u/Upset-Split-8585

So in my Theia arc analysis post, I briefly touched on the whole Theia love triangle, mainly because there were other points I wanted to discuss.. and that whole thing is difficult to write without getting insanely controversial… As everyone on the Reddit has their own opinion on it!

However upon researching and rewatching the videos for that post! I’ve came across several posts, and discussions mainly talking about how.. badly written this triangle was.. and just how frankly terrible it is!.. So I’m gonna cover it and offer my thoughts! Yeah.. not sure if this will do good, but eh! After making a controversial post this past week may as well stay on that train for another post! (Don’t worry my next deep dive is not as controversial! It’s actually gonna be pretty good!)

Anyways… Let’s begin!

THEIA:

Okay.. Theia.. has a ton of issues that I would be here all day listing them.. But to prevent me from turning this into a 2 hour documentary, I’ll say this… Theia feels kinda underdeveloped in some area’s Within 15 minutes of the Past Planet videos beginning she’s already forced in a love triangle which is a common thing with most Female SB Characters being forced in relationships apparently, but she? Probably got it the worst…. at least with other SB Female’s there was a bit of time and development? And overall they had more character going for them.. Theia on the other hand? It’s basically “I want life” and then bam we’re in a triangle, No time no development just we’re so on 100% Romance and that’s mostly her character here..

But without a doubt her biggest criticism is that she has… questionable moments with both Venus and Proto.. Let’s start with Venus, Theia pretty much dismissed his concerns about her safety, shutting him down on multiple occasions, and even when she did listen to him.. She seems annoyed with him like “okay, are you done?” I know Venus is a.. obsessed person in here, but Theia’s not entirely off the hook either and then we got her interactions with Proto which are also are up in the air, as it seemed like she.. at times forced him to go along with her plan to create life and never really acknowledging what he thinks of all this!.. + she is very inconsistent, one moment she hates Proto’s guts, next moment? She wants to… well kiss him! It’s kinda unpredictable how she’s gonna feel with each episode

VENUS:

Okay.. Venus had some severe issues in the triangle as well! While he started off okayish?… being one of Theia’s first supporters for the life thing, however eventually… over time? He started to get… obsessed with Theia like toxically obsessed with her, A clear example on what I’m talking about is after Proto and Theia leave the Asteroid Belt after they become friends… Venus quite rudely approaches them and tries to pull Theia away… and basically try to fight Proto?… Yeah that’s an insanely bad look on his part!

Venus also seems like a total wimp at points, and overall very insecure, letting people walk all over him and his personality?.. well holy damn… Venus seems so different! Being totally DEPENDENT on Theia, constantly wanting her approval on things… and wanting to make sure she’s happy, leading to some instances he does technically does hurt her feelings.. and doesn’t seem to notice it! Yeah… basically we’re getting here is Venus being a jerk and.. well being a jerk! Nothing like we all know him, still a jerk but the lovable type.. It’s not consistent with either personality 💀

PROTO:

Proto.. didn’t do enough to offend anyone but he still got flack for some things! Like his introduction to Theia (Which I personally believe that was more Theia’s fault than Proto’s) but I’ve seen people say that’s his fault… Anyways, Even outside of that. he was rather rude to Theia right afterwards, Neglecting her feelings for wanting to have life and overall being really arrogant to her before all of a sudden saying “Yup, I want to get life now..” and then they’re relationship began, Boy this relationship feels forced 💀

Also.. we didn’t see much of his interactions with Venus other than the scene I talked about and honestly the biggest issue with Proto is that the show doesn’t really explain or explore his side of things… He’s just… there.. like he’s important to the plot cause he’s the Earth!! (kinda) But.. we don’t know what he thinks of everything! And when we do.. he’s mostly too smitten with Theia to even get a close idea on what he truly thinks

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Soo.. what do I think about this?

Tbh, I didn’t really care for the love triangle issues when the episodes first aired.. mostly because we were just getting out of the first bad writing period, plus I’m not a big romance fiction type of person, So this got overglossed on my first watch

But I do acknowledge now after several rewatches, This love triangle has many flaws and problems, Every party in here.. has issues, Venus being way too obsessed with Theia, Theia neglecting people’s feelings and her and Proto’s relationship feels.. forced in some actions, I can definitely see why it didn’t click for people

But in the Characters and frankly the Writers defense.. It was an interesting concept and what the show really needed to get back on the right track after the beginning, And to be fair to the characters, keep in mind this is their past planet selves! So they haven’t experienced ya know Educational Era, Moon Revolution or X arc yet, So it does KINDA explain their character decisions here, Not all! But some!

Overall.. while I have some issues with how this Love Triangle went… It’s not terrible by any means! Is it badly written… Kinda? But is it truly awful like how some have described it? Definitely not! Besides SB has made other Romantic plots that have had it worse than these guys!

DISCLAIMER: DON’T harass anyone on these platforms! And please don’t go to war with them! I don’t want to see a SolarBalls Revloution breaking out ANYWHERE So again DO NOT HARASS ANYONE!!

Welp I wasn’t planning to discuss this as I already planned to talk about the SB leakers but I changed it, cause this topic seemed like the best time to discuss! (I will do SB Leakers at a future date! 👀)

Sooo… I’ve talked about previous SB Controversies but nothing quite like this one anyways… The Chrysalis Arc is.. well SPOILERS…. pretty bad! Though the last 2 episodes have been.. alright! Okay.. All of that will be discussed further when I do my big deep dive on that Arc.. (Lord help me there)

However the last few weeks ish I’ve been seeing people talk about how other SB Communities… and how they don’t “understand how bad things have gotten..” So I wanna talk about it in more depth! I’ll only focus on the 2 big ones.. I’ve been seeing recently YouTube and Discord! But there’s lots more but I haven’t seen much complaints coming from them!

With that out of the way let’s begin!

YOUTUBE:

Okay.. this section will be really quick as YouTube isn’t talked about as much as say Discord.. but it’s important to still mention it here cause I’ve seen some people here talk about this

Being the biggest platform (and the one that produces episodes) SB’s comments on both the videos and community posts.. umm are interesting to say the least.. Most if not all the videos and posts have been positive there’s very few if not 0 negative comments on there!

TMKP1 (horrible episode fyi) for an example had so many positive things to say about the episode it’s kinda ridiculous, Most talked about Sedna coming in and acting like Neptune’s helper.. Which I guess was kinda cool? But.. umm we never saw Neptune and the outer Dwarfs becoming friends on screen… And also Sedna kinda blindsided Titania into going with their plan.. + the Assassinated characters of Neptune and Uranus didn’t help… YET nobody talks about that in the YT Video comment section

The Community Posts… aren’t as bad as the videos.. but they’re still very bad! As it mostly exhibits the same issues as the videos well other than the preview images, and don’t get me started on the Live Chats as that’s a whole other discussion…

DISCORD:

SECOND DISCLAIMER: Discord users… I know you’ve been coming in here recently.. I’m making this EXTREMELY clear…. I and all of us Redditors don’t want any harm, we’re keeping things peaceful! And we respect if you do the same!

Aww yes.. the big thing.. and the most vocal criticism I’ve seen… Now I’m not in the official discord server, So do take what I say here with a big grain of salt.. But Discord has viewed the Chrysalis Arc more positively than I will say YouTube, and it has became apparent to them, and frankly the ones who ignited this Controversy, as Discord thinks we Redditors are hating this Arc far too excessively, and then us Redditors or well some of us, have seen Discord as being way too out of touch and overglazng, And I’m talking everything! From the writing, Neptune’s assassination, Sedna, you name it.. they bashed it…

And some of them went as far, to have the guts to pull my name and a few others from a comment section and talk trash about us… Yeah… I’m not surprised when SB’s Reddit actually got close to declaring war, As.. yeah that’s messed up buddy! We did nothing to you guys and then you do this.. Not to mention one last thing, you guys don’t even see us in other comment sections! All of us aren’t 100% negative, we do mostly talk about positives for the show! Soo you’re basing this off one bad comment… Yeah no wonder why Reddit went insane!

Ironically though funny enough when “TMKP2” aired they actually hated that episode! While the Reddit somewhat liked it! Boy they are the polar opposites of us, Anyways… Doesn’t help that the YouTube community or well some of them also isn’t a fan of the Discord people, due to reasons… I can’t 100% verify, so I will not be covering that as that’s a whole.. other can of worms

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Yeah.. I can definitely see why people especially here are frustrated cause a large portion of other communities have been more positive about.. well everything! Not just Chrysalis, and I’m assuming this has been going on for YEARS And because SB knows that a large portion of their feedback is positive, even on their worst episodes! They’ll likely just continue to write and produce more bad episodes one after the other, and then things fall apart into ruins

I’m of course not trying to bash EVERY single person on these apps! Cause.. ya know? Not everyone is bad! There’s people from YouTube, Discord and many other platforms that I didn’t mention who do see SB both positive and negatively

In the end.. this controversy is very interesting for sure! It has divided the fans on here and Discord and a bit on YouTube! While it’s natural for Fandoms to have disagreements, SolarBalls’s… is very divided based on who you ask and what kinda of platform your using….

Hopefully the Writing and Everything turns around soon! Which seems to be heading in that direction! And thank goodness, cause holy damn.. I’m not sure if the platforms can handle this much tension any longer!

Well guys I think we have figured out why the Writing for the last few episodes have been.. pretty awful! Alvaro has been away for some time on his honeymoon!

And with him trying to catch up as said in this YouTube post, no episode next week! Which.. I think that’s the best option! As holy damn.. have things been pretty dire the last few weeks!

Congratulations Alvaro! Take as much time as you need to come back! :)

Here we are guys!.. The Rouge Planets! So.. The Theia Arc ended on a really high note after a shaky beginning, but with the arc being controversial at several points, If seems the SB Team knew they needed to turn things around, So they decided to tackle something new, another arc this time about the Rouge Planets!

I will say.. It feels like the Team understood their previous mistakes in the last few major Era’s and tried to fix them, and I’ll say for the most part they did well with that! But like always it’s not perfect and more noticeable flaws are here like with Educational and Moon Revolution

So.. let’s begin!

POSITIVES:

The Writing has mostly improved compared to the last 2 Arc’s, while there’s still a few issues, At least there’s no more really bad character assassinations, or awful dialogue everything’s mostly going back to normal!.. The Animation here.. really reaches its peak with impressive lighting, new shots and heck the Character Designs changed to more accurate versions which most of them are pretty nice!

A ton of previously assassinated characters started to act like themselves again! Planet X in particular feels much more like his early X arc self and he would even use some of his “villain” traits to help the Planets out, definitely a massive step up here! Titania and frankly All the moons, were much more bearable here unlike the previous arc’s where they were so divided and very.. unstable, And despite it being kinda forced I did like Mercury apologizing for the “Stunt” comment.. you cannot believe how relieved I was when that first aired!

