Webcomic Character Analysis Blog: Strawberry Leaps Into DEATH BATTLE!

Strawberry Fields, the Froggy Helperton

Frog Raccoon Strawberry was created by Kyle Carrozza and John Berry, the reuploaded series can be read on Webtoon (rip Dunn Comics T_T)

DISCLAIMER: The Imgur Purge of May 2023 deleted most of the linked scans. Until I am aided in reclaiming all missing images, this message will remain here.

I would also like to state that this blog was created before the unspeakable crimes committed by co-author Kyle Carrozza were unearthed. I will keep this blog up for history's sake, just know that I condemn his actions.

Welcome back to the blog! Time for another series I recently got up to date with… sort of. I'm well aware Frog Raccoon Strawberry was fully uploaded on the Dunn Comics site before it became defunct, and the original pages are still being reuploaded to Webtoon. Seeing as people likely won't read the series via the Wayback Machine over the Webtoon link, I'll cover the content that has currently been reuploaded (update: the series has been fully reuploaded to Webtoon). I also wanted to give a shoutout to W.B. Thomas, who to my knowledge is making an animation based on the webcomic with the creator's permission (fun fact, the creator of FRS also made Mighty Magiswords!) It doesn't have a lot of attention, so I figured I'd plug his channel while the animation is still in development. (UPDATE, it was cancelled in light of the news surrounding Kyle, good on ya) Anyway, let's get on with the blog!

Background

"Ribbit to the limit, kids!"

When it comes to superheroes, none are quite like Strawberry Fields. She's a raccoon who believes she's a frog, always donning a frog costume she calls her skin. Strawbs is as ridiculous as her apparel; she's a spontaneous fountain of manic energy who seeks to help others in her own unique fashion.

She's been trained in the ways of frog by the Frog Spirit to be the best hero—or as they call it "Helperton"—she can be. While she goes on all sorts of wacky adventures in the city of Schwebkeville and has a slew of villains she butts head with, her life is relatively normal. She has a couple good friends who tolerate her eccentricities, goes to school like any other teenager, and she has a manager who helps set her up with crimefighting gigs.

However, her status quo changes when she starts questioning parts of herself she never considered before. Wearing a frog suit among a frog peer could offend them, she may be attracted to people who aren't as zany she is, her mentor may be more controlling than she realizes, and most of all, she learns what bystanders think of her. After becoming a well known superhero, she realizes people see her as random and weird, which she doesn't get at all. All of her quirks make complete sense to her, and that really starts bringing her down. And deep down she knows she isn't a frog, but to her, they are powerful and beautiful creatures she aspires to be like. When subjected to this new perspective, she becomes stubborn about changing.

Things only keep getting worse. She realizes she starts liking a boy she turned down, and after many failed attempts to reach him again, he turned out to not be the kind of guy she's looking for. She's getting upstaged by a superhero who's just as quirky as her. And she's being forced to work with a hero that's better than her in every way. All this reduced her to a sad sack in a frog costume.

Thankfully as time passes, she's able to move past these thoughts of sadness and doubt by confronting them herself or with the help of her friends. She realizes that no one is perfect, finding the perfect guy takes time, and that the equally bizarre superhero is actually a great companion. She learned that she shouldn't bend over to meet everyone's expectations of her, and learn from her mistakes to be the best version of herself.

Since then, things have been looking up for Strawbs. She's gained new friends, new powers, and has a better self-worth of herself. Whenever she's kicked down, she'll always pull herself back up and leap into action. That's just how the frog raccoon Strawberry is!

Equipment

Frog Suit

Strawbs will rarely ever take off her "skin" unless she wants to leave a good impression for a date. Donning her frog costume is what provides her with all her anomalous powers. She can't use her powers without it, and anyone else wearing the costume can't use her abilities. In the event she isn't wearing it, she has a little frog accessory that lets her activate the suit.

Spiked Maracas

At least I think that's what they are-

Birthday Suit

Thankfully in this context, her birthday suit is a pollywog costume. Doesn't really add anything beneficial to her powerset, but just look how happy she is :D

Skates

He was a skater boy, she said see you later boy… wait, wrong skates

Coffee

One cup of joe coming through nice 'n hot! Maybe too hot…

Pencil

Watch out all living drawings, this pencil's eraser will completely erase whatever it meets. Sadly, it's unknown if the tip is capable of making living drawings like Spongebob pencil

Extendable Tongue

Of course she's gotta have a stretchy tongue! She can use it to grab onto things or use it like a whip

Hazmat Suit

In the event she encounters anyone radioactive

Paper

Playing by Rock Paper Scissors rules, her paper will completely pin characters made of rock under them

Deus Ex Mittensa

Strawbs' secret weapon she pulls out towards the end of the fight whenever she needs it most, like a deus ex machina. This doesn't have any narrative abilities like the name suggests, plus pulling them out isn't always an automatic win for her.

