It’s almost been a year since Amphibia came to an end with its stunning finale. We left Anne Boonchuy, Sasha Waybright, and Marcy Wu several years in the future as they’d grown into confident young women, all following their unique paths✃ in life. Far removed from the teenage h🐻ijinks that defined them, the timeskip was a bittersweet farewell to a show many held dear.
Now it’s firmly in the rearview mirror, and with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marcy’s Journal surpassing expectations upon its release last November, I caught up with Amphibia creator and friend of the site 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Matt Braly to reflect on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Hardest Thing in its entirety. I can’t quit🎃e believe it’s been this long already.
TheGamer: Before we delve into Amphibia, I’d love to ask what you thought about Sonic Frontiers, and what sort of other things you’ve been working on/enjoying lately?
Matt Braly: I really enjoyed Sonic Frontiers. I’m not a fan of the screamo music during bosses, but nearly every other aspect was a gas t🧜o me. And as someone who also tried to drop a m🍃oon on our heroes in the third act, I especially liked the secret final boss.
The past few months have been jam packed with great games - I also loved Xenoblade 3, the RE4 remake, and am currently enjoying Jedi Survivor. I think Survivor has some of the best supporting characters I’ve seen in a game for a long time.💛 There’s a slug in a spacesuit with a Scottish a🌄ccent for chrissakes.
As for shows, I just started watching Skip & L🦩oafer, which is a very nice anime. Also, I watch the new Gundam (The Witch from Mercury) show weekly and always look forward to it. I also watch The Great British Menu for some reason, don’t ask me why. I’m burning through those seasons.
TG: I still can’t quite believe it’s been a year since the show ended. Now that this much time has passed, what feelings do you have looking back on the ending and where we left all these characters?
MB: I’m very proud of the ending - it’s everything I wanted for the show and its characters from the beg꧂inning. I understand if some fans found it sad, but Amphibia has always been a story about change. With that in mind, an ending where the characters continued to go on adventures together ad infinitum would have felt dishonest. Saying goodbye to things you𒐪 love is part of life, and we owe it to our audience to be truthful with our stories.
Plus, from my point of view, the ending is very sweet! Seeing Anne, Sasha, and Marcy reunite after all those years☂ never fails to melt my heart.
TG: When it comes to the third season, from both a narrative and character perspective, do you feel like you achieved everything you wanted when it comes to wrapping things up for Amphibia?
MB: Totally. This was a series that was essentially prohibited from having continuity in its first season. I remember the episode Prison Break was u🌟psetting to some of our executives because it didn’t follow the same slice of life pattern as the episodes before it.ꦜ The slightest bits of serialised storytelling would often result in finger wagging from the top and a speech about how these choices would cost us viewers.
Given that history, Season 3 is a miracle. It had our leads trying to find a way back to Amphibia to defeat an evil king as they are stalked by his murder robot…all while trying to make peace with Anne’s parents and evade the government. I’m really happy with what our team was able to accomplish - it was all very ambitious for an 11-minute show and nearly broke the production a couple times. The episode Escape to Amphibia had two car chases, a hallway action sequence, and a giant killer mantis attacking throngs of FBI agents. 🅘I still can’t believe we were able to make that one.
In retrospect, I think Amphibia was tantalisingly c📖lose to the kind of show the network really wanted - funny jokes, warm characters, and friendly visuals.🐷 But the sometimes dark overarching story was seen as undesirable and something to be pruned.
TG: The final trio of episodes - the finale especially - might be my favourite episode of Amphibia. It is so perfectly paced and does all of the characters justice in terms of their arcs and agency. I recall you saying the same about it, and would love to hear about why?
MB: In terms of pacing, I think the reason it works well is that we wrote it with a 90-minute movie format in mind. The human brain is very fond of the 90-minute runtime, it feels like a full meal without overstaying its wဣelcome.
Beginning of the End is your first act, and has your set up (15 minutes or so). All In is your act two and is the meat of the story and the bulk of the physical action (45 minutes give or take). The Hardest Thing is the final climax and resolution (30 minꦺutes). There’s something about Amphibia’s story that I don’t think I’ve ever had ꦅthe guts to say, but I’ll say it now - it is in many ways a break-up story. This kind of subtext really helps certain finale sequences hit like a truck.
For example, the space battle in The Hardest Thing is such a powerful moment for Anne, Sasha, and Marcy because it’s their last dance together. Even though the sequence is unquestionably triumphant and joyous, there is something beautifully sad underneath the surface as well. The real gift of the adventure was to let the three of them fully understand one another and see each other truly for the first time…which in turn lꩵets them bravel🌼y go their separate ways.
Amphibia was so delicious to write because even though there are incredibly high stakes and world thre🌳atening villains, it’s ultimately about strong personal relationship𝓰s between the characters. The fate of the universe feels equally important to the fate of this friendship. We seeded that question very early in the audience as well so for three seasons viewers have been wondering just what is going to happen with these friends???
I remember early on (maybe season 2) a fan on reddit said something like “guys…you do𒁃n’t think…the girls will separate at the end do you?” And other comm𒉰enters were like “no way, Disney doesn’t have the guts.”
TG: Time skips are often controversial, but I also love them and was so happy to see The Owl House follow in similar footsteps to Amphibia. When it came to depicting Anne, Sasha, and Marcy as older women after such a long passage of time did that come with any particular pressure?
