Adventures in Care-a-lot 4

Now, I liked these episodes, but the animation quality made it really, really, really hard to watch. Especially in the second part.
Part one - Erased
This story was seriously amusing. In another kind of story, this could have been weird, and this was weird, but in a good way. Still, I didn't truly understand what happened until I read the synopsis in the Teaching Moment, which wasn't even posted until this week. For once, procrastination pays off!
Anyway, the actual story. It starts off with Grizzle for a change, putting the finishing touches on his new robot companion. Appropriately named New-B, he's outfitted with an eraser ray, perfect for removing belly badges, and he isn't exactly locquacious. Grizzle sends him on his way.
Meanwhile, down in Care-a-lot, both Grumpy and Funshine have plans for Wingnut: Grumpy wants him to help out in his garage, but Funshine already made plans with him. Share advocates asking Wingnut what he wants to do, and Funshine wins out. Grumpy goes back to his garage, rationalizing that even a robot needs fun, when he's suddenly hit by the eraser ray! Instead of being erased, however, his belly badge turns upside down and his color fades. With renewed fervor, Grumpy goes after Wingnut again, this time determined to get him to work!
Grizzle is not happy to see his ray didn't work (and blames it on New-B). But New-B continues zapping Care Bears, flipping belly badges, draining colors, and causing much dissent among the bears. Now, apparently what the ray really does is make each bear only care about what their badge is about, and also makes them unable to empathsize with each other, hence the fighting. This becomes hilarious later on.
Meanwhile, Funshine and Wingnut are kicking back by the river (a rare chance to see both Funshine sans hat and Wingnut in swimtrunks) when Grumpy shows up and demands Wingnut. Since he hasn't been hit by the ray yet, Funshine agrees that they can have fun later. As soon as Grumpy and Wingnut leave, New-B strikes again, and Funshine demands Wingnut back. While he and Grumpy fight, Wingnut beats a hasty retreat. Grizzle is thrilled, sensing that if the Care Bears keep fighting, he'll be able to waltz in and take Care-a-lot for himself.
Wingnut runs into Oopsy, who agrees to go talk some sense into Grumpy and Funshine. Along the way, they run into Share, who insists that Oopsy share Wingnut with her and her alone. So Wingnut goes with Share, who then runs into Love-a-lot, who would "love" to be with Wingnut, too, but bristles when Share refuses to share him with anyone else. "This, I don't love." (But I love Love-a-lot having actual dialogue ^_^) Wingnut, freaked out by the strange behaviour, and the upside-down badges, heads for the hills with Share and Love-a-lot in hot pursuit.
Oopsy is having troubles of his own, as he runs into Cheer, who forces him to cheer up (this is the best part), and Surprise, who surprises Oopsy and clashes with Cheer. Oopsy slips away and meets up with Wingnut again, and they brief each other on what just happened. But all their pursuers show up again and start arguing with each other. Hiding from everyone else, Oopsy and Wingnut find New-B, who explains exactly what's going on (his blurps are translated to Oopsy by Wingnut, oddly enough). Oopsy confronts everyone else and tries to explain everything, but since he didn't have the Teaching Moment, he settles for individual examples. The ray made Grumpy grumpier, and Surprise became surprisier, "And I suppose it made you 'oopsier,'" Grumpy comments, getting a laugh from everyone else. But that's not the case, because New-B never zapped him Oopsy doesn't have a belly badge, so he isn't affected. But he expresses his concern for everyone (and Wingnut's, too), and Grumpy apologizes for making fun of him. With that, his belly badge rights itself, and his color returns. Wingnut hypothesizes that apologizing is the key to getting back to normal, and with Oopsy's encouragement, everyone apologizes to everyone else, and things are the way they should be again.
Only Grizzle has already arrived, ready to start construction on Care-a-lot (all those hearts and rainbows have to go!). So he's shocked to find everyone, not only back to normal, but standing right behind him. He blames his plan's failure first on Mr. Beaks and then on New-B, and they leave, arguing the whole way ("What do you mean, 'who programmed who?!'"), leaving Cheer to wonder if that's how they were all acting. Oopsy assures her that they weren't quite that bad.
Funshine and Grumpy end the episode by trying to get the other to go with Wingnut in an infinite loop of putting the other guy first.

