Plot: 3A: Otto 3000 â After breaking his snowboard while qualifying in a big competition, Otto sells out to a massive conglomerate, Sno-Mart.
3B: Night Prowlers â Lars challenges Otto and the others to a hockey game. The only hitch is itâs set to be at midnight. Otto accepts on behalf of everyone, but there will be big trouble if theyâre caught.
Breakdown: 3A: Otto 3000 â This episode is really dumb. I try to avoid starting reviews with watered down statements like that, but itâs true.
First and foremost, this episode is framed as a documentary Twister made on the events of the episode â which is just Otto partaking in a snowboarding competition. Twister films literally everything they do all the time, and they compete in a lot of things, so why Twister decided to make a documentary about this one, I have no idea. It makes even less sense because Otto is eliminated. Did he really turn this into a documentary because of Ottoâs brief family drama? Can you even call what happened drama?
The reason I bring this up is because I found the documentary aspect to be a lazy way of getting information out since they all do that reality-show-esque testimonial thing where they talk to the camera about things that happened along the way.
Not only that, but Twisterâs cheap and, quite frankly, poor manner of filming and editing makes this whole episode really annoying to watch. I can see how itâd be charming, but for someone so obsessed with film, Twisterâs sure not good at making videos. He doesnât even seem to have a video editor capable of making title cards, which is something even free video editors provide. Instead, he opts to hold up literal title cards with his friends doing the same when their testimonials come up.
Second, the conflict, if you can even call it that, is stupid.
Ottoâs partaking in a snowboarding competition, but his board somehow manages to snap in half when he very lightly crashes into Twister after his qualifier. They take it to a repair shop, but the price to fix the board is outrageous – $175. Just for fun, I looked up how much snowboards cost, and you can easily get one for $150-175 at cheapest with some of the more expensive ones being between $300-600.
And thatâs in modern money. Adjusting for inflation from 1999, roughly, that same $175 would be more like around $275 now, so Otto couldâve gotten a fairly decent board for the same price of fixing his cheap one.
Raymundo isnât having any of that, so he decides to fix the board himself. But he sucks at making repairs and thinks a board slapped together with instant epoxy and duct tape will still work. Not surprisingly, it doesnât. Otto canât even get the board to move, which means heâs basically screwed for the competition.
In comes, Iâm not making this name up, Dick Shakely â CEO of Sno-Mart, a popular franchise snow sporting goods store. He wants to sponsor Otto and give him a fancy new snowboard â The Phantom 3000, which they even renamed immediately to the Otto 3000 once he accepts the offer.
Otto immediately sells out, decking himself out in Sno-Mart gear. Heâs jazzed about the competition now, but Reggieâs livid because heâs usually sponsored by Rocket Boards, the business Raymundo owns.
This made me double-take because I had to question if Raymundo sells snowboards. As far as I know, he only sells surfboards and surfing equipment in the same building as the Shore Shack. And if Rocket Boards really did sell snowboards, why did Raymundo not have the ability to immediately get Otto a new board or pack a backup? Why does he suck so much at repairing snowboards when he supposedly sells them?
The short answer is, because he doesnât sell snowboards or the like. As far as Iâve researched, he only sells surfboards, which makes sense because he lives in Ocean Shores where they rarely, if ever, get snow.
It seems Reggieâs just angry, and Raymundoâs just disappointed, because Otto dropped Rocket Boards as a sponsor in lieu of a big corporation like Sno-Mart. He chose money over family. But, truth be told, Rocket Boards is a really shitty sponsor if they wonât provide Otto with enough money to repair or replace his board so he can, ya know, actually compete in the event he needs sponsorship in.
Ottoâs right â he did need a board. He couldnât compete with the one Raymundo âfixedâ – it literally would not move. It was either drop out or join Sno-Mart.
Besides, if Otto’s goal in life is to become a professional in any extreme sports circuit, he’ll need other sponsors besides Rocket Boards eventually.
The way that Otto âlearns his lessonâ is also very lame. Sno-Mart loads him up with so much gear that he canât move well enough to snowboard without wiping out, which makes Dick angry, because bad performers sponsored by Sno-Mart make the company look bad, which is understandable. Otto gets fed up with it, so he sheds all of his Sno-Mart gear and rejoins Rocket Boards, with one very important difference Iâll address in a second.
