Disney fans for some reason during this run of reviews based of animated episodes i've barely covered any Disney shows and while I don't really see that changing anytime soon it is something that I find odd. Simply because alot of the shows that I grew up with are Disney shows however due to the fact that the series ended I think on Sunday altho it might have been Saturday I thought that i'd take us back in time and review the very first episode of Elena Of Avalor called "First Day Of Rule" enjoy Disney fans.
The plot of the episode is Princess Elena sets out on a mission to prove that she's ready to be queen only for her young sister to be kidnapped and so it's up Elena and friends to rescue her and get back one of the town's ship's which has gone missing. Now here I would usually say or have said recently that the plot is the weakest aspect of the episode well here i don't actually think that since the plot of the episode is one of it's more stronger elements with the story being both heartwarming and funny as well as being quite charming.
Starring in the episode is Aimee Carrero as Princess Elena , Jenna Ortega as Princess Isabel and Keith Ferguson as Zuzo. Also starring in the episode is Christian Lanz as Chancellor Esteban , Julia Vera as Luisa , Emiliano Díez as Francisco , Jillian Rose Reed as Naomi Turner , Jorge Diaz as Gabe , Chris Parnell as Migs , Yvette Nicole Brown as Luna , Carlos Alazraqui as Skylar , Constance Marie as Doña Paloma , Lucas Grabeel as Jiku , Rich Sommer as Daniel Turner , Joseph Haro as Mateo and Joe Nunez as Armando.
In my opinion the acting at least in this episode was passable which is one the better things that you can say about the acting in a pilot episode. Alot of the actors in this episode at least aren't voice actors and it shows but over time these actors do get better hell i'd go as far to say this show is one of the better acted Disney animated shows in a long time but sadly tho in this episode like I said the acting is just passable which is a good thing because it shows that there's room for improvement.
Doing the animation for this episode and the rest of the series is ICON Creative Studio and also doing the animation for just this episode is Arc Productions. I'm going to freaking honest the animation in this episode at times looks like it belongs in a feature film but it also looks like it belongs in game cutscene because it really does rise and dip in quality which makes it hard to judge the quality of the animation but the fact that they managed to make this show as good looking as they did on a TV show budget is still impressive none the less.
When I first saw this episode back when it first aired I was really taken aback by how action packed it was. Since I honestly expected this episode to be the typical Disney fluff and nothing more but no this episode alot more action packed then alot of the other Disney shows both animated or not and I have to give Disney credit for taking this approach since it would have been super easy for them to create another kid friendly princess show but no they took the opposite approach with this episode and the series as a whole.
What confuses me to this very day is that they chose to air the prequel movie after the release of the series/. Making things worse is that they include clips from the prequel film in the opening few minuets of this episode which now makes the prequel movie which is a crossover movie with Sofia The First (the movie is called Elena And The Secret Of Avalor by the way) pointless because we know how it's going to end so why they didn't just delay the start of the series so it aired after the movie is freaking beyond me.
Here is something that you might not know but Elena is actually Disney's first Latina princess since Sofia while she is a princess isn't Latina. This was honestly something that I never knew and to me it makes sense since Avalor itself seems to be inspired by Latin lore and it helps that Elena herself is an honestly well written character since to me it would have been very easy to make this character a character that does no wrong and has no flaws but no they actually give her flaws and they make her do mistakes as well as give her a personality all of which serve to make her an actually interesting and well written female character.
Now the broadcast history of this show is pretty interesting because while it did start of airing on the Disney Channel on July 22nd 2016 but by the time show finished airing it was airing almost exclusively on Disney Junior. That to me is just weird because very rarely do you here about a show changing networks during it's run and it doesn't make sense since Elena Of Avalor is a more mature show and would be more at home on Disney Channel then Disney Junior.
Now then since this is an action adventure show that does mean that I have to talk about the action in this episode. Which given that this is a kids show with a twenty two minuet running time the the action is as average as you think it is which in this case does work in the episodes favour since the focus of the episode isn't getting us to the next action set piece but rather telling a good story and it helps that Elena has to use her brain and talk things out the "villains" of the episode instead of just punching them really hard.
Overall incase I haven't made it clear yet I thought that this was a really good episode and is in my opinion a fun episode as well. Yes this episode does have it's flaws like all first episodes do but this episode also remembers to be fun and to give us interesting characters who we want to see succeed in the end which is something that alot debut episodes fail to do as such this episode gets a 7 out of 10 from me.
All images used in this review were gathered from the official Disney fandom wiki page and that's it I went nowhere else for images from this show or episode. Which given that I only went to one place to get all of these images it goes without saying that the place I recommend for images from either this show or this episode is the Disney fandom wiki page because all the images that I found were really high quality and hell even the last image which was the lowest quality image in this review is still pretty freaking high quality that's how how the quality of the images are when you get them from the official Disney fandom wiki page anyways.