So... What expression do you want on your bust captain?
Grime: Hmmmm... It must be serious, regal, dignified. A perfect encapsulation of my glory.
So boss, what kind of expression do you want us to use for your bust?
Sasha: You know what, there is this selfie pic i had with Anne where I had the PERFECT expression.
One interesting parallel that can be found with the three parental figures the girls find in Amphibia, is how each of them is an old, experienced tradionalists, who are patriotic to Amphibia.
And yet, they all represents completely different aspects of tradition, and their journeys shows how tradition evolves when faced with opposition.
"And with it, Newtopia will be returned to Glory!"
Andrias is a Revanchist, a man who has seen his own civilization fall, and is hellbent on restoring the empire of old.
For him, it doesn't matter what Amphibia is. It doesn't matter to him that the land is horribly decentralized, that people are miserable outside the capital, or even that the people inside the capital are happy.
He has no interest in any of that, and long, long since stopped trying to improve the land of which he is supposed to be the steward of.
The only thing that matters, is the empire. The idea of former glory, not what it actually was(After all, ancient amphibians probably had a pretty sweet deal going for them in their empire), but the power of it, the prestige, the glory of it's conquests.
If Amphibia can't have that, then it is worthless in his eyes.
He is, in short, an embodiment of everything wrong, about tradition. He seeks to recreate a world that doesn't exist anymore, and not even the entire old system, just the parts he himself cares about.
He is stuck in the past, and is determined to drag everyone else back to it with him.
His entire motivation can be boiled dowm to try and make the world "The way it is supposed to be, the way it SHOULD have been!".
"Forget retaking the Valley! Forget serving the kingdom at all! How about you and I raise a frog danged army and storm the capital! It's high time a Toad ruled this world for a change!"
Grime by contrast has a journey that sees hkm become the revolutionary, the man who rejects tradition for good or bad.
He is introduced as the most stereotypical Toad captain imaginable. A proud, and strong advocate for tradition, and uphelder of the status quo.
He is what his society has made him to be, a cruel, brutal and harsh leader.
But unlike Andrias, who is stuck in the past, Grime begins to change. He tries new things, adopts new tactics, and finds to his suprise that it works.
The world he upheld for so long was inefficient, and trying something new simply yielded better results. So he abandoned the old ways, and embraced the new perspective.
Then at the end of Reunion, his entire world tumbles to pieces around him, leaving him rudderless for a time, unable to find any meaning in the world as his entire way of life has come to an end.
But he bounces back, and embraces a new course in life.
Screw the system! Screw authority! Screw the King!
Andrias abandons tradition completely, the way things have been for a millenia now, and decides to rip it all down, and place him and Sasha in charge.
Its a complete rejection of how "Things should be", but at the same time, the world Grime wants to create is still influenced by the world that he wants to overthrow, as Grime mainly seems to want to abolish the current caste system and replace Newts with Toads.
New boss, same as the old.
Or so it would seem, because Revolutions by nature are extreme, and there will almost always be something good that comes out of even the most violent and total revolutions.
In Grime's case, his revolution would have prevented the reestablishment of the Amphibian Empire, and whatever would have come in it's place would not have been as bad as this.
And finally we have Hopadiah Plantar.
"Well that's nice"
Hop Pop, like Andrias and Grime, is very much a result of his own upbringing. He is an Amphibian frog Farmer to his very core. Just like Andrias is an imperialistic Salamander of Newtopia, and Grime used to be a proud Captain of Toad Tower.
Unlike the two of them however, what Hop Pop represents a different side of Tradition. A more balanced side. Andrias is tradition rooted in the past and a refusal to ever move beyond it. Grime is a revolutionary who wants to tear down the old order for his own benefits.
By contrast, Hop Pop is content with the world as it is. He grew up in it, he lived in it, he works innit, and saw his entire family die in it other than his two grandkids.
Hop Pop has no intention or wish to changing the system. The world is the way it is for good or bad, we all have to live in it.
Hop Pol represents culture, and not in the sense that he loves the fine arts. He is a part of the common people, the world as it actually is, beyond the circles of power and politics.
Throughout Hop Pop's journey, we get to see the good, and the bad sides of that.
We get to see his stubbornness, his reluctance to try new things, and a wish to adhere to the way "Things have always been".
But we also get to see the good parts of tradition, because pretty much every single good part of Hopadiah Plantar is rooted in his upbringing.
In plantar's last stand Hop Pop is convinced by Anne to get into the conning business(Though he takes it way further than even she intended) but in the end, his sense of honesty and familial values of fairness and decency drives him almost mad, and he confesses to the deception, rather than continue to see the legacy of his name be further tattered by his own actions.
And when he actually does try and change the system, rather than trying to overthrow the legal order, Hop Pop does it square, and follows the rule of law.
And when he has the chance to make it big, and fulfill his dreams of becoming a famous actor, but at the cost of that honesty he is so proud of, Hop Pop ultimately does the right thing. And when given the chance to find fame on Earth, he ultimately gives up that fame to someone who needed it more than he.
When Andrias proclaims that it's time to bring Amphibia back to it's former glory, Hop Pop is enthusiastic about it, because he assumes that Andrias is planning on doing so in a way that he would have dome it in his place. To make life better for everyone in his charge. Only to immediatly sour when he hears Andrias announce his plans of conquest.
Hop Pop is not always right. But neither is he always wrong either.
