Rose Petal Place - Cartoon Retrospective (Part 6)

 Rose Petal Place: The Audiobooks ("A Garden of Love to Share" and "Rose Petal and the Evil Weeds")

Welcome back, my beautiful fairies! Why don’t we upgrade a little bit and talk about the audiobooks? Well, cassette-books, technically. If you’re young and dumb like me and don’t know what that is, you’d put a cassette tape into the radio and read the book along with the narrator. It was like listening to an audiobook while also reading the physical book at the same time. The first book we’re looking at, A Garden of Love to Share, is adapted directly from the first animated special. This version was written by Dagmar Foslien, with Karin Williams helping Pat Paris out with the artwork. It’ll be fun to see how this differs from the animated special. You can listen along to the audiobook right here!

The story starts with a song, just like the animated adaptation.

Rose Petal: (signing) “Push through the ground, little plant. Reach for the sun. a bright world will be found, little plant, when a new life’s begun.”
Narrator: “Rose Petal’s beautiful voice rang through the garden.”

I will admit, I love this song way more than the one from the first animated special. The singing is still lovely, but the lyrics are more imaginative than that stupid friend song from the animated version. But Rose Petal’s song seems to have bothered Nastina, and it’s pretty obvious that none of the actors from the animated special reprise their roles (aside from Marie Osmond as Rose Petal). That’s definitely not Marilyn Schreffler as Nastina or Frank Welker as Horace.

Nastina: “Oh, that Rose Petal! I’ll stop her from singing those ridiculous songs!”
Narrator: “She motioned to her repulsive assistant Horace Fly.”
Nastina: “Come with me, you moron. We have work to do!”
Horace: “Yes, Nastina.”
Narrator: “Horace muttered.”

Upon doing some research, I believe the cast of both the audiobooks and the concert record (which we’ll save for the end) were one and the same, but I can’t confirm this. Anyway, the same thing happens in the audiobook as in the special, albeit in a rushed and condensed manner: Nastina and Horace make a plan to destroy Rose Petal’s voice. Unfortunately, we don’t get her corny little musical number of “I Love to Hate”, but a stupider and shorter number about her bubbling cauldron. A lot of plot points from the special are repeated from here on out, with a few detail changes here and there. But during the part where Horace feigns his redemption, I like the added line of Rose Petal being genuinely happy about the supposed change. 

Narrator: “Seymour lumbered off to tell Rose Petal about Horace Fly’s problem. She was very happy about Horace’s change of heart, and said…”
Rose Petal: “If Nastina doesn’t have Horace to do her dirty work, she won’t be so powerful. Yes, I’ll see Horace.”

But even with these nicer details that I would’ve loved to see in the animated version, the plot continues as usual, with again, a few details changed. Like Nastina telling Horace that kidnapping her love interest in a net isn’t a good idea to show how they’re “reformed”. But hey, this version has Rose Petal be more suspicious and level-headed at least.

Narrator: “Rose Petal wasn’t sure she could believe Nastina, but she always looked on the bright side.”
Rose Petal: “Perhaps she really has changed.”
Narrator: “Thought Rose Petal.”
Nastina: “Let’s drink a toast to celebrate our new friendship, Rose Petal! Then you must sing for us.”
Narrator: “Gushed Nastina.”

Big shock: the villain is still the villain and her voice-destroying poison has worked perfectly, and Rose Petal is tossed in the dungeon. Seymour is worried about Rose Petal vanishing so calls all the animal friends rather than the flower lesbians. This is an improvement on the special, as it’s stated that the animals actually go looking for her, unlike the flower lesbians who sat there all night and did nothing while knowing where their friend had been taken. Sunny also makes the obvious observation that the evil spider lady down the street probably had something to do with the evil scheme. But their plan is much funnier and blunter in the audiobook, as instead of a stealthy rescue mission, P. D. Centipede just knocks on the front door and has the cat and the hedgehog beat the crap out of Nastina and Horace.

Narrator: “P. D. banged on Nastina’s door. When she opened it, Pitterpat lashed Nastina with her tail and forced her into a corner. Tumbles rolled in and bowled Horace Fly over. When he got up, P. D. knocked him down again.” 

Another thing I like about this story is that all my lesbian jokes have a payoff. 

Narrator: “The girls sat around her crying. Lily Fair’s tears fell on Rose Petal’s cheek when she stooped to kiss her.”

Let’s go, lesbians! We love seeing women love each other! Don’t be afraid to kiss the homegirls goodnight, my beautiful humans out there! This book was worth it! Anyway, what do you think the ending is? Pikachu tears wake her up, her voice goes back to normal, and they sing off into the sunset. 

Rose Petal: (singing) "Good friends, sweet friends, I love you so much. My life reawakened because of your touch.”
Narrator: “Once more her voice was beautiful and true. Everyone crowded around to hear the rest of her song.”
Rose Petal: “Good friends, sweet friends, I’m safe, thank you all. If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll come at your call.”

