The Owl House Face Reveals: Why They Work

the owl house is a superlative show people have rightly praised it for its groundbreaking representation it's writing its animation voice acting I can easily talk for hours about how great this show is in a macro sense but today I want to talk about the execution of a particular Trope that the Owl House does masterfully we're going to talk about face reveals [Music] masks and masking both literally and in a neurodivergent sense both play huge roles in the story of The Owl House representing everything from secrets to alternate identities to holding foreshadowing so it stands to reason that the crew would take great care in deploying them now face reveals are nothing new in media and in many genres within the speculative fiction box they kind of have their own language and preset expectations depending on the assumed archetype of a character growing up in the 90s this was consistent particularly with anime when a cool masked character or villain shows up there's often an instant of the face getting revealed in a moment of vulnerability that shows us what the character looks like but in a wide variety of these reveals the conclusion is often along the lines of oh they're a lot cuter than I was expecting there's often a little heteronormative romantic subtext here too up to the point where the visual language of the pretty princess posing generally indicates a lot about what the relationship between the two characters is going to be and for all the benefits and true Banes of anime type character design it was Slash is very common for the resulting face to be conventionally attractive or drawn to be perceived that way I know this is a sort of gentle pushback to the historical villain is ugly Trope that is nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be but after 30 years of pretty face mask reveals it ended up Paving the way for a strong sleeping expectation of the inverse mask equals pretty underneath instead and as a result we're not taking away much more information than what was already expected Mass character not so bad now this isn't always bad but in the case of a face reveal it's supposed to be a moment that establishes really important visual information quickly and if it's doubled with the mass character is unconscious injured there's a good chance they wouldn't normally let our hero get that close to begin with the same way that stock dialogue ultimately acts as archetypal shorthand shows that are being intentional about the use of a particular Motif like masks have a lot more heavy lifting to do which brings me to the first big face reveal in the Owl House Hunter yeah sort of we can't actually talk about Hunter without talking a bit about the face reveal that sets his up at the beginning of season 2 episode 6 hunting palacement when loose goes to school to participate in palisman adoption day principal bump reveals that his pal has been free win is both his staff and a disability aide and in the process Reveals His whole face up till now principal bump has mostly been a slightly Sinister but still goofy stoop-backed old man and because of how weird everything on the boiling Isles is it doesn't really occur to look past this part of the character design until it's revealed that his palaceman is acting as a mask and the character design choices are startling he's got this long silky Sailor Moon type hair he's missing his left eye entirely it's been neatly stitched shut and a long-heeled scar over the other and the pointy Little Fangs and this old movie star chin the response that this seemed to universally generate was oh my God what a beautiful old man oh what happened to you how interesting this scene primes us directly for the reveal of the golden guard's face not just by provoking a reaction but the odd combination of traits that leads us to ask questions alright with that covered we can go back to talking about Hunter so at this point the golden guard has made his debut and he's been set up as a genius team Prodigy this is loaded language that anyone who grew up watching anime instantly understands and even if you don't though the way Lilith talks about him sets him up for this expectation well in his introduction scene he shows up as a cocky little [ __ ] with a lot of bravado but also importantly with some key visual indicators of power he has a staff in one hand a cage and the other is wearing heavy armor and of course the mask he also shows up in a 50-foot fist made of boiling salt water without showing us his face the show has already laid a very strong foundation for what the audience is going to see under there so when we get our classic moment [Music] this is the golden guard this scene moves a lot of visual information very quickly first the golden guard's face doesn't resemble the archetable expectation that the audience might have had based on what's been set up if anything we're getting a lot of traits we're not used to on a sympathetically portrayed character all at once more on this in a second this specific composition is actually pretty evocative of the whole princess pose which serves as a visual shorthand to convey vulnerability and prettiness and well they also wisely destroy any possible interpretation of romantic subtext by giving us a disgusting sibling slap fight immediately but the biggest takeaway from this quick scene visually is that the golden guard here is very young about Lucy's age maybe a little older a detail highlighted by our hero herself and very vulnerable see how his torso heart is twisted up the head is tipped back and the eyebrows are scrunched up makes him seem quite a bit smaller looking even though he Towers over the other kids but what does this do for our visual understand ending of a scene when expectations are subverted the viewer is able to absorb the visual information with new eyes to clarify when a face reveal shows us something actually surprising it allows us to absorb the visual details without sorting them automatically into an archetype so what do we see who is the golden guard without his mask his armor or the trappings of any of his power well he has a lot of traits classically associated with