either. Not great, but not bad.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~