Rose Petal Place - Cartoon Retrospective (Part 2)

Rose Petal Place: A Garden of Love to Share (Animated Special)

 

Welcome back, my fairies! I'm your hostess Claire Aimée, your fairy Clairy Godmother. And we're here at my Fairytale Theater to begin our rosy retrospective series as we look at the first animated special of Rose Petal Place!

Rose Petal Place’s animated specials were produced by the now-defunct Ruby-Spears Productions, and both were directed by former Disney animator Charles August Nichols, the co-director of the Hanna-Barbera's Charlotte’s Web. The specials credit a man named Mal Marmorstein as the writer, but there is unfortunately zero information about him to be found online.

Ruby-Spears Productions was founded by the creators of Scooby-Doo, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, both of whom sadly passed away in 2020.

Background information for this one is rather breezy, so let's get to the fun part of the actual cartoon. I definitely want to talk about the production values and art direction before the actual story though, because it's easily the most attention-grabbing thing of the special. The backgrounds are gorgeous, with tons of delicate detail; they really do feel like they’re out of a pastoral portrait. The forests and gardens fittingly feel lush and vibrant, yet gentle and dainty. I love all the painterly shadows. Even darker thorn bushes and weed patches of the garden, with how they’re drawn with sharp angles and swampy colors, still have a very appealing whimsy to them. There’s a genuine sense of warmth and charm in these expansive backgrounds, capturing that soft and friendly atmosphere. The animation itself isn’t that bad for its time either. Of course you still have the occasional wonky coloring job, layering mistake, or slightly-off facial expression. But for 1984, the body animation itself has the characters move gracefully and fluidly. Some characters even dance along to the background music, which is an adorable touch.

The backgrounds, especially the grand shots of the old mansion and the delicate garden landscapes, are very beautiful and impressive for 1984.

The character designs are doll-accurate, and are themselves very charming. Each one has their own flower motif, and the elaborate hair-dos with flower hats and teardrop jewels are an especially eye-catching feature. My major gripe with the character designs is that the characters of Sunny Sunflower and Daffodil look way too similar and are easily confused for one another. They’re both blue-eyed white girls with short yellow curls wearing yellow dresses and hats. Personally, I would’ve made Sunny’s main color be orange, and maybe add a few more green accents in her clothes. Maybe the artists could've given her a different eye color or darker hair? Doesn’t help that both characters have the same voice actress, and their voices aren’t distinct enough from each other for it not to be distracting. Orchid and Lily Fair also have the same voice actress, but the voices are different enough to where it’s not confusing.

 

 

My main problem with the animation is inconsistency of the eyes: sometimes the eyes will just be flatly-colored with no extra detail, and other times the eyes will be drawn extremely detailed. (These two screenshots are both close-ups of Rose Petal, so you can't even use perspective as an excuse.)

As for this review and critiquing the actual substance within the special, the animated cartoon is available for free on YouTube. You can watch the special and read along with this review, or you can watch for yourself to form your own opinions before listening to mine. As for this blog, I'm going to be combing through this cartoon scene-by-scene, sprinkling in detailed criticisms about topics when I feel it's appropriate: a mix of recaping and reviewing. 

 

The animated special starts out with Rose Petal singing the franchise's theme song (simply called "Rose Petal Place") as she parades her friends around the garden. No big shock that Marie Osmond sounds good singing as Rose Petal. Her voice is clear, bright, and soft. She doesn’t sound bored being there, but doesn’t sound falsely-enthusiastic. She’s not childish, squeaky, or overly-sweet; she sounds warm and loving without being obnoxious. And I won’t lie, I think it’s primarily the singing and the overall beat that makes me oddly endeared to the theme song, despite the bland musical score and the sappy lyrics. The song also helps establish that Rose Petal’s magical ability is that her beautiful singing helps flowers bloom and restores dead plants. This makes her integral to the garden’s survival, thus Rose Petal and her voice are beloved and borderline worshiped by everyone in the forest. ...Unfortunately, the song is interpreted by our first crumb of conflict, instigated by our main antagonist: Nastina. 

