Amphibia Review: Ivy on the Run / After the Rain

"We all have our off-days, I suppose."

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This week's episodes were "Ivy on the Run" and "After the Rain." My editor told me to add more to this part but I feel like that would be stalling, and if you've gone out of your way to read what I write, you don't deserve that! You deserve the best. So I hope your general circumstances are comfortable and good. If they aren't, I hope this review makes them better. I don't know how it could, but I'm not you. Anyway: episodes!

If there's anything that always works in Amphibia's favor, it's shifting the focus out of our core cast of characters and giving peripheral figures more of a chance to shine. Ivy Sundew, especially, has proven herself to be particularly endearing, a rare instance of a romantic foil done right. A lot of that comes down to the fact that she's always felt fleshed out beyond just being half of Sprigivy; she matches her counterpart with a fistful of spunk but the same adventurous, sunny spirit. It's because of the sheer joy of her character that "Ivy on the Run" works, giving its rudimentary plot a fun paint job.

Amphibia Review: Night Drivers / Return to Wartwood

"Oh no! Who could have predicted this?" "Don't overdo it."

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Hi! Due to my current circumstances of being in college during a particularly hectic semester, I'll be experimenting over the next few weeks with trying to find a way to write shorter, quicker, and more succinct reviews. While I'm sure there are some people dismayed by this change, I think this is far more ideal than not being able to push reviews out at all, and the length shouldn't come at the expense of quality. And if you're still upset: pay me! I'll do more if you pay me, and that's only a partial joke.

Anyway, the review! There's a lot of excitement surrounding how Amphibia would choose to kick off the next leg of its season, but perhaps it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that "Night Drivers" fires everything back up by sticking to its guns, unraveling its narrative, more than less, as you'd expect. I don't intend to sling mud, and to Amphibia's credit, it's a show that's so tightly-written that it's hard for an episode to truly go wrong. That can also serve as a restraint, though, rolling out episodes that are certainly pleasant but, in the long run, unadventurous and indistinct. "Night Drivers" is one such case, an episode that's satisfying in a vacuum, but just another speck in the crowd.

Amphibia Review: The Shut-In!

"Nightmares are real!"

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Well, it's that spooky-ass time of year again. Admittedly, spookiness has sort of persisted across the entirety of this year, and perhaps most ironically, October isn't really shaking up to be any more scary than any other month this time around, but escapism! While Halloween in the traditional sense might be cancelled, there's nothing like a good Halloween episode to stir us into that fun, autumn mood, and "The Shut-In!" is pretty much exactly that.

Continuing television's long-held tradition of fictitious-but-eerily-comparable holidays, this isn't technically a Halloween episode. It's all about Amphibia's warped version, the Blue Moon Shut-In, the night where the moon turns blue and everyone locks themselves inside of their homes and tells stories until the sun rises again out of fear that staring at the moon could transform them into horrifying beasts. (There's also jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating for practical supplies, but... it's not a holiday.)

I was initially a little hesitant about how this episode falls into the narrative of the show, to be honest. It feels a little odd considering how elegantly last episode wrapped up this leg of the season, with Anne setting off to Wartwood once more and Marcy being approached with an ominous proposition from the King, for us to suddenly be back home without any indication of time passing. I honestly feel like that plays to the show's benefit, though, in retrospect. A good holiday special should have a relatively timeless quality to it, and there's something of an appreciable coziness to being back home, bereft of narrative complications, for some fun, scary stories.

Amphibia Review: The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers / A Day at the Aquarium

"These will be formative memories."

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Another week, another late, late review. Let's dive in!

It feels a bit weird how little we've seen of Marcy since her debut; even though "Scavenger Hunt" gave her a decent amount of character work, as with "Marcy at the Gates," the focus was still largely on Anne's relationship to her rather than vice versa. "The Sleepover to End All Sleepovers" is a similarly safe take on the characters to some extent, but it manages to find a new energy in putting the two, unequivocally, on the same side, and with no internal conflict between them in sight. Instead, it's just a night for them, Sprig, and Polly to have fun at the castle, uncover some secrets, and reflect on their missing friend.

