#sorry if this is in a weird or incomprehensible format im very tired and was going to go to bed but

[abyssalzones]

Have you seen the amphibia finale?? Your thoughts on the show are so interesting! what did you make of it? :-)

Managed to catch it live! Glad you think my thoughts are interesting, I'm autistic as shit and love to talk about anything people throw at me. That being said, my thoughts on how Amphibia ended are... extensive, I guess. I'll keep this under the cut to spare my followers.

I've honestly had a very mixed experience with Amphibia as a whole? I originally was not interested in the show, then got very interested in it, and then the tail end of season 3 kind of... lost me. Maybe not entirely, but it definitely didn't capture my attention the same way the first two seasons did. A lot of people say that season 1 and a fair bit of season 2 is "filler," but honestly? It felt like it was all (or most of it anyway) important for establishing the cast, the tone, and the overall liveliness of the show. If the majority of the first 2 seasons was episodic adventures with an overarching narrative, then it did an excellent job at delivering on that status quo.

Then, of course, True Colors aimed to change the status quo in a really interesting way. Things were getting more intense, consequences were becoming more tangible- so you'd expect the writing to pick up in the same direction the end of season 2 leaves you on. In some cases, this works. In others, it doesn't.

It's, unfortunately, another example of a show stretching out of its established expectations and then failing to deliver that same new quality consistently. It's trying to be dark and high-stakes and fantastical but it's also trying to be... a TV-Y7 cartoon with episodic antics contained in 20 minute time slots. Namely I don't understand why the finale felt so stretched out when most of it was recruiting different branches of an army that ultimately contributed very little to the final fight.

On that same note... I'm kind of getting really tired of the same formula of "big finale" that a lot of cartoons seem to be following lately. Everything has to end in a big fight with marvel-level theatrics even when it's completely tonally off from the rest of the show. I liked the Darcy fight! I thought Sasha and Anne teaming up to act as co-leaders was a very cool culmination of their dynamic! ...But ultimately it felt like it was all getting away from what was actually important in this show in the first place. Big, dramatic, precure-esque magical girl fights completely take away from the soft fantasy charm that made Amphibia endearing in the first place. It felt like the Plantars suddenly came second to everything else, despite their family unit being so important previously. It felt like Marcy and Sasha existed to fulfill a prophecy rather than as... people? And I enjoyed their development for the most part- but namely, Marcy was almost entirely shelved until she was important for the prophecy.

The Marcy issue could be a totally separate post, actually, thinking about how disappointing the conclusion to her arc was.

Anyway, I'll just make a little list.

Things I enjoyed seeing: -Yunan and Olivia are canon yaaay gay people #Win -darcy's fight with sasha felt like a great conclusion to Sasha's arc specifically -the weird space house with that god taking domino's form was... unexpected... but cool? i mean, it mostly seemed cool as like... a setup for a completely unrelated video game, but it was still cool.

-sasha bi flag <3 we finally did it. sasha finally likes women.

Things I did not enjoy so much:

-The fact that Andrias... lived? and was largely meant to be seen as sympathetic because WAAAAA IVE HURT SO MANY PEOPLE :< SPECIFICALLY MY FRIENDS </3 like man I don't care about you losing your friends because of your own actions. what about all the people who suffered from you Choosing to be a genocidal colonizer. Dude. Marcy destroy this man.

-I think it's boring when characters suffer very intense injuries and there's no repercussions or lasting effects because making a character visibly or noticeably disabled is too confusing of a change for children or whatever but that might just be me being... beyond the age demographic for this cartoon

-the fact that they waited up until the very last episode to even remotely confirm yunan/olivia. was their romance entirely off-screen? when the hell did they realize they like each other? and i actually really Like yulivia so i don't know how they managed to fuck that up so bad

-same principle as before but bi flag on sasha's rearview mirror. you had to wait..? until now........?

-I don't understand how sasha and anne could have possibly drifted apart or why that's supposed to make sense Sorry if that's me not liking a "mature" writing decision i don't think it's realistic though. or even like... lines up with what they established. Weren't we supposed to come to the conclusion at the tail end of season 3 that they were deeply important to each other? yeah, normally people drift apart after middle school, but these are clearly not... normal circumstances. They went to traumaworld together. same thing with marcy like even if you move you have Phones and computers just make a groupchat damn

-I don't understand the moon thing. I know they've been leading up to it since season 1 supposedly but it's just so funny. the final boss is the moon.

-powerpuff calamity trio looked bad. it was cute in like a pretty precure way i guess but my god it was so power of friendship in a show that was supposed to be like... a little less generic.... than that.... i thought....

-the biggest complaint im seeing is the complete saying goodbye to Amphibia thing which.... yeah i'm going to have to agree. I know the show has kind of been leading up to the girls going home and i think THAT is good, they've always been meant to go home, but i don't necessarily think growing up = abandoning all the things that were fantastic or "magical" about your childhood? this is supposed to be the Realistic ending i guess but it's just depressing. very "growing up sucks and you will grow apart from your friends Get used to it." maybe that wasn't the intention but i don't understand how they could just separate everybody like that after All the shit they went through. crazy to me.

anyway that is enough out of me i hope you didn't expect a super glowing review but i think... amphibia may have just not been for me in the way i thought it was. I really enjoyed the writing of this show for the most part so i can appreciate that but it's going to take a while for me to sit with this finale before I can come back to it probably. not the WORST finale i've ever seen but not great either.

... on another note, very excited for the new owl house next week.