#skyhooks II review

[animation-recaps-by-sean]

Adventure Time- Elements Hero Heart/Skyhooks II Recap

The fate of Ooo is left in Lumpy Space princess’ hands. Spoilers below. 

The episode begins with the fire people attacking the candy people with started out funny. They where just so happy they didn’t care but it got old before the episode was over. Finn attacks Princess Bubblegum, but LSP slaps him with PB’s hair. This reminds him of his failed romance of hair, the misunderstanding of the hair gift, the deaging, but soon he remembers hanging out with her, and being friends, and Finn calm down and he turns to normal. he gets PB’s jewel. 

PB decides to turn everyone she in Ooo into a candy person and sends out a wave  because she can just do that. Patience freezes herself like she did back before the mushroom war. 

Betty and Ice King fly in on a magic carpet. Finn climbs on gives her the jewels but she pushes him off.

Finn finally realizes that LSP isn’t effected by the elements, deducing that she’s some kind of anti-elemental as Lumpiness.  

 Meanwhile Betty uses the three jewels along with Ice King’s crown to open a portal into the past so she can stop Simon from finding the crown and stop the mushroom war from happening. She would be effectively leaving everyone in this timeline for dead. It couldn’t do it. Ice King was like “a fun house” version of Simon. So like the date earlier, she’s flipping the table, but this time she’s flipping he entire universe. Betty No! I bieleved in you. Why? I wanted you to work things out with Ice King!

To be fair, from her perspective, Ooo is an awful apocalyptic wasteland. Normally we wouldn’t be shouting, “Oh no she’s going back in time to stop the nuclear war that wiped out most of humanity!” But that doesn’t matter because Ice King knocks his crown out of the way, causing Betty to teleport herself to Mars, were she mets the man who drove her mad, Normal Man. 

LSP returns everyone to normal, although she my have done a too good job on Jake as he now looks like the creature that bit his father all though years ago. Plot point picked up two and half years later. 

This was kind of a disappointment, it’s like the producers and writers either had two ideas that the couldn’t fit one in two episodes or they couldn’t pick one and tried to use both. The effect is less than stellar. The last two episodes lacked focus. Which is a shame because the start of this mini-series started so strong.

Another key problem was it laid everything on the table in the third episode of the eight episode mini-series. And we never learned anything new about the world. We’ve already learned all about the elementals in previous episodes. And it didn’t even have an ending. We never learned what happen to Patience. Is she still frozen? Did LSP anti elemental effect her or is she still giant? We don’t know.

This miniseries had some great moments, but it’s parts where greater than there sums. 

I give “Hero Heart” and “Skyhooks II” two elementals out of four. 

[bucky-not-barnes]

Dgd albums >:D

hi hii :)

i’m going to review all of the dgd albums here so that you don’t have to suffer through each individual album because there are a lot.

early demos:

this isn’t on any streaming platforms sadly, but there’s a video on youtube that has their early demos for wisro, including one song that didn’t get onto the ep. they changed the titles of the songs as well, but i really like how their sound changed from these demos to the actual release.

whatever i say is royal ocean:

this is kind of a controversial take, but i personally love wisro. the cover photo is of a painting that jon made, and i think it’s the only time that his art has made it onto a dgd project. LP2 by secret band and self titled by secret band both have his art. this was the first of their projects that i listened to, and i loved seeing how they progressed through the years.

favourite tracks: robot with human hair, pt. 1 and 2, tidal waves, the importance of cocaine.

overall rating: 10/10 >:3

downtown battle mountain:

first album!!! very swag. this is probably my favourite project with jonny craig. personally i like jon’s older vocals, and this album has some of the best vocals for both of them. one of the first songs that i listened to, lemon meringue tie, is on this album as well. it’s also one of the only songs that has drums at the very beginning. with this album, i either love the songs, or don’t really care for them much.

favourite tracks: and i told them i invented times new roman, lemon meringue tie, it’s safe to say you dig the backseat, the backwards pumpkin song, 12 hours 360 miles.

overall rating: 8/10

dance gavin dance:

also called death star or self titled

this album is my favourite. this is the first one with kurt, and this is when the lineup changes start happening. uneasy hearts is my all time favourite of theirs, and every song on this record is amazing. kurt has a very similar vocal style to tilian, and his solo music and gold necklace album are phenomenal as well.

favourite tracks: uneasy hearts weigh the most, alex english, me and zoloft get along just fine, caviar, rock solid, skyhook.