Even if I've been a little colder on the Newtopia episodes than I'd like to be, I'm very much a fan of how Amphibia has been plotting itself. The show takes advantage of very episodic sensibilities, but tightly wound around a linear timeline, and through that, it's able to dutifully examine every potential shift in the status quo and its characters with a nice amount of care. There can be some weirdness to rise out of it—the pacing might not be everyone's style, and I feel like we've been struggling a bit to plug Marcy into things—but for the most part, it's offered Season 2 a level of variability and freshness that I feel last season lacked. In the case of "Sleepover," the immediate acknowledgement that this is the night before Anne and the Plantars reconvene with King Andrias ensures that the episode can occupy a specific time and place, but its most interesting contribution is how it exists as an opportunity for Anne and Marcy to reflect upon Sasha, the sleepover queen who set forth the rules that their present sleepover abides by.

Amphibia Review: Little Frogtown / Hopping Mall

"Y'know, I've always wondered, can you miss someone you never actually knew?"

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This review is late enough, so let's just get right on into it! This week's episodes: "Little Frogtown" and "Hopping Mall." Who cried? It's okay. We'll get to that in a minute.

(Note: in light of being back in college and the lack of timeliness with this review, it will be shorter and less comprehensive. But you've seen the episodes already! You don't need me to help you with that side of things!)

"Little Frogtown" is perhaps the most keen Amphibia has ever been on prodding at the fourth wall, though under Hop Pop's voice, that's hardly a detriment. There's so little that can go wrong with a Hop Pop-led episode; he's the sort of character you could saddle with almost any premise and he'll make it work, so who better to take on the series' second big genre parody episode? (The first one, "Children of the Spore," was also notably led by him.) In this case, after Hop Pop discovers the Newtopia sandwich shop of his long-time friend abandoned and ransacked, he sets off to get to the bottom of his unexpected caper, and with the screen tinted to a grayscale and internal monologues abound, we're off to the races.

Amphibia Review: Lost in Newtopia / Sprig Gets Schooled

"TEAM P'ANNE FOR LIFE!" "...Our team name's bad." "Yeah, could be better."

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As Hop Pop says at the start of this week's batch, we've got a few days to kill before Amphibia dives back into the nitty-gritty, and that can only call for one thing: filler episodes! Sure, the term has some fairly negative connotations, but there's nothing wrong with loosening up and being able to indulge in the sense of fun at the heart of the show. That's something that both "Lost in Newtopia" and "Sprig Gets Schooled" set out to do, and while they're no great shakes, they make for pleasing enough episodes to hold us over while continuing to key into the fun in our change of setting.

"Lost in Newtopia" feels like a direct follow-up to last week's "The Plantars Check In," giving Anne and Polly a chance to cut free in Newtopia and try to experience the city as locals (and even, amusingly, holding Sprig back after his big solo outing). It's a pretty decent conceit, and most importantly, a great opportunity for Amphibia to actualize the sorts of ideas that powered its conception in the first place; more than any other episode, it's most certainly an ode to Matt Braly's childhood trips to Thailand and the outsider feelings that coincided with them.

Amphibia Review: Scavenger Hunt / The Plantars Check In

"C'mon team, it's PUZZLE TIME!"

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In light of last week’s Marcy extravaganza, I was naturally very curious to see the sort of road that Amphibia would take following such a massive development—would the show barrel into the heavy subject matter that such a shift implies, or would it spend time getting comfortable with our newest addition to the cast? “Scavenger Hunt” and “The Plantars Check In” do a little bit of both, and although the Amphibia takes it pretty easy for this batch, it’s also the show excelling at what it does best, with great character work and sharp joke-writing galore.

“Scavenger Hunt” is a fairly standard way to follow up “Marcy at the Gates,” but it certainly works well. If that episode was intent on exploring the two characters’ new and transformed dynamic, with Marcy now being a respectable ranger for the royal guard and bearing a greater degree of autonomy, “Scavenger Hunt” dives into a pesky fragment of their relationship from back home: Anne’s inability to cope with feeling inferior to her friend’s astounding intelligence and puzzle-solving skills. Hop Pop and Polly fawning over Marcy at Anne's expense, too, only serves to aggravate those self-doubts.

Amphibia Review: Marcy at the Gates

"Let me see that power pose!"