I swear Nastina is the ex-wife of that creepy Tony Jay spider from Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends.

Nastina is the queen of the garden... though not really, as she has yet to take over the garden because Rose Petal’s singing is blocking her plans of making the garden look like the Bog of Eternal Stench. But despite the direct threats and the grizzly murder attempt from Nastina, Rose Peal is rather unphased, stern, and almost sassy. Nastina is voiced by the late Marilyn Schreffler, a Kansas-based voice actress who did dozens of voices for Hanna-Barbera cartoons. She was a background actress for her entire life, usually only credited as "additional voices", but she was most famous for Brenda on Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (another Ruby-Spears production, also directed by Charles August Nichols). Though you’ll probably recognize her for her final role as Winnie the Werewolf in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School. 

Fairy Fact: While working on Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, Marilyn Schreffler was so sick at the time that she had to record her lines from her bed. She would then tragically pass away in 1988 from cancer at the age of 42. 

 

Nastina also has this nasty little man-servant named Horace Fly, voiced by Frank Welker, who you’ll recognize from literally every cartoon ever. Primarily, he's been the voice of Fred on Scooby-Doo since 1969 (and later the Great Dane himself starting in 2002) and was the original voice for Megatron in Transformers. Though this is one of the weirder cartoons I’ve seen him in, Frank does voice every single male character in this special, which is impressive. Though this specific character archetype of a fly mobster with a shrill voice reminds me a lot of André from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. But I love Nastina’s energy (though she's as stock as a cartoon villain gets). As soon as the humans move out of the house near the garden, she’s just like, "This place is mine!" She’s not even a real queen! She just puts on a crown and goes, "I’m in charge now!" And the protagonists just kind of scold her lightly for it. She’s so over-the-top and campy! It's almost adorable. Anyway, as Nastina leaves to go do "evil things" (probably putting a grocery cart in a disabled parking space or something), Rose Petal promises her friends that nothing bad will happen to them, which of course means something bad is going to happen to them. Like being forced to witness this abomination:

The Great Deku Tree has an inbred cousin?

Oh, the creator of this cartoon worked on horror movies you say? No duh! That thing is terrifying! Truth be told, I never found Chucky all that scary, mostly because Chucky is trying way too hard to be twisted and ugly. While Elmer here is trying to look wholesome, which makes him ten times scarier because the creepiness is unintentional. But Elmer expositions us by telling us how Rose Petal and her flower friends came to be. As we cut to the only live-action portion of the special, a young girl is moving away from her home and she cries for her beloved garden because no one will be there to take care of it. So she makes a wish that the flowers would live forever. This magical wish combined with her tears of love brings Rose Petal and all of her friends to life to live forever and protect the garden.

Fairy Fact: That’s a young Nicole Eggert as the nameless little girl, who has a favorite rose. (Not that roses are her favorite flowers, but she has a specific favorite rose that she talks to. Bit odd, but there wasn’t much to do in this time period.)

And yes, the plot of this show is that Pikachu tears make immortal flower lesbians. There’s no hyperbole, as the official descriptions on things like their toy boxes do state that these girls will live forever. There is the disturbing implication that while these flower fairies are immortal, their animal friends aren’t, meaning the girls will have to watch their bug buddies die one day. And if we’re going by real-world life spans, Horace will live for about 25 days before Nastina must find a new evil minion, and she herself only lives for 2 years. So Rose Petal and her friends don’t need to do anything to defeat the villains but wait a while… or get a really big shoe.

Speaking of bugs, we see many of them gathering in the next scene at Carnation Hall for Rose Petal's concert. The character designs are fine, but they look nothing like the other bugs in the cartoon- mostly referring to Nastina and Horace. These bugs are super cartoony and drawn as more traditional insects, while Nastina’s face is practically human and Horace is overly-detailed to the point of looking more monstrous than any of the other bugs. They’re not even dressed the same. The bugs have no distinct time period in their dress. Meanwhile, Nastina is a Victorian monarch, Horace is a gangster out of the 1920s, and everyone else (including the human girl) is dressed very Edwardian. 