Part Two - Best Bear in Care-a-lot
Here the screen got all stretched out for some reason, making it hard to watch at times. Still, I liked the story, mostly because of Funshine's cheesy bigheadedness.
To start things off, Funshine is going around doing good deeds for his friends, like giving flowers to Cheer, finding Grumpy's tools, and even Surprising Surprise! She's so impressed, in fact, that she calls a council (alas, it turns out that the book building is not a library at all, but town hall ;_;) of herself, Grumpy, Cheer, Share, and Bedtime Bear. She wants to thank Funshine for being such a great guy, so they decide to give him an award. Grumpy insists he's too busy to make it, but caves way too easily (nobody said anything, and we didn't even get any close ups of them giving him significant looks or anything!).
Later, Funshine is giving Share's garden a little extra sun when Surprise, Share, Cheer, and Grumpy show up and give him a little gold statuette of himself, complete with recorded messages from all of them. Funshine is so pleased the listens to it (all day, I'm assuming, and) right before bed, even recording his own message to himself.
The next day, Funshine is still toting around the award, brushing off Harmony, and showing it off to everyone. Cheer starts to worry about how much Funshine likes the award.
Meanwhile, Grizzle is playing charades with Mr. Beaks when the Care Bear Alert goes off. He sees Funshine showing off his award to everyone and decides to take it, so he can find out why it's so important. Back in Care-a-lot, Funshine has just named his award Goldie when Grizzle snatches it. He attempts to get it back, but it's no use. Unable to cope with not hearing how great he is, Funshine gives off the Care Bear Signal (like a stare, but just him) and alerts everyone of the situation. No one else is as concerned, and Grumpy insists that he can just make another trophy, but Funshine's starting to get hysterical, so they (they being Grumpy, Cheer, and Share) agree to help, since Grizzle did take the award without asking.
Up in his lair, Grizzle is pleased that he snagged the award, but can't figure out what it is, and is annoyed that it's not even real gold. But he definitely realizes its value when he sees the Care Bears approaching (again via rockets from The Big Wish Movie). Funshine is able to walk right in and grab Goldie, but before they can leave, Grizzle traps them all in a voice-activated bubble cage. Grumpy uses his belly badge to make a cloud that zaps lightning (perfect!), but it doesn't damage the cage at all. Grizzle explains that the bubble cage only responds to his voice, demonstrates this, and then leaves to take a nap.
Trapped in the bubble, Funshine admits that it's his fault they're in this mess, and everyone agrees (it was great!). Funshine can't quite grasp that having the award doesn't automatically make him great, but Cheer clears things up (they still like him, but he needs to get over himself), and they all brainstorm a solution: they'll use the voice recorder in the award to record Grizzle deactivating the cage! So they trick Grizzle into deactivating and reactivating the cage, which he does repeatedly, until he gets annoyed at the bears' unflappable attitude in the face of his taunting and goes back to bed. The bears easily escape, but Funshine leaves the award in Grizzle's lair.
Back in Care-a-lot, Funshine delivers the lesson he learned from all this: there's a difference between being a good guy and being better than everyone else. Meanwhile, Grizzle finally spots the button on the award, and ends up activating and deactivating the cage on himself. We can assume that this goes on for a while.

With this episode, I think it's safe to say that UR-2 is gone for good ;_; Ah well.

Rental Magica Plothole in episode one

I don't generally keep up with fansubs, but I do check out a show from time to time. Right now I'm watching ShugoChara and Rental Magica. Both are okay, but there's a huge plothole in the first episode of Rental Magica that really bugs me, since it's so obvious.

While checking out something on a mountain, Honami and the others suddenly put the pieces together for the other case they're investigating (the disappearance of a girl's grandfather).



The thing is, the girl was telling all this to the president while these guys were on the mountain, so how did they know about the landslide? It's never explained.

I have to admit, I was slightly amused by this scene:

Backward march!

Adventures in Care-a-lot 3

I've been putting this off long enough. No screenshots this time around, sorry.
Episode 3 didn't really do it for me, so the quick and dirty version:
Part one - Ice Creamed (Lesson: Everything in Moderation)
Apparently, Amigo Bear has an ice cream cart. After Grizzle destroys it, Grumpy makes a new one that never runs out of ice cream. Predictably, everyone has too much of a good thing, until Share calls them all out on it and arranges for everyone to work off the ice cream. Meanwhile, Grizzle fails yet again to destroy Care-a-lot, so he steals Amigo's ice cream cart instead, only to inadvertantly fill his lair with ice cream.