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With our arrival to Newtopia, we've officially reached the season's first big shift. I'm, admittedly, a little saddened to see the road trip aspect gone so soon, but there's something undeniably promising about how eager Amphibia is to keep pushing its narrative forward, unafraid of dedicating itself to the ideas that it's orchestrated. While those may be as opaque as ever, though, as of right now, Anne and the Plantars have reached their destination, and equally important if not moreso, we've found Marcy!

Marcy's always been something of a mystery over the course of the series. We know that she was transported to Amphibia alongside Anne and Sasha, but beyond that, she's not someone that the show has been too intent to comment upon; her whereabouts persisted simply as one of the show's many loopholes, left at the sidelines until it could be meaningfully addressed. It's a joy, then, to finally be able to see what Marcy's personality is like beyond what little has been established: that she's a best friend of Anne and Sasha's, and that judging by the opening intro, she was very shocked to be sucked into the Calamity Box.

Amphibia Review: Swamp and Sensibility / Wax Museum

"SWEET TADPOLE MARY!"

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I feel like it makes for an interesting sidenote to acknowledge that, if Amphibia was being churned out at the same rate as last season, Season 2 would've already concluded; instead, though, we've only really gotten to one major narrative shift (in last week's "Toad Catcher"), with the show as a whole cruising along at a nice steady rate that I feel has really assisted in my ability to assess the show with contentedness. It's nice to get a better idea of what the show is supposed to feel like, unwinding on its own terms without the contrived urgency that its eight-episodes-per-week release model created, without allowing any episodes so far to really slip through the cracks... not like an episode as notable as "Wax Museum" would really have that concern.

"Swamp and Sensibility" certainly does, not to knock on the episode too much. It's nice but no shake-up, finding our protagonists taking an unexpected pit stop in Ribbitvale, the most expensive town in all of Amphibia, only to unexpectedly spot... One-Eyed Wally? His return is pretty exciting—he's the latest contestant in Season 2's game of recontextualizing the characters we met along the preceding season, and I've always had a soft spot for the guy—and the revelation that he's actually more properly known as Walliam, the progency of the rich Ribbiton family and heir to their family fortune, makes for a nice, unexpected bit of revision.

It threatens to undo some of Wally's charm, but using that bit of personal history to accentuate his love for living like a tramp is as smart of a way to go about things as Amphibia can get. In a lot of ways, it shares DNA with Season 1's fantastic "Wally and Anne," instilling the usually-wacky character with an appreciable level of heart and depth to ensure he's more than just a wild card in the cast. Little touches the episode makes along the way, too, like Wally hiding accordions under the floorboards of every room in the family mansion to keep himself sane, speak to the sweet degree that its conception is realized.

Amphibia Review: Quarrelers Pass / Toad Catcher

"Do you have to do this every single time?" "Honestly yes, repetition helps it stick."

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A new week, two new episodes. It's hard to really draw a connection between our latest set, but to me, they represent the show at its highest degree of functioning, yielding a solidly fun, character piece for the Plantars in the front, and setting the stage for the quieter ongoing narrative going on in the back. Let's dive in.

"Quarrelers Pass" is the more inconsequential of the two episodes, but it's still enjoyable in its own right, despite being fated to fly under the radar. Its set-up is incredibly simple: Sprig and Polly's quarreling reaches the point of becoming a hindrance on Anne and Hop Pop's enjoyment of their journey to Newtopia, and when their path splits into two (though with both looping back in on each other), they decide to separate themselves from the pair and set them out on Quarrelers Pass, "a road of reconciliation for weary travel mates." Sprig and Polly, then, are tasked with hashing out their problems and getting to the other side in one piece.

In light of how I was fairly critical of Polly in her episode from last week, "Truck Stop Polly," I think it's worth commenting on the fact that she works in this episode to astonishingly great effect. Part of that is probably how much of the episode is ingrained in her caustic tone and unstable relationship with Sprig, which is the perfect vehicle for her personality quirks, but more importantly, it's neutralized by Sprig clapping back. "Truck Stop Polly" struggled because there was nothing she could bounce off of, instead having her spend almost 11 minutes talking to herself, but we're able to hit the ground running with someone else in the mix to help power the episode along and create a fun dynamic.

Amphibia Review: Truck Stop Polly / A Caravan Named Desire

"Zap-tag, anyone?"