The New Characters here The Rouge’s and Dwarf Candidates are really interesting and all add something to the story… mostly, SIMP is a great villain, WISE, PSO, OGLE and I guess OTS are great villain side characters and their motivations are mostly clear! The Dwarf Candidates (Sedna, GongGong, Quaoar and Orcus) are very prominent in the beginning trying to warn everyone about the Rouge’s, it did seemed like we were being set up for the Dwarfs to take action like the last arc.. umm.. more on them in a bit

Planet Revolution.. honestly? Deserves its own separate post as there is a TON to talk about here! But to quickly recap these episodes, From The Planets coming back realizing that the Sun is beyond the point of reason, to them apologizing to one another for their previous actions in other Era’s (most notably the stunt comment), to Ganymede leading them in the Revolution, to the Revolution ACTUALLY WORKING? And of course the Rouge Planets coming to help them! I’ve said this in the Moon Revolution post, but the Team definitely learned from their previous mistakes here! And it resulted in amazing episodes! A step up from the first revolution!

Sun had admittedly great character development! Him finally coming to understand that he cannot continue to act like a total maniac, as his biggest fear came true that he was left alone.. AstroDude opening the door for communication between Sun and Earth + Moon then for them to actually talk things out is awesome! Not as great as Earth’s development from MR but compared to the past few Redemptions this one was done well!

The final showdown between SIMP and Sun was an absolute bang! And like The Earth Awakens was an absolute standout! The Rouge’s trying everything they can to take down the Sun, to the Sun’s solar flare, to the Planets and Dwarfs finding their way back from the Solar Flare and the final confrontation.. There’s no “hey, talk it out and everyone gets along” No.. Sun and SIMP had words and that was that, and while it does suck X didn’t come back to the Solar System I’m glad his send off to be with the Rouge’s was MUCH better!

NEGATIVES:

Like the Theia Arc, there isn’t too many negatives here as most of it is in the middle… and that’s mostly where it’s at nothing too big negatives like the last couple era’s, So let’s get this started! First things first while the Rouge’s are interesting we don’t know much about their origins, like can we have an episode explaining how they came to be and why SIMP is their leader? I feel that would’ve worked better… X and Theia arc’s had backstories! So why not here?

Mostly Everyone here.. was pretty stupid at certain points, So many Characters were dumbed down for the sake of Plot, Now I understand sometimes characters have to be dumb, as you can’t get a story if they’re smart.. but Jesus, We’re talking INSANELY Dumb moments here from the Planets blindly agreeing to join the Rouge’s without hearing all their conditions, To the Dwarfs deciding to stay in the Rouge Kingdom AFTER they made it clear they didn’t want to? To even the Rouge’s wanting Earth DESPITE likely seeing him freeze in the Theia Arc.. None of this really makes any sense

PSO and OTS.. don’t really do much in this Arc, both are heavily neglected! OTS especially, being the last major rouge introduced and being nothing but a plot device for the Rouge’s idea AND she didn’t even appear in the final episode.. PSO was pretty prominent in the beginning but then his screentime grew less and less, I liked the idea of him looking up to The Moons for the Moon Revolution but that wasn’t explored further..

Speaking of Characters not doing much the Dwarfs again.. got sidelined.. Seriously this is the 3rd Arc in which our dwarfies were shoved to the side.. What is with that? Not to mention they did have interesting stuff in the beginning with Charon not being happy with Sedna leading or Orcus saying he’s the “Anti-Pluto” but nothing more happens outside of that.. seriously we have 4 new characters and we learn very little about them, hell Quaoar and Orcus are like Mars in a way, just basically there like NPC’s

WISE… is very inconsistent at times, okay after admittedly a slow start and pretty awesome middle, during the end it seemed the Writers flip flopped on him MANY times, In one episode he could seem to be turning to the Planets side with the Dwarfs and X calling him “UNWISE” but then next episode he’s such a jerk to everyone.. like pick a side Writing Team is he changing or not? And why have this go for multiple episodes? I know Titan kinda went through the same thing, but it was done better then!

The biggest negative is the fact Arc feels.. unfinished like the Team had more ideas and plans but because Chrysalis and the Movie were needing to get done, They had to wrap things up as fast as they could like we didn’t see OTS’s reaction in the final episode, WISE’s character shift feels kinda rushed, and OGLE’s realization that Stars were not all bad definitely needed another episode or sorts, they definitely needed more time to flesh these out!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

The Rouge Arc overall.. while not perfect is certainly a big step up compared to X and Theia Arc’s, and definitely better than the Moon Revolution in terms of positives and It is much more bearable to sit through with everything seeming to be going in the right direction, which is a big relief to see!

The Animation and Character Designs are really good here! The newbies were mostly interesting, The Planet Revolution was a bang, Sun’s Character Development was really good! and The Final Showdown between SIMP and Sun was an epic episode, There’s a ton of good here! But like every Era, It’s not all positive though, Half the new Characters were sidelined, Everyone acted really stupid and brain dead at certain points, and overall it feels.. unfinished in certain areas

But I do think its highs are much higher than Theia’s and overall at least it stayed MOSTLY consistent throughout, The middle got a little bumpy yes, but the beginning and end were definitely solid! And with the past few era’s being inconsistent this was a big breath of fresh air!

Overall Rating: 8.6/10

Okay.. and that is it every Era in full detail! Well… not really… Chrysalis is up next, and oh boy that’s.. gonna be interesting to talk about.. and I also have The Moon Wakes Up mini series to also discuss.. but I’m saving that for a future date 👀

While Martin Van Buren saw 8 other Presidents take office after him, Richard Nixon saw 9 Vice Presidents take office after leaving in 1961, until his death in 1994

Lyndon B Johnson (1961-1963)

Hubert Humphrey (1965-1969)

Spiro Agnew (1969-1973)

Gerald Ford (1973-1974)

Nelson Rockefeller (1974-1977)

Walter Mondale (1977-1981)

George H.W Bush (1981-1989)

Dan Quayle (1989-1993)

Al Gore (1993-1994)

Sooo from me rewatching every analysis and keeping up with modern day SolarBalls here’s my updated character ranking! And I have included my earlier May ranking in here as well! and a few things I’ve noticed when looking at the two

First thing, congrats to Enceladus, Mimas and Oberon for moving up from No Opinion to Okay territory! As I actually remember some things you 3 did! And congrats Venus for making it to my top 5 favorites!

Second thing…. Neptune has fallen off badly going from my second favorite to 22nd I’m sorry the way he’s acting in the Chrysalis Arc is truly a downgrade.. 💀

Last thing I didn’t put characters I didn’t remember cause the list was too long lol, anyways hope you guys enjoyed this post! (Sunday is my last Era analysis so hope to see you guys there!)

Hey guys!.. So I’m working on my next big deep dive, The Rouge’s Analysis (which is coming out Sunday) but to keep things interesting and hopefully post a little more, Here’s a mini deep dive for you guys! Basically I’m gonna take a scene, an episode, or anything else and talk about them! basically Stuff that doesn’t need a whole Sunday type post!

And the first one is… Uranus and Neptune’s “rushed” scene at the end of the Theia Arc.. So let’s begin!

CONTEXT:
A bit of context is needed first!

Uranus rage quitted the Solar System in JIBP2 in hopes to find his Friendo Planet X who left at the end of BOPXP4 because he’s convinced nobody in the Solar System cares for him, After Jupiter failed to convince him to go back in Earth’s Core Part 1, Neptune shows up next episode and wants to go with Uranus to X, Now calling him Caleus, after some traveling and talking Uranus decides rather persuasively to stop with his bruised ego and go back to The Solar System and make things right

RECEPTION:

NEGATIVES: So.. okay.. people have said this feels rushed because of how it plays out, Neptune randomly shows up after MONTHS of being out of commission, and then starts acting really weird, Uranus’s realization.. is too sudden like there’s little to no time for him to think about what could happen if he continues going to find X, Some have said Neptune was “OOC” in this section and that he and Uranus were never really friends (yet alone Cousins)

POSITIVES: However I’ve seen people defend this scene, People have pointed out that Neptune wasn’t “OOC” and that he was doing what he did best! Like with Pluto in MR he has his own unique way of getting his point across!, Neptune also has more personal things to say about Uranus, than say Planet X does, So it makes sense why the writers picked him instead of X! and Uranus’s realization does kinda make sense as he didn’t want Neptune to revert back to his Educational Era self, as we’ve seen in the Past Planets he feels guilty cause in someway he caused Neptune to go insane, So he did it before insanity reached their brains

FINAL THOUGHTS:

So.. do I think this scene was rushed or was it blown out of proportion? Well after reviewing everything… I’d say…

It was rushed, to some extent

Now I do understand the defenders here, as yes I do see where the Team was trying to go with Neptune and Uranus here, as yes Neptune has personally known Uranus longer than anyone else has, and him convincing him to come back was the best outcome as other Characters like Jupiter couldn’t get him to return! It just can’t work with Planet X or any other character as they haven’t known Uranus as long as Neptune

But the delivery here did feel off in someway.. + what also didn’t help was that by this point many SB Fans, were ready to be done with the Theia Arc as the writing was really up and down, So that also probably contributed into this scene feeling “rushed”

Overall while I think the Concept was great and certainly interesting, Execution?… is a little hazy

Okay, Here we are.. The Theia Arc, after a pretty bad, rushed and disappointing Planet X Arc, The SolarBalls Team have made it clear in the final X videos that they’re excited to tackle.. Theia, a believed planet from the early Solar System which crashed into Earth, and thus gave us the Moon! Okay another Earth arc can’t be too bad right?

Oh boy… This arc is very divided based on who you ask, As some people really like this Arc while others don’t, There are so many things to talk about here, So you can imagine this was quite hard to write.. took me like 3 rewrites without getting too controversial, But I did it anyways! I managed to get it to work!

With that out of the way let’s begin!

POSITIVES:

The Animation Issues that appeared in the end of X’s arc pretty much disappeared which is a delight to see, and it seems the animation in general has greatly improved, As the lighting and background designs are noticeably better than the last few Era’s, and some of these shots are impressive to look at! Especially during the Past Planet videos, the ending, and even the beginning had some decent stuff, Truly an amazing arc based on visuals! And this will only get better in the next Arc!

All of our prominent Main Cast Characters got important roles here!, and they all got to mostly do something here! AstroDude played a big role in this one after being quite dormant for the last 3 Era’s, The Dwarfs had an adventure to save the Earth, The Planets all going on adventures as well largely to get Earth or Uranus back to their Orbits, Pretty interesting concept (if it was executed better, more on that in a bit) The Moons didn’t appear that much, but they got to do some stuff, and even Ceres got a pretty good role! And we got to know a lot about him as well!

Métis got used quite a bit during the beginning! Now she did debut in Planet X’s arc but didn’t get enough time to do much of anything, but in this arc she was pretty prominent! Being sent by the Moons to find Jupiter, and then getting the Dwarfs to help Earth, only to go on an adventure with them into deep space to get Jupiter to help Earth, Like Proteus this really helped her stand out from the others, and we got to know a bit about her! Now she’s not used as much in the ending, but that’s okay! I’m glad she’s here in the beginning really the few shining lights of that period!

We got more insight into the Past and saw where the Characters modern personalities came from, way more than in X’s arc, From Neptune and Ceres going insane, The Triton Incident, The Sun’s increasing mental instability, Uranus being very insecure, Earth’s pre redemption dialogue in Theia and Proto, Venus’s hot headedness, Pluto’s treatment in the early days, there’s a lot of stuff here that helps explain why the characters are well our lovable planets that we know today!

