#sorry i keep getting like artists remorse half way through a comic and not wanting to finish them LMAO my head said donkey kong not funny

[civetside]

sopping wet pathetic ass harrow out of context part 2

[book-o-scams]

Double Dee Weekend Analysis Challenge

This weekend, for Double Dee Appreciation Month, a bunch of EEnE blogs have been asked by @eene-fangirl​ to analyze the climactic swamp scene from Ed, Edd n Eddy’s Big Picture Show.  In this scene, Eddy tricks Edd into believing Edd has allowed Ed and Eddy to drown in quicksand.  This leaves Edd alone with the audience for about a minute, attempting to rescue them and then sobbing over survivor’s guilt. If you’re ready to deal with that, keep reading!

If you’re interested in how my opinion of this scene has evolved, here’s another analysis of it from a few years ago.  Hopefully I don’t repeat myself too much, I only gave myself a moment to gloss over it before I started this: http://book-o-scams.tumblr.com/post/128634520423/do-you-think-you-could-do-a-review-about-the

What if the last time you saw your best friends safe and happy before their tragic deaths, one of them was pretending to be an alligator-skin bag and the other was running away from him in half naked mock-terror?  This is Edd’s lot in life.

To be serious, I want to take a moment to say this swamp is beautifully designed.  The water is so much more detailed and colorful than the flat colors on the animated water we usually see, and the silhouette trees exist in a really surreal season 1-inspired style that I can’t put into words.  What are those stripes on the trees meant to be?  Just weird lighting?  Fumes?

“WAIT!” Love this little hand gesture.

I always wonder if Eddy was already planning the prank when he led Ed away. It IMMEDIATELY upsets Edd that Eddy is out of view.  Eddy’s prank seems like it could be a response to the argument Edd and Eddy were having prior to this scene about why Edd ISN’T on this road trip (”to impress your brother”).

Graceful Swamp Nymph Edd over here....

Whoa

How did he land that jump!?

This whole shot is great. 

 As much as I would love to watch close-ups of Edd slipping all over these platforms, the crane shot communicates the loneliness of the moment, the distance between Edd and his friends, the dread that makes Ed n Eddy’s deaths seem like a possibility, and all while giving us a moment to appreciate the background art.  

The decaying stagnant location could probably be taken as a metaphor for the state of the Eds’ friendship...

The small drawings are a little sloppy, but kinda charming.  They remind me of the EEnE comics that weren’t drawn by AKA artists.

This moment of isolation also feels like a parallel to shots from the previous prank in the movie....

I love the subtle extra detail in Eddy’s hand, and the grime is good and creepy.

Maybe it’s just because lately I’ve been listening to the music I listened to backwhen BPS came out in 2009, but I feel like there’s a metaphor for Edd’s friendship with Eddy and Ed behind this whole “quicksand” visual hook. I’ll let you psychoanalyze that yourselves, but here’s a song about quicksand to help you think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo50Wv2A4uk

Gotta love that escalation from whispering to panicking!  In my previous analysis of this scene, I believe I considered the possibility that Eddy fell in this muck by accident and just ran with Edd’s suggestion that it was quicksand.  On the other hand, it’s pretty suspicious that Eddy ran off shirtless and then got dressed before jumping in here...  I think Eddy really does just know how to fake his own ignorance and predict Edd’s phobias.

I mean look at Ed in the very next shot!  He’s not even trying to make this convincing.  Very good dramatic touch on Eddy’s part to reach out for Edd, though.

I know I’m supposed to be analyzing Edd but I’m always taken by Eddy’s acting during these pranks.  In the Gag Factory, he just goes for horror movie shock value, but here it becomes clear that Eddy has thought through the dramatic potential of his own death. Look at this pageantry!

Ed’s comments, “In Manure” vs “Immature” and “to all the girls I’ve loved before,” also suggest the scriptedness of this prank.

But at least Ed’s choking here sounds genuine enough to make his other banter more believably sad that he’s going out with jokes.

More staging focused on isolating Edd from his friends.

Ed and Eddy dragging each other to their deaths, their voices fading out in the background, while Edd frantically races in the foreground to do what’s best for them.  Eddy really could not have set up a prank that conveyed the cracks in their friendship more VISUALLY, could he?

Suffocating close-ups. This anxiety is drowning Edd more than Ed and Eddy are drowning themselves!

Like tightening a noose, right, Edd?

BTW, don’t forget the significance of nooses to Bro, and by extension, Eddy!

So, seriously, what’s causing the bubbles here?  Are Ed and Eddy waiting out this prank with no oxygen or are they back in the bushes or something?

I’d like to mention how much I appreciate the subtle gritty spraypainty detail on the coloring of the quicksand, it definitely helps create the illusion that this may be more threatening than the show’s usual grimy environments.

Today on Ed, Edd n Eddy, Double Dee processes the existential horror of accidental death!

“No.”  Edd clutches his heart and attempts to restrain himself.

OOOH, good expression matching between shots!!!

“No!”  

This is such a goddamn sweaty movie.

“NO!!!!”

The very first frame of the next shot is Edd already digging and slathered in mud.  The urgency with which he throws away his germ phobia to save his friends makes his leap into the quicksand so fast it cannot be caught on film.