unsympathetic characters to start he has dark heavy brows reddish eyes and an ashy face and aqualine knows in a big old Gap in his teeth he's got a torn ear Grim [ __ ] eye bags and a gigantic facial scar now lately eye bags and facial scars have come into Vogue for Heroes but not usually in combination with all those other traits if it was just a scar or even just the ear it wouldn't have told us much and even here they're startling because very few other characters in this show display eye bags or prominent scarring not even the mercenaries just print principal bump and we'll get to him in a sec this is all in combination with the amusing fact that he's fabulously expressive and Earnest regardless of emotion which takes the edge off of any potential ability to intimidate and we know he's about as intimidating as a kale salad as shown when he tries to order the coven Scouts around at the precinct cute I didn't know kids your age were still into temporary tattoos at this point now now that whatever preconceived vision of the mysterious golden guard has been thoroughly blown out of the water we're able to absorb what each individual character design choice is actually telling us this is one busted ass teenager the ibags age him and highlight that this kid is at the very least exhausted and overworked animation facial scars have been tacked onto characters as an aesthetic choice so often that it sort of blunts how awful they actually are and this one in a show largely absent of visual scarring on adults let alone kids Hunter's facial scar is a brutal [ __ ] injury and the kind of thing you only get when someone is deliberately trying to hurt you in combat or well what's implied to later be the actual reason it's also pertinent to note that bumps scars are much neater looking his eye is carefully sewn shut and the scar he has is much lighter and thinner by contrast Hunters is huge and livid to the point where as the owner of a few huge scars myself I can confidently say he probably doesn't have much feeling in that side of his face and I'm reliably told it's a miracle it's not partially paralyzed there's also the fact it was allowed to scar like this at all in a world where magical healing has been shown to convey away the worst of injuries like these something that also has hideous implications but that's not for this specific video the ripped ear adds to the suggestion of scrappiness like a stray dog or someone who's used to either losing fights or having to struggle to win the gap teeth however is probably one of the most impactful design choices I can't think of the last time I saw an animated character with imperfect teeth who wasn't at least mostly a comedy character but it's played straight here and seriously underscores the childish imperfection of Youth this guy couldn't be threatening without the mask if he tried and God he tries Tumblr user circus gagsity left a tag on the original post I made about this that I think sums all of this up perfectly the Gap is so childish and makes him 100 less menacing we suddenly go from a young overconfident Bellow slacky to me in Middle School one of the things that struck me most about watching this for the first time and watching other reaction videos a lot of different ages and demographics to get a decent sample size was the incredible consistency of the response to all of this visual information almost every single one of them had some variant or combination of these thoughts oh no he's so young poor thing is he okay and even better the audience understands the answer to that question the minute they ask it even before the conclusion of the episode no he's certainly not this brainwashed child is in a lot of physical and emotional danger oh my God please Eda help him which is great that's clearly what the intent was and given how much of a little [ __ ] he was in his first appearance it's really amazing to see how thoroughly Hunter was able to go from this to instantly sympathetic as well as visually very interesting he's just fun to look at he captures the eye and as the audience grows to love him traits that are classically associated with villains become viewed as cute idiosyncratic and even handsome based on the portrayal which is itself one of those representative Goods that the Owl House offers as an alternative to old crappy ideas about beauty and sympathy but no video about masks in the owl house would be complete without a look at the villain of the piece Emperor Bellos it can certainly be argued that this character goes through not one but two major face reveals so we'll be covering both Emperor Bellos is introduced to us as a distant figure in season one and his design is engineered with symbols of power imprisonment and crusader righteousness we first see him hunched over and gasping for air beneath the stuttering beat of a gigantic rot green heart a naturally plugged up which immediately gives the impression that not only is something deeply [ __ ] here it ought not be at all this guy is well past his expiration date and the first thing we see him do is drip a broken Talisman into unnaturally glowing blue eyes a sharp contrast to most of the eye colors represented in the boiling Isles as most people seem to have a warm eye color and his Eerie blue is the color we come to associate with him even over the reddish color that supplies his magic his costume's motifs are a creepy combination of a pope a deer and an iron [ __ ] Maiden combined with the armored gauntlets and his unique staff what we're getting is this incredible facade that sums up the themes of religious power torture and imprisonment with the dear bird motif of the Mask we also get the heraldic meaning of the deer generally sacrifice and Christian martyrdom as well as the sort of Birdie shape that makes for a horrifying Twisted mirror of Eda and to a lesser extent Hunter as birds in this show are mostly set up to symbolize the claw Thorns paired with the idea of freedom from size alone he definitely gives the strong impression of being a straight up monster towering even over Eda and Lilith his battle with loose shows us all this weird grasping Twisted flesh and unique red magic and he moves in this