Non-Abstract Review - Amethyst: Princess of Gem World (2013)

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/2/24/Amethyst_Princess_
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Director: Brianne Drouhard

Screenplay: Amy Wolfram

Based on the comic book series created by Gary Cohn, Ernie Colon and Dan Mishkin

(Voice) Cast: Sophie Oda as Amethyst; Eric Bauza as  Pegacorn; Keith Ferguson as Prince Topaz; Grey Griffin as the Frog Mayor; Tara Strong as the Frog Prince; Nicole Sullivan as the Jalapeño Vendor

Synopsis: Amethyst is playing a video game, a high fantasy adventure, only to be sucked through the hand held console screen and turned into a princess of this weird little world.

Here's a work that'll be difficult to elaborate on but not by fault of its director Brianne Drouhard or any of the production staff* - the issue is that, with what they were given before this micro-series was cancelled, this DC comic property only consists of seven episodes which are only two minutes or so long each. Thus it's effectively a short film or a test project when put together; something clearly worked hard on in what creativity is still at hand, but handed an ignoble fate of a lack of length, where even micro-series from Japan of more limited animation and ridiculous premises like talking farts can at least get over twenty minutes if you combine all the episodes in a marathon.

The work was part of a series of projects called DC Nation Shorts, small shorts based on obscurer DC Comics properties which were shown between their other, more conventionally long animated work on Cartoon Network, such as DC Super Pets, inspired on the time Batman and Superman had their own animal sidekicks in the Silver Age of comics, or imagining Batman villain Riddler as voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic. Reading up on them, including one animated by Aardman Animations of all people and a live footage version where real life professionals demonstrate the equipment of these characters in practical reality, it's an inspired idea and I want to see all of them. As much because that, whilst I got bored out of my skull by the modern Marvel Studios superhero film template, I am still fascinated and growing in fondness for these types of characters. If I could afford American comic books at a price closer to their Japanese counterparts, in terms of value for money, I'd be less inclined to read more famous creations like Spider-Man or Superman either, but delve into comic book history's strange oddities and cult figures. Some are legitimate cult icons - like Swamp Thing, the living embodiment of nature who became a greater figure in DC Comics when the legendary comic writer Alan Moore had a hand in changing him drastically. Some are misbegotten - like Man-Thing, Marvel's swamp creature now unfortunately living as the poor man's Swamp Thing. And some truly ill-advised ideas I read up upon and still want to read - like Marvel's U.S. 1, a truck driver hero with a cybernetic brain, which could pick up CB radio transmissions, and armed with a super-equipped big rig truck

Among these, Amethyst is also intriguing in a positive way - from 1983, the era of My Little Pony and He-Man, it was clearly meant to be a high fantasy story for a female audience; here, from a female director and a largely female production crew, this premise was re-tweaked for the modern era. In this version, Amethyst starts off as a bespectacled nerdy girl who, once transformed into Amethyst the heroine, finds herself increasingly baffled by what she encounters, immediately from the village of frog people proclaiming her a heroine of the realm, and yet using her smarts to succeed, including the idea that peppers in video games are really, really hot. This leads to the fact the series would've taken the piss out of high fantasy and role playing games, immediately evoking for me a Japanese straight-the-video anime series which tragically only had two episodes before it also got canned, Dragon Half (1993), which ran with its high fantasy setting into utterly ridiculous and hilarious consequences. The reference to anime isn't far off either, clearly influenced by it in aesthetic and also that the first joke is a parody of the magical girl genre, of female characters who transform into heroines like Sailor Moon, where the costume change sequence found in them takes place here in mid-air, not bad for Amethyst until the dimensional pocket said transformations always take place in disappears and one is still falling down in the sky.

Sadly, and this is a justification for typing an expletive as it perfectly sums up the situation, the creators of this production were given a shit deal in that, even without the factor that Amethyst was cancelled, they only had enough time for a tiny little plot they had to quickly resolve. Sadly, a project like DC Nation Shorts, whilst absolutely compelling as an idea, can become its own worst enemy in terms of how short the projects within it could be, as was the case here. What you get here is only a minimal plot - which Amethyst must face an evil male character named Dark Opal - and a little of the world to see including its denizens, worst as you barely get to meet characters like Prince Topaz, the last person to take on Dark Opal only to be left a living skeleton, found in a cave and suffering from chronic apathetic depression and a lack of confidence in himself. It's not a lot in all honesty to work with as a viewer.

But thankfully, there are still signs of what could've been, and Episode 3 is the best episode to show this. Whilst needing to wash, she finds herself encountering a very perverted living tree, one who is watching her bathe, as well as there being the incredibly dark humour of living flowers nearby who argue among themselves who'll be eaten by her horse and reveal in their devouring by the steed. It's a clear sign that the series, if it existed in a longer form, would've still appealed to a young audience but would've had an eccentricity that appealed to adults. The best thing is that, by all accounts, those great gags were directly inspired from the source material, an obsession in the art with even rocks having faces and therefore being alive. This is a great argument for the virtues of adapting source material, even the strangest details, as with this example you get a great idiosyncratic aspect of this fantasy world that would've been used further. The same applies as much to those pastiches which, rather than the dreadful Family Guy style referencing style of merely referencing something for a joke, it's implemented in a way that still works without getting the references.

Sadly, this is all we have, less than ten minutes. We barely see this heroine or her worlds, which was why the review was going to be originally more middling, not a criticism of the show but a wonder if there wasn't enough to get a lot out of from bad luck. However, with hindsight there was a lot still to like, even if having to intricately dissect from what little was there. It's just a shame, in this significantly more positive review, there's just that much left to actually watch.

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* Without any hesitance, this review references back to a podcast episode for the show Cancelled Too Soon, which covered this micro-series with Drouhard herself, so I'll include a link HERE.

From https://www.dccomics.com/sites/default/files/video/
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