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As I mentioned in my last review, one of the most enjoyable parts of this chapter of Amphibia is the fact that we're no longer stuck in Wartwood, and that freedom means that whatever idea is fueling an episode, it'll feel truly unique and have its own sense of atmosphere. Whether or not an episode succeeds or struggles, though, is a matter of how well the show is able to use its new environments to make interesting revelations about its characters or push a certain theme. Anne, Sprig, Hop Pop, and Polly will always be at the forefront amid a rotating cast, and even if that means we won't get to see whoever each episode introduces be fleshed out over a longer period of time, it's an opportunity for rapid-fire character portraiture and seeing how our core four make the most of it.

All of that promise can also lead to mixed results from time to time, admittedly. In the case of "Truck Stop Polly," while its setting of a grungey truck stop opens the doors for a different crowd of characters and some fun visuals, its prospects get nixed a bit much by the fact that it's dedicated entirely to Polly, who remains the only character that I've remained unsold on.

I haven't actually written about her too much, and a lot of that is just because my general feelings towards her haven't changed since she was introduced. She's Amphibia's easy source of comic relief, affronting the comparative mellowness of the other main characters with her instability and impulsive nature. I can somewhat get how that was used as a subversive asset earlier on in the show, but as Amphibia developed and matured over its first season, I feel like Polly has felt more and more out of place. She no longer provides a unique contrast to the good-natured spirit of the show; the frequent, dark musings from Hop Pop, Sprig, and Anne do that perfectly.

Amphibia Review: The Ballad of Hopediah Plantar / Anne Hunter

"Audiences want clear stakes, Hop Pop! And action."

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In my last review, I delved into a lot of my general thoughts in terms of where I stand with Amphibia; it's a show that I appreciate deeply, but also a show that still feels cozily embryonic at times. It knows what it wants, but throughout Season 1, I rarely saw it trying to explore different paths, leading to a solid but streamlined feel. My greatest hope, then, is for Season 2 to demonstrate a willingness to defy expectations and ultimately find a distinct voice among its competitors, and with this batch of episodes, I feel like we might be getting on the right path.

"The Ballad of Hopediah Plantar" certainly stands in raw defiance to audience expectations, at the very least. There's a formula deeply-embedded in most of the show's episodes; a character or group of characters commit some cardinal mistake that sends them scrambling to resurrect goodwill in an attempt to salvage the situation, always ending in some happy ending that puts a nice cap on proceedings. While this episode certainly follows those basic, initial beats, it also shows an interest in tampering with that formula, and the final outcome is potentially one of Amphibia's most quietly daring episodes yet.

Amphibia Review: Handy Anne / Fort in the Road (and Other Season 2 Thoughts)

"Anne! What the heck is a disk?!" "I don't know! I'm from another dimension, not the '90s!"

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When Amphibia's second season was announced, I had a lot of mixed feelings. I'm not sure how much of that was simply off-set by circumstance; beyond the fact that I'm trying to balance coverage of soon-to-be two other shows right now, writing about the first season, indebted to its agonizing release cycle, drove me up a wall. While that churned through the season far too fast for it to really be discussed to my liking, it also presented the occasionally repetitious patterns of the show that fueled my nervousness about its longevity. Amphibia is funny as all hell, clever, and endearing, but as we enter the new season, it's still quietly juggling the same set of issues.

As much as the show entertains me, I feel like there's always been something of a question in regards to, "What about Amphibia makes it Amphibia?" Some shows are able to find an identity incredibly easily, and through that, a unique perspective that makes them immediately enjoyable enough to allow you to tolerate their inevitable ebb and flow. If there's one thing I can say about Amphibia, it's that it came out fully-formed and packed with a certain swagger, smart writing, and strong characters for that writing to live through... but that's about it. As the first season unfolded, it demonstrated an admirable level of craftsmanship, but few revelatory moments.

I think what I'm trying to say is that even though Amphibia is incredibly enjoyable, it's also very safe, and it needs to show an interest in taking risks and working outside of its conventions to really prove what makes it worth investing in and find a unique pulse. This season, I wanna see the show demonstrate that it's got that intangible special something, because I know it's there, buried deep down.

Amphibia Review: Reunion

"Spranne against the world."

