Chapter 1: Replacing Raven + Ch. 1 Thoughts

I completely forgot about this episode, hence why it's not with The Day Ever After. But at least there's a review of the season! 

Raven decides to find a replacement for her in Apple's story, and a random member of the Three Little Pigs shows up

Unsurprisingly, this is the first and last time we see this character for more than ten seconds. His plan to be evil is accompanied by vocally going "DUN DUN DUN" as he does harmless things like switch condiments. There's even a failed attempt at chemical warfare by filling balloons with 'dangerous gasses' like...helium. 

Apple is disheartened to see that Raven is being nice to her again, and insists that they're supposed to be Frenemies so she can have her perfect destiny.

Now the pig has been caught in the mass of harmless balloons and decides to abandon "evil" to be a balloon enthusiast.

Raven sums up my reaction pretty well;

There's nothing here. 

But here are my thoughts on Ch. 1 as a whole...

So here we are, at the end of Chapter 1. I spent a lot of time lamenting that interesting concepts would never be seen again, and while they won't be, Chapter 2 does introduce concepts that will have a lasting impact.

I occasionally gave shoutouts to the backgrounds, but the artstyle as a whole is quite gorgeous. As are the character designs; While the later dolls and outfits will ... more or less ignore the character motifs established, right now, they're cleverly implemented and coordinate well. These are images from the box art of the dolls;

I didn't realize until now that Lizzie has nods to the entire card suite in her outfit. As the future Queen of Wonderland, it makes sense.

I think an eternity ago I read something that said Ashlynn's dress was a twist on a style of Japanese dress. Perhaps I was hallucinating, either way, Emily's review of Ashlynn's doll at The Toybox Philosopher goes into greater detail about how well her design was created. Speaking of, Ashlynn Ella is possibly the most creative name in this franchise.

Ashlynn = Aschenputtel = German name for Cinderella.
Ella = self explanatory.

You could count Poppy and Holly as variants of rampion = which is the original, non english name for rapunzel, which is another name for Valerianella locusta = or lamb's lettuce, but that's a bit of a farther reach.


It bears repeating; The stakes don't feel....serious . The threat doesn't feel real when only three people are fed the lie of going 'poof' if you ignore your story, one person takes it seriously, one doesn't, and the other is just "Eh, will or won't it?"

The show will manage to write itself out of this half baked conflict and open up the world a bit.

If that seems remarkably short, it is - I'd just be repeating myself with "People's reactions are hyper upset to nonchalant about potentially disappearing out of existence."

Mattel had a beautiful world that does get decent detail and expansion in the diaries and books, but it's far easier for a kid to hop on youtube instead of buying at 14$ book or a 22$ doll.