MB: I think we were all really comfortable with this! I remember one of our creative execu🦹tives, who is a good friend of mine, was briefly cautious - “are you sure about this? Because it’s going to mean we can’t make any more.”
But honestly, seeing Anne grown up and working at an aquarium is something that has deli༒ghted everyone who has seen it. It just feels so right, and it’d be insane to have not gone through with this. I will say it was important for us that each girl felt confident, self-assured, and VERY supportive of one another in the end.
TG: There are also so many references in that final episode from Zelda to Gunbuster. It is so damn excessive and so brilliant, even if they’d go over the heads of some viewers. What are some of your favourites? Also, is Captain Grime losing his arm a reference to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare?
MB: I have never played COD: Advanced Warfare, so unfortunately that’s a no. (editor's note: both characters are played by Troy Baker, so it’s a wild coincidence to dismember both.)
For the finale, I ♑would say the biggest influence♎s were (takes deep intake of breath)
Magic Knight Rayearth, Gunbuster, Diebuster, Shin Getter Robo Armageddon, Sonic Adventure 2, Mobile Suit Gundam Char's Counterattack, Powerpuff Girls, Dragonball Z, Majora’s Mask, and Madoka Magica.
The show was really a wonderful opportunity to smash a♔ll these cool things together like some mad scientist in a lab.
TG: One thing I’ve noticed with female heroines in recent years is the theme of self-sacrifice and a lack of worth in who they are as people and what they’re capable of. I’ve seen it with Anne, Adora, Luz and so many others. Why does this trope resonate with you specifically, and the realm of animation?
MB: I think a lot of artists struggle with self-worth, so it’s an easy thing to project on our characters. I also think the idea of empathy as an important and valuable quality is somet🐻hing that is (thankfully) becoming more popular in fiction.
Many artists/creatives tend to be meek as well and have trouble asserting themselves or speaking up when they’re struggling or unhappy…so once again, I think it’s an easy quality to pass on🐭 to our heroes. In writing these characters we are communicating that - yes, these feelings are real and worthy of addressing.
TG: We touched on shipping before in this fandom and how some might react to the third season, and aside from some gay lizards and some other cute inclusions things went as expected. Have things calmed down since?
MB: Honestly, I think the f🦄ans were very mature and respectful about our choice not to create any official romantic pairings between the three human leads. Better still, they’ve all been very supportive of one another’s he🦋ad canons and personal ships. So hey, I’m proud of you guys!
TG: Is there any question or thing about Amphibia you haven’t been asked before but would like to bless me with? If not, is there anything in the finale you would want to expand upon or change if given an opportunity?
MB: Oh wow…I feel like the Genie when 🃏Aladdin asks him what he’d wish for. Uhhhh let me think…free space question….free space question…
Oh! Here’s one - I saw some people wondering why Anne makes a joke as she’s about to♓ wither away after using the combined powꦡers of the stones to obliterate the Core.
“Why didn’t you have a more serious ไor dramatic line there?”
The answer is simple… Anne wanted the last⛄ thing she saw to be her friends smiling and laughing. Hence, she goes for the joke. Classic Anne!
TG: Marcy’s Journal seems like it was a huge success judging by how fans and critics reacted. How are you feeling a few months after the fact? Thanks for trusting me enough to cover it and debut a few pages ahead of release too. It was so fun!
MB: The Journal exceeded my expectations in terms of quality. Adam, Cat𝐆, and Sol (our graphic designer) really went that extra mile to make it feel real, valuable, and complimentary to the series. Thank you for covering it! Fans were SO delighted to have pages trickling into the wild.
TG: While the journal covers mostly familiar events from the series it also touches on new ground when it comes to Anne and Marcy. How did it feel to have a place to explore them in this way?
MB: The ꧙diary format really let us go wild with the characters’ inner thoughts in ways that would not have been appropriate on screen. For a show, rambly dialogue and inner monologues are big no nos…but for a book like this it’s extremely natural.
TG: It’s also surprisingly dark when you take away the fact Marcy is a zoomer weeaboo and Anne is a lovable dork, with a deeper glimpse into mental health and personal introspection than I could have expected. Was there fun material here you could delve into that the show couldn’t offer?
MB: Absolutely. There are a lot of moody sent꧙iments in the Journal that would have utterly halted the pacing of some of our episodes…but on the page we were able to make them feel as if they were happening in tandem to the action/comedy found in the show. Additionally, because you, as a viewer, KNOW what happens at the end of Season 2, we were able to bake in a lot of dramatic irony with Marcy’s early solo adventures. It’s additive in a way that wouldn’t be possible had this book been written at the same time as the show.
TG: I also have to ask about the ending, which seems to take place after the time skip while hinting that a new portal or similar device has been cooked up at the lab. Is this a ‘never say never’ situation when it comes to returning to Amphibia?
MB: Pretty much! The journal does n▨ot commit to the girls returning to Amphibia but allows for the possibility of a reunion…or at least for the idea that the girls would get to finally pass messages to their friends on the other side. It’s wha𝔉tever you want it to be.
It’s been such a pleasure Jade. I hope our paths continue to cross in the future. As a scoop I’d love to give you 🦂something big to share with the fans…I can’t OFFICIALLY confirm i❀t yet, but I will go on record saying it’s looking like more Amphibia books are coming. And they’re really exciting.