I am bugged (pardon the pun) by this inconsistency in the clothing because I do genuinely love the early 20th century fashion and design direction. It’s more timeless than something like Jem and the Holograms, and it helps the series stand out a little bit more. I just wish the bugs and animals could also follow this design philosophy rather than just the lead characters.

Speaking of friends, let’s go to the concert hall's dressing room and catch up with all our lil’ lesbian flower babies. (Look, they’re all girls doing girly things and there's not a single man to be seen. Like the very similar Strawberry Shortcake, men seem to be an endangered species in this world, and Plum Pudding was transgender anyway. So yeah, girly 1980s franchises are queer culture. I don’t make the rules, except for when I absolutely do make the rules.) 

As I mentioned, Sunny Sunflower, the tomboy, and Daffodil, the no-nonsense business woman, are both played by legendary voice actress and voice director Susan Blu. She’s most famous for voicing Arcee in the original Transformers, but we ALL know her deep down as Grandma Spankenhiemer from the Christmas classic, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. ...Actually, all my lesbian jokes fit surprisingly well here, as Susan Blu herself is a lesbian and was married to Cynthia Songé up until Cynthia's death in 2010, and Susan is currently married to Tania Themmen (sister of former child star Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory).

Fairy Fact: Like Nastina's voice actress Marilyn Schreffler, Susan Blu also was in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School as the voice of Sibella.

Orchid, the self-absorbed fashionista, and Lily Fair, the naïve and delicate dancer, are voiced by Renae Jacobs: the original April O’Neil on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Renae herself would go on to work on another David Kirschner project, as she provided the (uncredited) cries of Baby Glen in the movie Bride of Chucky. And lastly there's Iris, the shy painter, voiced by professional theatre actress and dancer Candy Ann Brown.

Do these characters sound potentially interesting in their personalities and dynamics? Well, if the show actually focused on any of them. Those personality traits I mentioned are only, if barely, highlighted in supplementary material like the books and official descriptions. None of those characteristics ever actually show up in this special. None of the other flower girls use their artistic talents to save the day or anything, and they don’t have relationships outside of their connection to Rose Petal. They have nothing to do or say in this special, and it’s a real waste of good character designs and interesting-sounding personalities on paper.

Anyway, Nastina tries to drown them. Like, she goes from childish threats towards the heroes to straight-up natural disasters in the next scene. It’s comical, but it’s effective. From "No, you’re dumb!" to "I love murder!" So Nastina’s horrible flood destroys Carnation Hall (but being a kid's cartoon, no one is hurt). But despite the flood destroying their theater, Rose Petal remains obnoxiously optimistic and assures that they’ll stay in the garden no matter what, not even being mildly phased by the destruction. I can only imagine what kind of conversation the bad guys were having during all of that: "Hey boss, what was the plan here? Just drown them all?" "Of course! I am very smart! By killing everyone, I ensure their loyalty! Then I will be the queen of this empty kingdom with no one in! Ah ha ha ha!"

...After that failed plan, Nastina goes back to her freaking cool castle. Seriously, I love this place: the bucket towers, the teapot chimney, and the broken glass bottle doorway shining the harsh yellow light. This place is seriously sweet. I love watching large everyday objects used by little characters in ways like this, where you could live in a watering can or a paint bucket. It’s a favorite design trope of mine! Anyway, remember when Nastina said she didn’t want anymore singing or music in her garden? Well, this villain who is established to hate music and singing is next seen playing an organ. (Davy Jones and Ocarina of Time's Ganondorf, she is NOT!)