The Crash and Aftermath… oh boy was the Team really cooking with these episodes! I liked Theia’s goal here to make the Sun happy, her and Proto’s love story was pretty good! Not great mind you, but decent enough! Venus and Mars played an important role in contributing to the crash, and of course that fateful Kiss… and The Aftermath was great! One of the few times SB stayed consistent after an awesome episode, We saw Venus’s guilt and speech, the Sun wanting to hear everyone’s side on what happened without going mad, and all wrapped up with Earth and Moon forming and waking up.. Boy the team was really pulling their all into here!

The final episode is really awesome! And a strong way to end off this arc, with our main 8 planets + the Dwarfs and AstroDude all together, The Planets cheering on AstroDude realizing he’s okay making him feel part of the team, Earth finally getting out of the Kuiper Belt and we even had some sad scenes when Proto and Theia told Earth to say Hi and that Theia still sees Venus as a friend which made him cry, which is pretty sad to watch, and to the final shots showing the next Arc and what will happen then truly a PEAK episode!

NEGATIVES:

Honestly the negatives here are just a bunch of small negatives, with a big glaring negative that kinda ruins the entire Arc.. Anyways.. let’s get through the small negatives really quick.. Some of The Thumbnails took a nose dive this Arc.. with many MANY questionable ones being all over the place!, Neptune straight up disappeared for SEVERAL months and then he comes back only for his and Uranus’s “rushed” scene to occur (I plan to cover that in more detail in a future post)

The Writing.., is this arc’s big glaring negative.. Hell you can easily make the argument the writing got even WORSE than Planet X’s writing! Let’s start with the pacing.. Unlike X’s arc where the episodes feel rushed, The opposite happened some episodes feel like they’re dragging out the plot, like “What if Earth left the Solar System to Lost Earth” essentially nothing much of note happens! As the same 4 mini plots are repeated again and again.. God this arc would’ve been done in half the time if these videos had not existed! And then other times it’s a bit too forced like with the Romance stuff for example the pacing is very inconsistent!

If you thought X’s character assassination was bad? Well.. he wasn’t the only one… Several main characters also got character assassinated, Some got it worse than others, but it caused a ton of reputations to go down in the Fandom, With Mercury, Earth, Moon, Mars, Uranus, Titania, IO, Phobos, Deimos being completely unrecognizable and what’s worse is that several of them continued to act like this assassinated character for MONTHS after.. even during the ending some of them were still out of character!

The Dialogue here… is pretty bad, not just the beginning but like half of the Arc is filled with pretty bad dialogue, Like for a few examples Ceres’s whole entropy thing was cool don’t get me wrong, but then it gets repeated through several characters, it feels kinda off.. Earth’s whole spiel about Proto and Theia is really cringy at certain moments especially during the End, anddd how can we forget M*rcury’s infamous “Stunt” Comment… Seriously how in the world was that even approved? Did the team forget what happened in Moon Revolution?

A lot of characters made extremely questionable decisions and their actions sometimes don’t really make any sense.. like okay for a few examples Venus and Saturn saw Earth heading for the Kuiper Belt and NEITHER STOPPED HIM?! Like I understand somewhat but y’all don’t care for AstroDude’s earthlings?, The Dwarfs for some reason needing to find Jupiter to get Earth back in his orbit, although theoretically Saturn could do it, he’s also bigger than the Earth! Lastly Theia changing her motivation for wanting to have life, feeling that was her “Purpose” when it’s clear she wants to make the Sun happy.. Unfortunately this will become very prominent in the next Arc

The overall love triangle Theia, Venus and Proto had?… It’s a complete controversial mess, It’s interesting yes, but Theia and Venus made a ton of questionable decisions to one another with Theia being considered a bad friend for being “Self Centered” and she “Took advantage of Venus” according to several people, and Venus got obsessed with her and acted rather aggressive and.. controlling? I guess, Proto didn’t do much to offend anyone but did contribute into putting himself and Theia’s life in danger SEVERAL times + Theia and Proto aren’t great “Parents” to Earth as they basically died just so Earth can do their work… Not the best when you watch in that regard

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The Theia Arc… overall, well is a complete mixed bag, It has many noticeable highs, but many equally noticeable lows as well! To me at least, It’s definitely better than the Planet X arc by a long shot.. but it’s not quite Moon Revolution good in retrospect

This Arc is pretty badly written and everyone here is kinda brain dead, The quality really depended on the video, The Characters didn’t feel like themselves at several points, The pacing is pretty bad, and some of the Actions are really questionable, Overall pretty bad all things considered, But the highs of this Arc are really high, We saw more glimpses into the Characters in the Past Planet section, The Crash and Aftermath were done right, Everyone mostly got to do something here, and the ending is without a doubt solid!

To me I feel the Theia Arc has a lot of things going for it, and I would rank it higher than MR based on its high points, but… the Writing isn’t as great, And that’s honestly really frustrating cause I do see where the Team was trying to go with it, Hell I like some things they did here! But that god awful beginning and the other points just pretty much ruins the whole Arc in some aspects

Overall Rating: 8/10

Alright.. things are pretty dire now.. with 2 Arc’s being pretty bad and divisive respectively, SolarBalls clearly needs to turn something around and get out of this hole they dug, But everything changes come the next era… The Rouge Planets, Only good things lie ahead!

(Side Note: it’s quite ironic I’m releasing this as we’re entering into another Dark Ages💀 with the Chrysalis Arc)

Okay… here we are! The “worst” Arc of them all! Planet X! After a mostly good Moon Revolution Arc, The SolarBalls Team decided to tackle some hypothetical planets! With the first one being Planet X! A believed gas giant who got screwed when Jupiter’s “grand tack” event occurred

This Arc oh boy.. is not received well by the Fandom, after being pretty good in the beginning and middle.. the ending?… is notoriously awful and really the sign of the decline SB would face in 2024 and 2025 respectively.. I know everyone is ready for me to rip on this arc, But It’s important to acknowledge what this Arc did right as well as it’s low points

As stated before this isn’t an episode review, just a general picture to this Era! Anyways.. let’s begin!

POSITIVES:

The Animation and overall direction hasn’t really changed much from the Moon Revolution, I mean it’s kinda like TMR continued in terms of that, But there’s still some improvements in background settings, As new shots of the Solar System began being introduced here, which will become more present in the next few Arc’s and the lighting is slightly better, Now as for the animation of the characters… yeah we’ll get into that!

This is mostly a Gas Giant Arc or well more accurately a Jupiter arc, After 2 Era’s of the gas giants not really doing much of anything this was their time to shine! And for the most part they’re handled pretty good! From Jupiter and Saturn’s dilemma about Planet X, to Uranus being manipulated by X in the ending, to Neptune joining the Moons in finding Jupiter, They all got to do something here! Unlike the last 2 era’s where they would appear and disappear without warning, So it’s nice that the SB team gave us more screen time with them!

The aftermath of the Moon Revolution was mostly pretty solid! We saw where AstroDude was during the previous Arc, The Rockies making up and getting along again, The beginning signs of X as he moves around watching, and we saw the Moons go back to the planets, only to realize they won’t be tolerating their issues much longer (well most of them Uranus’s Moons never were shown reuniting) So the Moons decide to form a Club where they can all voice their concerns which those episodes are pretty mid ngl, but not awful!

Proteus was a big standout this time around! Daring to adventure outside the Kuiper Belt when he learns Triton was going out there, and eventually finding Ganymede, Europa and X, then brings them back to the Solar System ultimately becoming X’s first friend along the way, This really helped separate Proteus from the smaller and more forgettable moons, and it gave him a personality! Now he’s severely underused yes.. but I’m glad he got something here! And hey he would become a pretty fun character going forward!

The Big Bang videos while pretty divided based on who you ask, are pretty good at explaining where the Characters modern counterparts came from, from the Sun’s backstory and insanity, Uranus’s insecurities, and X being thrown out. While we would see more of these videos in the Theia Arc, They did pretty good at an overall baseline for backstory! Kinda like the Educational Era was a baseline for the Characters! + AstroDude telling the story was also good! As we saw more insight into his family life before becoming an astronaut, nice to see some AstroDude action in here!

And for the final positive, I think the Team did well when introducing Planet X, Yes he doesn’t come until the middle, But the team did good at keeping him mysterious, seeing his face pop up in several spots, and giving us plenty of theories into what happened to him, Giving us little hints that yes he’s planning to come back and he’s out for revenge against Jupiter and Saturn..

NEGATIVES:

So before we get into the big negatives.. it’s important to acknowledge the minor ones here first.. Ganymede and Europa had a forced redemption Arc and it doesn’t really make sense.. Now as I’ve said before they do lead the Moons better than anyone can but.. They did try to get you Moons to commit mass genocide, It does make sense to not let them join you guys again right away! Maybe wait a little longer before you let them into your Club, this is just more evidence of the moons being really divided in this time period

The Rockies and Dwarfs kinda got screwed here, Mars did get a little something role here, his first big role in awhile mind you, when he was trying to figure out Jupiter’s secret, but wasn’t really explored further, Not to mention none of the Rockies even got a chance to speak with X and get an overall opinion on him.. And as for the Dwarfs, Makemake did also get a small role by telling Ganymede and Europa to find X for him before they leave.. But they never reported back to him! Making his scene here kinda useless, like they could’ve still ran into X based on gravity alone! This scene didn’t really need to happen, Can I also mention Saturn got sidelined? Like he faced no consequences for X’s ejection? How did the Team just forget him and his actions?

Okay.. The ending.. is without a doubt This Arc’s biggest negative.. Let’s start with the apparent Animation Issues.. while the Animation is still strong for the most part, The last couple episodes had Animation Issues… Now there are posts in more detail about this, But for example in “What if Jupiter leaves the Solar System Part 2” a ton of character’s eyes were inconsistent sometimes appearing larger than usual and other times being normal.. no idea what happened here

But the biggest criticism of the ending.. is without a doubt… The Writing, The episodes from “What if Jupiter leaves the Solar System” to the final episode feel extremely rushed, Now a fast paced episode isn’t entirely bad, But sometimes scenes need to slow down and breathe! So here’s the rundown… Planet X in Jupiter’s Orbit, X tries to change the orbits of the Solar System, A competition by the Sun is held, X wins the Competition, then realizing after what he did in the final episode, he apologizes to Jupiter, and then leaves.. all that in 6 Episodes

Speaking of the Writing taking a hit, It’s like the Writers somehow forgot how X was characterized… As I’ve discussed before Planet X when he first arrived on Screen he was a vindictive, observant and overall pretty mysterious character! But then during the ending.. He all of a sudden became a whiny, arrogant, unsympathetic bully with the “I’ve been banished for 4 billion years..” trope.. Where did this come from? There’s little to no evidence prior to this shift! I mean it makes sense why he would become a villain but only to Jupiter and Saturn.. Not everyone else!

Then.. okay I have to address this. The way X was written off.. was awful.. Now I do plan to cover this episode in more detail in a future post, But to quickly recap it here The final competition is Asteroid Dodgeball, The bigger moons get defeated by X, The smaller moons are told to give up the fight, since they can’t survive, Proteus stands up to X and then X does what I said earlier… Okay 2 things here… The Team never really explored X and Proteus’s friendship thus making Proteus’s final scene feel less impactful, and.. Why did X come back to the Solar System again if he was just gonna leave like that? As I’ve said before wouldn’t it have made much more sense for X and Jupiter to come back to the Solar System together and X becomes a “Jupiter” to the Dwarfs? Or find another way to make him stay why just make him leave?