overall rating: 100/10

happiness:

the lineup for this album is complicated. kurt is still the clean vocalist, but jon left for a few years due to lyme disease, college, and his best friend leaving the band as well. any of the unclean vocals are done by guitarist will swan. i didn’t like this album much till recently, but it’s started to grow on me more.

favourite tracks: tree village, nasa, carl barker, happiness, don’t tell dave.

overall rating: 7.5/10

downtown battle mountain ii:

“dance gavin dance babyyyy downtown battle mountain twoooooo”

anyway. here we have: the return of jonny craig!! :,) but more importantly, jon mess is back!!!! this album is okay. same with dbm one, i either really like the songs or don’t. this is the first album that has will rapping (i might be wrong? i can’t remember).

favourite tracks: spooks, pounce bounce, thug city, elder goose, heat seeking ghost of sex

overall rating: 7/10

acceptance speech:

tilian!!!!! finally jonny craig is gone for good lmao. this album is PHENOMENAL. i love it. the instrumentals are probably my favourite part, but the vocals are incredible too. some of the runs that tilian does (especially in doom and gloom) are just pure perfection. this is whenever the albums really start to get their own individual sounds. i love this one sm.

favourite tracks: jesus h. macy, doom & gloom, demo team, death of the robot with human hair, the jiggler.

instant gratification:

this one was also an album that i didn’t enjoy until recently. stream wise, it’s their most popular album. “we own the night” is their most popular song, and it’s on this album. now that i’ve listened to it through a few times, i really like it. there are quite a few parts where the guitar really stands out.

favourite songs: something new, on the run, shark dad, awkward, eagles vs. crows, variation.

overall rating: 9/10

mothership

if i remember correctly (and i might not be), this was the first tilian-era album i heard. i genuinely loved every song on this album, but whenever i heard flossie dickie bounce i was,, confused. i looked up the lyrics immediately to check if i was hearing wrong. no, the chorus is actually “cocaine cringe fest” like 3 times. i hated that song at first, because i was like “dude wtf.” but now i love it. absolutely phenomenal. that song is actually a really good example of how a lot of dgd songs won’t be good for the first few listens, but it clicks after a bit. the podcast that i was listening to today actually talked about that. so yeah!! flossie dickie bounce is,, a song for sure.

favourite songs: young robot, deception, philosopher king, petting zoo justice

overall rating: 10/10

artificial selection:

this album is whenever the lore really gets started. but that’s a post for another day lmao :,) this album has lots of very fancy riffs and it sounds super Swag :) honestly i’m still waiting for some of the songs on this album to click with me. i don’t have many things to say :,) good album. lore swag. yeah :)

favourite songs: son of robot, count bassy, suspended in this disaster, story of my bros, hair song.

overall rating: 8/10

afterburner:

100/10. beautiful. all of the blends of genres. the only critique i have is that tilians accent is so american in calentamiento global, but it’s okay. he’s doing his best :,) also the fact that there’s rap, experimental vocals with jon and tilian, and a bilmuri feature just,,, YES.

favourite songs: prisoner, parody catharsis, born to fail, parallels, night sway, say hi, nothing shameful, into the sunset.

OKAY!!!! i did it. thanks for sticking with me!!!! pls don’t cyber bully me these are just my opinions okay bye!!

[gunterfan1992]

Episode Review: ‘Bonnibel Bubblegum‘ (S09E18)

Airdate: September 17, 2017

Story by: Adam Muto, Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, Julia Pott

Storyboarded by: Hanna K. Nyström & Aleks Sennwald

Directed by: Diana Lafyatis (supervising), Sandra Lee (art)

Princess Bubblegum’s origin story has been one of Adventure Time’s most tantalizing mysteries, presented to us in bits and pieces throughout the shows seasons-long run. In ten seasons, we’ve learned quite a bit about the candy monarch (we know that she was spawned from a gum wad along with her brother Neddy, we know the story of her early kingdom during the time of Shoko, and we know that she befriend Marceline many moons ago), but until “Bonnibel Bubblegum” we the viewers were never privy to how the Bubblegum became the leader of a candy empire.

I guess they’re saving the best stories for last, eh?

“Bonnibel Bubblegum” opens with Finn, Jake, Bubblegum, and Marceline chilling near a river. Finn presents Bubblegum with a silver goblet full of apple juice, to which Bubblegum remarks that it reminds her of a cup that her uncle had made many years ago. Finn and Jake are caught off-guard because Bubblegum rarely talkes about her past and has never discussed her family with them, despite their being fairly close friends. With a captive audience, Bubblegum begins to talk about the rise of the Candy Kingdom and the fall of her Uncle Gumbald...

