As if in response to my own writing from before I saw Milo's Return...
Would "Team Atlantis" have been another "Gargoyles?" Judging by Milo's Return, only in theme. The general tone of "Team Atlantis" would have been more cheerful, although darker than other Disney series. However, storylines would have been a little more complex than usual (the kraken episode, for instance).
Would it have been a good series? Heck, YES! The episodes we saw in Milo's Return show nothing distinctly cliched, overused, et cetera. Episodes like that would probably be kept to a minimum, such as the Tarzan series (Limited mostly to an episode about how bad lies are and a big dinosaur episode, though the latter is VERY acceptable, since Edgar Rice Burrows actually wrote about the land of Palucidar.)
I don't plan on tearing the thing apart. There are some things I would have preferred, but this isn't a big deal. I'm glad we got a taste of the series.
Animation? Is it really as bad as they say? Not really. It's Korean division, nothing new. Great animation? No. But the color approach is much better than early Korean division work (Aladdin). Would it be nice if the Australian division did it, like the Lion King 2, Little Mermaid 2, and Lady and the Tramp 2? Or even "House of Mouse," the only Australian division series? Sure! (Milo, Kida and Rourke did make brief apearances in that series, by the way. No lines, just appearances.) But the chances of all that effort being put into the sequel for a movie that didn't do well was unlikely, anyway. The animators for Milo and Audrey were pretty good (though there was an error with Audrey's fingernails, but the same mustake happened with Kida too. Only the male characters are supposed to have triangular fingernails.) Kida was a little over-simplified for my tastes, mostly as far as mouth-detail. Not surprising, though, since she has a lot of line milage in several small areas. (I'm sure if they could have simplifies Mole, they would have, for instance.)
Visual errors: Yep, Kida suddely gets an extra earring, missing tattoos, a missing king stone, different look to the crystal, Obbi's belly color, and the amount of Atlantis above the water. Yep, it happens. But you will notice these are all visual, not story-based. Even the first movie had some problems with character placement, and Crystal Kida's earring is missing, then suddenly reappears all in one clip. It happens, plus the tattoos were supposidely very tough on the cleanup artists in the first movie. I'm addmitedly not happy the tattoos were missing, but I understand why. I figured out a way to address the big ones by way of fan fiction.
The ending: Some people love it (since it's a VERY happy ending) and others hate it. Yes, it can give you cavities it's so sweet. The people who don't like it say it's because it destroys the believability, the ability to think that maybe, somewhere, Atlantis still lives beneath the earth, undiscovered by the public, as a place where magic and beauty still dominate. If it rose, then people would know. But since in real life, people don't, then it's hard to pretend that Milo and Kida existed. The guide to Atlantis book, "Subteranean Tours: Atlantis," was a book that was about what you could expect if you visited the lost city, concerning dining, shopping, and staying. About ALL of it was rendered incorrect by the sequel! The book, "The Mythological Guide to Atlantis: From Plato to Disney," had some similar problems.
...But...
This can be solved. In the story, "Team Atlantis: The Light Lost," I wrote about a disaster that sank Atlantis again, and the stories from the few who saw Atlantis became local legend in the fishing communities. "The world was never the same after that. It was much, much better." This is because the story of it, and stories spawned from it, became a source of hope. The story of Atlantis was not just the story of its destruction, as Kida feared. (Plus with characters like Kida exposed to the surface, they're going to want to go to the surface out of both curiousity and the desire to make a difference, the world would be better.) So everything can be fulfilled, AND stil have it match the books AND still be real in some way.
Nope, Milo's Return didn't meet the title graveyard. Not a big deal, either.
As a sequel, it wasn't bad, in my opinion. I got what I expected, and I'm satisfied with that.
The stories were good. The voice acting was good. In fact, James Arnold Taylor is a great voice match for Milo, and unless you've seen the original dozens of times, you won't notice. If you have seen it dozens of times (like me) then I can assure you, you'll notice only in the first few lines before remembering its a different voice actor. JAT did a very nice job (said by a Milo-holic). The voice actor for Cookie also did a credible job. The rest is the original voice cast. (Cree is a blast, as always, thus said by a Kida fan.)
And Obbi is a cutie. Face it, even for those who were annoyed by him, I'm sure they would admit he's adorable.
As for my "Balto II comparison"... Though Balto II has better colorists and line quality, the animation of Milo's Retrun is consistant, not distracting, has no mass/movement errors (I believe there are a few in Balto II) and a good set of stories. So is Milo's Return so bad? Certainly not. 8>)
If I offended anyone with this, I'll apologize once again. We got our sequel and series, just together. You can choose to ignore it. Personally, I liked it, though I will admit there are better done Disney sequels, like Return to Neverland or the Rescuers Down Under, thugh the latter was the only Disney sequel to be done in a feature animation studio. I, for one, view Atlantis: Milo's Return as a continuation of the Atlantis Legacy, and something that needs expanding in fan fiction, fan art, and so on.
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