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The Planet X Arc overall... Well.. I feel is a big step backwards in some directions I do think there are small improvements from Moon Revolution, I liked the Gas Giants being the main focus this time around, Planet X was an interesting character in the beginning, We got the Big Bang videos which explored the early sights of some Characters and Proteus stood out here in this Arc, There’s admittedly good stuff here!

But I feel whatever improvement there was it’s overshadowed by negatives, The Animation took a decline in the end, and Most notably The Writing took a massive dip with rushed episodes, X’s Character being Assassinated and overall this arc feels like a giant mess when it’s all said and done

My only logical explanation I have for why the X Arc ended this badly, Is the Team really wanted to get started on Theia’s Arc but because they still had this Arc to finish, The SB Team just kinda threw things together and hoped it would work… Yeah it didn’t… All I can really say is that thank goodness Planet X would get a million times better in the Rouge Arc

Overall Rating: 6.8/10

Okay.. maybe just maybe now with Theia’s arc next! The SolarBalls Team can fix their issues as it’s pretty clear they’re excited to start working on this one! So maybe things will be okay…. ummm… be prepared to go on a roller coaster everybody!

Soo.. here we are! Arc Territory! After the Education Era introduced us to our Characters, and overall just have fun for the first few months, The SollarBalls Team decided to take a big risk and do something they didn’t do in Mr Spherical… Create Stories! And the first idea that came to mind for them… was The Moon Revolution!

This is where SollarBalls began to get popular, as a majority of long term Fans began arriving this time around! and I will admit this was a solid arc for 2023-2024 standards, and for a long time it was my personal favorite arc.. (until recently) However nowadays, I feel this Arc has certainly gotten a reputation.. It is strong for the most part, but it has a really divided ending… Soo why not go into the entire arc and talk about it in more detail!

Like I’ve said last week this isn’t a review on each episode, just an overall picture to the Era! There are people who have reviewed each episode! I highly recommend you check them out!

Anyways Let’s begin!

POSITIVES:

First things first the Animation and overall direction, has certainly stepped up since the Educational Era, while it’s still a little dated at certain points, It seems SB had figured out its animation issues, no more of the kinda dull 2022 animation from their early videos, As this time the scenes are much more refreshing, and filled with new interesting shots! The voice direction also improved with better quality and overall more cast members joining the team you can really tell the massive difference here!

I feel the Team did pretty good with introducing the Moons, Not as good as the Planets mind you, really only the bigger moons got spotlighted, But it does make sense as they are more noticeable on screen, and we don’t want all 290 some (or at the time 146) Saturn Moons appearing at once, cause then things will get confusing! We saw how they interact with each other and how they are with their Planets! And I will say each moon they did introduce, all mostly got to do something here!, Phobos, Deimos, Ganymede, Europa, IO, Callisto, Titan, Triton, all got major roles both good and bad!

Ganymede and Europa’s villain arc.. was interesting! You can really tell they were the masterminds behind it all pulling the strings and making sure Titan stayed committed to this, even though he was unsure about it! I actually kinda enjoyed them here! Really helped them standout in that aspect! And you can tell the team had fun playing into the villain persona with them! Making sure they will fight on until either all moons turn on them, or the Earth’s life will end!

Earth had a solid character arc, As I’ve discussed before in my best SB video post, the Team did great with Earth here as you saw how his arrogant actions costed his friends, and quite frankly started the Revolution, Then we saw how dark and desperate he got to try and make things right by ALMOST THROWING HIMSELF INTO THE SUN!! HOLY DAMN THE TEAM DIDN’T HOLD BACK HERE!! And then after some help from Moon and Mercury, he was convinced to make things right, and his apology to Titan was done perfectly! For a first time at an overall redemption I’d say they did great here! Speaking of Character Development plenty of other characters had development some more noticeable than others Mercury, Moon, IO, and Callisto are notable examples but I feel Pluto and Titan’s overall developments were true standouts!

Titan: Well heck you can make the argument Titan started the revolution.. As he looked up to the Earth for having earthlings! And when a certain comment is said he tries to stoop down to Earth’s levels in revenge, However things of course go wrong, and when Earth finally apologizes, he realizes his mistakes and decides to do what’s right and stop the Revolution, You can really see how much growth Titan has from beginning to end here, and really helps portray a clear message here, No matter how difficult things get, Stooping down to the same level makes things worse.

Pluto: Pluto largely felt outcasted by everyone and having to come to terms with his demotion sent him into a crisis feeling like he had no one to support him, with the help of Neptune and Charon he is able to understand he should embrace being a Dwarf Planet and stop trying to fit into a category and overall just be himself, I really like Neptune here, he may not fully understand what is going on due to him being insane, But he does word stuff in his own way that does help a person! God I freaking love both him and Pluto here!

The fight scenes are really good! And they are really destructive I mean we saw Venus and Mars’s epic fight to defend the Earth only to get bombarded by Asteriods, to the final episodes where everyone was throwing Asteriods at the Earth, and Titan and Ganymede’s epic final fight, They are without a doubt the best shots in SB history at the time and seeing the aftermath of each battle was also mostly great!

NEGATIVES:

Okay.. So one thing I do want to mention is the video timeline for the Moon Revolution is a little off, if you watch it by episode and not the 2 hour final version, The beginning is still kinda wrapped with the educational era Like one video is Moon Revolution, next one is Educational Era, so for those who watched it live in 2023 (like me) it’s a bit hazy here and overall kinda ruins the overall experience a bit

The Gas Giants and AstroDude barely get mentioned again in this, now in AstroDude’s case he was there in the beginning sending Saturn into a panic and finding SIBO on Titan but then he disappeared right after, and as for the Gas Giants I mean we got episodes of them in the beginning as well! Introducing us to their Moons but then.. they also kinda disappear again, with their last major appearances in this arc being in the middle when they all look for their Moons (well minus Neptune of course!) and I also would like to mention by this time Uranus was the character with the LEAST amount of screen time.. He’s kinda getting the Mars treatment here…

Like I’ve said before the smaller Moons barely got mentioned here and honestly that in itself makes all of them very forgettable here, and that’s something that they never really fixed.. Well some smaller moons like Metis and Proteus would shine in the next few Arc’s but I can’t say a lot for the rest of them, Also it seemed like Saturn and maybe Jupiter and Uranus’s moons were shown throwing asteroids, soo not everyone was participating in that sense, nor were shown defending Earth soo… what were some of the moons doing, how were they contributing to the Revolution?

The Moon’s Plan itself… is admittedly kinda stupid, Soo basically their plan is to take down the Earth and his Earthlings so the Planets can… respect them.. Erm… what? I don’t believe for a solid minute the Planets would be happy to find out you committed mass genocide on the Earthlings, if this had succeeded…. And honestly there would be WORSE conditions than what you guys are dealing with, Like you could for example have gotten chewed then thrown out by the Sun, or remain stuck in your Planets orbits forever becoming what the Rouge’s are… I’m surprised nobody thought of the long term consequences here

There’s a scene in Moon Revolution Part 3 where Houston gets a call from someone who claims to know what is happening in the Solar System, But that’s still have yet to be figured out… and it’s been nearly 3 YEARS since that call! Are the Team ever gonna address that? I’m dying to know who figured out the Planet’s Secret! We know it’s not AstroDude as he’s in the ocean during this time! Soo.. WHO?! And why have it in the first place if they’re not gonna do anything with it?

Then we get into the TMR’s Infamous negative, that being Pluto at the tail end, stopping the whole revolution… erm yeah not a big fan either, I do see why people would think this scene feels kinda rushed and pointless, especially after 3 episodes and half of Part 4 being solid The last few minutes were.. weak, Wouldn’t it have made much more sense to have the Gas Giants show up and stop the revolution? Or if you want to have Pluto appear have the Moons turn on him and then that’ll lead them to the Gas Giants or the Sun? Idk! Find someway to make it work! This is what really sours people’s opinion on this Arc.. unfortunately

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Moon Revolution.. overall was a noticeable improvement from the Education Era, there are noticeable changes in quality, the animation and voice direction while still somewhat dated looks much better this time around, The storytelling was pretty good and more consistent than the previous era, The Characters are standing out more and there’s overall character development with some of them! All while still keeping their educational route’s here! It hasn’t truly gone away yet!

But it’s not all good things though… as this arc does have many flaws, like the Gas Giants and AstroDude still being sidelined as more characters are coming in, The Moons’s overall goals are kinda stupid here, and the Arc ended on a rather mediocre note after being very good in the beginning and middle!

But in this Arc’s defense this was the SB’s team’s very first attempt at writing a Story like this, so it’s understandable where there would be some issues the team hadn’t figured out yet, Everyone who starts writing can agree your first story is not gonna be strong compared to the later stuff, and also this is largely attributed to the fact that the team are used to short, educational stuff, not full on Storytelling, So you can give them a bit of a pass here!

Will say though The Planet Revolution which was released in the Rouge Arc, was a much better overall revolution arc than this one, as the SB Team fixed their previous mistakes made from this one! And it’s overall portrayed better, So glad to see development over there! :)

Overall Rating: 8.4/10

Welp okay.. you think SolarBalls will continue to improve now that they have had experience of working an arc… but unfortunately the next arc is the beginning of the dark ages… with the next Arc, I plan to cover… Planet X!!!

So… I’ve had this idea for a little bit now, actually I planned these to be released in May, prior to SB’s 4th Anniversary, but I ran out of time and overall it looked badly written… But Anyways I want to go into each of the major SB’s Era’s (Educational, Moon Revolution, Planet X, Theia, Rouge and when it’s done Chrysalis) in more detail! And talk about each’s positives and negatives!

I won’t go into every episode of course and review them, then we’ll be here all day… besides other people have done reviewing Episodes better, So this is kinda an overall picture to the Era I did try to keep things as short as possible so hopefully y’all have time to read them! :)

I honestly didn’t really have much to say about this Era, As it’s mostly short and it kinda repeats itself, Soo I had a bit of trouble but I was able to get the main points here! :)

With all that out of the way let’s begin!

POSITIVES:

I feel the team did pretty solid with introducing us to our Characters, nothing too crazy yet mind you, Starting off with our Familiar 8 Planets + The Sun, Moon and Pluto, and helping us get to know them and their personalities and I’m not gonna lie they all (mostly) get to do something here! And we saw some early signs of the Arc’s getting mentioned with Earth’s Ego being 100% here, Mercury and Venus’s rivalry, Uranus’s debate in himself about wanting to fit in, AstroDude being threatened with his life on multiple occasions, ETC

The videos are pretty fast paced, with a majority being a minute long, which is good as basically you can watch an episode, get a quick laugh or 2 and then be done and move on for the day, You don’t have to sit through large filler scenes, or having to think “why do these planets do that” It’s all fun and games here! And hey maybe you learned something about Space you never thought!

