Episode 42: King William's Pursuit of Happyness

Click here to watch episode 42.

Plot
The episode begins with a brief recap of the previous episodes - the transcript of the recap is written below.

"In the previous episodes, there was a terrible disease making everybody in a small town called Trellutor sick. King William sent three of his best warriors, Drake, Rachel and Rory, to try and find a cure to stop the sickness. When they finally got to Trellutor, they talked to some of the people in the apothecary, and discovered that the ingredients for the cure are very rare and hard to find. Meanwhile, King William met a woman named Christina at the Royal Ball and she became his girlfriend."

The episode opens with a scene of Drake, Rachel and Rory leaving Trellutor to look for ingredients to a cure that will heal the disease in Trellutor. By nighttime, they're still walking along the crossroads. A very powerful vortex sucks all of them into a mysterious world called the World of Destiny. A man named Phillip approaches them and informs them about the daily battles taking place within the coliseum. They all decline the offer.

Back in Adrellia, there is another stampede taking place within the castle courtyard. Because of the money needed to fix everything destroyed by the stampede, the kingdom is nearly bankrupt and the kingdom's entire fortune had been reduced to 2,000 coins. King William decides to solve this problem by imposing a 90% tax on all of the citizens.

He makes a public speech announcing the new tax. After seeing that the tax was met with staggering disapproval, King William begins to question his ability as a ruler. The advisor tries to cheer him up, but this time he can't. King William goes to the park and decides to order ice cream. In protest of the new tax, the citizens all throw ice cream at him, ultimately making him resign as king.

Alan, a close friend of King William's, asks Christina to meet him in the castle kitchen to talk about King William. Christina and Alan decide to organize a huge surprise for King William by preparing a huge feast in his throne room.

King William decides to put his son, Prince Albert, in charge of the kingdom. The advisor immediately takes a disliking to Prince Albert. He prepared a statement for Albert to read on Adrellian television announcing that he will be the new king, and his first action as king would be to reduce the tax to 9%.

The episode ends with an aerial overview of the forest, and it shows where King William is. A "To Be Continued" screen is shown.

Reception
Episode 42 received very mixed reception. The average review score is 7/10. It's been noted by some that it was the best episode of the series yet, and that the animation, plot and structure was good. The episode was praised for good writing and for its humor. Some reviewers pointed out that the animation could have been better, and that there wasn't enough variety in the camera angles. The new voice acting was mostly praised.

It passed judgment with a peak score of 3.89, but soon went down to a 3.57, which it stayed at for a while until it was bumped back up to a solid 4.

