Sofia the First: Winter's Gift

The second Sofia the First Christmas special after yesterday's Holiday in Enchancia, this was shown during the show's second season. This was the time where the show's aforementioned following grew as people above the demographic started to watch it, leading up to quite a few famous guest stars appearing on top of the Disney Princesses. With Buffy & How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan under it's belt for this episode, does Wassailia deserve to be given a second chance, or should Enchancia just stay away from showing us their holiday traditions? Let's take a look!

Story: Yeah, this does follow the tiresome formula of the TV series: Sofia wants to do something, a conflict gets in the way, a Disney Princess comes by to sing the moral/teach her lesson, she manages to solve the problem, everything's OK. Rinse and repeat! This time round, it involves Sofia wanting to get Cedric the perfect gift after a cliched eavesdropping at the wrong time & meets a fawn called Winter who is cursed with ice hands by Queen Glacia. And guess who the Princess of the Day is? Tiana AKA the princess who'd be better off teaching a moral about balancing hard work & fun! But instead, she teaches the moral of 'a true gift comes from the heart' and it is a while nice lesson, this has been such a tiresome cliche that so many kid's shows have done it much better! But not only does that plot feel familiar, Winter's story of her ice curse feels so much like Frozen that I was expecting Olaf & Sven to pop up at one point to sing a musical number! And while they try to give Winter a backstory/motivation of wanting to be special, she really can't carry her own episode because she's just not that interesting despite being a freaking fawn! And sure, it is nice that her music is what gets Glacia to revoke the curse, it was pretty obvious beforehand because she's doing nothing else but play her panpipes! Anyway, there's also a brief conflict because of Winter's powers being put on Clover (despite the inconsistencies), but it feels predictable that everything will be fine by the end because the said formula makes it compulsory for everything to be OK. Anyway, I will say that the ending is pretty sweet and heartwarming and like last time, the heart is clearly in the right place. The message this time round shows that even if you think your gift is terrible or not up to the receiver's standards, you've still put effort into giving/making somebody a gift in the first place. So...I guess I can be a bit more forgiving with this episode.

Animation: Given that this is obviously an episode from the TV series, the animation is alright. Similar to Paperman, it's clear they're going for a 2D look within a 3D environment & it actually works better with the character designs thanks to the clearly higher budget, having that iconic Disney style while still being unique & Tiana does fit into the world pretty well. However, the same can't really be said with the character animation as it does feel pretty limited in comparison, even if they do their best with it (although there is an obvious glitch with one of Amber's arms disappearing at the end of the episode). And the same can also be said with the textures as nothing really looks or feels like what it's meant to be, leaving it to feel plastic-y. But unlike other cases, I guess it's intentional given that they're making it look more 2D, but even at that, the lack of attention to detail still bothers me even if the ice & snow admittedly look decent (and much better than Holiday in Enchancia). Another part I like is the backgrounds, giving out a very pretty wintery look around the forests & I also really liked the design of Queen Glacia's castle (which thankfully doesn't rip off Elsa's ice palace). Sure, it may not be the best in terms of technicality, but it does look really good in terms of design.

Characters: Sofia is pretty much the same optimistic & kind hearted princess wanting to do good by getting 'the perfect present' for Cedric & helping Winter with her dilemma despite not thinking about the consequences & learns yet another moral. That's pretty much it. Her arc always seems to be that The other recurring characters like her Sofia's family, Baileywick & Cedric barely appear & are pretty much their same selves (in other words for the latter, annoying). Even Clover doesn't do much besides cracking one liners & trying to be funny because it's Wayne Brady doing his shtick despite going with Sofia during her quest. he titular Winter (voiced by Alyson Hannigan) is a fawn that befriends Sofia who's cursed with the touch of ice akin to King Midas who only wanted to be special. And despite her backstory & motivations behind going to Queen Glacia, she still came across as weak to me despite Hannigan's pretty good performance (even if she's not very convincing voicing a little girl)! Tiana's only purpose is to hand-fist (and sing) the moral of the episode to Sofia that a gift comes from the heart rather than something materialistic or & disappears sporadically like other Disney Princesses that have appeared in the show. And to be very honest, I really didn't feel like she fit into the episode or its theme. Well, the best I could say about her appearance is that at least she gives out useful advice to Sofia compared to Aurora in the previous Christmas special! And finally, there's Glacia, who's interesting in concept, but not really in execution. Even though she can kind of be seen as the villain towards Winter, she's surprisingly benevolent by the end as she still revokes her curse by the end & was aI know it's a bit too much to ask in a 20 minute episode, but the characters old and new in this aren't really that interesting.

Songs: There's only one song in this (From the Heart), but I thought it would be fair to discuss my thoughts on it. Like mentioned before, Tiana sings it to Sofia to tell her that both her present for Cedric & Winter's gift to Glacia should come from the heart as they show their special  It is admittedly a very pretty tune & Anika Noni Rose's beautiful voice does shine throughout, but to be honest, the lyrics themselves are rather generic & really hammer down the message of the episode.

Yeah, while this has some improved animation & I liked seeing Tiana despite feeling out of place, this is still a weak episode. The moral feels heavy handed, the characters are for the most part two dimensional and while the ending is sweet, it was way too cheesy for my taste. I know I may sound pretentious, but I'm sorry, Sofia the First simply isn't a show for me. I know older audiences have grown to like it, but clearly I'm not one of them. If you like the show, go figure! I won't judge anyone my age who likes it because part of me understands why from the concept, the respectable voice actors like Ariel Winter, Sara Ramirez, Wayne Brady & Tim Gunn and the morals, while heavy handed, aren't bad ones at all. So to sum it up...I probably should just stay away from reviewing Sofia the First episodes to make everybody's lives simpler because all I'll do is criticize them and make the fandom's blood boil!
Story: 😕
Animation: 😊
Characters: 😕
Song: 😠
Overall: 😕