This Era is also very entertaining with several iconic moments, like Taiwan screaming “WHAT THE HECK IS THAT” (I didn’t know that scene was deleted WTF SB!!) and the Earth and Moon unintentionally screaming realizing Mars’s answer at the end of “What If Planets Collide” The System’s reaction to finding out that Uranus smells, which was spoiled by Neptune, AstroDude freaking out about the Planets being alive and there is many more examples that I would be here all day listing them!

The YouTube Cameos are also pretty good!, with Kurzgesagt, Veritasium, Chrisdacow, Danrhoades, and in the Russian dub ScienceChalk, all appearing to join the craziness of these videos, Although it’s just one episode each and they all disappear afterwards, it’s nice SB invited some YouTubers who are also in the Science Community in the beginning I think it did help them gain some momentum!

The videos did slowly get longer as the Era went on with “Is the Moon REALLY leaving us?” Their first longer video, being the most popular video of SB and then gradually exploring more ways with the cast, You can tell they were having way more fun with each video, Getting more creative with video ideas and finding new ways to get their educational facts out, The Cast also slowly began getting bigger with DSOTM, Charon, SAR, and Eris all making appearances! And I can say they all mostly did something in this era as well our Main’s

It’s truly a fun Era where you don’t have to worry about anything or drama related, just sit back, relax and enjoy the craziness! :) and turn off your brain, Have a great time!

NEGATIVES:

First things first you can really tell SB hadn’t figured out its place in the YouTube algorithm yet Soo.. naturally these videos are gonna age like milk, The Animation Quality and the Voice Direction is a little shaky here, especially in the beginning, It’s not that awful, and every new YouTuber goes through that, But.. that kinda dates everything and now with the show being 4 years old, It’s certainly dated a bit like I’m clearly looking at 2022 animation

I feel this Era’s biggest overall weakness is the fact.. there’s not really much happening in these videos, Like don’t get me wrong yes they’re short and fun videos, and get the job done, But other than a few funny moments, most of these episodes don’t have much going for them, and it makes a good portion of the videos kinda forgettable…. The videos are also very repetitive as it’s just this “Video opens up and shows us a Character/Characters or a Character doing something, Planet asks a question, Someone either a Rocky or later Jupiter, answers that question and then wraps up with something silly” so take that and copy/paste that for nearly every video.. Yeahhh I think you get what I mean

This era is also largely Rocky Planet focused, which isn’t entirely bad, but I mean the first 15 videos of this Era and of SolarBalls are all mostly Rocky focused, and watching them in order, as entertaining as the videos are, it does get kinda boring.. even “What if the Sun Disappeared” and “Pluto is Planet Again” The only 2 episodes of the first 15 to have more characters talking, Nobody new really speaks and if they do it’s mostly ONE line of Dialogue.. CAN WE GET SOME MORE GAS GIANT/DWARF ACTION HERE? MY BOYS ARE STARVING FOR SCREENTIME!!!

Speaking of the Characters I feel.. some of them hadn’t been figured out quite yet…
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in particular don’t really shine as characters, until we get in the Arc’s later on, and honestly seeing Neptune being portrayed as 100% insane is so weird, Compared to today where he’s still insane but has been toned down to like 50-60% They did try to give them something with Saturn and Uranus’s adventure which was pretty good, but it’s the same issue with a majority of these videos, Same formula, andd.. it doesn’t happen until midway through this Era

Mars’s NPC personality unfortunately gets its debut here, he honestly doesn’t do a whole lot, other than appear and give facts, Even in his own Arc “How we Terraform Mars” he didn’t really do anything as it’s mainly an AstroDude arc, Speaking of AstroDude I feel he kinda disappears midway through the Era after being quite prominent in the beginning, I mean I understand you want your Planets to be the main focus, but AstroDude is a main character as well! Why sideline him?

There’s also some continuity errors here, Stuff that happened or are mentioned in this Era, are handled VERY differently in the Arc’s… So there’s some forms of inconsistency, Like for an example, Pluto’s Treatment in this era… To explain, Pluto is depicted as the Planet who got demoted to a Dwarf, and everyone treats like shit, and then later so let’s use “Earth’s Core Part 3” The Planets act like nothing ever happened, like they’re still “Friends” and act all friendly… despite earlier depictions saying that they treat Pluto like dog water.. I’m fully aware this is nitpicking territory but I feel it’s worth to mention

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Overall I did like the Education Era, despite its flaws, I feel it’s a decent starting point, laying out the building blocks for the Show and seeing the things that would become major plot points later in the Arc’s! Even if it’s a little inconsistent, I’m still glad there is forms of continuity from this Period, Really helps these episodes feel important to watch

That being said this era itself is really weak when you compare it to the later Stuff, Everything sometimes seems really dated here, and not much of note happens so it’s really easy to forget what happens in these videos, If anything I do appreciate the fun things they did do, despite how repetitive it was, It is entertaining after all :)

Honestly if SB had stuck to this format, Well the show wouldn’t have gone as famous as it is today, nor I don’t believe it’ll last as long as it has… I do believe The SB Team switched into doing the Arc content at a great time, early enough where they were still small, but not big to alienate the audience

I still do believe these videos would be great as overall cooldowns or like have a week or 2 of just the planets doing the fun stuff from 2022 ish, As while yes the Arc’s are more interesting it would be nice to go back to its roots and just have fun again! The Chrysalis Arc is underway (as of me writing this) and it promises to go back to something like this, And I will say we’re 2 videos in and they have been entertaining!

Overall Rating: 7/10

Not that bad of a start! Next up we’re diving into Arc Territory.. with the very first one… The Moon Revolution!!

Last week, I made a post talking about Solarballs’s horrible writing period and after enduring that torture to make that post, I was given the idea to do the opposite talk about SB’s best episodes and I thought that would be fun to do! As much as it’s easy to talk the negatives, I feel it’ll be good to talk about the standout episodes from SolarBalls! As there’s quite a lot of them! And hopefully spread some more positivity around here!

I tried to be as fair as possible, and pick from every major arc/era but some videos were really tricky to find, with PX’s arc in particular being the most difficult to find and I did truly consider cutting the entire arc all together, But I felt it was wrong so I kept going… until I was able to find something!

This will be another long post so sit back and relax! I have quite a lot of things to talk about here! Soo, I do hope you guys enjoy!

Credit to u/Greedy_Ad_8196 for this idea! Be sure to check out his PEAK!!! work!

With all of that out of the way let’s begin!

WHAT ARE THE BEST VIDEOS ACCORDING TO THE FANDOM?

IS THERE SOUND ON MARS?:
I honestly struggled with finding an episode from the Educational Era, as a majority of videos that were well received back then, isn’t really nowadays but I had to think of something and upon my research bam this one is here

While this Era is largely Rocky Planet focused What really stands out in this episode was they gave AstroDude a chance to stand on his own 2 feet here, without the assistance of the Planets, yes the planets did appear in this episode, but it was like a second and they don’t speak at all, giving the humans full range!

This is one of the few times AstroDude was able to stand up for himself and was able to trick Houston into sending him a piano to play for his wife on their wedding anniversary, and… AstroDude playing Rocket Man (made by Elton John), was one of if not, the very first emotional scene of SolarBalls and AstroDude has a great singing voice as well!

Definitely helps this video stand out from every other Education video!

EARTH ALONE + REDEMPTION:

Ironically Earth Alone Part 1 was the first video that got me really invested into the Fandom, So I’m glad to see a lot of fans still think it’s one of the best videos

Earth in 2022-2023 was to a lot of people, at the time one of they’re least favorites, with his iconic arrogant and egotistical personality, constantly boasting about the fact he has life which leads to him saying a rather nasty comment to Titan and slowly over time, causing many of his friends to abandon him

And the team did not hold back, they weren’t afraid to show how desperate someone can get when placed under these circumstances! SB by this time was slowly moving away from Educational and wanted to tackle more dark topics and Earth was a great first character for this task!

But without a doubt what’s really great about these videos is how Earth’s development plays out going from someone who thought they couldn’t fix anything, and almost attempting to end themselves, to being convinced that, yes he can fix his mistakes, and with the help of Moon, Mercury and to an extent the Sun, they were able to help him understand where he went wrong and how to improve! I will say for their first attempt, at redemption of a character, this one is solid! Most other Redemptions the team have tried, have been not so good (cough Ganymede and Europa cough)

What else is notable from these videos, was that Mercury and the Moon, were willing to put aside their issues with the Earth to help him out, that’s massive character development for them! And it is such a travesty that Mercury would later think of this as a “Stunt”, But let’s pretend that comment doesn’t exist!

Earth had solid redemption here and I’m glad they stayed consistent with this in future arc’s, and would revert him back to this in the episodes that would take place BEFORE MR

MOON REVOLUTION:

So this one is a bit of a weird one cause this one can be either the whole Arc or the Final 4 episodes which is titled the same thing, Kinda confusing there when your asking about best SB videos

But I’m not gonna talk about the whole arc (I will soon 😉 so consider this an early teaser)

What’s awesome about these videos was how it plays out… for the most part, starts of strong with Titan, slowly beginning to believe that this is wrong but keeps being manipulated by stronger more leadership type moons Ganymede and Europa, to go all in for this, and he continues even after the Moon shows up to try and put a stop to his madness after finding out Venus and Mars were attacked

Earth actually showed for the first time, he cares for Venus and Mars after finding out they were attacked by the Moons, and with this information in mind, gives him motivation by deciding to take the risk of leaving his orbit and entering the asteroid belt to put an end to this mayhem once and for all.. to protect everyone else from getting hurt and or killed

Earth apologizing to Titan and his speech in general for acknowledging he was wrong for saying what he said and how he was sorry for everything, was handled perfectly and really helped Titan realize just how wrong he was for all of this, only for Ganymede and Europa to cement themselves and become true SB villains and push for the Earth to be destroyed, which their buildup in general, leading the Revolution cause, was pretty good!

The fighting scenes in general are without a doubt one of the best scenes, there’s a lot of interesting shots of the Moons throwing Asteroids at the Earth, trying to get on his surface and IO, Callisto, Phobos and Deimos deciding to risk it all and protect Earth and the Earthlings alongside the Moon, (who the Earth acknowledged his name in that speech) Which is development for them as well! Going from supporting the Revolution to being fully against it upon seeing how much damage they have done, even Titan would turn his back on Ganymede and would get into a cool kinda like a final showdown type of fight!

Nowadays I feel like these episodes are largely defined by 1 certain moment at the tail end of Part 4 but honestly everything before that point was solid enough to earn a mention here and the Pluto scene isn’t that bad all things considered, it’s weak yes, but it’s not awful

PLANET X RETURNS:

Sooo.. okay this is the one I’m not 100% certain about as the X arc in particular is the weakest of the major arc’s and every video seems to have a mixed reception but I feel it was wrong to cut it.. So after many, many hours of research to find its strongest video, here it is

The team did really well with Proteus here, really helping him stand out among Neptune’s smaller moons and the smaller lesser known moons in general as by this point, only the big moons got focus so having Proteus here really helped! Especially with him becoming X’s first friend in over 4 billion years (just wish they would actually did something with it afterwards)

Mars actually got a little bit of a role here, Trying to figure out why Jupiter was acting suspicious, and why he looked like he was hiding something, yes Mars is still mostly an “NPC” but I thought it was worth mentioning, Which was followed by the Sun protecting the Solar System from X and this is the earliest sign with Europa protecting the smaller moons as hey that’s an interesting character trait! Really shows that she really looks out for the smaller moons after MR

The final episode is the Arc’s strongest X coming back to the Solar System and forcing Jupiter to confess what he did with the Grand Tack, and the fact he was willing to defend Saturn to prevent him from meeting the same fate really showed his character here, and everyone else looking in shock and disappointment it really shows just how much every planet and even the Sun to some extent, looked up to him only to realize that even Jupiter has some dark secrets

And this is where of course right before the Bad Writing Era began.. so X is still in character here so it’s a positive!

