It was alright.

I didn't totally hate it so i count it as a win.

While watching the movie, a group of kids would react and yell and sing at every instance and many would find that annoying but i found it endearing. It was like looking at a past version of me and my friends :]

Shout out to the one kid who was SUPER EXCITED for the lesbians and Trans Jax. They were fighting for their life against the other kids who kept yelling to jax to marry them or kiss pomni (while technically still yuri, ykwim.) i salute you brave soldier.

There was also a dude behind us who would commentate on the actions and we KEPT laughing at that he was so done with every character i was CRACKING UP LMFAO

The audience in the theatre really enhanced my enjoyment. We all sang along to caine's song and the whole room was alive. It felt so refreshing to be amongst excited fans, even if i wasn't on the same level 💝

BUT BACK TO THE MOVIE

So okay. Starting with stuff i liked.

Surprisingly I didn't completely hate jax, but gimme a minute to ruminate. Bc i still didn't like him, Or should i say HER?? EHHH????

I'll stick with the neutral "They" for jax now just to err on the side of caution considering we are viewing them from the worst parts of their life.

point being: a lot of us saw their ending coming a mile away but i digress.

I liked them in the movie. I liked that they played up their issues and really show how their behavior pushed others away, i thought their backstory with their mother was. Interesting. It was a little anti-climactic if you ask me for how "fucked up" we were hyped up to believe but IT WAS INTERESTING so i'll leave it at that!

The moment with the bow was cute and their friendship with Ribbit and Kaufmo was wonderful :] I loved Kaufmo and Ribbit's voices. Also the scene in Ribbit's room was very nice!

OH THE DREAM SEQUENCE?? SO COOL I HAD A LOT OF FUN WATCHING THAT. You guys know i'm SUUUUPER into surrealism and I was having a blast with Jax's dreams. EXCEPT GANGLE'S. THAT. THAT MADE ME A LITTLE UNCOMFY I WONT LIE. This view of Gangle is coming from a character who would hold Gangle's fantasies over her head over and over so i was. NOT THRILLED ABOUT THIS SCENE... BUT UH. NEXT QUESTION.

Jax yelling at Ribbit about how they are manipulating them? wonderfully done. It's a great look into jax's mindset. We see jax purposely isolating Ribbit and failing to do anything when she goes radio silent. I love how we see Ribbit trying desperately to deescalate the situation only to be shut down by someone who refuses to acknowledge the issue. Its a great look into Jax's character. I like seeing them react to the ACTUAL consequences of their actions! Good job!!

And to have Jax abstract OFF SCREEN IN THE FIRST FEW MINUTES?? I DIDN'T THINK MY PRAYERS WOULD GET ANSWERED BUT THEY DID OH PRAISE BE!! AND THEY DIDN'T BRING THEM BACK IN THE END I WAS SO WORRIED THEY WOULD OHHH I FELT LIKE I WAS ON CLOUD NINE ESPECIALLY WHEN GANGLE SAID SHE FELT NO SADNESS ABOUT IT? YOU TELL EM GIRL!!!!

I also liked the whole cast's human forms <3 some looked exactly like I imagined them, and the others were a pleasant surprise! I liked them living their best lives, as well as all of them meeting at the bus stop that was so nice ☺️

Movie was very Yuriful :3 My friends (all lesbians and bi-women-leaning) can attest to that so i'll mention it here lol Lots of Ragatha and Pomni and yes, gangle and zooble banged. Good for them lol.

I'm ngl, i liked some of the corny moments where the hugs just help the characters, especially ragatha and pomni's hug. I felt myself get all light and fluttery at that. They are wonderful :]

While I didn't feel overly satisfied with how a lot of these characters were wrapped up, It made me feel fluttery to see them all come together like that. Pomni and Ragatha, while very Togachako (shoved in all the development at the end) were cute!!

Caine was adorable. Esp at the end. I'll get to my comments about that in a second but i'd be lying if i said i didn't like caine being there. I love Caine and his sequence about learning about the humans through the internet was just gorgeous. Him saying goodbye to able (bubble) was such a bittersweet moment it was still beautiful to slowly watch him integrate and befriend the human cast. He and the moon made me tear up i won't lie to you. The moon said I love you and meant it. How wonderful <3

All in all, everyone was hyping me up for such a bitter-sweet ending but honestly?? That was such a happy ending. It ended as happy as It could have and I liked it! I felt very light hearted about it all and i was pretty satisfied over all. The ending music was awesome too. I loved the parallels and they all seem happy!

My fav scene? (other than the dream sequence and caine's realization) The lil ending scene where they are all playing DND!! So cute!!!

Ok

Now we get into why most of you clicked on this in the first place.

My dislikes.

Someone mentioned something to me a while ago. I was having an argument about tadc and I said that "I understood they had a limited run time so i understand why somethings felt rushed" or something to that extent. Someone then, to further their argument, mentioned how I was wrong and that goose actually chose to have only 9 episodes and that it was all planned.

