Amphibia

Nothing should bring more joy when watching a tv show than when it surprises you and turns into something much more than what you were expecting it to be. From the outset, the 2019 animated Disney channel show, Amphibia, looked like it had a lot of potential to be the next big thing for Disney (with Gravity Falls concluded and Star Vs the Forces of Evil stumbling its finale). However, first impressions from the show may give off the idea that this isn’t going to be anything worth keeping an eye on (maybe acting as a cute fun smaller show). But much like the amphibians that this show bases its concept around, time leads to monumental growth, and it can sprout into something wildly different. It’s beautiful how fitting that metaphor is because Amphibia turns from an otherwise bland and forgettable series in its first season, to a truly brilliant kids show come its conclusion and one that Disney should definitely be proud of. The story of Amphibia follows Anne, Sasha, and Marcy (voiced by Brenda Song, Anna Akana and Haley Tju), three middle-school BBF’s who on Anne’s birthday, steal a mysterious music box which unexpectedly transports them to the alternate world of Amphibia, a world where Frogs, Toads, Newts, and other similar amphibians reign supreme. With all three being separated, Anne winds up in a Frog village and is taken in by the Plantar family, who consist of Grandfather Hop Pop (voiced by Bill Farmer), tadpole little sister Polly (voiced by Amanda Leighton) and Sprig (voiced by Justin Felbinger), a frog who Anne forms a close friendship with. Slowly starting to adapt to this other world, Anne eventually sets off with her new frog family into the wild areas of Amphibia in hopes of finding her two best friends and getting home, but discovers that Sasha has allied with Captain Grime (voiced by Troy Baker), leader of  a group of war faring toads (who bully and terrorize frogs) and Marcy has been enjoying her adventurous life with the Newts under the rule of King Andrias (voiced by Keith David) who seems to hide his own intentions. Discovering the flaws within their friendship as well as the toxic nature all three have inhibited from their time spent together, as well as an insidious plot involving the trio and the music box that brought them here (more specifically the coloured gems within the box), The three girls will have to face a danger that could possibly bring about the end of Amphibia and through all this turmoil, try and find a way home and see if their fractured friendship is fixable. Beginning life in 2019 and just recently ending in 2022, Amphibia blossoms into a touching, powerful and timeless story that tackles mature themes, has memorable characters, great visual design, and chaotic humor resulting in a show that is going to be remembered for a long time coming.

The bizarre thing about Amphibia is that the show operates majorly on extremes; in that It balances between levels of extreme brilliance and levels of extreme mediocrity. The show unfortunately doesn’t have the cleanest record in its entire lifespan, with episodes that are either forgettable and inoffensively harmless to outright bland and generic. But on the other hand, they can also have episodes that are downright fantastic and easily stand as some of the best animated episodes of Disney’s current animated line-up (each season finale is outstanding). The show does have to separate time to fester in its ideas, tones, characters, and humor before it dives into its dramatic, mature, and epic qualities, it’s just that the level of slow start-up was much weaker than other Disney animated shows that had similar natures, tones, and deliveries. Season One of Amphibia is not very good; it is by no means awful, and it has its shining moments (usually when it has something to do with Anne’s growth or the other girls), but overall, it’s slow pacing and its generic, dated episode storylines really make the show come across nowhere near as innovative and different as it would later become. It presents itself with comedy as its major focus, which causes a problem when building a show that will grow into an over-arching character-driven series, and it leaves most of the secondary comedy-based episodes being weak and not worth watching again. With that said, the episodes focused on character and story-building are quite good, and as the show progresses, things start to increase in quality. Season two improves drastically from its first, featuring a lot more story-driven episodes and even allowing the side-stories to be more engaging and well written. Pieces start to fit together for the grand scheme of the show, characters start to develop into stronger roles, the plot gets more intricate, and come the season finale (True Colors), it will leave people speechless in the best way possible. Wrapping up with Season Three, things have finally become full circle and Amphibia has become a much stronger show; with its episodes, characters, and even humor feeling well laid out, correctly distributed and feeling incredibly tightly written. It is true that overall, the comedy focused episodes can still feel generic and even incredibly pointless, but it has scaled from legitimately bad to just underwhelming. The show’s creator, Matt Braly, clearly shows off the talent he experienced from working on shows like Gravity Falls and even Big City Greens by being able to construct a show with a lot of mature themes and important life lessons that Disney strives for, but don’t usually show off in this way. Amphibia shows that it can be incredibly silly, but upon reaching the end, it also shows it can be surprisingly moving, heartfelt and impactful, as well as legitimately intense and threatening (there’s some stuff in here that is pretty shocking even for a modern Disney show). How it manages to create a narrative about talking frogs and inter-dimensional travel and make it about the flaws of escapism, manoeuvring through toxic friend groups and the importance of moving on despite fearing the inevitability of change, is very impressive, and despite the show’s failings, these highs more than make up for its lows.