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This the moment we've all been waiting for, and it was worth the journey. More than just being the pinnacle of everything that happened over the past month, "Reunion" is Amphibia showing its dramatic potential, an entry that looks to prove the series' worth amidst its contemporaries, and in that respect, it's a massive success. This is a show demonstrating that it knows what it's doing, and demonstrating that its narrative has been building up to this point while adding new, daring elements that seek to change the game that Amphibia's worked so hard to establish, and that combination of acknowledging the old while compounding the scope and vision of the show ensures that "Reunion" is a milestone.

A lot of its success is indebted to Sasha. We've only seen her in one episode prior, though she made such a strong impression that she feels fully-realized from the start. I made her out to be nothing but an antagonistic force back then keen on manipulating her friends, but "Reunion" reveals her to be a character with a lot more dimensions than simply being exploitative: as its beginning flashback reveals, she actually does value and look after what she perceives as Anne's best interests.

Amphibia Weekly Round-up Review (feat. "Cursed!," "Fiddle Me This," "Anne of the Year," and more!)

"I'm not sure if all this was a blessing, or a curse." "It was literally a curse, Anne."

Since tomorrow's episode, "Reunion," is something that'll undoubtedly be major, I'll reserve an individual slot for it considering that I assume that there will be a lot to say about it. In the meantime, though, there's six episodes to cover, so let's just dive on in, because there's lots to discuss.

In its final stretch of episodes, Amphibia's getting more ambitious, though its occasional adherence to its own norms tends to play out to its own harm. When Amphibia tries to fiddle with new, engaging ideas, it's almost always a success, getting to demonstrate the strength of its writing, but at this point in time, it can regularly get bogged down by its own sense of regularity.

Case in point: cliffhanger ending aside, I wasn't too swung by the season's penultimate episode, "Anne of the Year." It's an episode aiming to be the culmination of Anne's time in Wartwood: she's gone from a local freak of nature to Frog of the Year, voted upon by its citizens as the resident who best exemplifies selflessness and Wartwood's values. Naturally, Mayor Toadstool disagrees and prepares for disaster in the form of the massive party that the FOTY has to plan for Wartwood, and even more naturally, Anne goes crazy over it.

Amphibia Weekly Round-up Review (feat. "Croak and Punishment," "Snow Day," "Wally and Anne," and more!)

"Wow, you've gone from Town Beast to Town Protector! Big fan of that narrative."

(Because of Disney's ridiculous "eight-episodes-a-week" scheduling, I'm trying a new way to write about the show. Hopefully it works out.)

Amphibia is clearly aware of how ambitious its narrative will ultimately become, but at the moment, it's embracing a more episodic nature, with hints of its progression occasionally coming to the forefront with some level of influence. It's a sound formula, and one that allows the writing to occupy a very specific and valuable time and place: it allows its characters to establish themselves, and gives time to flesh out the universe of the show. It's just a matter of, at this point, what more the series really needs to elaborate upon, and while this past string of episodes has been consistently fun, it feels like Amphibia tends to coasts along by virtue of its own goodwill and inherent strengths, occasionally (but not always) bringing something new to the table.

Perhaps most noticeable is how many of the past few episodes have used Sprig as a catalyst for conflict, to varied effect. Entries like "Trip to the Archives" and "Family Fishing Trip" feel somewhat on auto-pilot by taking advantage of his ability to behave poorly, and even if they're just another means of him learning some valuable lesson along the way, it's a lesson he's learned enough times that the repetitive nature of his use feels sort of disruptive. There's certainly an interesting kernel to their premises, with "Trip to the Archives" being a field trip to the town archives to ready Anne for her journey and "Family Fishing Trip" showing how Hop Pop's new relationship with Sylvia affects Sprig, but they just take advantage of his ability to be petty, which feels unflattering.

Amphibia Review: Civil Wart / Hop-Popular

"Ah, theater night. The one night a month we come together, watch our stories, and forget all our horrible, horrible troubles."

Okay, I just want to get this out of the way: it's obviously Team Alastair. His eyes sparkle like stars and the dude slays with the panflutes. I'm not falling for some phony Schwarzenegger-ass lumbersexual.