Idk how to tell you this, but that just makes it worse.

You're telling me that they CHOSE to only have 9 episodes, all culminating to this final conclusion, and we barely know anything about most of the cast. The pacing is incredibly disjointed. Watching the whole series through felt more like I was switching through stages of the fandom. Most of this stuff felt like It was expanded upon more in fan-works and then the show acted like we all knew that and knew what was going on.

The continuity felt very cut up into several pieces. Caine is gone and they don't talk about it. Jax kept them all in the circus and they don't talk about it. Zooble never gets their arc. Pomni and Ragatha don't get their on-screen chat (yes they talked in the movie WHEN THEIR RELATIONSHIP WAS ALREADY MORE STABLE AND NOT HELD BACK BY JAX. Though that hug scene was cute it wasn't the big climax of their relationship) And to top it all off, any sort of forgiveness or reparations for Caine or the others done felt so rushed.

Honestly most of the plot points felt rushed. And you're telling me it was on purpose??? How does that aid in arguing against me? That feels like such a bad management of the short amount of time THEY GAVE THEMSELF.

I DON'T like how the movie acts like everyone had their lore basically completed or wrapped up. I don't like how everyone is acting like we are supposed to know these things they reveal. The show is entirely based on how much you know from going onto Goose's tumblr or looking into different things.

Bc for those who don't do that like my friend didn't? The mind-scan (while obvious to most) was confusing, "Abigail is still an accountant" we were never told pomni was an accountant, that was on Goose's tumblr.

EDIT: We were in episode 5 my bad. I forgot bc that scene felt very info-dump-y but lmao I'M CERTAINLY ONE TO TALK WHEN IT COMES TO THAT So moving on

I don't think we were ever given Queenie's name through the show its always just "Kinger's wife" which. I think you guys know how i feel about that. Scratch was constantly mentioned so who cares about what effect Queenie had on the plot. (This was further aided when my friends literally asked me to explain wtf was going on in half the movie, when They watched the full series.)

Pomni's talk with Kinger just felt. Strange to me??? It felt like a conversation RAGATHA would have with Kinger not Pomni. I did like the call-back to the manor episode (the strongest ep imo) but the whole conversation about "I just wanted to help uplift everyone and make sure they are okay..." ... wasn't that Ragatha's storyline?? Pomni felt very... all over the place continuity-wise. You can tell her character was sacrificed to become an audience insert, which would be fine for some, but not for me. I dislike how we lost Pomni's positive take on cynicism. It felt like they abandoned her plot after the manor episode and she slowly faded into what Twilight Sparkle, Ash Ketchum and Lloyd Garmadon (From s3-7) fell into; A Flat protagonist who preaches the message of the episode/show to everyone else. The so-called savior who has protagonist syndrome and breaks down when things go awry.

Back to Ragatha, Unless i'm just remembering wrong, but wasn't the whole drama surrounding Ragatha's character was that she was SUPPOSED to be a play on toxic positivity (i DISAGREE HEAVILY WITH THIS but if you want me to expand, i'll do so in another post just ask me) but in the end she was just trying to uplift everyone and didn't know how?

So when Pomni cried to kinger it felt... Stolen?? Like hey that's not your character's motivation that was Ragatha's! I'm not saying that should have been Ragatha's conversation, but i am saying that it felt like they were taking from Ragatha's character bc they literally lost Pomni's. I mean look at pomni's fear sequence. It's just Gummigoo. Pomni said in the last episode that "They all did things they regret" uh? Like what? EXPAND UPON THAT!!!!

Also, Ragatha was the closest with Kinger so i'm just saying we could have gotten a cool insight to that, but no... Ragatha's relationship with Kinger was QUITE LITERALLY (in the dream sequence) Thrown into the background.

And not to be that guy, but once again this happened to ALL the girls. And Zooble.

Gangle's whole moment with feeling guilt over not feeling bad about jax's abstraction was just that. A moment. Two if you count the time where she cried and immediately felt better with Zooble. Wow that was fast. Gangle has been a constant target of Jax's for the whole show. Jax literally holding their sexual fantasies over her head (blackmail) harassing her (throwing shit at her like a bowling ball, or breaking her mask on purpose, or calling her weak and pathetic), calling her interests boring or weird and ofc the whole scene where Gangle talks about how since she chose to go against jax, ergo humiliating him, Jax would take it out on her and making her life worse or miserable.

Gangle not being sad about his abstraction could have been an interesting nuanced take on how someone could be GLAD someone who terrorized them for so long is "dead" but oh well. Thats just solved by Zooble. Much like how Zooble's entire character arc was solved offscreen. sigh.

