Hello everyone! Welcome to another Classy Critique! In this critique, we delve more on episodes 7-9 of “The StickNodes Movie!” So far, over half of the Movie has been pretty bad in quality, so let’s see if the later episodes redeem the beginning ones! Remember to watch the episodes before/while reading the critique to make it easier to understand! Let’s get started people!

Episode 7:
I just wanted to point out that Empress Roux has facial marks on front views of her, but none on side views. It can be irksome at times, especially considering how design is supposed to be highly emphasized in this animation. The dialogue at the beginning of this scene is very unusual and doesn’t flow well grammatically. It’s also strange to Roux’s character for her to offer Cyan Claw a chance to just leave lol. Why would she do this if she’s also an empress who wishes destruction upon all her enemies and control over all of utopia? Considering how Roux believes she’s stronger, it’s odd for her to just give Cyan Claw the choice to leave. The whole “I won’t leave him to you tyrant” bit is cliche too. In addition, the fishnets(?) that Roux wears also disappear every front shot, and are questionable in design. Even though this series emphasizes detail, it surprisingly has a lot of detail-related mistakes. The fight is very fast paced, and at one point, the background completely switches in the middle of a part of it in the same shot. Also, the butt slap is completely unnecessary and crude. Why would anyone add a butt slap in the middle of a fight like that, especially since there isn’t any dialogue mentioning it at all? Such an action could be possible and relevant in a fight if one of the characters is known to be flirtatious and the dialogue is playfully flirtatious, but this is completely out of context with no dialogue at all. It seems more to “appease” the animator rather than expand the plot. Also, I’ve been pretty calm about grammar and spelling and whatnot throughout this whole series, but it’s gotten to a point where some of these sentences are filled with errors and it is hard to ignore. Storyline includes dialogue, and if storyline is to be a focus, dialogue should be refined. I can understand a mistake now and then, but there’s been way too many throughout this series. “That blade belongs to Epitaph and Kaiju!” “Oh it will do, once I bury it through their ribs!” The fluidity of that is nonexistent, and dialogue could certainly be worked on. Also, Roux fires a blast in a straight horizontal line that Cyan Claw dodges. It travels and then hits Ralph’s cell. However, previously Cyan Claw and Roux jumped ABOVE Ralph’s cell during their fight. Yet, somehow, the bolt teleports and hits the cell when it shouldn’t have. It’s just bad choreography and spacing. Also, the hole is through the middle of the cell and nowhere near the edge, yet Ralph can stick his head out of the edge despite there being no physical way he could. Ralph runs away, with Roux close behind, yet in the next shot, Cyan Claw is behind Ralph. There’s a lot of skipping and choreography/spacing errors with this entire scene. Not to mention, the fight isn’t the best. The whole “password” part is nonsensical as well. I understand the try for humor, but it’s just ridiculous. Why does a security system require a password for the workers? Isn’t it already their job to be monitoring the system and have it already be on? The nude is also completely unneeded. It only cements Roux as slutty rather than an empress/tyrant. You don’t need to include nudes of a character to show that they are flirty. It’s complete fanservice to both the fans and the animator. Fighting in general is way too short with the Rouxians. Cyan Claw and Ralph decide to hijack a ship, but not just any ship, a cruiser. This actually has potential, as we could get a cool segment of Cyan Claw and Ralph infiltrating the ship and taking out all the Rouxians on board. Instead, they somehow throw off the stabilizers keeping the ship in the hangar, which for the most part should be practically impossible without explosives/massive strength. They then jump through the bridge window and have a probably incredibly awesome fight segment. The audience doesn’t see any of it, however, as the only glimpses of fighting we get are just Rouxians getting thrown out the window. The sizing of the animation as a whole is also a major problem. The rooms shown inside the cruiser are just too big to fit inside the ship as shown through Cyan Claw and Ralph’s comparative size. It’s a mess. Explosive Bullet is back, and he does have a funny moment by firing his gun when saying to target the rogue cruiser’s engines. The bullet bounces all over the room, and it’s pretty funny. It could be more funny if it was longer than one second. Comedic Timing and pacing has clearly been shown to be a problem with this series. Ralph and Cyan put Rouxians in a ship and launch it at the enemy forces. Again, there’s a sizing problem since the ship is very small in comparison to the cruiser, yet Cyan and Ralph were as tall as some of the spires on the ship. In comparison sizing, Cyan and Ralph are bigger than the fighters. The collision course part happens way too quickly as well. Even though the fighter hits only one part of the cruiser, the audience is shown multiple parts of the ship exploding for some reason. Also, for the three prisoners, how would they even know Cyan Claw’s name if he doesn’t even know them? The same should probably be said for the prisoners, since they are being HELD in prison and their information on the situation is incredibly limited. It’s not like Cyan’s name is being blasted through the intercoms. If there is a reason, it is never explained. Little details add up to a jumbled and convoluted storyline. Also, the “freedom” bit is rushed beyond belief. One minute, they’re pushed out the ship, the next, they’ve somehow fallen thousands of feet. Pacing needs to be worked on. The to be continued doesn’t seem to interrupt the flow of events anymore, but now it only lasts one second. The audience needs time to perceive and react to what happens, and the pacing doesn’t allow the audience to do that.