Bees

NOT THE BEEEEEEES!!!

Magic Wand

A Slim Jim-looking magic wand that's capable of magic zaps and barriers

Froggy Blade

A frog-like sword that's actually alive, but is limited to ribbits

Villain Spit Jar

WHY DO YOU OWN THAT?

Abilities

Frog Spirit

This likely counts as outside help, but Strawbs is able to call upon her mentor Frog Spirit at any time. He provides Strawberry with words of wisdom or a useful item like the pencil. He's capable of being killed, but turns into another ghost afterwards. He's also capable of telekinesis

Sleep Manipulation

How this is related to frogs is beyond me. This will be a running theme throughout most of this section

Dream Manipulation

Along with putting others to sleep, she's capable of entering peoples' dreams, and is able to manipulate what can happen inside her own dreams. Dream manipulators beware, because she can quite literally eat them with her mind

Super Jump

She's able to jump way higher than most folks thanks to her froggy aspects. The highest she's ever jumped to is outside the Earth's atmosphere

Water Running

Strawbs isn't above breaking the laws of physics, able to run on water

Resistances

Water immunity (She's a 'frog,' so water attacks are useless against her, she can breathe underwater, and can run on it as previously mentioned
Eye irritation resistance (It's weird how her eyes are completely unaffected by Lemonade's lemon gas bombs)

Erasure

Basically went over it in the pencil section, but whatever she erases doesn't seem to be able to grow back. It's unknown if this affects anything that isn't a living drawing

Costume Shifts

One time she somehow changed her appearance to become gothic, while a gothic lolita dress somehow appeared on her frog suit

Energy Projection

Yep, she can do that somehow

Explosion Manipulation

Many of her special moves inexplicably cause large explosions

Body Control

Her body can be morphed into different shapes

Frog Summons

She's able to call upon local rare frogs to aid her in combat, like forming a bridge under her feet or leading her to places. The number varies on location. Here is a list of types of rare frogs she can call upon:

Ice Frogs (basically blue frogs that dwell in Anarctica)
Reinfrogs (frog reindeer hybrids with red Rudolph noses)

Froggyspace

A dimensional storage Strawberry learned how to manipulate. She's able to summon portals to Froggyspace to store and grab anything she wishes. She can also use them like portals, able to create one portal and have her arm move through another. She's capable of using it to teleport, but it's too weird being inside Froggyspace for her to use it. Here is a list of everything that's known to have been in her Froggyspace:

Deus Ex Mittensa
A pullable poster
Betty White
A carrot
A slushy
A lobster
A Kamen Rider Fourze figurine
A hamburger with a record between the cheese and pickles

Villainy Senses

Villains won't be able to take her by surprise when she's able to sense them before they can make a move

Frogbull

Like Frog Spirit, she's able to call upon the Frogbull, master of all froggy techniques, to aid her in fight. However, he's likelier to come to her aid if he's in the area. He's only able to communicate with other frogs telepathically

Strawberry RED

Intense training with the superhero Caterang unlocked two hidden abilities. The first of which is RED, which turns her "skin" red. This state lets Strawberry get in touch with her inner literal strawberry and and lets her fight with pure-energy strawberry projectiles and a strawberry energy platform she can use for flight or shielding. She can only access this form when she's mad.

Strawberry EVEN GREENER

Her other new power makes her "skin" even greener and gives her lilypad powers. She can fire lilypad projectiles or turn her appendages into lilypads.

Techniques

Frogdoken

Basically her own version of a Hadoken

Frog-Fu

A martial art that utilizes the agility and bounciness of frogs

Buddy Smash

A move where she uses her friend Chuck to slam her opponent in the jaw

Poke of Doom

beeg poke

Cat's Got Your Tongue

A combined attack with Caterang—a superhero that has a crush on her—where Strawberry extends her tongue and Caterang kicks as the same time, causing an explosion

Twist of Lime

Strawbs is turned into a lime bomb by her equally weird superhero friend Lemonade, causing an explosion of lime gas that’s actually strong enough to destroy large walls

Hamfist

A combo move with Lemonade where both deliver a punch while wearing their Deus Ex gloves, creating a large lemonfrog mushroom cloud

Got Your Nose

LOOK OUT, SHE'S GOT A NOSE!

