Jungle Fever

Hordak orders Adora captured and sent to a remote prison, and Grizzlor's troops take her in the forest. She slips out through a vent and falls, and when she wakes she has lost her memory. In the jungle she stops a boy named Tondy from fighting a beast, and his village, led by J'Milla and watched by his uncle Korg, condemns her to face the Great Beast. She learns that the creature comes only because the village's conch sounds like a wounded animal, and J'Milla bans it. Korg goes to Hordak, and Rattlor's rattling and a fire set by Imp turn the beast on the village. Adora's memory returns as the jungle burns, and She-Ra defeats Rattlor and Grizzlor, then tips a mountain lake with the Great Beast and Tondy to put out the fire and end the water shortage. J'Milla names Tondy a Beast Protector.

Loo-Kee: "Hi! I'm Loo-Kee. Did you find me in today's adventure? If not, look for me now! See me here? Here I am! In today's story, Tondy found out that it is better to be a Beast Protector than it is to be a Beast Warrior. It's the same in your world too. What I mean is, rather than being mean to animals, be kind to them. Be an Animal Protector. Bye, now, my Animal Protector friends."

Tondy: "You ruined my test. Now I'll never be a Beast Warrior."

Adora: "There's no bravery in fighting with animals."

J'Milla: "Tondy, you did better than a Beast Warrior. You are a Beast Protector."

How much of a hero is left when she cannot remember being one? Jungle Fever takes Adora's memory away within five minutes and spends the rest of its length showing that what she does with a problem survives without her name. Adora loses her name and keeps her method: find out what the other side wants before anyone picks up a weapon.

The first scene that carries the idea comes straight after the fall. A boy named Tondy is trying to spear a red beast beside a stream, a small yellow creature cowers at his feet, and an Adora who does not know her own name steps between them. She tells everyone, "Nobody's fighting anybody. Let's all calm down." Tondy is furious, because she has ruined his Beast Warrior test, and the village's law sends her to the Great Beast as a punishment for disturbing the ceremony. She acts before she has any idea who she is.

What the writing does well is refuse to make the villagers villains. J'Milla and Korg quarrel, but both are working from the same fact: a stream too thin for the people and the creatures at once. "That is why we have always fought them," J'Milla says of the creatures, and Adora's reply is that there must be a better way. Her own discovery is just as practical: the village's conch trumpet sounds like a wounded animal, so the Great Beast comes believing it can help one of its own, and J'Milla bans the horn. A piece of information does more than a sword could.

The standout is the scene with Pooka and the snorters. Tondy finds Pooka asleep and then sees a pack of wild snorters close in, and charges. Adora stops him, because attacking would only make them angrier and they would take it out on Pooka, and she tells the little creature to lie still. It turns out that all the snorters wanted was acorns from his tree. "That's the way fights start," she tells Tondy, and the line carries more of the episode's argument than any speech by a chief. It is a small, funny scene about animals.

The weak point is Korg. He goes to the Horde prison base, talks of the village's new Beast Warrior, and is promised a reward once he helps the Horde recapture the traitor. That is a real betrayal, and then it disappears. By the time J'Milla thanks She-Ra and names Tondy a Beast Protector, Korg stands in the group with his eyes closed and his chin raised, and nobody mentions what he did. Grizzlor and Rattlor are dealt with in under a minute of scuffling around a tree, and the whole Horde plot is over almost before it began.

What remains is a tidy parable, finished with a mountain-sized solution: She-Ra, Tondy and the Great Beast push a lake so that its water runs down and puts out the jungle fire. Tondy slips on the ledge, She-Ra turns her sword into a lasso, and he jokes that he is "just...hanging around anyway." It is a gentle, modest episode, more interested in persuasion than in fights, and Loo-Kee's closing call to be an Animal Protector fits it exactly.

1. Continuity: Imp calls her Force Captain Adora and is told she is no longer a Horde officer, a nod to her Horde rank in Into Etheria.
2. Continuity: Hordak orders her taken to Beast Island, the setting of Beast Island; the Horde base in the jungle is called only a prison base.
3. Continuity: Adora says she cannot change to She-Ra in front of Grizzlor's troops, and she only transforms after her memory returns.