Conclusion: Pacing is a nightmare as always. The fighting is cluttered and not well choreographed. It seems to be a highly hypocritical series. It’s main focus is detail, yet it makes many mistakes that are detail-related. It claims to be story-based, but the storyline itself is basic, and the additions and details to this story are unorganized, not to mention the movie does a poor job of telling the stories of the characters and expects the audience to already know previous information about them. It’s unusual to see an animation that is specifically focused on these categories mess them up a lot. Character additions seem random, and there is no attachment to characters from the audience. The story is pretty bad. :/

Episode 8:
Here, we are introduced to some average users. Even though they’re introduced in the end of the 7th episode and have their moment of spotlight in the 8th, they’re pretty much the most interesting characters of the movie. (Besides maybe Ralph, but that’s just Ralph being comedic relief.) Chimdi, Squido, and Galaysite actually have some nice character introduction and lines. They fulfill their roles pretty well. Chimdi is portrayed as the leader, and he takes action and protection over the group. Galaysite is timid and frightened about the events, fearful of getting involved in the violence. Squido is for the most part comedic effect, but he’s also shown to be a supportive friend. It’s a great group with interesting side lore and personality, and my only gripe about them is that they weren’t introduced sooner and given more screen time. The humor is nice, and the characters really do work well together as an effect for the audience. The dialogue is a bit wonky at times, and the story fails to explain more things, like “Why is Central Utopia off limits to average users? What even are average users? Who is Jackfly?” (I know who JackFly is, but it should be assumed that the audience doesn’t know, so this is just a point on how the movie needs to explain.) Even though this knowledge would be common if the viewer were invested in the SN community, it needs to be assumed that the audience has no connection or intelligence about the lore besides the events of the last episodes. There was more potential for lore revelation about “the outskirts,” but it’s interrupted by a one-shotted Node Spawn. The effect of the Node Spawn revealing itself could have been more impactful if the outskirts tale was told, since it would add to the anticipation and fear factor. There also could have been a cool fight segment for this Node Spawn, but it just gets one shot. Another Node Spawn nabs Galaysite and takes off with her, and thus we get the conflict for Chimdi. Galaysite takes the Node Spawn out and drops into the middle of a field full of Node Spawn and user corpses. It’s a rather somber note, but it could have been pulled off a little better cinematically for more effect. It’s a pretty nice scene. The focus cuts back to Kaiju, Ralph, and Cyan as they talk. Kaiju states that Epitaph has a “rivalry to settle” and that’s all we particularly know of his relationship with EB. This isn’t well explained in the movie, and it’s rather unusual too. EB is a multiple gun-toting robot and Epitaph is an energy-wielding creator. Those two categories don’t particularly match up for many rivalries. Only with knowledge on the real Epitaph and Explosive Bullet’s relationship does this part make sense, but once again, it should be more fleshed out in a movie. Also, Kaiju doesn’t seem to be important in the slightest. He’s got a lot of potential to be super cool (as his description is that he’s an Origin Being of Time) but this isn’t emphasized or shown at all. He’s a stereotypical bland swordsman.

Conclusion: This was a mostly well made episode. Obviously there are areas that can be fleshed out more, and some parts weren’t as impactful as they could be, but all in all, I liked Episode 8. These new characters actually have fleshed-out personalities and are interesting to watch as they interact with their environment. It’s kinda funny how the most interesting and most developed characters aren’t the main characters. It’s also funny that the best parts of this episode (and the whole movie) focus on the side characters, and the boring, convoluted, unexplained parts of the movie focus on the main characters.