Strawbehameha

A move she can use as Strawberry RED, she shoots a large strawberry construct that traps her opponent inside it. It sends them flying—while still trapped—until it bursts upon contact with something solid.

Lilyhammer

A move she can use in EVEN GREENER, Strawbs turns her fist into a lilypad to land a powerful blow.

Feats

Overall

She was trained by the Frog Spirit to become a capable helperton
She ate loads of peanut butter to stop crime dogs from being distracted, which turned her into a peanut
She trained a crab to walk forwards instead of sideways
She flew to Japan just to bonk the cartoonist who invented a hat with a chipmunk living inside it, just because he had the idea first
She stood in the same spot for an entire week
Defeated the Porpoise, who turned out to be Slippery Weasel the Evil Baby
She’s able to juggle a toaster, bear trap, knife, and lit torch… while balancing a poodle on her nose… on a unicycle… balancing on a tightrope
Defeated the villain who can manipulate her hair Hairy Chick… by informing her that she’ll be audited for her tax fraud, making her worry so much all her hair fell out
She saved her friend January from a tentacle monster at a comic convention by attracting him with dating sims, before throwing him off the edge of the con
She fought supervillains like Taffypull and the Duke of Juke
She defeated three of her previous nemeses back to back for a pay-per-view special. She fought the likes of the Freddy Krueger-esque villain Ricky Reuger, the stone trio Gravelly III, and the real weather manipulating Porpoise
She managed to buy Gilbert Gottfried as an apology gift to the Frog Spirit
She defeated the blowdart-firing evildoer Amazon with a single punch
Defeated No-Good Nicky the mild-mannered criminal
Survived an attack from the Walrus after he absorbed the concept of Christmas
Teaming up with Caterang, the two defeated the sentai rejects the Alliterative Five
She managed to solve her beef with Lemonade and teamed up with her to rescue Caterang and his sister from the elderly supervillain duo Halitosis Mole and Flarey Arson
She traveled to Antarctica in a week
She completed her training under the Bullfrog, who knows all secrets of the froggy universe
She defeated Pippi after she trained in witchcraft, along with her boyfriend Nigel
She saved Frog Spirit from his rogue student, the Green Shadow, who killed him another time before she came to his rescue
She sparred with Caterang, neither of them held back, resulting in her not just unlocking new powers, but finding true love
In the future as Xtreme, Strawberry became an intergalactic murderer, killing thousands of people throughout the galaxy. She actually defeated her future self in combat when Xtreme was going through an emo phase
Strawberry practiced combat her whole life

Strength

Speed

Durability

Weaknesses

Her ‘frog powers’ don’t work while her frog skin is off
When it comes to other practicioners of froggyspace, she can’t follow users through portals they create (though she is able to hold them open)
Killing opponents is extremely against the helperton code, and will result in punishment and banishment from her masters (then again, she wasn't punished for eating Ricky Reuger (rest in peace Ricky, you were the realest UmU))

Matchup Potential

Strawberry Fields vs Tsuyu Asui (Frog Raccoon Strawberry vs My Hero Academia)

(thumbnail by Vibe Check)

Vibe Check

Tsuyu is another one of those characters that doesn't have an interesting matchup spread. Most of the matchups just boil down to frog or tongue characters. Most are harmless, but dreadfully mediocre to me. But when it comes to Tsuyu vs Strawberry, I feel like this takes it a step further than most.

The connections boil down to girls with froggy quirks and getups, along with other odd behaviors who trained to become bona fide superheroes. I like the contrast in personalities where both are really eccentric, but Strawbs is loud and in-your-face while Tsuyu is monotone and blunt.

At first I didn't think this matchup would be much, but thinking harder about it made me more invested. Where it really shines is the potential. Yeah, Strawbs has a really huge and varied arsenal (and yes she likely stomps in the debate too) but nothing mentioned here is too overwhelming for Tsuyu. She's able to match Tsuyu in her cqc and underwater combat, but just has a large arsenal to spice it up. I'd imagine the fight would fuse the enhanced comedic aspects of FRS and the gnarly action scenes from MHA. Of course there's gonna be some fun gags like their tongues getting twisted and Strawbs spectacularly failing when trying to land a hit on Tsuyu. There's a specific scene I'm imagining where Tsuyu is unleashing rapid-fire tongue swipes at Strawberry midair, but she's dodging while running on a bridge of frogs, before leaping up to deliver a powerful punch. This just seems really fun compared to Tsuyu's other options, even if it's quite simple.

NEXT TIME ON WCAB… whenever I feel like it

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Strawberry Leaps Into DEATH BATTLE!