In all seriousness, as cartoonishly over-the-top Nastina is, she does kind of make sense as a character: she wants to rule the garden and make it all scary, but Rose Petal’s flower-growing singing makes that task impossible, so she wants to get rid of Rose Petal’s singing. …But a queen driving away subjects by making their home uninhabitable means she has nothing to rule but an ugly pile of weeds even if she does succeed in her goals, unless she's going to force people to stay (though it also could be explained that Nastina wants the garden entirely to herself). The description on her toy also implies she’s jealous of the flower girls’ beauty, which adds subtext implying she both hates Rose Petal’s singing but also is jealous of it, on top of her beauty. Perhaps she’s envious of the worship and admiration Rose Petal gets for her singing while Nastina’s own talents are ignored by the garden she wants to conquer. Protecting her love of power, control, and herself by seeking to exterminate anything that rivals those three things could actually make great motivations if better written. Aside from that, she’s a good threat that is constantly attempting to violently destroy and even manipulate the protagonist. So yeah, I don’t hate Nastina as far as simple Saturday-morning villains go. She has understandable if simplistic motivations, her goals mostly make sense when paired with said motivations, she’s active in her pursuits, and she’s got a bombastic if shallow personality. Sadly, she’s probably the most interesting character in this show.

Anyway, our plus-sized spider queen here may hate Rose Petal’s singing (she’s so obsessed with her that it’s basically a crush at this point), but she’s got a little villain song of her own for us! Nastina’s song, "Love to Hate", is just… stupidly charming in how cartoonishly evil it is. The song itself is cheesy, but the lyrics are mischievous enough to be entertaining. Though, Nastina's not really singing: she’s more speaking to a rhythm. It doesn’t sound that bad as is though, and I can imagine singing in a voice like this would be very troublesome for the voice actress. So yeah, it’s not good, but it’s a cute little time waster and an excuse for Nastina to have some dumb fun. 

Anyway, the bad guys’ plan is to give Rose Petal a poison to ruin her voice, and this plan is put into action with Horace visiting Rose Petal’s snail friend Seymour to manipulate him. The fly spins this tale about wanting to turn over a new leaf and leaving Nastina as a way to get Seymour to ask Rose Petal to meet him out in the briar patch. 

And you know this series was written by a man because the defenseless woman with a purse goes into a sinister alley alone at night knowing there’s a creepy man who tried to kill her earlier that day waiting for her.

Big shock, Horace kidnaps Rose Petal. (Who could've seen that coming with such a subtle location?) Rose Petal’s useless friends contemplate potentially having a purpose in this show and go to find her, all the while Rose Petal is taken to Tin Can Castle. Nastina has seemingly changed her ways and renovated her castle into a beautiful palace of pink, inviting Rose Petal inside to bring Nastina’s OTP fan fiction to life with a romantically-coded dinner.

How is Rose Petal falling for this after they put her in a net and essentially kidnapped her? The original plan was to fake Horace’s redemption with the idea that Nastina was still a jerk, but then they set it up like it’s Nastina’s redemption and Horace is still slime. But I guess Rose Petal is too blown away by Nastina’s magically-changing castle to think about that. Granted, I would too. I mean, look at Nastina’s new dress and hair! She is eating and leaving no crumbs. When the animators don’t draw her purposefully ugly, she looks just like a nice older lady with some wrinkles, beauty marks, and fat cheeks. In my heart, no matter how they draw her, Nastina will always be my BBW lesbian queen. Slay spider bae!

The dinner straight out of a ship fic goes well for our femme and former-butch, as Rose Petal falls for the fake redemption story, and barely questions how Nastina goes from murderous floods to "lol flowers are cool now". This tricks Rose Petal into drinking the poison. The poison for Rose Petal. The poison specifically designed to kill Rose Petal. Rose Petal’s poison. And Nastina's evil plan to destroy Rose Petal’s vocal cords works flawlessly.

Nastina, girl! You had it all: the threads, the pad, the waifu. Quit the poison and garden shenanigans! Just stop being evil and embrace your true feelings already! Rose Petal was so close to loving you. You were winning a game you didn’t even know you were playing!