Slightly less importantly, "Civil Wart" was a great episode. While the last set of episodes left me skeptical of the show's sense of ambition when not pursuing more serious parts of its narrative, "Civil Wart" immediately assuaged me of my concerns, leaping into a particularly crazy idea with full force. In this case, after Anne shows "Love Choice," a movie where two dudes compete for the love of a girl named Constance, the town gets split into two aggressive factions rallying behind each male lead, both spearheaded by the Plantar kids—Sprig is on Team Alastair, and Polly is pro-Hunter.

Sure, it's inherently funny to watch how dramatically the feud plays out, with Wartwood devolving into a warzone with a line straight down the middle of town, and the snippets of "Love Choice" we get shown are appreciably weird in how they spoof Twilight-esque movies, but the best part of the episode is just how it illustrates Sprig and Polly's brother-sister relationship. I've consistently struggled with Polly's role in the show because I feel like she never feels genuine as a character (instead dishing out mocking commentary whenever she can), but she tends to do well when she's actually in the spotlight, and "Civil Wart" is no different, allowing her to participate in some pretty nice character work.

Amphibia Review: Grubhog Day / Hop Pop and Lock

"Don't stare into the abyss, Anne. After all, it stares back."

Following yesterday's spoils, perhaps there's some disappointment to be felt in "Grubhog Day" and "Hop Pop and Lock," two episodes that very well could've happened far earlier. They don't acknowledge the changes that "Toad Tax" afforded Anne in her place in the community, most noticeably, even though it's not a necessary factor into the episodes themselves, but that still leaves room to feel somewhat disappointed by the gesture that the show was seeming to make. Either way, today's batch isn't bad—just pleasant, if unremarkable.

"Grubhog Day" is definitely the more conventional episode, and probably one of the most straightforward yet: Hop Pop makes Sprig watch over the Grubhog, Amphibia's warped take on Groundhog Day's groundhog. In traditional fashion, though, Anne convinces Sprig of a middle ground, with them taking the creature out of its cage and celebrating a day at the fairgrounds with it. Naturally, this backfires as badly as you would expect, with the Grubhog being captured by a bird and flown away.

Amphibia Review: Toad Tax / Prison Break

"Now, who wants pill bug pancakes?" "Oh, my favorite! I've been here too long."

With Amphibia at its halfway point, I was anticipating some more legitimate development in the show's narrative; most episodes in the past, after all, have been more focused on building up the show's cast of characters through more episodic, conventional subjects without taking any bold steps towards anything greater. Luckily, today's episodes delivers on every front, bringing about a sense of real change, aiming to shift the status quo and ready the second half for some exciting changes.

"Toad Tax" will tragically go somewhat underappreciated by virtue of the episode it's paired with, though both feel incredibly seminal in their own ways. Here, the show finally tackles the townsfolk's perception of Anne in a meaningful way, something that's always been somewhat in the background but never examined in such a way as to suggest a break in the cycle. As much as I enjoyed "Breakout Star," which a lot of people didn't, even I have to admit that it played more with their perceptions of Anne for laughs without making any more poignant examinations, so "Toad Tax," in that sense, feels incredibly refreshing and exciting, taking that episode's ideas and pushing them towards a certain end.

Amphibia Review: Contagi-Anne / Family Shrub

"Wow, that's uncharacteristically generous of you."

Amphibia episodes tend to play like extended proverbs and life lessons. No matter how complex the episode, there's a basic sense of lesson-learning crucial to each of them. From the very start with a basic but cleverly-subverted message about not judging books by their cover, to "Breakout Star" teaching you to never forget where you came from, there's a sort of fortune cookie mentality, with each episode dispensing some nugget of uncomplicated wisdom on its way to the finish line. It's never to the expense of the material of the show itself, and it allows for a basic throughline of optimism that connects every episode, but at a certain point, you wonder if there's really any other mode that Amphibia can switch into.

"Contagi-Anne" is, in that respect, as straightforward in its lesson-learning as it can get. Instead of helping out her new family with protecting their crops during the worst rainstorm of the year, Anne decides to fake coming down with a bad case of the Mocha Lattes, but as a result of her refusal to lend a helping hand, all the other Plantars get legitimately sick, and it's her job to take care of them. That's a fine bit of situational irony in and of itself, but there's the extra step taken of having all of them come down with a far worse ailment: a deadly disease called Red Leg, which turns you red from legs up until you croak. (Heh, frog puns.)