PAST PLANETS:

So I was going to have the Big Bang videos and Theia’s Past together here but upon further research I’ve found that The Big Bang videos have a very mixed reception so, yeah :/

Anyways.. these videos came right after The Bad Writing period, and to me and mostly everyone’s delight it was such a refresh to see the massive turn around in quality! The characters starting to act like themselves again or more accurately the proto version of themselves (nice pun there I know), The Writing became more bearable to sit through, The pacing is a lot better than the beginning, and everything seems to have fallen into place!! Kinda like a back to basics sort of thing

We got several glimpses into the Characters, most of which we would see their later modern personalities come from! And it is really interesting to watch and pinpoint the dots into how and why they’re the way they are!

Things like:
A. Neptune slowly loosing his mind because he wanted to orbit near the Kuiper Belt, and what happened with Triton
B. Uranus’s internal debate in himself about wanting to join in with the other Planets activities but at the same time worrying about Neptune going insane
C. We finally got an explanation on what happened to Ceres and why he ended up going insane, Which is pretty sad
D. The Sun had a great explanation for why he wanted a planet to have life, He didn’t want to feel alone after spending so much time in the dark… This gave Theia a good motive and she wanted to fulfill that wish even if it was impossible
E. We saw how Pluto was treated in the early days and man, knowing the future and what will happen is just sad to see
F. Even in one of the Ads, we saw the early glimpses of Saturn trying to remember all of his Moons’s names but struggling to remember them
G. You can definitely tell how Earth is the “child” of Proto and Theia as many things they do, is resembled in the future most notably “Proto should know his place!” If ya know your SB history.. you should know what I’m talking about 👀

The Episodes are all mostly really good! And I’m sure when we see these videos again they will be solid as these ones! There’s still some bits we have yet to see like the Earth getting life, Saturn getting his rings (Which is coming up really Soon!), How Uranus got its tilt, and Pluto’s demotion to Dwarf Planet

But I’m not done talking about the past yet!!

THE CRASH OF PROTO AND THEIA + THE AFTERMATH:

Awww yes… The Crash… Holy damn did SolarBalls make this video emontial in the greatest way possible!

There’s a ton of positives here with Proto and Theia fully cementing their love for each other in this Arc, to the many signs of them getting too close, to The Sun figuring it out and separating them and Theia being the very first Planet to call out his tyrannical moves and how that he said he wanted Life to happen, and that she wasn’t gonna stop until that wish was completed and she even knew a bit about his Past! Which of course would not end well, as this caused Sun to go more insane, and he chose to separate them, creating the built up to the crash

And of course the Crash… boy that was PEAK seeing Mars and Venus play an important role into unknowingly create the final blows that would lead to the crash was an interesting plotline! And for Proto and Theia to finally found their answer into having life, while questionable…. was great nonetheless! And then of course that very fateful kiss…. and seeing Venus’s reaction afterwards after he tried to help them was very heartbreaking to see as you can tell he’s very upset about what he had to witness!

The aftermath was one of the few times SolarBalls has stayed consistent after a very epic episode as something I did notice SB doesn’t stay good after an awesome video as usually it gets kinda weak right after

But I will give them credit here! They handled the aftermath GREATLY!, As you can definitely feel the impact the crash had on everyone, The Sun wanting to hear everyone’s side about what happened, and what role they played and he didn’t really get upset with anyone as I believe even he knew where he himself played a role for the crash, Venus’s speech for why he threw Theia to Proto Earth and how he felt guilty for not stopping it, and Mars’s own explanation when talking to Jupiter and the Sun are both very heartbreaking..

Which was then followed by the final scenes of the Crash and the birth of the Moon and Earth and then both waking up for the first time and we saw that “Attempt” Pluto talked about during the bad writing period, we saw Venus’s hot headed self get its debut here as it’s pretty likely this developed as a way to get over his guilt, and lastly seeing Mars and Earth play Asteroid Dodgeball like Proto promised right before his death, at the end was truly a great way to end off the early planets! (as of now)

THE EARTH AWAKENS:

The final episode of the Theia Arc, and they surely went out with a bang (no pun intended)

I remember there were people that were skeptical with this episode was first announced, coming after a mediocre Earth’s Core (Had to make a whole post about it) but I’m sure all those thoughts died down when this aired

It seemed like the Team knew just how badly the beginning went, so they attempted to fix mostly everything that went horrible, The Planets are no longer their assassinated selves and are completely acting like their true selves again, Every Planet and the Dwarfs getting pretty prominent screentime, The Earth FINALLY waking up from his long slumber to see everyone worried for him was a great scene followed by The Rockies (for the most part) apologizing for their Actions from Jupiter is Back

Then we got some even more emontial scenes as Earth would tell everyone that Proto and Theia said hi and that Theia still rejects Venus even in death, which led to another tearful Venus scene, you can tell he’s still upset about this.. which was followed by the The Planets cheering on AstroDude realizing he’s okay, which really made him feel like a part of the team and of course the Earth finally having the answers as to why he wanted life

And then the episode ends with those epic final shots for what was coming next and hey even X got a little cameo in this one! A great ending to a divisive arc!

A TALE OF TWO ASTRONAUTS:
I also remember when this was announced and everyone was skeptical cause ya know Cosmo’s previous appearances were very weak… But my goodness this one was a surprise pick tbh

They really did seem like we were jumping into an AstroDude vs Cosmo showdown only to reveal the astronaut had abandoned his ship with a final video explaining what happened

The team handled Cosmo’s off screen death perfectly, The continuity from Theia’s arc when Cosmo mentioned he couldn’t find Earth or the Moon or anything for that matter.. was an awesome set up to reveal that he was still around, after AstroDude left with Moon, Saturn, and Mars to find the Earth, Then only to discover Cosmo ran out of food and fuel, while searching, slowly realizing in that ship where he went wrong for abandoning AstroDude and Laika and knowing his time was limited he chose to speed up his death..

SAR was handled pretty good in this video, being shown he was able to repair Laika despite her almost killing him in SDSOTMP3, and showing her Cosmo’s final video, This really shows he’s not an entirely a villain to other Characters, even going as far as helping/rebuilding ones he did destroy

AstroDude was handled pretty solid here! And he chose to honor Cosmo by putting SIBO in his suit and letting him go, yes I feel AstroDude should’ve brought SAR’s ship back to prevent his current predicament but this ending was indeed satisfying

RIP Pringle Man your writing was not good but at least you got a proper send off

THE PLANET REVOLUTION:

Ganymede’s Prediction from the Solar System Trials came true! And it was a banger!

Moon Revolution was a solid arc but it has a ton of flaws, Planet Revolution… Damn! did the team make up for their past mistakes from that era with these epic videos

First things first, The Planets acknowledge they had to clear the air and work together to defeat the Sun was a solid setup and they apologized for their past mistakes from previous videos, from Uranus for not embracing his name and for being embarrassed about being Neptune’s cousin, to Jupiter for hiding his own past, to Saturn favoring one moon and forgetting the names of way more, to the Earth for his actions from TMR and yes we finally got that apology from Mercury’s infamous comment (yes it might be forced but hey I’ll accept it!)

Ganymede was selected to train and lead the planets and he was against the revolution at first, only to be fully committed after some convincing, as much as his and Europa’s redemption were weak, you can definitely tell they have changed for somewhat the better! And it’s a smart continuity from the Moon Revolution as yes, he HAS the most experience leading a Revolution! And he played that to his full advantage which was awesome!

But by far the best thing from these videos was the final, When the Planets’s plan actually somehow worked and the Sun was finally loosing control, then the Rouge’s come in and make him unable to fight back, Which led to some of the best shots of the Solar System by far, We got a few good scenes with Jupiter and Uranus reuniting with X, Mercury managing to convince the Rouge’s not to crush the Sun, all wrapped up by the Planets well everyone but Earth, Moon and Ceres straight up leaving the with Jupiter the very first planet in the Solar System told Sun to his face that they were all done with his antics

And the Sun’s worst fear came true, his planets abandoned him thus leaving him alone in the dark..

SUN VS THE ROUGE’S:

Okay I know very recent video, but there’s no denying evidence this one is a genuinely great episode!

The Sun finally moved for the first time since the Big Bang videos to go get his planets back, which was cool! Especially knowing before he had struggled with trying to move around post Big Bang

Theory showdown between Sun and the Rouge’s was PEAK!!! Sun showing up wanting to talk and then immediately jumping into battle, First SIMP tried to do what she did before only for the Sun to push back and knock her down for a bit as he searched for his Planets which led to more awesome shots of the Rouge Kingdom this time!

Sun realizing the planets will not hear him as they move further away, and in order to get their attention he had to light up the sky was epic! That Solar Flare was absolutely amazing! Definitely Sun’s best Solar Flare by FAR!!!! Which helped the Planets and the Dwarfs find their way back, which was followed by a solid emontial scene with the Sun and the Planets both apologizing for their actions in this Arc.. and Jupiter realizing he spent too long in the dark was an awesome continuity from The Big Bang!

And hey, unlike Moon Revolution there was no “hey talk it out, and everyone gets along” thing, No, Sun and SIMP basically had words and they were done with one another, and everyone goes back to where they belong, acting like a baseline for SIMP as she and the Rouge’s might be cooking something for the future 👀 oh and if you thought Planet X got done dirty in his Arc? Well this video was a much better version for him :)

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I honestly had a blast revisiting these Episodes, especially after doing that bad writing post, you can easily tell in all of these The SB Team was really excited to get these out and pulling all their A-Game to make them as good as they are

In my opinion, I feel It’s important to acknowledge that every SolarBalls video, yes even the worst of the worst (Like BOPXP4) has a positive of sorts, I know it’s insanely hard at times especially when the video is boring or flat out terrible but I feel it’s important to acknowledge what a video did right and shed some highlights on it These videos I mentioned are standouts but I think every SB video does have something unique about them!

Reddit is notorious for its negativity so I feel it’s important to look on the bright side of things, We’re all here for a reason right? We all enjoy these talking Planets and if ya don’t… why are you here? Go somewhere else!!

Andddd that’s it for me folks! Hope you guys enjoyed this post!

(Perfect image for this!)

Sooo, I ended up going on a hiatus period after doing the S11 gate list, my sanity was on the edge after getting through that Season and after watching that after S16 and a disappointing S24, I needed a break but I’m back!

I decided to conclude the final 20 person cast gate list by watching… Season 12!

Back when I first joined the HK Reddit I flat out and passionately hated this Season and wouldn’t watch it again for the life of me… Why? Well this was one of the first Seasons I saw back when I got into HK in 2020, and I didn’t fully understand the show back then, But looking back I was purely stupid and didn’t give it a fair shot, So for that I apologize I believe now that Season 12 is a pretty solid Season! A great cast, Perfectly balanced Talent and Drama, and filled with iconic moments!