 

The Mr. Bean spider lady reveals herself as still evil by ditching her disguise: as she has a crown behind her other crown, wears her dress under another dress, and her three ponytails turn back into one bun by the time she undresses as if the dress magically up-do’ed her hair. Because fitting those shoulder puffs and high collar into those skinny sleeves TOTALLY makes sense.

Nastina, you don’t need the garden. You clearly have magic clothes and a shape-shifting castle! The garden is a trash heap compared to your, er, literal trash heap. But you know what I mean! This dinner date plan of hers is only fueling my lesbian crush theory. The constant obsession, attending her shows from the sidelines, the stalking of everything she does, the way she wants her to come to her castle, the little date night she sets up complete with a cute little outfit? Nastina is crushing on Rose Petal but doesn’t have the heart to be open about her feelings. If she keeps her rougher aesthetics, they could have a good butch/femme dynamic going on. (It’s okay to come out of the closet, Nastina. We support your sexuality.)

Nastina locks Rose Petal up in a dungeon with no sunlight for her to live off of where she’ll slowly wither and die in the darkness without the ability to call for help, which is a pretty grizzly demise for a little girl’s cartoon. The show then remembers that other people exist in this world (as none of the characters aside from Rose Petal are relevant or unique) and the flower lesbians find Rose Petal’s car, making the obvious conclusion that she's been kidnapped by the only mean person in their entire society. Back at Tin Can Castle the next day, a butterfly spots the dying Rose Petal from a crack in the wall, so she goes and warns Rose Petal’s friends of Nastina's plot. But the main problem with this scene is that they already know that. The last scene had Rose Petal's friends discover her car, acknowledge they all know she's been taken to Tin Can Castle, and then they all chose to do nothing. For added salt, it was night during the last scene with them, and it’s day by the time the butterfly goes to talk to them.

The characters wasted a whole night doing nothing with the implication they knew their friend was in danger with only one culprit, and they did nothing. By all accounts in terms of story logic, Nastina should’ve won. Leaving Rose Petal to just straight-up die is an effective villain plan, and pretty hardcore. (Good job Nastina for doing the painfully obvious and actually trying to kill the protagonist.) But you know the story won’t end like that, as the garden would die without her. Because the other characters, despite living in a garden, don't know how to care for a garden other than through magical singing. Because Rose Petal is a macguffin who has the entire universe revolve around her, and the other characters are practically decoration. 

The female characters sit around moping until the only male one of the group, P. D. Centipede, suggests they take action and rescue Rose Petal (how empowering for the girls watching at home). Their animal friends sneak into the castle to lower the drawbridge as the distracted villains jam out to their own music, only for the animals to be caught immediately. But P. D. Centipede is the only character here doing anything of importance, and his brilliant idea of "actually fighting the bad guys" works, and the rest of the useless crew bust in as they casually walk up the stairs to save their dying friend. The girls discover the worst fate of them all: the show’s budget ran out and they can’t afford to pay Marie Osmond anymore, so now they don’t have to waste money on celebrity voice actors! (Oh, and Rose Petal is dead.) …But Nastina has a secret weapon: a giant catapult! 

And again, I love that they use everyday objects to make this machine, they even have helmets made out of thimbles. The aesthetics are off the charts! But while I appreciate the villain being so bloodthirsty, the idiot ends up destroying her own castle. Villainous Blunder No. #15: don’t destroy your own lair or resources just to get at the heroes! After the castle is destroyed, the flower friends mourn over their fallen siren, but their lesbian tears bring her back to life. …Oh, I get it: she was brought to life by tears, so they revived her with tears. That actually makes sense within context and is a good spin on the Swiss-Army Tears trope! These tears restore her voice too, and Rose Petal sings her heart out once again.