The characters in Amphibia have the strengths of what you’d expect from any typical cartoon show of this type; the memorable designs, the quirky personalities, the distinct voice actors, but the level at which these elements are handled really elevate a lot of the show in the long run. First off, the voice cast in this series is phenomenal; managing to take even certain lines that aren’t written that amazingly and making them leagues more hilarious than they need to be, they find that perfect balance of delightfully childish, yet mature enough to handle the serious aspects, it’s a great cast all around. Also, the three main girls are some of the best protagonist written for any Disney cartoon to date. Anne, Sasha, and Marcy are wonderful lead characters; with noticeable flaws and even more noticeable developments, creating complex roles that you actively see evolve through their time in this new world. Anne’s journey from a push-over selfish teen girl who only assisted to meddle with people, into a responsible and caring hero is very moving, Sasha’s manipulative control freak ‘’Queen Bee’’ attitude conflicting with her genuine care for Anne and Marcy starts her off as a fantastically complex antagonist, but her growth into a warrior willing to protect those she cares for in order to right her wrongs is truly inspiring, and Marcy’s adorably dorky persona and infectious lovable personality acting as a means of hiding her own toxic mentality and choices that have greatly impacted her friends in some truly horrible ways, it creates such a fresh and unique conundrum of a character by trying to determine how you feel about such a likeable person who did such an awful thing. Ironically, because the three girls are written so fantastically, it calls attention to a majority of the other characters who unfortunately aren’t quite as strong. It brings to light that despite the show having an extensive cast of characters, the show would not be able to survive without these girls in it. Thankfully, none of them are that awful; all the Plantar’s are likeable in their own right and their familial bond with Anne is quite touching, Grime’s fatherly connection with Sasha provides a surprising amount of heart and comedy, and King Andrias is a deliciously complex character; going from an obvious portrayal of one thing from the beginning to later revealing how his silly yet commanding personality clashing with his warped worldviews and past traumas turn him into something much more sour and detached; he’s a great character, Keith David (as always) is fantastic in the role, and his relationship with Marcy is also quite tragic.

This is a show that clearly houses a lot of inspiration from other popular media, and it all stems from shows and content that Braly himself grew up on and enjoyed in his youth. Amphibia clearly pays homage to various shows, anime, and games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda, Chrono Trigger, other popular Disney channel shows (one of the biggest being Pepper Ann) as well as movies from studios like Aardman Animations and Studio Ghibli. This level of integration also works in the form of the inclusion of Anne’s Thai heritage playing a big factor in the show (with Matt Braly himself being Thai-America), it adds a nice spice of diverseness that isn’t at the forefront but brings light to aspects that most people wouldn’t know about Thai culture. Current Disney faces a slight issue of a lot of their cartoons housing a similar animations style to other shows out around the same time (basically copying the Gravity Falls format) and despite still resulting in great 2D animation, it can lead to various shows looking similar to the other. What does help diversify these shows is the character designs as well as the locations themselves. Amphibia is a cool looking location; turning an environment that could look repetitive due to its swamp-esque aesthetic and creating some great colorful locations. The character designs do look basic in parts, but they have that simplistic memorability to them, and they have a lot of character put into them. The animation overall does range from being average quality to incredible in moments (particularly during any fight scene). The music by T.J. Hill is also very effectively; nailing a lot of emotional moments with some truly heartfelt and emotional-driven pieces as well as making scores that are awesome in combat (again any fight scene) and songs that are instantly memorable (No Big Deal is a really catchy song). The humor in the show does get some good moments every once and a while thanks to the fantastic voice cast and downright chaotic energy that exudes from the lines themselves, but it definitely feels like it’s trying to make you laugh more than other current Disney cartoons and it does lack the clever wit of Gravity Falls or even the surreal randomness of Star Vs.

Amphibia as a show is something special because, much like its message, it grew from something flawed and lacking greatness into something that shines like the brightest star. How it changed from an episodic goofy show into a proper dramatic overarching epic narrative that combines massive scale and action with surprising heart and depth, is remarkable and deserves a lot of praise just for that. It is definitely more unbalanced that some of the other Disney animated series as the lows in the show are unfortunately pretty strong lows, but the good stuff is so incredible, so well written and so timeless in its messaging (the finale is going to last the ages for what it gets away with), that it definitely shouldn’t be ignored. It may take some time to fully get into it (again the first season is a bit of a slog) but after that, it’s a ride worth getting stuck into. Jump on into this froggy world of unknown, discover its strengths and weakness, watch it grow into something beautiful and decide for yourself how you feel about this story of a normal girl living in another world.