I love that the movie does not overstate Edd’s germ phobia and instead lets the grotesque thickness of this mud’s animation speak for itself.  Nobody would want to start wading in anything this gloppy, but Edd does it with so much energy, he is not kidding about how much he does not want Ed or Eddy to die no matter how they’ve mistreated each other in the past year.

OOH THEY FORGOT TO LINE SOME TEETH!!!

ah there they are

The first frame of Edd crying in this scene and the tears are already down his cheeks!  He’s sprung a leak now.

Edd demands to know where Ed and Eddy are.

AND WE’VE STRUCK GOLD WITH THIS FRAME-BY-FRAME ANALYSIS

to be clear I am skipping some frames.  sorry there isn’t more commentary but i think this glorious ugly-crying speaks for itself.

Edd begs them not to give up on him, the survivor’s guilt coming out full force.

“ANSWER ME!”

Edd whimpering after “...please...” is the part of this scene that breaks my heart the most.  That quiet acceptance that death is real, even in the Eds’ static world, definitely hits on the pain of losing someone close to you for the first time, a note that’s really important to land when this is so obviously (to the audience) a prank.

The tear animation on this particular expression is REALLY smooth.  Some of the dripping loops are kinda choppy but this one looks great, I love the touch with the darker eyelid skin being colored differently through the tears. It’s a perfect capper to a shot full of really incredible Edd drawings.

Again I’d like to point out that Edd’s perspective keeps switching between claustrophobic close-ups and devastating isolation.

I love how he SCREAMS and stomps around in a circle!

A little foreshadowing of the physical violence he’s going to bestow upon Eddy when they fight after the prank is revealed...

“WHY OH WHY DIDN’T YOU LISTEN TO ME!?”

I love that I can’t tell if Edd is referring to these swamp antics or the entire show. It feels a little underhanded for Edd to say this stuff out loud at what he believes to be the scene of their deaths, but that sort of darkness is necessary to justify this scene after the prank is revealed. Ed and Eddy don’t exactly deserve a better requiem, at this point they’ve brought almost nothing but despair to all the people they wanted love from, even if that’s not what they intended. 

In an ask earlier tonight, I interpreted a line Edd says after this scene that informs why he reacts to their “deaths” this way. ��I just want to underline that: Ed and Eddy are officially more important to Edd than any member of his family, any acquaintance, anyone he’s ever met. And this is the way they treat him after ruining what little bit of a life he had accumulated through all his mistakes.  His reaction to their death and his reaction to them being alive but lying to him have a similar fury behind the expressions, fueled by how much Edd has lost over both the last year and the last 24 hours.

Edd finally faceplants in the mud, to punish himself for failing to steer Ed and Eddy away from their doomed quest, for failing to save their lives, and for insulting them at their graves.

This is the beginning of the last shot of the “Ed and Eddy are dead” sequence, but I want to savor it.  

This is the moment where their “death” has finally lingered long enough to feel like the new reality, to Edd as well as the audience.  A moment sooner would have rendered it meaningless, and possibly made Ed and Eddy seem nicer or at least more concerned with Edd’s heartbreak, while leaving our thoughts on Edd’s slight about Ed and Eddy ignoring him.  Keep the death going too long and it would DEFINITELY feel like a waste.  This feels like Ed, Edd n Eddy tugging at heartstrings with the exact balance of sweet and mean that defines the show.

“This is all my fault!”

“I should have never let you leave the cul-de-sac!”

I like that Edd’s thoughts would return to “the cul-de-sac” at their death. Even with the traumas we witnessed in Peach Creek, “the cul-de-sac” still sounds like a safe nostalgic place, the natural habitat of the Eds.

Is that a miscolored sleeve?

This shot was important it because it allowed Edd to show remorse and get more to the heart of what he meant with that slight.  

And I think Ed and Eddy quietly offering Edd a tissue is a really good beat to end the death sequence on as well.  Mean as they are and as rightfully angry as Edd is, we are still given the sense that they heard what Edd said, and want to return with a semi-caring gesture with a little of Ed’s personality mixed in to help restore normalcy.  It’s almost like they are saying “let us laugh right now and we won’t blame you at all for thinking so little of us at our deathbeds.”  It is specific and in character.  But it doesn’t make up for their actions as much as they think it does.

Edd initially complaining about Ed’s gross handkerchief and then drooping as the dots connect that this was a prank is also a pretty well-timed gag.

These shit-eating grins, Eddy looks like Norbert Beaver right now with that little beak.

Hmm, Ed’s face doesn’t match between these shots... I wonder if a line got cut out for time here.

Ridiculing Edd for caring, which probably reflects how little care Ed and Eddy receive from their families and peers.

Just like old times, huh Double Dee?

...Maybe too similar to old times... 

Thousand yard stare while tears stream down his cheeks...

“This muck’s only ankle deep, can’t sink in it!”   

Edd untethers himself.  Symbolism.

Ed starts making some stupid free-associative response to Eddy’s line.

And Edd spins around and stomps away with stifled anger.

In light of how deeply he just felt about these two, he cannot bring himself to give them the fight they deserve without Eddy dragging it out of him. But Edd can sure as hell walk away.

And with that Edd silently quits and Eddy makes a series of strange faces.

Also in this shot, tiny Eddy’s animation does not sync up with the dialogue at ALL, so I really want to know what line he was animated to...

Anyway, that’s it for this challenge.  I hope you enjoyed this mini-analysis grande-screenshot-gallery and have been enjoying these character appreciation months as much as I have!  Have a good night.