The stuff I liked:
-Grizzle as a clown
-"Do I look like someone who'd hire a clown?"
-That quick moment of disarmment in the bushes (you know, when Share was all "Is that what it's supposed to do?" and Grizzle's all "No, it's supposed to..." and then they realize what's really going on)
-Grumpy's obvious pride in the new cart
-Oopsy hoping bumbleberry juice doesn't stain.
-Grizzle ranting to Mr. Beaks, and everyone else being all "Who's he talking to?"

The stuff I didn't like:
-These kind of stories just rub me the wrong way. But I'm not going to go into that right now
-Amigo's grief over his cart being offscreen
-Did we really need to see Grizzle imminent suffocation by ice cream? One, it would be enough to know that he's getting more ice cream than he can handle. Two, it would even be enough just to see that he doesn't know how to make the cart do what he wants to do. We don't need to see any more than that, especially when death is implied. (Not that I thought he would actually die, but I don't see how, outside of a "cartoon reset," he could get out of that alive)

Part two - Heatwave (Lesson: Face Your Fears)
Grizzle has a plan that's working for change: utilizing a giant magnifying glass (aka the Magnifryer) to heat up Care-a-lot. His plan is threatened by the Thunderwhales, giant flying whales that make clouds (thus bringing rain and cooling things down). Grizzle chases them off, so the Care Bears plan to lure the whales back with sweet things. And since Share is the only one who can make anything sweet on command, she gets saddled with the job, even though she's terrified of the whales. But she manages to bond with the whales, who destroy not only the Magnifryer, but Grizzle's entire lair. It rains, and Care-a-lot is saved.

The stuff I liked:
-Grizzle actually having a good plan
-Share hiding behind Grumpy when the Thunderwhales show up
-Funshine trying to fight the Magnifryer's power with his own sun power
-Share doing the same "nononono" thing that Grumpy did in the first episode

The stuff I didn't like:
-The denoument. I mean, really, did the whales have to destroy Grizzle's entire lair? Sure, the Magnifryer had to go, but the rest is just overkill. And then having Grizzle's suit rust in the rain? Again, overkill.
-The apparent permanent disappearance of UR-2 :( It looks like Grizzle's going to have a new robot in every episode, but none of them will be as awesome as UR-2 *sigh*

Episodes 4 & 5 coming soon, hopefully before the weekend is over.

Next - a Blockbuster surprise

Last night I was planning to spend the hour before Heroes watching a couple of episodes of GaoGaiGar (I don't remember why I put it in my queue, but it probably had something to do with a review on the Anime News Network), only to find that the disc I actually received was a movie called Next. Since I was all geared up to watch something, I decided to check it out anyway, even though I didn't know a thing about it, except that it was 96 minutes long and rated PG-13.

I actually ended up liking it, although towards the end I had a little trouble seeing where it was going. There are definitely worse movies that it could have been. Now I'm going to write about the plot, so beware of spoilers, including one that will absolutely ruin the movie for you if you haven't already seen it. So you probably shouldn't read this if you ever plan on see it. Which you might, since it's a good movie, and it has Nicholas Cage in it (I'm not a fan, but some people are).

Cage plays Cris Johnson, a 2-bit Las Vegas magician who supplements his income by gambling. This works because he can see into the future, but only as it pertains to him, and only two minutes ahead. Except when it comes to this one girl (named Liz and played by Jessica Biel. He eventually hooks up with her). Meanwhile, the FBI is after him because they want to use his visions to stop potential terrorist attacks. Watch the movie, because I'm not going to do it justice here (at least, not after just one viewing). If you hate being faked out, though, this movie probably isn't for you. Especially at the beginning and during the last big action scene, we're shown things happening, only to go back a little and see that it was really just Cris' vision. In fact, the entire last act of the movie ends up being a vision, a twist that I definitely did not see coming.