bone-jarring way that gives the unnatural movement the Vibes of that goddamn owl from The Secret of nim we are also shown a twisted goopy form erupting out of the confines of his papal finery that despite all of its violence Bellows is shown to have incredibly fine control over all of this combined with this soft mocking little voice that oozes perfect confidence and contempt even when pissed off or inconvenienced I like your spirit but try that again and things won't end well for you Tick Tock human the owl lady doesn't have much time left this completes the implication of a real horror beneath that mask so the audience has been fully set up to expect some big Ghibli goop monster beast and in season 2 episode 9 Eclipse Lake the audience is surprised with the reveal of bellas's human face so without all of his papal Crusader trappings what do we see well he turns around and shows us the kindly if magic ravaged face of an old white man he's got unhealthy looking eye bags cracked Grand polyps and tired hooded blue eyes of course this face isn't without its what the [ __ ] moments notably that nasty looking magical rot all over his face that sort of gives this tacit confirmation of a curse mark in addition to making him look older this rock here is almost tree-like in its quality with the texture and gross little holes his eyes are heavy and blue and they're also unique in that there's literally no light reflecting out of them giving him this dead-eyed hollow appearance and finally there's his ears the important takeaway is that they're not quite right and they make you look twice they're much smaller than the ears of every other witch in the show and the little cut in the left ear on top of that serves as a tool to draw the similarities between Bellows and Hunter while also emphasizing that it is a cut leading many people to the ultimately correct conclusion that he hacked his ears in to shape himself to better fit in with the boiling aisles and subsequently nudge the audience to the truth of his identity the rest of the scene is used to pull the viewer further along that track by lining up shots in a way that the viewer can compare and contrast Bellows and Hunter trait for trait The Ear The Eyes the nose and even the hair colors so this scene works very well as both an effective reveal but also a lever to move the plot and mystery along while also pointing out a sort of human face it's important to note that this reveal is performing two major tasks at once revealing Bellows his face but also making every possible choice to make sure the audience notices the visual similarities between his face and Hunters this scene guided me a bit because most of the emperor's coven and honestly the boiling Isles gets this monstrous external figure that makes either the terrifying Overlord or a powerful enemy but this old man phase is the one Hunter sees and fears disappointing someone you can imagine an isolated Child Soldier loving and admiring despite everything now it's bellows's humanity and human flaws that make him a compelling walking in case of tragic irony in a villain but the trick here is that the human face revealed to the audience is less reflective of his identity than the Monstrous reveal of hollow mind Bella's human face in addition to being what he thinks of as his true face is one of a number of tools that he uses to get the edge over the people he wants to control be it hunter or weaponizing this false vulnerability before the entire boiling Isles as a misdirect from the batshit crazy religious vagaries he's trying to sell them indeed it is from Hollow mind that we get Bellows going mask off in a number of really important ways but for our purposes we'll be continuing to look primarily at the visual aspect Bella's monstrous form here isn't physical amalgamation of the consequences of his journey he retains the antlers of the Martyr deer and while his eyes aren't the same as his human eyes he still gets to keep this Eerie cold blue the bones and lyrics skulls peeking through the sloughing off goop of his shape is visually evocative of rot and its liquid quality reflects how much Bellows was capable of taking any and I mean any shape at all to achieve his goals even if it means abandoning everything he was to begin with as a mortal vital human to becoming this parasitic dripping monster born of the death of Palace and he's harvested for 400 years and the irony that this soggy Puritan showed up turned into a monster and made all the witches and demons Catholic will never not be hilarious as well as horrible Bellows has various unmaskings like hunters play really well against the expectation of what a mask in a story does for Bellows the relatively tame reveal of his human face shocked people more with the banality of the execution rather than any shock his features generated some people even found it a little underwhelming however this was the foundation for the true reveal of his monstrous condition which for the most part was met with terrified choruses of what the [ __ ] and given that Philip the human here is the truest monster of this show this feels like a well executed example of how to reveal it right in the context of masks The Owl House demonstrates a lot of Mastery over animation and writing techniques and tropes you could fill a book on the topic and please oh please oh please let there be an art book at the end of this please please please but I really loved how they handled face reveals especially and to date the owl House's handling of the Trope is definitely my favorite they always go the extra mile and doing more than just subverting what's become a very tired Trope in visual media by using the subverted expectation to make the visual Exposition interesting as well as move the plot along to incredible dramatic effect while sprinkling in key details without the use of verbal Exposition thanks for watching if you enjoyed this don't forget to like And subscribe and we'll see you in the next one this is Idle screen signing off [Music]

Channel: Idle Scree

Views: 260,663

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Id: rLCTaLWKyds

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 08 2023