I watched the first two seasons of Battle for Dream Island as a kid and I really loved them. They led me to the cult of “Object Shows”. Now seems like the time to check out the original season again after many years. I’ve rewatched all twenty five episodes and all four hours in one day and it’s time to write about it! The premise of the show is simple. A group of (gendered) objects compete in challenges hosted by “the Announcer”. For a time, the contestants were in teams. Each episode, someone is voted out until one stands and they win dream island. The thing special about this show is that the viewers at home vote for who is eliminated and the beginning of each episode features the results and elimination set up last time.
The following paragraph headers are quotes from the season.
“A Teardrop Family Reunion!”
At the start, things felt rushed. There should be at least a little more subtlety in the characterization of the cast and the show. Fortunately, as soon as Episode 2, Barriers and Pitfalls, starts, the show gets more steam. Some jokes had me laughing quite a bit, though some jokes, like the “Needy” one, were annoying. People frequently refer to a character named “Needle” as “Needy” and she doesn’t like that. That’s the whole joke. Some of the characters eliminated early in the game lack a character to them. They’re basically filler. Fortunately, eliminated contestants often make guest appearances. While deep characterization is nice, such a cast allows for some thin characters that are good as they are. As an example, characters like Teardrop and Rocky work perfectly well without much character. Teardrop is a “straight man” comedy character and Rocky is the quiet, innocent character. At many points, the show is too fast paced. Even though every episode has character moments, there should’ve been more that aren’t covered in the show. There are some animation errors, such as characters with arms being briefly seen without them, with the most likely reason for that being the animators forgot to include them.
I love how stats are referenced in the show. Pencil seemingly keeps track of who hasn’t received an elimination vote and Golf Ball tracks her chances of being eliminated, which almost always would be the same number for all the other contestants. The show’s creators, Michael and Cary Huang, commonly feature projects on their YouTube channels that involve graphs, numbers, stats, etc. You can see their interest in this show. One of the best aspects of the show are the “budget cuts”. Sometimes they go against the laws of physics and it’s hilarious. It’s a humorous parody of how shows can go through budget cuts and lose things that could be needed.
“Icy, because you have no arms, I’ll have to sit on you.”
The characters being certain objects is relevant. It affects how they progress. There’s jokes related to what they are. This gives more flavor to this series. Some characters, such as Bubble and Firey, easily die due to how their bodies are. Bubble is often popped. Sometimes this would require others to run to a “Recovery Center” to revive them. Golf Ball and Tennis Ball have no arms. This was a really clever way of showing the difference in characters and adding drama. If one relied on Bubble, they would be taking the risk of her popping. In Episode 14, Half a Loaf Is Better Than None, armless characters got sympathy points in a contest, which arm-having characters did not receive. However in Episode 16, Bowling, Now with Explosions!, the armless characters were not allowed to compete specifically because they were armless, but they could still receive the punishment of said episode. Like with Episode 16, sometimes factors out of the contestant’s hands (or feet) lead to them getting an unfair advantage or disadvantage. This generally didn’t work well as an unfair game isn’t as gripping or interesting.
As the show progressed, episodes were less eventful. A noteworthy example is Episode 24, Insectophobe’s Nightmare 2, it mostly just sets up the last episode and doesn’t have its own individuality. For the bulk of the episode, the remaining contestants chase bugs (which is not a competition) and the elimination results of Episode 23 take place at the end of the episode. It’s all filler.
SPOILERS
“So it looks like another ball is going home.”
There’s lots of things that don’t work here. Disappointingly, the friendship between two characters, Leafy and Pin in Episode 1 Part 1, Take the Plunge, lost relevance as soon as Episode 1 Part 2 started, due to them being on different teams. Why not explore that by having them miss each other or learn and change in some way? In Episode 18, Reveal Novum, Pencil wins fair and square, but is ultimately eliminated by having 105 points on a two-digit points system. The number in the hundredth place can’t be included, so she only has five points. This isn’t funny and it creates unnatural developments in the story. If the creators wanted Pencil on the block, she should’ve just lost so hard that she fairly got into that position. In Episode 9, Insectophobe’s Nightmare, a team, the Squashy Grapes, are disadvantaged by being split in half, despite not having done something to constitute that.
The relationships that the characters have is one of the most interesting parts of the show. If a certain character is eliminated, it’ll have some impact on the people that knew them. When Blocky was eliminated, Pen and Snowball were upset. Unfortunately, Tennis Ball didn’t react much to his best friend, Golf Ball, being eliminated. Match’s elimination led to a shift in Pencil and Bubble’s alliance. Ice Cube replaced Match in said alliance, but when Pencil was eliminated, Ice Cube divorced from Bubble in the alliance (despite having no reason to). Ice Cube was always less involved in the alliance than Pencil and Bubble. The series shifted to being about the characters of Bubble, Firey, and Leafy. Bubble and Leafy have a rocky relationship, while Firey and Leafy have a rocky, romantic relationship. It’s clear that the creators wanted Bubble to not be tethered to the alliance which had mostly been about Pencil and Match and instead have her play off of Leafy and Firey. It’s unfortunate that it was shoved off to the side and ignored unceremoniously.
“We choose the barf bag!”
Over the series, characters have been inconsistent with characterization. In Episode 15, Vomitaco, Pencil tastes vomit without any reason to, despite having been revolted by it earlier. Throughout the series, she goes from a valley girl type to more of a doer and “tomboy” for lack of a better term. She cares less than in the beginning about hurting people’s feelings. In Vomitaco, she deliberately pops Bubble as she’s annoyed by her. She wouldn’t have done that earlier on. She used to be portrayed as stupid, but got smarter. While the creator’s probably just stopped liking the initial character, this inadvertently shows character development. The creators often seemed afraid to set up something long term like character development. If they start the ball rolling, then that character is eliminated, the scenes dedicated to them changing are more or less redundant. It became somewhat obvious who would make it to the end, as these characters were the most popular, so they likely wouldn’t be voted out.
