The DVD Fairy

THANK YOU SO MUCH. I didn’t watch a lot of the Ayam Aghoul episodes because the character kind of bugged me as a kid, so missed stuff like this. I will give it a watch though, because I can imagine my current head canon might be wholly inaccurate. 

“Wait, why’s everybody sad?”

Again, it wasn’t his episode to learn anything; he perfectly represents the level of ignorant destructiveness people level against nature on a day to day basis. 

He’s sad because Jasmine is sad. There’s really no time left in the episode for it to really sink in for him that he just murdered someone in cold blood. On one hand I get it because KIDS SHOW and this is already pretty dark, but on the other, what a wasted opportunity for character development! 

So to honor Arbitus, Jasmine and the Sultan resolve to plant the heart cutting in the palace gardens. 

Jasmine makes a statement about how recognizing how we’re different helps us to see how we’re alike. It’s a good message, because it goes against the “melting pot” and “colorblindness” shit that gets thrown around in racial discussions. Differences should be recognized and respected because there are other ways in which we as people can connect rather than as homogenized mush. 

It’s a fabulous message. It could have been better executed, though, if expanded into a two-parter or even just spending less time watching Aladdin and his friends screw around in the treasury. 

I remember feeling devastated that Arbitus was dead as a kid, btw, until the final frames of the episode,when the flower grows a little and draws in a breath of air – obviously in Ron Perlman’s voice, suggesting that Arbitus can eventually regenerate. 

It was a nice touch. 

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I remember finding it especially haunting when I was a kid.

Jasmine is trying to convince everyone to stop fighting and just listen to each other. We’ve established that Arbitus actually isn’t all that bad, just genuinely misunderstood and convinced that these people (kind of rightly so) are there to harm him and his creations. 

And then Aladdin fucking kills him. 

The animation here is really interesting because I’m used to this group of animators using very crisp but fluid movements and everything is slowed down, and somewhat blurred, and uses fewer frames per second to make it look more dramatic (and probably less grisly). 

And then Aladdin: 

You dick. 

Like seriously Jasmine he just gives his flowers water and they’re happy what the fuck else do you want from him? 

While he also seems to get that she’s trying to escape the ways he finds to deter her from just walking out are done with the same level of care as stopping vines from climbing up a wall. 

“No, no – you’re not supposed to grow that way." 

However, when Jasmine informs him that she needs her family and friends, he seems to "remember” that humans have different needs than plants do.

I just thought that was interesting.

I’m also not sure he intended to keep her there forever. Much of their conversation once they actually get to talking seems like he was waiting for the right hot-button words to be hit so he could go into a lecture. 

Jasmine tries to explain to him that she’s not a plant but she poorly words it. She can’t be inserted into the soil and expected to grow. What she says, however, is that she’s not a “thing.” Because in talking to him she doesn’t seem to recognize that while he’s a person, he’s not a human. he’s a plant. And plants aren’t “things” to him. 

There is probably a commentary about racism in here somewhere. Or even nationalism on certain levels. There are differences between racial groups. There are differences between countries and their various cultures. When you do not often have to be confronted with those differences it becomes easy to ignore that those differences exist. Which leads to thinking like this. 

Using an elemental and a set of organisms completely removed from humanity helps the writers, in this case, to showcase a similar theme without alienating anybody. 

The ways in which Arbitus outlines the cruelties man inflicts on the world’s flora are issues largely of ignorance. Humans aren’t totally ignorant to the notion that plants are alive but there’s no strict feeling of equality. The fact of the matters is that even if we woke up tomorrow and realized every bit of plant matter we consume or use is aware and can feel pain (and some plants can feel pain, btw), we’d be faced with the ethical dilemma that is that we still need to use other organisms in order to survive. 

Yes, people burn wood for warmth. Yes, this creates pollution (but not on any level that’s significant back in his own time). 

And yes, we pick flowers for decoration and let them slowly die. 

This is different for Arbitus. As an elemental, he’s aware. He’s a person. He gives life to these plants, and when someone kills them, it hurts him just as much as it would hurt the Sultan if someone were to kill Jasmine. 

Jasmine concedes that she understands and that’s all well and good but this is a conversation he should have been having with the fucking Sultan.

what even is this