The story then shifts to roughly 800 years into the past. It was during this time that Princess Bubblegum was but a young girl trying to establish her kingdom in a dangerous and desolate land. Eventually, after moving from the protection of the mothergum, she selected a small tree near a mutagenic river to serve as her capitol while she scoured the land for bits and bobs that she could use to raise up an empire. Because she only had her brother Neddy to keep her company, Bubblegum decided to bio-engineer a family: an aunt named Lolly, a cousin named Chicle, and a great uncle named Gumbald.

At first, the five got along quite harmoniously, but soon, the familiar bonds that united these candy entities began to fracture. The first sign of trouble came when Gumbald felled Bubblegum’s forest of taffy trees and used the wood to erect a cabin; Gumbald told his niece that by building the structure, he hoped to begin construction of a new candy city. Bubblegum became frustrated with her uncle’s rampant self-promotion (for instance, he produced a number of promotional silver goblets with a crest of his face stamped on the inside), and so to foil his plan and get him to yield to her, Bubblegum used one of her science experiments to engineer Butterscotch Lake near Gumbald’s cabin. Because he was planning on putting his gift shop in that space, Uncle Gumbald reacts with anger, vowing to curb Bubblegum’s micromanaging tendencies.

To distract Bubblegum, Gumbald created her a boyfriend, Young Mr. Cream Puff, and sent the two off on a date. With his domineering niece out of the way for the time being, he called a family meeting with Chicle and Lolly, explaining that he had created a ‘dumdum juice’ that would render Bubblegum docile. He then poisoned his family to prove the formulas efficacy: the potion turned Lolly into Manfried the pinata and Chicle into Crunchy. But little did Gumbald know that Bubblegum was witnessing the whole ordeal; after a brief scuffle, Gumbald’s potion was dumped onto his face, turning him into Punchy the punch bowl.

The episode then jumps back to the present. After inspecting the cup, Bubblegum is shocked to realize that it bears Gumbald’s crest.

I’m appreciative that the writers and producers for Adventure Time understand the importance of continuity. In a world as sprawling and silly as Ooo, it would be easy to hit the reset button at the beginning of every episode, but such an approach would cause the world to lose a sense of realness (which I do realize is a bit silly to say, since this is a cartoon). Instead, the writers of Adventure Time often double-down on maintaining in-world consistency. In this episode, this takes on the form of expanding on the history of characters and providing backstories for certain locations (Gumbald’s felled forest first seen in “Susan Strong”, his cabin that was first visited in “Hot Diggity Doom”). The episode also makes use of the artful retcon by retroactively inserting Uncle Gumbald into the story by arguing he has been there all a long as Punchy.

But how, might you ask, did Punchy revert back into Gumbald? The answer has to do with Elements. At the end, when Lumpy Space Princess’s anti-elemental essence was pulsating throughout Ooo, characters who had been magicked or otherwise transmogrified were reverted to their original form (and unrelated ot the topic at hand, this is likely how the Lich awoke in Sweet P). In one shot in “Skyhooks II”, we see Manfried, Punchy, and Crunchy all standing together. It stands to reason that when the anti-elemental wave hit them, they reverted back to Lolly, Gumbald, and Chicle. How clever!

Throughout the episode, it is clear that Gumbald is driven by a desire to create, promote, and then sell. Much of what he does revolves around making capital; for instance, he created a slew of merch to woo people into living in his new town and he was furious that Bubblegum's butterscotch lake took the place of his gift shop. Given that Adventure Time has never strayed away from criticizing absurd capitalism (e.g. “Furniture & Meat”), it seems to my mind that Gumbald represents what the Candy Kingdom could have become had rampant materialism and unfettered capitalism taken the wheel. Contrasting the diabolical and money-hungry Gumbald with the well-meaning but micro-managing Bubblegum is important in my mind because it continues the trend of reforming Bubblegum’s image—a trend that began around mid-season six when Bubblegum vowed to turn off her extensive surveillance system. Prior to this shift, Bubblegum was often derided by fans of the show for being autocratic and deranged. With this episode, however, the show further suggests that while her methods in the past were not great, she was/is a much better leader than a money-hungry kleptocrat like Gumbald. What is more, this episode suggests that some of her more unsavory behaviors might not really be her fault, but rather instinctual and unconscious reactions caused by her family’s coup d’etate those many years ago.