There wasn’t much to say about this book that wouldn’t be repetition from the animated special’s review, both have the same problems. But I guess I do prefer this one for the small additional details. How about we check out an original story? This is Rose Petal VS the Evil Weeds, written by Nancy Buss. A pretty interesting, potentially action-packed or even scary title. Let’s give it a listen!

This story begins quite sinister, as the atmosphere hits you right away.

Narrator: “The first time the weeds came, Rose Petal and her friends were fast asleep. The slimy creatures moved into Rose Petal Place in the dead of night. Clouds covered the moon, and the fog muffled the sound of their marching feet.”

Firstly, the mood is going strong here! And I love the more sinister undertones presented right away in contrast with the happier tales of this series. This one has, so far, the potential to be rather special in terms of Rose Petal Place stories. But the weeds themselves unfortunately have an annoying and unpleasant villain song.

Weeds: “We are weeds that crowd and strangle, we are weeds that choke and sting.”

Still, it’s nice to have antagonists that aren’t Nastina and Horace for once, and they have the potential to be decently threatening- oh, who am I kidding? The weeds are, big shock, Nastina’s doing. The next day, the flower lesbians prepare for the Festival Day picnic, only to find their celebration grounds choked with brambles and thorns. 

Narrator: “Daffodil pulled at one of the brambles.”
Daffodil: “I don’t know, but I bet Nastina’s behind it.”
Rose Petal: “No, even she wouldn’t do this.”

Oh, I beg to differ considering all the stunts she’s pulled. She killed you! Anyway, to prove Rose Petal wrong, Horace Fly buzzes over and starts to smash onions onto the crowd, causing panic and tears amongst the festival-goers. The lesbians run under the protection of Elmer the Tree from Hell, only to find out he too is infected by weeds. So the girls decide to try and free him from his viny tomb. Meanwhile, Nastina is banking on everyone’s hopelessness to be their downfall, as they plan another onion-attack on top of the weeds. Speaking of attacking, the weeds return that night, with Rose Petal and her friends waking up to find they’re struggling to even navigate the garden anymore. Horace also returns and directly destroys Rose Petal’s house by throwing vegetables onto her cottage. The flower lesbians decide to actually try and do something, a first in this story, so as to not be driven away from their homeland.

Rose Petal: “If we leave Rose Petal Place, we won’t be together. We’ll all be going somewhere different.”
Narrator: “Sunny Sunflower took her friend’s hand.”
Sunny Sunflower: “We might never see each other again.”

…Why not leave together? Oh no, wait: they have an actual plan. They simply take all the scissors, rakes, and clippers they can find and start slicing the weeds.

Narrator: “Rose Petal and her friends attacked the weeds. Soon, they were joined by all the citizens of Rose Petal Place- even the smallest creatures helped.. Rose Petal started to sing a song she had written especially for the occasion. Before long, everyone had joined in.”

Rose Petal: (singing) “Evil weeds that crowd and strangle, we chop weeds that choke and sting. Little and sharp vines that mangle, out they go, that’s what we sing.”

I do love that the heroes essentially remix the villains' song as they start attacking and gaining victory over them. And it’s cool that we have characters who aren’t actually afraid to fight, even if most of the story was them cowering.

Narrator: “Now everyone’s eyes were dry. And the only ones who were left to cry were Nastina and Horace Fly.”

For an original Rose Petal Place story, this one’s actually pretty decent. It has some threat, some atmosphere, I really love Nastina’s hammy voice acting… but there’s also the problem of much of the story being dedicated to characters crying, hiding, and not doing much until the climax. The defeat of the villains is okay, especially with them turning their creepy song into one of hope, but Nastina and Horace’s ends were really anticlimactic. There’s also no real theme or message aside from “working together is good”. Overall, an okay story. But definitely not my favorite. Though, none of these audiobooks are anything really special. But that last story did get me thinking.

This leads into the fourth main issue I believe led to Rose Petal Place’s failure: The setting isn’t used to its fullest.

Much like how the themes of art and music are wasted, the series doesn’t also take much advantage of the garden setting. Aside from the one with the weeds, many of these stories could take place in any setting. This series has two potential elements that could help make it stand out, the art/music motif and the garden motif, and neither are utilized in the plot in creative or meaningful ways. The garden is a very boring setting with, ironically, not much life of its own. Its safety acts as a plot device more often than not, rather than actually being a special place you care about. It’s all just a waste when both of its themes could’ve blended together to make a truly wonderful world.

But we’ve reached the end of our retrospective with one last piece of media: the record. The problem is I’m not very knowledgeable on topics like music theory and song composition, but I do know how to sing and I do know how to write a story. And this is a story-driven album meant to showcase the personalities of the cast, so I’m primarily going to be judging it by that merit. Now, let’s get to the curtain-call with this final piece from Rose Petal Place.