In Episode 25, Return of the Hang Glider, Firey and Coiny, both enemies, befriend each other, even though there is a reason, it doesn’t make sense. The two have nitpicked problems to have of the other person in the past. This suggests they felt a need to dislike each other. Admittedly, Firey did mature quite a bit once Coiny was eliminated and who knows whether Coiny’s personality changed once out of the game? If Coiny was to grow, we should’ve seen it. He actually gets more character development in Season 2. The Announcer initially said eliminated contestants would be sent home, but it was later revealed that even from the beginning, they were actually sent to the TLC, the Tiny Loser Chamber. Was he lying? What is even the point of the TLC. On another note, why is he giving away Dream Island? Why does he want to befriend Leafy and Firey in Episode 20, Gardening Hero? Many of these questions aren’t answered. Leafy often switches from being nice to mean, sometimes in the same episode. In Episode 17, The Reveal, she gives Bubble a gift… but takes it away later. Vomitaco features her giving Pen a taco, but only for an absurd amount of money. There should’ve been a reason for Leafy’s character shifts, but none was ever given. In the end, it seemed she was the antagonist, but that was seldom made explicit. She was nicer in the beginning of the show, when no one was getting character development. She was just “a nice one”.
“Wow, it’s been eleven hours and still no one has blinked.”
It’s not an issue to have contestants joining/rejoining the game if done sparingly, but near the end it became way too common. The episodes where someone joins or rejoins are numbers 9, 14, 18, and 21. Things began to matter less as there were so many chances to rejoin. What’s it matter if someone’s kicked? They might be back next time! The characters of Flower and David both weren’t interesting or developed and were eliminated briefly after (re)joining. There was also a very large gap of time in which they were absent, so you don’t care about those characters as you haven’t been following them. This can happen with a show so dependent on how the viewers vote/think, but it doesn’t make good storytelling. It doesn’t make sense from a storytelling aspect to jam in characters that don’t do or add much. Flower served the purpose of showing that not being interesting gets one eliminated. She was the first person eliminated in the show. She was an example of how the format of this atypical show works. That’s all.
“Twenty-two cakes have come and gone, but none of them are nearly as magnificent as the Grand Cake.”
The last episode solves certain things and leaves other things open. Firey wins Dream Island. He then lets everyone in Dream Island except Leafy. Firey’s reasoning is that Leafy didn’t like Firey’s ferris wheel from Episode 24 and this means that Leafy is hateful. However, the only reason Leafy didn’t like it is due to a lava fall that painfully killed her. I can understand Firey getting offended, but he is a very forgiving person. In this same episode he forgives Coiny and lets him on the island. How could something so little cause Firey to not let in the person nicest to him? Did the episode just need a conflict or a comeuppance for how she treated Bubble? Leafy then secretly buys Dream Island, is caught, and is revealed to be a Football. That is completely out of nowhere. Next we see of Leafy, she’s a leaf again. What’s the point in the football? Why not pick something at least the same shape as a leaf? The contestants then suggest Leafy be killed and almost every contestant turns into a mob out for blood. This contradicts some of the characters, who seemingly wouldn’t do such a thing. Firey saves her before anything happens. Firey then says he doesn’t care about Dream Island, but he does care about Leafy. While this likely doesn’t happen based on the events of Season 2, one would think that Firey and Leafy go to and live in Dream Island happily ever after. There’s also a jarring shift as earlier in the episode, Firey was terribly offended by Leafy. We never saw him change his mind on that.
If the writers wanted Firey to stop being cool with Leafy, why not have Bubble tell Firey of how much of a jerk Leafy has been to Bubble? This would tie that loose plot thread into the episode. Leafy was quantifying how nice Bubble is as a person for some of the season. That would suggest a deep lack of respect Leafy has for people. While this would call for carefully crafting the story, what if Firey thought that he liked Leafy so much he couldn’t let her in? Leafy is also not the kind of person that would be vindictive enough to steal something like Dream Island from a bunch of people who didn’t do anything. Furthermore, some characters criticize Flower for killing some characters and their Recovery Centers, but then they’re fine with killing Leafy? Almost all the characters with varying opinions and personalities, turned to obsessing for revenge over something. These character flips are all over the place.
A subtle aspect of the ending is quite nice. Everyone except Firey, Leafy, David, and the deceased end up where they initially were. That’s a nice way to bookend the series. Note that in Episode 1 Part 1, the characters were just hanging out on this big, mostly empty plain. The Announcer also ends up with his people, an alien race, which presumably he was with prior to the series starting. If you ignore Leafy and Firey’s odd blip in friendship, it is nice how they get together, which built over the course of the season.
OVERVIEW
“Oh no, I’ve been dulled!”
This season lost a lot near the end. I wonder if the creators became eager for it to end or if they wanted free time, so they rushed together the stories. I appreciate how original it all is and Battle is a fun watch. It’s fascinating looking into the minds of Michael and Cary Huang, who were two kids that crafted this whole world. Battle for Dream Island sadly isn’t as good as I had thought and I doubt that most who bother to give Battle for Dream Island the 3 hours and 50 minutes will get anything more from it than I did. If anything, longer episodes would probably help the season by giving more time to story and character development. The show’s still okay, regardless.
The Filme Diary 