The ending of the special feels underdeveloped. Why couldn’t anyone else use their special talents to restore the garden? Or maybe have Rose Petal and her friends work together to help restore it? These other girls are briefly established to be talented in their own fields, like Iris’s painting or Lily Fair’s dancing, so why can’t their creative arts also be used to help heal the garden? What if instead for a finale, Rose Petal’s voice was still broken? But she attempts to sing her song with her friends and the power of friendship working in harmony could both restore her voice and give the side characters something to do? Have friendship be the true secret to keeping the garden alive, not just Rose Petal's singing. This pilot is meant to introduce the audience to these characters right? So why do I know nothing about them? Why do they do literally nothing? Why was this whole animated special nothing?

Rose Petal Place: A Garden of Love to Share has some good parts about it: the visual style is beautiful, the music is good, the character and environment design are extremely charming, it has some incredible voice talent, and there’s definitely a cozy charm… but charm only gets you so far. The story isn’t terrible, as the villain is fairly competent (and even enjoyably silly) and the atmosphere is rich… but where the pilot fails is in its characterization. The side characters have no purpose within the narrative, and all feel very hollow and forgettable. Even when they decide to try and do something, it’s unimpactful and they feel poorly stapled into a conflict. Rose Petal’s flower friends didn’t need to save Rose Petal. The animals could’ve done it themselves. You could write these girls out of the story entirely and nothing would change. There’s no theme tying the narrative all together either, and there’s no lesson to be learned: it’s just a generic rescue mission with characters you don’t care about. But the side characters don’t matter, right? It’s Rose Petal’s show and it’s about introducing her.

And that leads to the first of the five main issues I believe led to Rose Petal Place’s failure: Rose Petal is an uninteresting character.

I hate how the term "Mary Sue" has been butchered online to basically become a boring buzzword for "female character I don’t like", but Rose Petal really is an example of overly-perfect and shallow main characters, like the kind you find in low-effort fan fiction. To give genuine writing advice here, there’s nothing wrong about making a character who is exceptionally kind or beautiful or beloved. Heroes need some likability. But Rose Petal is a Mary Sue not in the sense that she’s the nicest or most talented person in the show, but in the sense that the entire world revolves around her to the detriment of everyone and everything else within the narrative.

Rose Petal herself has very little personality aside from being generally good-natured and a talented singer, and while there’s glimmers of bravery or spunk within her, those brief highlights fade away under too many layers of gooey, overly-sweet frosting. And all of the scenes, even the scenes she isn’t in, are about her. All the villains ever talk about is Rose Petal; the main antagonist is so obsessed with Rose Petal that she might as well be in love with her. This scene where the flower girls seem to be getting ready for performances that could showcase possible personalities? No, the Carnation Hall scene only showcases Rose Petal and her traits that we already know about, with no expansion or added depth. Rose Petal hogs so much of the story that everyone else from friend to foe feels like Rose Petal’s accessories rather than individuals. Nastina was right: Rose Petal is nothing without her singing, because she basically turns into a prize to be fought for by the characters when she loses her voice and becomes a useless prop waiting to be saved. And for the main song, sung around three times mind you, to be about friendship, the relationships aren’t developed in the slightest. Characters like Orchid or Daffodil feel more like fangirls than companions. They’re never seen hanging out or getting to know each other aside from just listening to Rose Petal’s singing.

I don’t know if this was intended as a rip-off of Strawberry Shortcake, as it was more likely that this flavor of feminine media was popular at the time. But for comparison, I did watch the first Strawberry Shortcake special released in 1980, and it is better in every way. It’s also incredibly charming with great aesthetics, but the characters are far more defined and the narrator is actually pleasant and not nightmare fuel. The writing is downright peachy, pardon the pun, and it maintains a playful and wholesome vibe while staying down-to-earth and not forcefully chipper. It’s still flawed, but it has a stronger identity. Rose Petal Place feels much more shallow, and even on its own merits, it’s rather unimpressive in all other aspects but visually; it has a bland story, a worthless supporting cast, and a putridly-perfect protagonist. 

However, this was only the first special- let's see how it improves with the sequel. But we're going to have to find that out next time with Your Clairy Godmother.