Ragatha's plot of... Having an abusive mother... Was just made fun of by Jax to further his character as an uncaring asshole and then dropped until the end when we see that Susie cut ties with her mom and that she has friends who like her. Okay. Ragatha solved i guess. Yes we get Ragatha and Pomni reassuring eachother, but i feel like that would have been more impactful if we saw them fully make up in the episode where they were supposed to: the gun episode. Instead we get 0 insight into Pomni and Ragatha's reconciliation and jump straight into them fixing what we apparently FORGOT was broken. Also not to be that guy AGAIN and i know i know i KNOW the bechdel test is outdated and needs reworking but FUCK MAN. THE ONLY CONVERSATIONS THEY HAD IN THE BEACH EPISODE WERE ABOUT KINGER AND JAX AND A LIL BIT OF CAINE AND "ABLE" BRO. CMON.

We hear that Ragatha and Ribbit might have also teamed up a lot, implied by ragatha literally saying "Hey Ribbit, wanna be on my team /AGAIN/" But. That goes nowhere. We see Ragatha talking with kinger and then asking for Ribbit but ok. That's got nothing either. But whatever they weren't the main focus. put a pin in this bc i'll come back to it.

We don't know more about Pomni or her friends, it seems she's stayed the same except for "Being more confident/self assured" irl, though Pomni accepting her own name was a nice callback, her ending didn't feel earned. It felt thrown in? Like the callback to the dinner table was very nice! But her accepting her name felt very.. idk i didn't feel much for it bc in the beginning she was less like "NO THATS NOT MY NAME" And more "Whatever call me whatever i don't care." so its not much of a parallel like they were setting it up to be.

Meanwhile we got SO much focus on Caine and Jax and their development.

I hated some of the dialogue but not for being corny (bc i actually teared up at Caine and The Moon's convo, as well as Pomni and Ragatha's hug) but for the part where "you didn't think you'd take care of him alone, did you?"

Thats where i saw it. It was once again up to EVERYONE ELSE to give Jax a redemption. It was never by his choice to do so. Its always up to someone else to be stubborn enough to "fix" him. (and before you say "they weren't trying to fix him" there is literal merchandise of that exact wording on a shirt. next to pomni's. sigh.) And that could be interesting if they didn't constantly have the cast doing all the legwork for him to seem like he's worthy of that. They literally BUILT A FORT FOR HIM TO REST IN. Dude. Its always up to the others to make sure that he's comfortable in a situation he out himself into.

It felt so uneven. The relationships and the plot surrounding jax. We have had jax as a conflict for about 4-5 episodes, and it culminates in something that ULTIMATELY? Didn't really effect the true message or meaning of the whole thing.

Taking the aforementioned pin out now: I didn't like how we basically got Jax's entire backstory in the FINAL EPISODE. This is the episode that ties everyone in together as a group. This was supposed to be EVERYONE'S finale. Instead, it was mostly 50% Jax, 20% Caine, and the rest was left for the others to fight for a moment of screen time.

Jax doesn't feel like the true final boss of the show. If anything, his story interrupted what should have been the casts's and Caine's stories/reconciliation and acceptance with their reality.

In my opinion, (AND THIS IS NOT OUT OF HATRED FOR JAX SURPRISINGLY; It's more on a love for a more concise and linear narrative) Jax should have abstracted prior to this. We get his backstory and then we get him terrorizing the cast once again with no caine to help. Meanwhile the cast try to survive it and slowly wrap up their arcs and come to terms with it, fully living by the end of the finale in the circus as new beings together.

We would have moments with the crew where we see their pasts and backstories, of which in my head would have been established by now, come to full fruition as they learn to live again with Caine having his redemption arc begin.

Instead we get not one, not two but THREE MONTAGES. One of which being a dream sequence that surrounded ONE character and ONE "DEAD" CHARACTER.

But on thr topic of the montages, Regardless, I liked Jax's dream sequence, it was so surreal and the piano thing? BRO THAT WAS FROM A DREAM I HAD THATS CRAZY!!

But you know what else was crazy??

The fucking capcut ass fancam in the ending of the dream sequence.

Bro.

My friends and i LOST IT in the middle of the theatre.

WHAT WAS THAAAAAT

IT WAS TO A SONG WHERE A MAN TALKS ABOUT HIS DAUGHTER TOO

i get it. It was to bolster the Transgender Plotline for jax, ONE THAT I STILL FEEL WOULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING TO GIVE TO ZOOBLE AS WELL BUT I DIGRESS... And to sorta parallel Jax's parental issues,

BUT OH MY GOD DID THEY HAVE TO SHOW IT LIKE THAT??? I WAS PISSING MYSELF WHAT??????????? THAT WAS SO RANDOM.

All in all. The movie was okay.

I had fun watching it and it was one of the more enjoyable theatre experiences. I wish all people who enjoyed lively audiences were in lively audiences and those who don't are in a more quiet area. I had fun, and in the end thats what matters.