Adventures in Care-a-lot, Episode 2

The first part, titled Growing Pains, starts with everyone admiring Share's garden. Cheer expresses a desire to have her own garden, and Share tells her it'll take a few weeks. A few weeks later, Share wakes up to find no one in her garden, much to her surprise. Oopsy shows up, and spills the beans--he was actually going to Cheer's new garden, where everyone else is (but being Oopsy, he went to the wrong place). Unable to wrap her mind around the idea that someone else could have a garden, she follows Oopsy, and is not pleased with what she sees. Cheer's garden not only has bigger flowers (and a toy bush), but a tire swing and topiaries.
Back in her own garden, Share laments that it isn't as big as Cheer's, and tries to think of a way to make it better. Unable to actually think of anything, she goes to Grumpy for ideas. Grumpy, meanwhile, is working on a fountain for Cheer's garden, prompting a scene of awesomeness. Seriously, the betrayal in Share's voice when she finds out he's helping Cheer, and Grumpy's whole "You're not jealous, are ya?" accusation really made this episode for me. If these two aren't a Care Bear Couple, then they oughta be. Grumpy gives Share some grow glitter (he can't reach it, so he uses his belly badge to make a cloud to get it--I love it!), warning her to use one pinch and one pinch only. Surely you can see where this is going.
Share spreads a pinch of grow glitter over her flowers, and sure enough, they all spring up. Still insecure over whether her garden is better than Cheer's, Share reasons that two pinches will do the trick. And it does, as everyone flocks from Cheer's garden to hers (mainly for the now-giant lollipop tree). Cheer manages to stop Funshine from leaving, but that's about it.
Over in Share's garden, everyone's impressed, and Share couldn't be happier. Meanwhile, outraged that Share's trying to outdo her, Cheer has Funshine making a row of suns to help her flowers grow bigger, while she applies buckets of water. While Cheer wonders how Share got her garden to grow so big, Grumpy arrives with the now-fixed fountain and explains about the grow glitter. Again, there's great betrayal and "Now you sound jealous," action here. Grumpy gives Cheer his last bag of grow glitter, setting forth a chain of grow glitter use by Cheer and Share, while all the other Care Bears go back and forth between the two until they're too confused to do anything but stare at the rapidly growing foliage.
Funshine alerts Grumpy to the situation (since he spent the whole time working in his garage, apparently), who at first scoffs, but when he sees the ginormous gardens, the look of pure horror on his face is priceless. Funshine and Grumpy try to talk to Share and Cheer, but the gardens are too overgrown. Share is unable to reach the tops of the plants, but still worries that Cheer's garden is bigger. So she uses the grow glitter on herself (which you're probably not supposed to do), and instantly grows taller than her flowers. Seeing this, Cheer does the same, and the two proceed to both argue and use more grow glitter on themselves.
Cut to Grizzle's lair, where he's just about to take off in his Sticky Plane (which will somehow seal the Care Bears in stickiness). He opens the hangar to take off, only to find the gigantic heads of Cheer and Share. So much for that plan.
Back in Care-a-lot, Cheer and Share continue to argue, creating havoc for those on the ground. Grumpy makes a cloud plane using his belly badge (Funshine contributes a sun propellor) and goes to confront Share and Cheer: "Somebody used more than just one pinch!" I just love the annoyance in his voice here. With just that and a cold stare, Grumpy gets the two girls to fess up to their jealousy, which in turn makes them shrink back to normal size (not the gardens, though). They resolve to make a new garden together, so they won't be jealous. Oopsy runs in, but is sadly too late to see the "giant Care Bears." End part one.

