Baby Need Smoko

i really hate the Viz official translation i think it stinks bad (second one). they just completely stripped the sauce out of it. there are a bunch more examples but i really think this has damaged the potential of oneof the greatest manga of all time in the west because they took out all the chan references (which i believe are present in the original japanese!) and replaced them with millennial redditor crap. its a very fine distinction but it means everything

even the english cadence and rhythm of the Viz version is worse

notes:

the top tier is not S tier. the top tier is like "6 or 7 out of 10, by kids' movie standards, if I'm being generous".

"enjoyable elements" usually boil down to a villain who is completely batshit insane and chewing the scenery. sometimes it's "clown plane" or "she always milked the cow her own way" though.

most of these tiers are sorted chronologically, not by quality within the tier. special exception to the bottom tier, which does descend in quality, steeply.

It means various things! Those movies are weird and hard to categorize and I didn't even understand what they were going for.

Barbie in The Nutcracker (or BASEBIE IJN THE NUTCRACKERT) was the very first animated Barbie movie, and one Mattel wants people to forget (Barbie in A Christmas Carol was billed as "the first Barbie Christmas movie). It's a kind of surreal movie that features lengthy wordless plotless ballet sequences, random D&D monster encounters, a horrible-looking bat, and a Rat King who doesn't make sense from basically any angle. It's also got this really bizarre ending twist in its framing device that I really don't know what to make of. It was kind of entertaining to watch insofar as being baffled and boggled is enjoyable, but "good" isn't a category of thing that feels like it could even be applied to it.

Barbie & The Diamond Castle (or BAURVE & THE DIANOD CAALT) is the one I find hardest to figure out if the writer thought they'd accomplished what they wanted or not. It's the most lesbian Barbie movie, insofar as it has two leads who are women who live together and sing about how much they love living together in their cottagecore fantasy house in the woods and show no interest in the male love interest supporting characters- but it's a chaste 2008 possibly-somehow-unintentional kind of gay that doesn't really do anything. The weird thing is its bizarre original story about magic music witches that runs on a fairytale logic that keeps zagging out of the way of making sense- it's the one I'd have the hardest time describing what it's about. Also it has maybe the worst CGI animal sidekicks in the franchise. Those horrible little dancing dogs feature in my nightmares.

The Barbie Diaries (or THE NAIRNE DIARIES) is not a Barbie movie. It's a Disney Channel original movie that got lost on its way to the shoot and fell into the Barbie basement by accident. Not animated by the same studio, stylistically and tonally completely different. Leaving aside the weird inconclusive subplot about a magic good-luck book, it's a perfectly serviceable teen movie about high-school popularity drama- a subject I cannot fucking stand and so I hated every minute of it. I can't honestly call it bad, but I've got an allergy.

Barbie: Princess Charm School (or BARBE: PREINCFWESS CHARM SCXHOOL) is a fever dream. It's kind of funny and high-energy, but, uh... well. The plot: there is a, uh, prep school type thing for "lady royals", which doesn't appear to have any correlation with hereditary noble standing and might just be a state of mind. Barbie, a commoner, is enrolled sort of by mistake and has sort of a fish-out-of-water plotline where she learns to be the Barbie franchise's deranged hallucination of what a princess is, and embroiled in a complex inheritance manipulation scheme that doesn't make any sense. The school incidentally has like, fairy slaves flying around and they're weirdly involved in the action despite not talking or having their deal explained ever. It kinda turns into a girl power heist movie towards the end??? This is like, the most running-on-vibes a Barbie plot has ever been, besides BARBIER: S FASHIN FWAIERYTALEW which is kind of the same movie (down to the poorly-explained fairy slaves) if it were tedious and ugly and about nothing.

That’s IT.

YO BITCHEZ, LOVE DUNKAROOS?

WANT TO MAKE A MASS QUANTITY OF IT AND SAVE MONEY AT THE SAME TIME??

WELL HERE YOU FUCKING GO:

1 box funfetti cake mix (DO NOT add the ingredients that you usually would to actually make the cake - you need just the mix) 2 cups plain yogurt ½ container of cool whip. Serve with animal crackers or graham crackers.