Episode 9:
This is the main confrontation between Epitaph and Explosive Bullet. First though, for some reason, we’re shown EB shooting up that weird snow golem monster we saw earlier in episode 5. There is literally no explanation for this. Nor is there any information on what the snow creature is. Everything in a movie should serve a particular purpose, and this doesn’t seem to have one. The rivalry between Epitaph and EB isn’t well explained either. I can understand both character’s motivations, but their relationship isn’t that expanded upon. It again expects the viewer to contain previous knowledge about these characters that isn’t given to them through the series. Rivalries can be very effective and have very powerful moments if pulled off right, but the confusion between the history of these two muddles with that. I don’t particularly talk about sound effects or music, but the music choice for this fight isn’t fitting at all. The music sounds like it should be introducing an antagonist, not a rivalry fight. The only thoughts I had in my mind while hearing this were “Evil slow jam.” Sound is incredibly important in Cinematography, and the inclusion and usage of sound can really make or break a moment. The music choice for this scene, however, isn’t all that epic and doesn’t help elevate the scene. The green background in the midst of this white tundra is also very jarring. The scenery is confusing to the eye, and the green colors of the background should have been changed to white. The fight itself is mediocre. EB as a character is pretty cool, however, and I feel as if he had a whole lot more fighting potential if there was more use of his jet pack. He’s very Boba Fett-esque as a character, and that’s pretty cool. The fighting is very fast paced as well. Not in the sense of base figure fast paced fighting, but the movements are too quick with not enough impact. It can almost be related to a pool noodle fight at times. Sizing and spacing also are an issue, and some of the angles of the fight just don’t fit well. This particular bit of dialogue before Explosive Bullet is destroyed is nonsensical too. “My programming dictates that surrender is no option.” “Then I will show you none!” The whole of Epitaph’s response is just odd and jumbled. It doesn’t flow well, and it’s hard to understand what Epitaph is specifically responding to. Also, EB literally said that he can’t stop fighting because he’s being forced to by his programming. It’s not that he can’t realize there is no hope, it’s that he can’t act upon it. There’s a ton of potential centering around EB because of this. Perhaps he was never actually on the enemy side, and was simply reprogrammed like the Rouxians to follow the Empress. But instead of expanding on this and giving EB an interesting new arc, Epitaph just flies EB really high and makes him go boom on the ground. His head plops on the floor and the visor slowly fades to black. There’s a head pun waiting to be said here but I won’t get aHEAD of myself (insert Pelo laugh here). It seems like a lot of the cool characters get cut out early before their times to shine. Shirokaze got axed immediately without much of a fight, and he was badass. EB was shown from time to time with his cool design, but he wasn’t really pulled off well as a character. The only two main baddies we have left are Roux and Charxek Thar. Roux can’t quite be seen as a main villain at this point, since her personality and actions practically ridicule herself. Not to mention, people already see her for the questionable fanservice. As for Charxek, she’s only actually seen in this very episode. The big baddie of them all, the one controlling the Node Spawns and the one that literally every Origin Being wants to stop, is only shown an episode before the finale. Buildup of final villains is equally as important as the buildup of characters. Charxek is only described through words, and there’s wasted potential in that. There definitely could be more refinement to this story arc.

Conclusion: It’s a stereotypical rivalry fight. Fighting is mediocre and the story behind it isn’t well explained. Setting isn’t well made and doesn’t blend. (Why are there giant green cliffs in the background for this white tundra-based fight?) At least the character powers/gadgets are somewhat cool. It’s literally a scarf figure fight without the scarf figures. And not a particularly well made scarf figure fight, at that.

Well, two episodes left before the series comes to a close, and the StickNodes Movie has been for the most part pretty badly made. It’s quite confusing actually, as I’ve heard so much about it being a story-wise masterpiece, yet it’s turning out as bad as it does. I’ll have to look into the reason why. Maybe overhype or something, idk. I’ll probably look into that in a different critique and provide facts for it.

Well, that’s all everyone! Tune in next time, where I review episode 10! I’ll be happy to answer any questions, and I encourage discussion in the comments! Thanks! Stay Classy!