“Bonnibel Bubblegum” was storyboarded by two of my favorite Adventure Time artists: Hanna K. Nyström & Aleks Sennwald. Given that their last episode, “Fionna & Cake & Fionna” was a bit disjointed, it was nice to see them return to true form with this episode. Both Nyström and Sennwald are quite funny and gifted writers, but what makes their episodes so strong is that they seem to fundamentally understand how characters like Bubblegum think and act. It’s hard to explain, but watching these two artists handle the characters just feels right.

And speaking of feeling right, I enjoy how the episode presents Finn, Jake, PB, and Marceline all hanging out together. No real excuse is given, other than four friends killing time and having fun. To reiterate what I said earlier, it is writing like this that makes the world of Ooo seem so real.

Mushroom War Evidence: Because this episode largely takes place in the pre-Ooo, post-Mushroom War past, we see a lot of relics from the war. This is perhaps most true near the beginning, during the scene wherein Bubblegum rummages through what appears to be an abandoned gas station. The building’s walls are covered in graffiti, and the ruin is littered with bits of trash that suggest a rather tragic story. The desert that Bubblegum then traverses through is full of war rubble. When Gumbald shows Bubblegum his cabin, the area around the house is littered with debris and refuse.

Final Grade:

[tuiyla]

I’m doing a sort of kind of live-blogging of the new Adventure Time miniseries, “Elements” (of the leaks anyway, because CN is incompetent and I’m immoral well iTunes same difference). I’m going to write a proper, collective review (along with “Orb”), but I have to get my thoughts out before that. So, starting with “Skyhooks”:

the “Elements” title cards are simply just gorgeous

Jake just ran out of fucks to give and it’s wonderful

Finn has grown so much, like his first reaction to everything being candy is to think it was PB messing it all up again, and honestly? fair enough, at leats he’s not idolizing her anymore but seeing her for the problematic fave she is

Lemonpink is just as disturbing as Lemongrab, bless Justin Roiland

“Sour’s get the tower” well that’s not ominous at all

“maybe they don’t need you to fix them” wow Jake, offering some deep advice right off

just at the moment I was thinking Marcy wouldn’t be in this miniseries at all, she’s A FUCKINg MARSHMELLOW… THING! PB the fuck have you done

Marshmeline… yeah right

“anyone that’s overwhelmed with work or responsibility” so you wrote that song for your girlfriend, basically, bless you Marcy- Marshie, I guess

NO, guys, I wanted to hear that song, dammit

Olivia Olson humming Greensleeves… something I never knew I needed yet my life before seems devoid of perfection

“she’s everywhere” okay Marcy I appreciate the heart eyes but that’s creepy

“fixed them” oh PB you sick tyrant, love Finn fighting back tho

I have a lot of feels about Marshie hanging around PB even still, despite the whole concept being fucked up… #shippingituntiltheend

BMO is just so chill, sometimes I envy that

Ice King saves the day, because of course he does

Skyhooks, hmm, curious that the title should gain significance at the very end, especially considering that the last ep is called “Skyhooks II”, so we’re getting a nice frame again

[thegeekiary]

Where we left off, Betty decided to go AWOL, leaving Finn to be zombified by the candy people, while absconding on the magic carpet with Ice King and the elemental jewels. What’s her real plan, and how will Ooo be restored? It’s time for Elements to come to a close in “Skyhooks II”.

READ MORE:  Adventure Time 8×23 Review: “Skyhooks II”

[tuiyla]

Skyhooks II thoughts:

“my friend Finn” oh IK

I mean I did call Betty betraying Finn

Marcy is just casually floating around PB

nice Bubbline duet, I guess, I’ll take what I can get

so the Cloud and Lumpy Space Kingdoms are special

the fifth element, but there are still others… ah well

“shouldn’t live in the past” “why not” Betty that’s no way to go about it, look at Marcy, she got over it

the Mushroom War and the Cosmic Owl and Prismo, they really went for cameos here

“the most you you’ve ever been” nice

maybe in another 1000 years Patience will do what she wants, whatever that truly is

there’s also the question of Sweet P and whether the Lich will be more powerful in him now

Marcy, of course with the What Was Missing outfit, because stab me why don’t you, and catch PB in your arms while you’re at it

Jake became his pure essence?

it all ends on the fixing note and brothers being brothers

I’m going to elaborate in my proper review, but I’m glad the miniseries is going to have actual consequences