The only reason Otto gives up Sno-Mart is because they made him wear too much stuff. I donât understand why he didnât just shed his underlayers and keep boarding. Thereâs absolutely no point in wearing the other stuff unless itâs visible. Thatâs kinda the point of sponsorships. They pay you to wear their logo and endorse their stuff so their logo and stuff can get more exposure on the back of someone prolific. The other crap heâs wearing underneath can easily be removed since no one can see that stuff.
In addition, he had absolutely no issues moving before Dick gave him that one jacket. He even performed a very complex trick off a huge ramp with ease with all of that gear on. They threw this flimsy development together just to get to the resolution.
Itâs like they had the bare bones of a plot here: Otto gives up his family businessâ sponsorship and sells out -> learns itâs not what itâs cracked up to be or he gets mistreated or something because heâs just another faceless billboard to them -> Compete with the Rocket Board sponsorship proudly again. But when it came to the details they got ridiculously lazy.
Speaking of the third part of that plot â Otto does indeed go back to wearing the Rocket Boards logo again when he takes his first run of the event.
Oh dear, though. He has no snowboard because his old one is unusable and his new one is courtesy of Sno-Mart, meaning heâs still technically shilling for them if he uses it.
Well, the solution to that problem is simple. Ignore it, and just have him use the Otto 3000, not realizing that it completely defeats the purpose of his sponsorship change.
Yay.
Dick takes the board back, but only after Ottoâs run, which he fails because he wiped out.
And Otto learned a very important lesson â His fatherâs a cheap-ass sponsor who was basically complacent with his son losing this competition by default because he didnât want to pay for either a cheap replacement board or to get repairs on his snapped one, and heâs happy when his son basically cheats a free snowboard out of a company, even to just use it once, just because grrr big company bad.
Also, Otto learned that he does not possess the ability to remove excess layers of clothing unless he learns the very lazy barely-there non-moral of the episode.
3B: Night Prowlers â Luckily, this episode is much better with funnier jokes and a better moral, but itâs, overall, quite boring.
The kids, barring Otto, approach the idea of going out at midnight very realistically. They do want to go, but they know their parents will freak if they find out, so theyâre hesitant. Even Twister needs to sit on the idea before he agrees.
The episode is more about actually going out at midnight than it is about the game, which makes sense because the game never happens. Lars shows up, and is somehow the only one who thought to bring a flashlight. His teammates, however, bailed because they didnât want to get in trouble. Since Lars has no team, Otto and the others win by default.
The cops show up right then, however, and Lars gets away, which I thought was BS. The worst one of the group and the one who started this mess gets off scot-free? Give me a break.
When they get home, Otto willingly takes all of the punishment because he was the one responsible for agreeing to this in the first place. I guess, despite not living there, Twister and Sam are also allowed to walk away with Otto taking the blame. I donât know why Officer Shirley dropped all of the kids off at Raymundoâs, especially when they specifically have a scene where the officers are asking where the kids live. That was probably for the sake of wrapping up the ending, but itâs still rushed and makes no sense, especially considering the kids live very close to each other.
The punishment, by the way, is garbage duty for three weeks, which is a far cry from the âgrounded until youâre my ageâ punishment he said theyâd get if he ever caught them out late at night.
The best part of this whole episode was, oddly, in the equally as boring B-plot. Stimpleton is performing a stakeout to catch a night prowler, hence the title. The night prowler is literally moving his lawn furniture by like an inch. I donât get why Stimpleton wouldnât do the intelligent thing and just buy a security camera. His house is so ridiculously automated, Iâm surprised he doesnât already have such a security system.
Anyway, it was Mrs. Stimpleton skinny dipping. Yup. I probably got more amusement out of that than I should have, but it was a pretty funny twist.
Oh and just to highlight how boring this episode is, you know that thing I mentioned before where Rocket Power will take a word or line, usually slang, and make an animated X-TREEM title card to exaggerate the word or phrase? (Which will henceforth be referred to as X-TREEM title cards.) They did it a few times in Otto 3000, but only once here. Guess what they used it for.
âŠ.Stimpleton slurping his coffeeâŠâŠ.in an X-TREEM WAY!…I guess.
Next episode, Reggie’s birthday plans get screwed up when Otto gets them banned from the skate park, and Sam and Twister start taking lifeguard training.
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The Anime Madhouse 