I still don’t think it’s the best Season for me personally as there’s still a few issues I have with it that are hard to overlook, but I no longer say I despise it, it’s now in my Top 10 so it is improving! Maybe after a few more rewatches it can go a bit higher but Top 10 is where it is, as of this moment

I have decided to do the gate list for rest of the Seasons.. I haven’t quite picked out my next Season to cover but I will get these out.. when I can! Don’t want to be spamming these! I will say Season 12 didn’t have many notable gates like S11 and S24 hey! that’s impressive!

Anyways same rules as always, for something to qualify as a gate it has to be A Chef or Chefs screwing up something BASIC, A Chef going on a surprising downfall or anything else noteworthy

With all of that out of the way let’s begin!

OPENINGNIGHTGATE

SOMEHOW despite there being 20 Chefs NO DISHES beside Tableside were served on this night GENERALLY HOW?! Definitely the worst HK Service ever, and probably the reason why they stopped doing having 20 person casts until S24 (12 Seasons Later)

FINGERGATE

Guarav put his finger in a Risotto and claimed multiple times that everyone does it which led to his elimination and really Guarav you likely would’ve survived if ya didn’t do that!

PATTERNGATE

Okay… the first 3 services went like this Chefs on both sides screw up multiple times, Ramsay kicks a few women out, proceeds to kick the men out, then finishes up by kicking the rest of the women out, That’s a pattern right there if ya ask me! And the fact it lasts for 3 episodes is insane

RAGEGATE

In Episodes 3-5 and to an extent Episode 11 the Blue Team got into many notable arguments with everyone but Richard and Scott getting extremely pissed in these episodes, I mean Jason would go full on rage at Sandra in Episode 4 (which is where I say he lost the Season despite Scott’s amazing leadership down the road), The Blue Team largely fought in the Episode 11 service with disastrous results, and all topped off with the Iconic “GO BACK TO THE GROCERY STORE” quote

DEMARCOGATE

DeMarco was nominated in all 5 Services he participated in and Ramsay gave him an iconic elimination quote “DeMarco, Demented, Demoted, DENIED”

PIZZAGATE

The most infamous gate of this Season, where Multiple Chefs in the challenge and in service Bev, Sandra and Kashia and most notably Chris and Scott screwed up Many MANY Pizzas aka “The Pizza Massacre” ya know when something is a true gate as even the Narrator agrees this is a gate

FAMILYGATE
Joy, Kashia and Melanie decide to put Rochelle up for elimination in the first Final 10 service… for wanting a Family???? Definitely one if not the STUPIDEST nomination reason ever!, At least Rochelle showed them up in the next episode

COUNTGATE

Gabriel for some reason couldn’t count in Episode 12, getting 4 ingredients instead of 5 in the challenge and being 2 tuna short of 12, and then Richard also a miscount on tortellini and plates

FRIEDCHICKENGATE

Kashia, Jessica and Jason would struggle cooking fried chicken in Episode 8 and this night was mentioned multiple times afterwards this Season, most notably in Episode 13 during the Menu Challenge

CRABCAKEGATE

Many Chefs also struggled with this! Richard served cold crab cakes multiple times in Episode 4 and was forced to eat them with Ralph, He would then make the same mistake in Episode 13, Rochelle would burn a crab cake in the same episode, Bev would struggle with them in Episode 8, and Sandra would struggle with them in the Finale

ANTONGATE

Aww yes “The true winner of HK S12” Despite seeming like a lock for a BJ and possibly to win, Anton went on a massive downward spiral in the Final 10 and 8 service, with his Final 8 service being so bad it got him eliminated, Anddd… he would make a rather sexist comment to Chef Andi

FLUSTRATEDGATE

Kashia grew “Flustrated” (which I believe it means she’s flustered and frustrated at the same time), In multiple services from the Final 15 to her elimination at the Final 6

QUITGATE

Joy would infamously quit during the final 5 service, in the words of Jason “She quit… over a fish” Oh and she said in Episode 1 she doesn’t give up…. ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?! Also the foreshadowing to the quit is insane when you watch the Season in retrospect

NOMINATIONGATE

Scott was nominated 7 times (the last person who was nominated that much in a single season) with 4 of those Noms being for BS reasons, Despite that and many other struggles he was able to win, A solid and fitting storyline for him :)

This is from Anton’s elimination episode, aka Episode 14, Jason became Scott apparently 😂 is this some form of foreshadowing? Lol

So.. I’ve mentioned this a good number of times in the comments, but I’ve never dedicated a full post to Solarballs’s worst era, but since some time has passed and with the Rouge’s wrapped up, I wanted to go into a full analysis, and go back to revisit this period, I suffered through these videos to make this soo.. hoping it does well!

Honestly there is quite a lot to talk about here so sit back and enjoy reading this post, and here we go!

WARNING SIGNS:
SB's Writing has never been perfect with one of the first instances of it being weak was Pluto and the end of the Moon Revolution, but you can give them a bit of pass due to that happening at the very end, and that was the Team’s first attempt at writing an Arc

However SB’s writing faced a sharp decline in the summer of 2024 prior to this Era with “The Moon Club” (Or nowadays “What are the Moons up to?”) and “What if the Moon crashed towards the Earth?”

Moon Club: I’ve said before this was the earliest sign of the Writing taking a turn, and I still stand by that, basically what happens is Titan creates a Club for just the Moons without Ganymede and Europa for their actions in TMR, Now.. in this little arc, the writers made Titan come across unlikeable for not letting them in, When he had every valid reason to not let them in, right away I do understand where the other Moons were coming from, as clearly Ganymede and Europa can lead the moons, better than anyone can, But come on guys, they and Titan (to an extent) almost caused you all to commit genocide on Earth, for what reason? So it makes sense to not let them in, right away definitely after some time has passed, not to mention this is where Ganymede and Europa’s forced redemption began which that in itself was admittedly weak, and not really much of note happens in these videos, except for the lead up to the Solar System Trials so it ended kinda alright? They’re not awful, by any means, but the earliest signs of the weak writing points to here.

What if the Moon Crashed Towards the Earth?: This is where the bad writing became noticeable, to the general fans here, Now i believe the point of this Arc was the SB team was trying to explain what the Moon was talking about in TMC by how the planets don’t let him join in their Card game (Solar Cards didn’t exist just yet) However it’s very poorly paced and overall very very boring As basically what happens here is the Moon falls asleep trying to study the planet’s card game and its just the same thing over and over again with the Earthlings panicking, The Planets somehow not noticing the Moon getting closer to Earth, and then it ended on a mediocre note.. not to mention This would be DSOTM’s final appearance (as of June 2026) can I also mention Phobos and Deimos did nothing to help? They were perfectly okay with causing mass destruction to the Earth and not bothering to help? Yeah… not a great arc all things considered.

SB’s writing did take a massive step up in the Solar System Trials and stayed mostly consistent through Planet X’s introduction, The Big Bang and X coming back to the Solar System… However things took a turn for the worst after X came back to the Solar System…

THE ERA:
Okay... There’s a crap ton to talk about here

So SB’s horrible writing became very noticeable around What if Jupiter left the Solar System.. though where it actually became very noticeable is a bit hazy so I’m putting it’s beginning with “What if Jupiter left then Solar System Part 1” which was uploaded Nov 16th 2024, and unfortunately this Era would go on until April 26th 2025 right as the Theia arc was entering its middle..

Planet X: Okay.. everyone has talked about how this Arc ended, and how poorly it did, But to explain this again, after Jupiter leaves the Solar System, and X took his spot Planet X... changed, Before he was a rather observant and vindictive dude with a clear motive for revenge against Jupiter and Saturn but once he was back... it’s like the writers somehow, forgot how Planet X was characterized and he became very unlikeable, real quick basically becoming a rather arrogant unsympathetic bully especially the "Oh I was banished for 4 billion years" trope now it does kinda make sense as to why he would be a villain especially to Jupiter and Saturn, but where did this come from? There’s little to no evidence of him changing prior so it’s very sudden, and like okay X we get it you got done dirty for 4 billion years.. But why would you keep repeating that? You’re not helping yourself here!!

Planet X's last episodes were insanely rushed, like the Team wanted to just get it done so they can get started working on Theia’s Arc and they just kinda threw things together with little time to breathe, And then of course the Finale with X just leaving the Solar System… WITHOUT FACING ANY CONSEQUENCES FOR HIS ACTIONS… Sooo why the hell did he come back to the Solar System? If he was just gonna leave again? Wouldn’t it make sense for X to come back with Jupiter so they can both figure out how to move forward together? Also X could’ve orbited outside the Kuiper Belt to be a “Jupiter” to the Dwarf Planets… or anything else to make him part of the Solar System! Man what a missed opportunity!!

There’s also other things I want to mention
A. There was a whole side plot with X becoming friends with Proteus, but they didn’t really do much with it and when Proteus finally told X to his face, about what he did in BOPXP4, it didn’t really amount to anything or make it impactful
B. Saturn was there when X got kicked out, and yet he faced no consequences for it
C. None of the Rocky Planets got a chance to speak with X to develop their own opinions
D. Did the Sun really need to do the Asteriod Dodgeball challenge? knowing the smaller moons will not survive? I know I’m a big defender of the Sun’s actions but I will admit, this is one of the few times I can’t defend him here
E. So.. Makemake told Ganymede and Europa to find X for him, though he never got a chance to meet him in this arc, making his little scene quite pointless (They would go on to meet in the Rouge’s Arc)

Following X’s very bad Arc we got SDSOTM, AstroDude Mini Arc.. which explains where he’s been and the Arc was… okay not great but not awful, Part 1 was pretty good, then it got bad immediately soo… Cosmo aka Pringle Man, wanted SIBO to somehow restart the USSR… what? That doesn’t make any sense! Like if Cosmo wanted to keep SIBO on DSOTM to run tests on him., then sure makes sense as to why AstroDude wants to leave, But.. that’s not what they said here, also I don’t believe in any regard the USSR could be restarted because of a single organism.. no matter how rich you can get, Not to mention what the heck AstroDude? I know you and SAR don’t see eye to eye and that SAR is meant to be the villain, but you can at the very least help him find his ship, instead of just abandoning him on DSOTM… Cause now he’s gonna be very pissed with you (And that’s likely gonna happen next time we see SAR when he finds out you let his ship drift into space)

Theia: Oh boy…. Sooo Theia's beginning can be described as very painful, and probably a lot worse than X's ending which I can’t fully argue, as you thought X got done dirty? Well he wasn’t the only one who got character assassinated, Some of the main Characters also got it and it took a massive hit on some of their reputations in the Fandom, with the Moon and Mars pulling a 180 and lashed out at the Earth who was clearly mentally distressed, Uranus’s ego got the better of him and rage quitted, Titania single handily caused the rage quit and stepped into villain territory, Earth pressured his friends into trying to get them to talk to Jupiter, when they clearly weren’t ready to talk yet

And… okay.. excuse me for a moment the most notable offense was Mercury CALLING THE EARTH’S ATTEMPT A “Stunt” DESPITE THE FACT HE WAS THE ONE WHO HELPED EARTH OUT OF THAT DEPRESSION?!!!! SERIOUSLY HOW THE HECK WAS THIS EVEN GREENLIT IN THE FIRST PLACE?! I KNOW THAT HE WAS MAD AT VENUS BUT WHY TAKE IT OUT ON THE EARTH?! PROBABLY THE BIGGEST HEELTURN (In wrestling terms: when a beloved character joins the darkside) IN ALL OF SOLARBALLS.. AND THEN MERCURY CONTINUES TO ACT LIKE THAT FOR MONTHS AFTERWARDS IT IS SOOO GODDAMN FRUSTRATING!!!! ESPECIALLY WHEN BEFORE HE WAS IN MY TOP 10 FAVORITE CHARACTERS!!

