It’s been a long and exhausting week, and I haven’t had a lot of free time, so I’m going to keep this review short. I’m hoping next week’s review will be better but I make no promises. This week’s review is also going to be a bit different.

The videos I’m reviewing aren’t straight up cartoons per say. They’re animated storybooks. There’s no real dialogue, just a narrator. And they’re both based off of semi-infamous story books for kids; infamous because they have…*gasp* gay main characters.

Unlike Steven Universe, these are stories where the twist is that the character is LGBT. It’s not a trope I’m terribly fond of. I don’t think it works anymore in our world. And I’ve never been extremely fond of the children’s media tropes where they hide an important attribute about a character to show how a disability doesn’t make them different. Especially since that character typically only shows up for an episode.

But I understand why people use it; it’s easy to present people as the same by having them not think to mention what’s different.

The first short: Rosaline is far more dependent on this twist; the short follows a young woman named Rosaline who is taking a basket of goodies to her sweetheart. Along the way, she runs into all sorts of issues. It takes elements from famous fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Cinderella,” and inserts them in obstacles into Rosaline’s path.

Every single time, she defeats them by wits or personality, all while saying: “I must get to my sweetheart,” never revealing her significant others’ name nor traits. It’s only when a fairy godmother offer Rosaline all the goods in the world, plus the affection of a handsome prince that things start to be odd.

Sure, she’s devoted but who can resist a prince?

But she turns the fairy godmother down and goes to visit her equally ethnically ambiguous girlfriend in the village to share a picnic. And then it ends. There’s no real character development. Nothing happens, it’s just a story to reveal that a goodhearted girl likes another girl.

Even a children’s story deserves to have some actual conflict.

And that’s why The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived is certainly the more interesting tale; it tells of a boy, Cedric who wants to become a knight. He grew up on a pumpkin farm, making armor out of pumpkins and always playing knights with his friends. The only hint that something is odd, is that he’s never crazy about the idea of ‘marrying’ his friend, who plays the damsel.

One day, the boy is made a squire. He trains for many years to be a knight and sets out on his own.

He finds out about a prince and princess being held captive by a dragon and goes to rescue them. His years as a pumpkin farmer prove to come in handy, as the castle where the hostages ae, is filled with pumpkins.

In the end, he manages to rescue the siblings. The sister asks him to marry her, but he refuses. But on the journey back to the kingdom, he falls in love with the brother whom he weds. (The prince’s father isn’t thrilled about the idea at first, but eventually allows them to marry, which I wasn’t expecting.)

It’s much more interesting and the idea that the idea that Cedric was gay is introduced much earlier one and makes up much less of his personality than Rosaline.

It’s not amazing or groundbreaking, but it’s definitely a nice thing for younger kids to introduce them to LGBT-friendly characters and content. It’s a start.

The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived is supposed to get a sequel where Cedric teaches his daughter Nia, to be a knight (and maybe deal with adoption?)

I wish they had actually done more with the shorts, though. It’s kind of boring just to have them be story books. And I get that they’re for kids but even both of these are a little anvilicious.

And that’s the scoop.

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Rosaline Score: 5/10

Year of release: 2016

Writer: Daniel Errico

Voice Actor: Teri Polo

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The Bravest Knight Who Ever Lived: 6/10

Year of release: 2015

Writer: Daniel Errico

Voice actors: N/A

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If you liked this read:“Trick or Treaters” is a not-so Halloween treat