Review: Shimmer and Shine “A Lightning Colt for Shaya; A Special Delivery”

Are these episodes lightning in a bottle?

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

“A Lightning Colt for Shaya”

The first episode begins when Shaya invites the titular Trio of Shimmer, Shine and Leah for them to witness him perform his first “Lightning Storm spell” as he’s a Lightning Genie who’s power is the ability to capture lightning in magical crystal balls which seems like a success at first until the lightning runs away leading them to chase after it. With the three female Genie leads catching up. Out of happenstance, they end up being on an Island where Shaya accidentally bumps into a Pegasus-looking creature called a “Lightning Colt” but the island turns out to belong to Nisha the “Animal Genie” who’s a caretaker of these Animals.

A good portion of the episode is spent further explaining who Nisha is, and her along with a magical chant she can sing that helps calm the animals in their stressful situations. That is until the plot proceeds to pick itself back up when the lightning comes back much larger and scares some of the animals resulting in our protagonists along with Nisha chasing after the animals who end up missing which leads Shaya searching for that same Lightning Colt from earlier who turns out to be at the other side of the Island. As Shaya proceeds to rescue the poor thing, he comes up with a quick solution to capture the lightning with the Colt’s help and the new names the Colt “Aziz”. The episode ends when Nisha helps cement Shaya’s ownership of Aziz with a “magical bond” spell making them official best friends.

“A Special Delivery”

The 2nd episode kicks off during a game of hide-in-seek between the two Genies and their animal companions and long after finding them, the two proceed to tell a story to Leah about how they two got their Animal companions Tala the Monkey and Nahal the white Tiger Cub revealing this episode to be very flashback-focused. It’s a simple story that’s effectively told, but during the flashback, Shimmer and Shine both express interest in having pets of their own, but unbeknownst to them, Nisha notices their wish and proceeds to travel to their place to give the two their animals. But being the mischevious & impulsive animals that they are, they jump out and out of happenstance come across the titular duo. given that they don’t know whom these animals belong to, they decide to give them back to Nisha out of principle and attempt to fly in her direction but the animals end up missing again.

A good portion of the episode spends it’s running time with a musical montage as they chase after them resulting in some cutesy comedic setpieces but of course, it’d be a much shorter episode if their quest to get these animals back was too easy. As it turns out, Nisha was heading towards their house but they end up making Nisha’s job alittle easier when they find her and discover the Animals were meant for them to begin with, and Nisha decides to use the “bonding spell” to give the two owners of their new pets with Tala belonging to Shimmer and Nahal belonging to Shine respectively. After the story, the episode truly ends when they decide to chase after them as it’s time for there to nap with Leah commenting to her animal friend that “Some things never change”.

Our Take

While the former episode “A Lightning Colt for Shaya” does a good job introducing Nisha as a fully realized character to the audience along with her purpose in this show’s universe, the latter episode “A Special Delivery” feels like it should’ve come first as it properly explains how the titular duo got their pets from, to begin with.

From an Animation standpoint, the art style is cutesy & colorful enough to cater to its target audience and in terms of character designs, everyone has a plastic doll-like texture to their hair & skin and much like a “Bratz” Doll, many of them have what I like to call “Anime Hamster-eyes” so I’m not surprised if this choice was done to have toys already made of them at this point. Upon research, I was more shocked that Dee Bradley Baker (Klaus from American Dad) voiced all the animals in the show which got my attention the most.