Trivia

 * The episode's title is a parody of the 2006 film, "The Pursuit of Happyness."
 * It broke episode 39's record of longest episode, with a length of 10 minutes and 15 seconds, including the credits.
 * This episode was the very first Adrellia Village episode to feature original music compositions.
 * This episode was the first Adrellia Village episode to receive a Daily Feature.
 * The credit music was composed by the creator and was originally created for a possible video game episode of Adrellia Village, but to avoid copyright issues and because the creator thought it was fitting, it instead became the credits music.
 * This episode set the record for the episode with most votes, with episode 39 being a very close second.
 * This episode is the most viewed episode in Season 3.
 * The episode was originally planned to be 11 minutes and 45 seconds. Some versions of the episode exist that are over 12 minutes long.
 * This episode was the first Adrellia Village episode to utilize surveys. The first survey was a Google Spreadsheets questionnaire that was sent out to a few people so that they could provide their input on the animatic so that the final product turns out better. The second survey involved an unlisted YouTube video featuring four different versions of the "In the previous episodes.." - the visuals stayed the same, but there were different music choices for each choice.
 * The first choice was "Day Dream" by WingoWinston on Newgrounds, and was ultimately the version used in the final episode. The second choice was the credits music from a video game called, "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie." The third choice was the title theme from, "Ecco - The Tides of Time." The fourth choice was the "Market Town - Town Hall" music from, "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie."
 * There were many changes from the original animatic, but most were minor. The "Actually, you can, but it wouldn't be the same" part was cut from the original line, "Yeah, but he was King William, and nobody can replace him. Actually, you can, but it wouldn't be the same" because the creator felt that it disrupted the tone of the episode, and for production purposes.
 * Another minor change from the animatic was that when the crowd member asked, "How much we talkin' here?" It originally showed the crowd and one guy saying that. Due to time constraints, the audio was instead heard off-screen which resulted in a choppy change to the "Oh, nothing much, just about 90%" line.
 * The video version of this episode (that appears on mobile devices) omits the first and last scene.
 * The MS Paint drawings in the beginning were originally just storyboard panels, though they were left in the final cut.
 * The episode was originally supposed to end with a scene in which a search party was looking for King William, but that was held over to the next episode.
 * Episode 42 received heavy marketing compared to the other episodes in Season 3.
 * "Skinny kid" was an ad-lib from Rory's voice actor.
 * This is the second episode to have a TV-PG rating, the first one being episode 18.
 * The golden toilet cutaway was originally not going to have any audio, but nat29 found a water drop sound effect and artistuknown also contributed a buzzing sound effect. The drawing was supplied by Exedor, but the finishing touches were by MistyEntertainment.
 * The podium when King William makes the speech was drawn by Mabelma.
 * The background for King William's speech was originally supposed to be a forest background, but the creator decided it looked too far away from the castle, so it was swapped with a background that had the castle in the back. However, the forest background was still used when Phillip referred to the World of Destiny.
 * The last "Helloooooo" from King William when he was testing the microphone was cut out so that it didn't feel like it went on for too long.
 * The "You suck!" from the crowd was taken from Futurama.
 * The "Loser!" from the crowd was taken from King of the Hill.
 * Nat29 drew the toaster that was thrown at King William.
 * To avoid Flash crashing or memory errors, rather than importing the footage from episode 39 into episode 42 using Flash, it was taken into Sony Vegas for rendering and importing into Flash. Nat29 mentioned this in his review.
 * The advisor's original line before he said the poem was: "Y'know, King William, my mom once told me a poem whenever I was down in the dumps: 'When you just wanna crawl up and die, just remember that...' uh, I forgot. You're a great ruler, though!" It was fixed to a more humorous version as the writer felt that the advisor forgetting the poem wasn't as funny as it would have been if he wrote a hilariously bad poem.
 * The Beatles/Beetles joke was Exedor's joke. There was originally supposed to be a Volkswagen Beetle in there, but the creator forgot to add that in the final episode. Exedor contributed lots of helpful feedback and suggestions, along with rough mock-ups, so he received a writing credit on the episode.
 * The creator is a big Beatles fan, so that's the reason that the "I'm a Loser" joke even exists.
 * "Moogle" is a reference for Final Fantasy fans.
 * When the advisor searches for results on how to cheer up a sad person, a result saying that flowers would cheer up a sad person and another result for "How to be funny" was originally supposed to show up. It was swapped with "No results found" in the final episode, however.
 * King William was supposed to throw both books, but it was ultimately left out in the fi0nal episode as him throwing the book would be impossible to animate within the time constraints.
 * The voice of the person saying, "You're the reason I don't have a house anymore!" was pitched up in Audacity for comedic effect and in an effort to provide a larger variety of voices.
