Review: Gravity Falls “Gideon Rises”

What’s the aftermath of Gideon taking over the Mystery Shack? Find out after the jump!

The clan is staying at Soos’s grandmother. Gideon plans on building Gideonland on site of Mystery Shack. Come to learn later that Gideon is looking for the journals of an ancient writer because they unlock unimaginable power. Grunkle Stan says he needs to send the kids home because he can’t take care of them anymore. Dipper and Mabel use the third journal to help undo Gideon’s damage.

Dipper tries to figure out how to get the deed back, and they use the gnome army. The gnome army descends on the Mystery Shack and traps Gideon. Gideon flips the gnomes using his dog whistle. In the process, Dipper loses his journal. In what is built up as one of the saddest moments in animation history, Dipper and Mabel leave Gravity Falls.

Gideon soon realizes that he needs 3 books, so he gets in his Gideon-bot. If you’ve ever watched it, you’d see pretty quickly that how it controls looks like it’s straight out of G-Gundam. In what is a pretty well thought out chase scene, Gideon-bot takes Mabel as his hostage/queen. Dipper and Gideon fight inside the cockpit and causes the robot to fall off the train tracks. Dipper gets his journal, and Gideon is found out to be a fraud. He had an intelligence center in his bot. At the end of the day, everything is back to normal. The end of the episode had a pretty gnarly twist. It showed that Grunkle Stan had the first book the entire time, and ganked Dipper’s, so he can unlock the secrets.

I only got into this recently, but let me tell you, I think I am hooked. The writing was spot on, the voice-overs were spot on, and the character designs are enjoyable. You don’t see many cartoons these days break the mold. This one did it and then some. This two-parter had a lot going on, but it was very easy to follow. Linear stories will do that for you. I really enjoyed meeting Mabel. Come on, how many characters do you know that carry around a grappling hook that isn’t named Batman? The fact that the creators made her have braces, but not look like your stereotypical cartoon character with braces made it work. I also enjoyed the nod to G-Gundam with the Gideon-bot. Finally, there was a great set up for season 2 with Grunkle. There was a lot to enjoy, and the only thing I can tell you is watching this show. You will not regret it.