HONESTLY I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN VENUS KICKED HIS ASS IN “THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS EMPTY PART 3” I HONESTLY WOULD’VE DONE IT IN A HEARTBEAT REEEEEEEEE!!!!…… Okay.. My apologies, I’m still as you can tell, very pissed off that even happened, and yes Mercury would apologize for that in the Rouge Arc, and revert back to his pre Theia Self, so I’m glad that’s been taking care of

Minus the Character Assassinations, the Episodes are not that good, but instead of the episodes being rushed, we got the opposite… 9 straight videos (“What if Earth left the Solar System to Lost Earth”) the Characters doing the same thing over and over and over again dragging the Theia Arc’s pacing to.. horrible levels now I understand there needs to be filler in some cases, but when your doing the same thing over and over? It can poorly make the episodes boring and honestly uninteresting to watch

This is what everyone was doing for those 9 videos
A. Jupiter leaves to find Uranus and get him to return, Neptune also follows though not on Screen
B. Earth tries to ask Jupiter about Theia, which leads him to fall asleep in the Keiper Belt
C. Saturn, Moon, Mars and AstroDude trying to find the Earth
D. Venus and Mercury try to keep the Sun calm, however they but heads and Mercury's attitude doesn't get any better
E. The Moons try to figure out what's going on with some of them also getting Character Assassinated (Phobos, Deimos, IO, and some of the minor moons)

I do understand there needs to be built up to Theia, we can’t jump immediately into her story, but let’s be real for a moment Theia’s arc could’ve been completed in half the time then it took in real life, and these 9 videos, dragged it to unbearable levels thus extending this awful period even if the last few videos did somewhat turned the writing around

Here’s some things I need to mention
A. Neptune straight up vanished for several months after everyone except Mercury and Venus left with little explanation until right near the end of Theia’s Arc
B. Saturn could’ve have stopped the Earth when he was trying to get Jupiter, I understand that he wanted to keep the Asteriod Belt under control, but.. Earth is leaving his orbit and his Earthlings cannot handle drastic temperature changes for a long period… so why didn’t he attempt to just grab Earth and put him back in his orbit?
C. Some of the Thumbnails got very.. questionable which unfortunately remains for the rest of the arc
D. Sooo.. I know a lot of people flack the Sun for the way he acts in the later Theia & Rouge Arc’s however the planets did get up and leave without explaining why.. and ON HIS BIRTHDAY So I can’t fully blame him for getting very pissed
E. Why did the Dwarfs need Jupiter to bring the Earth back? Like any big planet so all the Gas Giants could lead or throw Earth back to his orbit so really they needed to find Saturn or Neptune (we didn’t know where Neptune was at the time)

POSITIVES?:
Okay... I hate being overly Negative about something, So lets talk about a few positives this Era did have

The Animation Quality is still as strong as ever, I’ve seen people say X’s arc had animation issues in the end, but upon my latest rewatch I didn’t notice any real animation issues maybe they were talking about how the writing was getting bad? Idk

Even during this Era they were introducing new Characters, Metis in particular became an important character following her Debut in BOPXP2 and played an important role in the early Theia Arc, though this wouldn’t last long I’m glad we got to know her a bit, Really helped her stand out from the smaller and more forgettable moons

I completely forgot until this latest rewatch that some Characters did the Intro that SB does in their videos, Callisto, Planet X, IO, SAR, Laika, The Singularity, god I kinda miss when the characters would tell us what happened in the previous episode

Planet X: I did like how Europa told the smaller moons to just quit the fight, knowing they cannot survive X's asteroids after what happened to the bigger Moons, I thought the Challenges (minus the dodgeball) was pretty cool and unique seeing the moons come together in the Race, and the SolarCards challenge was an interesting way to show off the Cards and act like an educational video of sorts, and of course Earth hearing Theia’s name would send him into a crisis, which would start that arc, and despite how rushed it was, I did like X and Jupiter’s reconciliation just sucks it’s overshadowed by a ton of negatives

Theia: I did like the Dwarfs actually getting a chance to do something Instead of just sitting around their Dungeons and Dwarfs game all of the time, and I will say having Ceres talk was pretty exciting because then we got to theorize why he's the way he is, AstroDude finally got a big role in this arc after being dormant for MR and PX Arc’s, I liked how Ganymede and Europa were trying to be reasonable and telling Titania they should wait until Metis comes back before they take action, It was cool to see the Earth Chemicals again and the last video where Theia and Proto-Earth finally make their debut was awesome to see!

LONG TERM EFFECTS:
SolarBalls's Writing did finally begin getting better when the past Planets arrived on Screen, and SB has done a good job at keeping things really good, However.. things haven't been entirely smooth..

August and October 2025 had the writing again called into Question, with "Earth's Core” Parts 2 and 3 having noticeable weak scenes, and then the whole Moon Wakes Up series, which the Writing decreased to drastic levels, and most recently March-April 2026's writing had multiple Characters dumbed down for the sake of the Rouge's plot to go forward and we're talking REALLY dumb moments. Like most of the planets blindly agreeing to the Rouge’s without knowing all of their conditions? The Dwarfs staying in the Kingdom despite telling them they didn’t agree to staying and then getting lost? Seemingly everyone forgetting Earth cannot leave the Solar System without life on his surface dying? It was a mess..

I will make the Argument here and obviously this might be a hot take, but I will say this.. Solarballs hasn't quite fully recovered from This Era, aka there are long term scars from this Era, and what I mean by that is something I’ve noticed from this latest weak writing period…

Solarballs tends to kinda get in this mindset of just getting content out every week with very few breaks, Now I understand this is their most popular channel among all of Alvaro’s channels, and they have to keep things consistent otherwise people will loose interest that’s how YouTube today is unfortunately…. However when your just getting out content for the sake of just doing it, Fans can steadily pick up that your not putting your all into this, And if your not having fun, unfortunately it’s going to show, SolarBalls used to often take semi monthly breaks quite often in 2022-2023, giving them a bit more time to write and plan future episodes, hence why I think TMR worked for the most part, but lately they kinda stopped taking those breaks, and rushing a video out for the sake of filling a quota aka making sure there’s videos every Saturday.

I feel SB needs to understand that it’s okay to take a step back and have a break sometimes, Fans are not gonna abandon SolarBalls because your taking a week off, It’s okay that we have to wait a week or 2 for new episodes, especially when you really want them to do good, And overall start having fun with SB again, you can definitely tell in this Era, they just weren’t having as much fun as before or after this period

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Solarballs’s Bad Writing Era was really a massive low point for the show, causing some fans to leave and damaged 2 arc’s reputation here, with X’s being considered the worst and Theia’s being very divisive that being said, I do appreciate that SolarBalls has seemed to learn from their past mistakes and are taking the right steps to make these videos really good again, Theia’s middle and ending and The Rouge’s are a massive step up from this era, So it’s safe we’re likely never gonna get a repeat of this

Yes weak writing periods are likely still gonna happen from time to time, SB is not perfect what so ever, and that’s okay, they’re learning what works and what doesn’t work with every new Arc they do, For an example, Planet X was done very bad in his arc, yet in the Rouge’s he got a whole lot better so there is evidence development is happening and will likely continue going in the future.

Hopefully SolarBalls can and will remain strong until the end of the Show’s run.

Looks like we are about to witness something PEAK for the final episode of the Rouge Planets, hopefully it’ll be worth it!

Now us non Paterons have to avoid leaks like the Plague, I can only imagine how the Pateron people feel about having to keep this whole episode a secret and not tell anyone about it!

EDIT: Seems like my post flair has been changed to “OFFICIAL NEWS” when I originally put it as “Miscellaneous”

Ooookkkk.. It’s been a little while since I’ve went on a Discussion about SB, but I feel like I want to say something because this whole thing has gone nuts

Run Monster Run is basically Alvaro’s new show that’s set to release June 20th, Now the show is not gonna be uploading regularly like what SB has been doing for 4 years that’s basically as far as I know, I would talk about RMR in more detail, but this Reddit isn’t about that and I don’t want this post getting flagged, sooo moving on into this controversy with SolarBalls

The SB team announced RMR on May 22nd right before A Journey Into Darkness’s preview images which for the episode was set to release the next day, and the SB fandom well a portion of it, freaked out cause they thought Alvaro was canceling SolarBalls for this brand new series, and immediately started hating on this series, Now Alvaro and the Team has made multiple statements to set the record straight but now there’s apparently a petition to have RMR removed??? (I couldn’t find the petition, so I’m unable to verify that information) And it seems some people still aren’t getting the memo

Okay.. there’s a couple of things I want to say

1. Alvaro has made numerous other shows HumanBuddy, PlayerRound, ETC and he never said he was gonna cancel SolarBalls when those shows entered production, Can I also mention SolarBalls is a spinoff of Mr Spherical? And while they largely stopped uploading on Mr Spherical they never abandoned that audience infact they still upload there from time to time

2. Now I do criticize the way the team communicated RMR as it did come across as a ball drop, Basically the only thing that gave us any sign was Alvaro’s personal channel changed to RMR, and he created a new personal channel… about 4-5 months ago, But it’s not that bad, it took me a minute to realize “Ohhh they’re doing another show” its really simple to understand, Alvaro wants to create new shows going into more stuff he just can’t do with the current ones he has

3. Why would SolarBalls all of a sudden stop after the Rouge Planets? Which is due to end June 20th the same day as RMR premiers, The SolarBalls Team has plenty of new stories and ideas to come up with, like we got Black Holes, Exoplanets, The other stars from PX’s arc, Pluto’s reconciliation, Sun’s continued Redemption Arc like there’s still lots to talk about and develop so I don’t know why or how this thing that SolarBalls was gonna stop after Rouge’s got mentioned in the first place, Also SolarBalls isn’t due to end for another few years so relax, there’s lots more to come before we talk about SB reaching the end

4. Okay.. that supposed Petition to have RMR removed…. Why? Just why? Like okay I understand that you’re aren’t gonna like RMR and that’s totally fine, nobody’s forcing you to watch it, but why ruin the fun for people who actually want to see RMR? Like what the heck? Also that petition if it is real, a million percent not gonna succeed because well there’s a large portion of RMR fans already soooo.. good luck with that

Okay.. in conclusion this whole situation with Run Monster Run is flat out stupid, SolarBalls is not gonna stop uploading anytime soon the team has made it extremely clear that this show is not replacing our beloved talking Planets and the fact the fandom has reached arguably a new low is quite upsetting to see tbh

Like they say every fandom has dark sides to them, and it seems we found one of them in this whole situation