 * Punch sound effects were used when King William's face was hit with ice cream instead of splat sound effects.
 * The scene with Alan and Christina was never meant to exist. It was only added in the script before the final stages of production to give the new voice actor for Alan some lines and to re-introduce him to the viewers. It's the creator's personal favorite scene of the episode for its character development.
 * Christina did not originally have a role in the episode, but when it was pointed out that she was forgotten about in the last few episodes, the creator decided to remedy this by giving her a role in the new scene with Alan.
 * The kitchen background was traced from a background in episode 38 that briefly appeared in the 21 Jump Street intro.
 * The One Direction joke wasn't originally in the script. It was added two days before the episode was finished, and when the episode was shown to focus groups, it ellicited the most, and the hardest laughs.
 * The advisor questioning about his son was added in the script after a member of the focus group brought up that Prince Albert was never mentioned in the previous episodes, and also commented that it seemed like the writer was "short for ideas." This was fixed by King William explaining that he tried to get him to meet everyone, but he wouldn't get out of his room.
 * In the original 194-page "Adrellia Village: Kingdom of Darkness" novel, Prince Albert was portrayed as a responsible, noble person who did an excellent job of running the kingdom. However, it was decided that in the animated series, Prince Albert would be an irresponsible video game addict.
 * Nat29 provided the sound effects while Prince Albert was playing video games.
 * There was originally a scene where Christina and Alan sit in the throne room waiting for King William, and Alan decides to eat part of the feast they prepared for him. It was then originally set aside for another episode, but was completely cut out of the next episode. It is unknown if the scene will ever be in an episode now.
 * Sweetcommando provided three traced images of the original storyboard that were used while Prince Albert was sleeping and while he was reading the statement he was supposed to read on Adrellian television.
 * Prince Albert was supposed to walk away and the advisor would pull him back onscreen, but that was changed to Prince Albert saying, "Yo, I'm your new king. Bye" and the advisor nagging him to read the statement.
 * The "We interrupt your probably crappy program to bring you a very important message!" voice was pitched up in Audacity with the hopes of providing a larger variety of voices in the episode.
 * The scene in "Kerri's Big Invention" when the video game is interrupted by a very important message loosely inspired that joke and the framing of the shot.
 * There was a scene where the advisor called a meeting with the castle council to complain about Prince Albert and to discuss his competence as a ruler. It was cut out due to time constraints and because the creator felt the story functioned well without that scene.
 * The last few episodes of Adrellia Village ended in "SE" for Special Edition. However, most of those episodes had no special features, so episode 42 was intended to have a DVD menu. It was ultimately uploaded without one, and it featured a message stating that a DVD menu was coming soon.
 * This was the fourth Adrellia Village episode to feature Kingdom Hearts music, the others being episode 7, episode 13 and episode 39, respectively.
 * This episode has the highest peak score (without daily upvoting) that an Adrellia Village episode has ever had. It got up to 4.04 while it was under judgment.
 * This episode has the highest amount of co-authors of any Adrellia Village episode.
 * Mabelma drew the preloader image.
 * This episode marked the return of the Adrellia Village forum being used for production purposes.
 * So far, the reviews for this episode of Adrellia Village have been much more detailed and in-depth than the reviews of the previous episode.
 * The ruler book originally showed an ugly old man in the "Before" panel and a ruler in the "After" panel. Exedor suggested that the "Before" panel should instead feature a bent, faulty ruler. It was changed the day before episode 42 was released.
 * This was the first Adrellia Village episode to utilize join.me for animation sessions.
 * This was the season 3 premiere.
 * The stampede was a callback to episode 39, as we see a bunch of Turtums stampeding in the intro for episode 39.
 * The short transition music when King William says he's a loser was from the "double bass" section from an online virtual keyboard.
 * The last two minutes of the animatic were moved to another episode due to time constraints and for pacing purposes.
 * Nat29 provided coloring and lip sync for the ice cream scene, as well as a more animated version of the shot where King William's mouth is gaping when he sees the ice cream.
 * The design and coloring of the World of Destiny was based on Traverse Town from Kingdom Hearts.
 * The subplot of Drake refusing to help Rachel and Rory was completely excluded from this episode. It will be featured in the future episodes, however.
 * The summon sound effect and image was taken from Kingdom Hearts.
 * This episode has the longest trivia out of any Adrellia Village episode.

Goofs

 * When Drake and the gang are walking and it's a windy night, it's barely noticeable, but there is a line moving. This goof was fixed in the YouTube version.
 * The image of the second Alex Burtman book being open changed to the shoddier, original version quickly.
 * In the original .swf, within the first 30 minutes of its Under Judgment phase, the episode stopped right before Prince Albert made his statement.
 * The episode's recap doesn't cover the stampede. The stampede, although leading to one of the plot points, is only mentioned briefly.