Part two is much better IMO, but mainly because it features lots of Grumpy. As awesome as Grumpy is when he's pointing out people's flaws, it's good to see him learn a lesson, too. This story is called King Grumpy, and it begins with Grumpy showing off his latest invention to Share, Cheer, Funshine, Oopsy, and Wingnut. The Bubble-phonium, which runs on water and makes musical bubbles. Everyone's impressed, until it explodes, washing everyone out of the garage. While helping Grumpy up, Wingnut rolls over Grumpy's foot, hurting it badly.
Share makes the diagnosis, which makes me wonder why Take Care Bear couldn't have been there. C'mon, writers! You've got the perfect opportunity for a cameo (which is why most of us are watching, I'm sure), and you just let it slip through your hands! But I do like Share's lack of tact in this scene:
Funshine: *comforting Wingnut* It was an accident. You were just trying to help Grumpy.
Share: But instead, you hurt him.
Wingnut: *tears up*
Share: Oh. *puppy dog eyes* But you didn't mean to! (Yeah, like being cute makes it all right...)
Cheer tells Grumpy to stay off his foot, but he doesn't want to just sit around. Wingnut offers to help, but Grumpy turns him down until Oopsy points out that it would make Wingnut feel better to help, just until Grumpy's better. So he agrees.
Thus begins the "Wingnut Helps Out" montage, with Grumpy protesting at first, as Wingnut cleans up the garage, does the dishes, vacuums, does the laundry, and other jobs that would be rife with hijinks in a different story. Finally, the house is so clean that you have to wear sunglasses just to look at it, and Grumpy has fully accepted Wingnut's help.
The next day, Funshine and Cheer check in on Grumpy, and find that his foot is okay. Fearing this will mean the loss of Wingnut's help, Grumpy fakes his foot being sore, with Wingnut none the wiser.
Later, Wingnut works on the Bubble-phonium and discovers the reason it broke: a Q bolt that was too small. In order to fix it, Grumpy needs a Q bolt expander, but Grizzle stole his a while ago. Hearing this, Wingnut immediately takes off. At the same time, Funshine and Cheer show up again, wondering if Grumpy's taking advantage of Wingnut's kindness. Grumpy takes umbrage at their accusations, so Funshine quickly backpedals, "Of course not. Friends don't do that to friends." "And if they did, just think about how you'd feel if they took advantage of you," adds Cheer. And they leave. Grumpy breaks the fourth wall to ask the audience if he's taking advantage of Wingnut, but decides he isn't, and goes to bed.
That night, Grumpy dreams that he's a serf and Wingnut's a king who orders him to move a statue all around. This makes him realize that, yes, he's been taking advantage of Wingnut, and he goes to apologize, even though it's the middle of the night. Not finding him in the garage, he goes to Oopsy's house, which is where Wingnut lives, apparently. Oopsy tells him that Wingnut left earlier, saying something about an "R nail reducer." Grumpy rightly guesses what happened, which leads us to...
Wingnut knocking on Grizzle's lair's door. It's the middle of the night, but Grizzle is still up, having a midnight snack (we aren't shown what the snack is, but I'd like to think it was a roast beef sandwich). Finding that Wingnut is not there to get his old job back (Wingnut started as Grizzle's henchman in Oopsy Does It, but switched sides before the end), Grizzle introduces him to his replacement, not UR-2, sadly, but Mr, Beaks instead. Wingnut gets down to brass tacks and asks for the Q bolt expander. Here we get some wonderful voice acting characterization as Grizzle initially turns him down, only to immediately agree to let him "borrow it," and Wingnut doesn't suspect a thing. He gets the expander, but is quickly trapped by Grizzle, who, being a villian, has a cage ready for all occasions.
Even later that night, once Grizzle is asleep (in his suit. That's can't be comfortable), Grumpy arrives to rescue Wingnut (now in the dungeon). But first, he apologizes to Wingnut, who forgives him pretty readily. Grumpy gears up for a hug, but gets a Q bolt expander instead. He uses it to open the cell door and the two escape via rocket (the same one from The Big Wish movie, I think).
The next day, with the newly expanded Q bolt in place, the Bubble-phonium is back in business. Grumpy promises to make everything up to Wingnut, which makes Wingnut so happy that he accidently squashes Grumpy's foot again. Grumpy insists that it's just a bruise, but tells Wingnut he can still help out around the garage if he wants, except that everything is clean, so there isn't much to do. On the contrary, Wingnut points to the hose, which is overfilling the Bubble-phonium, which explodes again as the episode ends.

I gotta get this out of the way: Grumpy is the cutest!!!! *squeegasm* Seriously, he's the best. He really made this episode for me. The first part was rather silly, but his parts made up for it. The second part kind of made me think of the Nelvana episode with Q-bot, especially the part where there could have been hijinks, but instead everything worked out perfectly.
Also: Pajamas! More pajamas! Also, Oopsy in pajamas. Share, however, apparently sleeps in the nude.

Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-lot episode previews

The new preview clips are up, and there are a couple of things I want to comment on.
The first episode looks like the more interesting of the two, with Grizzle sending a robot down to zap Care Bears and switch their personality around (or so I assume). At any rate, it turns belly badges upside down. What havoc will be wreaked, and what the heck kind of lesson will we learn?


The second story looks a little lackluster, but I gotta say, Funshine is the best egotistical bear ever.


Also, Love-a-lot lost her bandana and Harmony lost her headband? What happened? And am I the only one seeing a resemblence?


That is all.

Galaxy Post

From Paniponi Dash, episode 12:
"Captain, you've got a package by Galaxy Delivery. It's from our home planet."
"A package by Galaxy Delivery?"
"It looks like a package from Galaxy Mail Order."
"Oh, it must be what I ordered from Galaxy TV Shopping! Put my Galaxy Personal Seal on the Galaxy Payment Slip and get the package for me."
"But it's Galaxy COD."
"Just go ahead and do a Galaxy Advance for me, will you?"
"But it's before Galaxy Payday. I don't have any money on me..."
"Didn't you just get a Galaxy Advance?"
"I'm sorry... I Galaxy-lost all my money on Galaxy Pachinko, so I'm totally Galaxy-Broke right now."
"You're Galaxy-hopeless, moron!"