Warning: Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages. Proceed at your own risk.
What? You didn't think that an adorable little web series based on a Hasbro franchise wouldn't be the least bit unsettling? Think again!
"A Moonflower is Born"
- What's the first thing that we see after the bright, colorful, upbeat intro sequence? An ominous and unsettling introduction to the Big Bad, courtesy of a bleak narration by Kiazuki. And that's not merely a trope name in effect; that's the only thing characters can use to describe it. It came from nowhere. No one knows what it wants. It can't be argued or reasoned with. It simply exists, passes through the galaxy as it pleases (if it even has the capacity to please), and turns whatever place unfortunate enough to stand in its wake into a dead, grey-colored wasteland. And worse yet? No one has ever found out a way to stop it.
"Strange Gravity"
- This episode gives us our first in-depth look at a moon destroyed by the Big Bad. The empty landscape devoid of any evidence of life is creepy enough, but that giant sand apparition that hunts Hanazuki and Lime Green simply defies understanding, especially since we never know what it is.
- Imagine suddenly getting sucked up from your comfortable home and into said empty, inhospitable world. That happens to Hanazuki and Lime Green, and the former nearly gets stuck there forever when she's caught in the gravity between the two moons, unable to reach her moon despite how close it is.
"Friend or Foe"
- The Mazzadril—a giant, horned monster with tentacles for a mouth—may not look especially scary per se, but the way it's introduced by its creepy growling noise certainly makes it foreboding.
"True Colors"
- This episode acknowledges the Fridge Horror of a setting where Everything Talks being threatened by The End of the World as We Know It: even if Hanazuki and all the moon creatures somehow ride out the Big Bad's attack, the rest of the moon would literally die. We even get a demonstration by means of two landscape objects moaning and coughing as they are enveloped and suffocated by the Big Bad, desperately doing everything they can to keep their spirits up, and eventually holding out for Hanazuki to help them.
"Meteor the Family"
- It's lightened by the fact that it's Played for Laughs, but the mere ambiguity of Dazzlessence's mental state in the end does pose a question: how would you live with someone you're not certain has lost their mind, however slightly?
"The Volcano of Fears"
- In concept alone, the Volcano of Fears itself is terrifying. It's simply not enough that you could fall into a volcano and get stuck on a ledge above a pit of molten hot magma. You also must endure visions of your worst nightmare being played before you over and over until you finally receive help—if help ever comes, that is...
"The Transplant"
- This episode sheds light on another horrifying aspect of the Big Bad: any living creature who's exposed to it for too long will gradually and completely phase out of existence. Emphasis on "gradually": the process is known simply as "the sickness", and it is slow and agonizing. And the worst of it is, we see this happen on-screen to Red Hemka, turning the usually fiery little guy into a scared, weak, helpless creature. So, if you've ever wondered why there are absolutely zero signs of life on any moon consumed by the Big Bad, you will get your answer with this.
- The way Basil's eyes roll back into his head in ecstasy as he "downloads" his "digital waffles" is...unsettling, to say the least. And because the episode already ends on such a dark note, his presence there just makes it all the more disturbing.