Tradition is not inherintly good or bad. It can be both, but usually it all depends on context.
It isn't alway worth it to rip something down to the foundations to build aomething new, and sometimes, what is buried in the past is best left forgotten.
Tradition has a place in the world, but you cannot be so focused on the past that you let it dominate your future. Hop Pop's story is about him trying to strike that balance, and still remain true to the man he is, the hardworking, honest and patriotic frog who is proud of his history, and loves his family more than anything.
Or as one of Hop Pop's closest friends would say.
“Turns out if you embrace change instead of clinging to the past, you get a say in what the future looks like.”
I love how Amphibia get's so much milage out of Grime's blind eye always showing how he truly feels to create such expressive animation
You know, after having analyzed the Toads, their caste system, and how Andrias most certainly locked them into that system on purpose and effectively banished them to backwater, out of the way provinces so he wouldn't have to deal with them, I've gotten a new appreciation for the the thematic symbolism of the final Toad revolt that takes place in "True Colors".
Here Andrias is, 1000 years after having lost everything, 1000 of having ruled a medieval kingdom that he long, long since gave up on actually trying to improve.
He has been skillfully, and masterfully manipulating the biggest threat against his rule, not only making them de-power themselves, but also making Anne literally hand him the key to the return of the Empire of old, and the subjugation of her own world.
And what stops that from happening?
The Toads that Andrias has screwed over so hard, and made certain will always live in misery, to such an extent that almost every single one of them jumps at the prospect of overthrowing him.
Andrias has spent a millenia screwing the Toads over by locking them into a caste, forcing them to live in fortresses in the middle of nowhere, created a system where they are miserable, where their leaders are encouraged to be the most vicious and cruel leaders imaginable in order to create an environment built on fear.
And here at the end, when Andrias has total victory literally just outside of his grasp, he's brought low by Grime, "The cruelest Toad soldier of all time", a result of Andrias own gladiatorial Arena that exists presumably mainly to create the most vicious and evil toad leaders Andrias could possibly make.
Grime might be evil, but he is only the way he is, because of the awful system that Andrias himself created, and frankly there is something magnificently fitting about the fact that here, at the end, it is this awful, deliberately horrible system that the old Salamander created that screws him over.
Karma is a Bitch.
One thing that Amphibia does really, really well, is to showcase the fact that when it comes to relationships, love isn't enough by itself.
You NEED respect from both parties for relationships to work, to be healthy, to last.
Sasha loves and adores Anne more than anyone else in the world. It is THE thing she cares about more than anything else.
And that goes both ways, as while Anne has other people she loves, Sasha is one of the 4 most important people in her life.
But there is one difference between the two. Anne respects Sasha.
But Sasha does NOT respect her.
There is an old saying that we all are the heroes of our own stories.
This isn't entierly true, because not everyone thinks of themselves as a hero, but the core of the idea, that we think the universe revolves around us as individuals is absolutely true.
We are all the protagonists of our own stories. We all think of ourselves as the main character of the universe, whether we be a queen, a prisoner, a soldier, or a school girl.
Sasha has been all of these, and at no point did she ever stop thinking of herself as the protagonist of this tale.
What broke Sasha, was not the realization that she wasn't the protagonist of this story. Nor the realization that she was not a hero(as she hadn't thought of herself as one since she was a kid). What broke Sasha was that Anne called her "A horrible Person".
In the moment, her rage being burning hot, Sasha lashed out, and tried to make Anne hurt in response to herself being hurt. She managed to put off the implications of it so long as her rage was burning hot, but once things had cooled down, the fact began to seep her way into her mind, was that Anne was right.
And the reason why Anne calling her out on this, managed to shatter her entire belief in herself as a "good person", is that for Sasha, what she defined as "Good Person" is a good friend.
Of the 3 main races of Amphibia, Toads have what seems like the most straightforward, and frankly best spot in society. They're the warrior caste, and though subordinate to the King in Newtopia, they run their own fiefdoms like as they like, with the only thing the capital cares about, is whether or not taxes are paid, with the 4 Captains seemingly allowed to do anything to make certain that they run smoothly.
However, the main thing about Andrias rule as king, is that the society he's created sucks for absolutely everyone, and even if something looks shinny on the outside, it's rotten inside at the core.
In that regard, the Toads have it no different. Because frankly, their place in society sucks for them, just like it does everywhere else.
There's been a lot of speculation in regards to Sasha regaining her Calamity powers in season 3, which not surprising, given that at this point the girl really needs an edge if she is going to remain relevant in the final battle against Andrias and the Core.
The common idea is that it will come from the box, as it originally did.
That said, I noticed a chekov's gun no one else has brought up as a possible alternative to her somehow regaining her powers from the box.
Namely the fact that there is an artifact right by Sasha's side that is absolutely full of her calmity powers.
Namely Barrel's old warhammer.
In it's introduction episode, the old artifact was reactivated when Sasha finally tapped into her calamity powers and lifted it from it's resting place, after which it seems to have sucked out power from her directly to restore itself to full power.
Given that it's Grime's current weapon, it's easy to forget that this weapon was charged with Sasha's own energy, and which means that just like Anne remained a container for the power after leaving the second temple early, the warhammer is still a fully functioning battery filled to the brim with the power of the pink gem.
Which means that If Sasha were to need to regain her powers, the hammer might just be the solution, since she can't easily reach the music box.
