Template:Episode updated V.2"The Second Minigame" is the fourteenth episode of the second season and the fifty-five overall episode of the animated television series Lovely World. It is directed by Brady Sawyer and written by Blake Thomson. The series follows the adventures of the main character, Edward, who gets teleported into an in-digital world and is tasked with surviving while creating his own “world”. In the episode, which serves as a sequel to "The Minigame", Edward, Michael, Kamila, and Leo are informed that the village is hosting another series of games for the villagers to attend, and they attend the event, with Edward and Michael preparing themselves and training both Leo and Kamila for the games. The episode originally aired in the United States on the children's programming network Children’s Avast Television on February 25, 2012.
The creator of the reality television series, The Games of Life, Brinley Greene returned to work on the sets for the episode and served as the head director in developing the stages. Since its debut, the episode received a strong positive reception from critics.
Plot
In the early afternoon, Edward and Michael are hanging out together. However, Kamila appears and informs them that the town is hosting a series of mini-games. They both get out and ask Kamila for more information, in which she explained that this was due to the critical success of the first round of minigames. Because of that, Leo and Kamila are being prepared and instructed by Edward and Michael for the following couple of days. Edward, Michael, Leo, and Kamila go to the hotel on the day of the games to watch the villagers undergo additional preparations for the competition. Kamila assured her that she would perform better during that time. Kamila is shown in a flashback as having participated in a prior round of games, but she breaks his leg after falling during a round. Kamila is optimistic that she would survive the first round of games, but Leo talks to her about the earlier incident. When the games started, the first objective is to finish 50 hot dishes when the minigame eventually starts. Edward's month began to burn so hot that fire poured out of him as he was finishing the first lead, causing him to panic and start a fire. Because of that, for a short amount of time, the stage is evacuated and Edward is eliminated, having gone to see a doctor. Despite this, after the stage is clear and everything goes back to normal, the primary winners are Kamila, Michael, and Leo, along with eleven other villagers.
In the second round, to see which animals they could concentrate on the most, Kamila gave the pigs, lambs, cows, and other animals gentle hugs. Kamila becomes furious and distraught over likely upsetting the animals, but she manages to draw their attention to herself with her singing voice, shocking them all. The cows then rush in to give Kamila tearful hugs. The animals are more interested in Kamila than in the other villagers, despite their attempts to draw their attention. This leads to a pig being violently dragged by one of the villagers, who becomes enraged and punches him, hurting his chest. Five locals and Michael and Kamila are the winners. Competitors compete to see who can cross the track first after three labs in the third round. Michael takes the lead right away, but Kamila quickly overtakes him and declares to herself that she will likely be the winner of the minigames. Kamila wins the round along with three other villagers. The fourth and final minigame round's goal is to see who can construct the best house. According to the round's rules: as long as they don't already own a home, players are allowed to build anything they like. Although the villagers saw this as a chance to construct a theme park, Kamila decided to construct both a fully operational city infrastructure and an underground water park with his hands. Eventually, the build is finished, Kamila triumphs in the minigames this time. As the crowd cheer her on, Kamila began to feel overwhelmed with joy and is given a prize of over $100,000 dollars and a free animal to take her home. Following that, the group heads home after ending the episode with a generally satisfying experience.
Production
"The Second Minigame", like all episodes of the first two seasons from the Lovely World television series, was produced by Starlight Productions and is based on the Lovely World books. The episode was directed by Brady Sawyer and written by Blake Thomson from a story by John Collins. John described the episode as a "legacy sequel" to the season one episode "The Minigame." Following the success of the previous episode, John expressed an interest in creating another one based on the games. However, the episode's conception reportedly began in June 2011, a month after writer Blake Thomson's "The Minigame" episode aired. Billy Mcconnell had expressed an interest in writing an episode, but he was preoccupied with other aspects of the series, so Blake was assigned the role of writer. Blake watched the episode several times before getting the idea for the games, and he began writing a script for the episode.
Brinley Greene, the creator of the reality television series The Games of Life returned to serve as the head director in creating sets for the episode. Greene wanted to take the sets in a new direction, so instead of designing them on paper, he had them built as a real-life demo, which took about three months to complete. One of the first sets was the stage for the first round, and the idea of having the villagers eat extremely hot food was convinced by him as a running gag in the previous episode. Greene introduced a set that featured animals as the key to winning the stage, with each person attempting to draw the audience's attention to each animal for as long as possible. Later on, the concept appeared in an episode of Greene's television series. With Kamila and Leo having been introduced in previous episodes from the first and second seasons, Blake Thomson was tasked with focusing the episode on the four main characters during the first couple of games before eventually focusing on the character in first place. Originally, Blake wanted Edward to open the games after losing the first games, but John Collins wanted to take the story in a different direction and promised Billy that "in future episodes, Edward will win a minigame". Billy Mcconnell took charge of the writing for several sections of the episode and ordered to not be credited.
Critical reception
Upon its first airing, "The Second Minigame" was met with a strong positive reception from television critics and local audiences. The episode first aired in the United States on the children's programming network Children’s Avast Television on February 25, 2012. An estimated 1,077,197 million people watched the episode during its premiere. In a December 2012 review, Madden Wilkerson gave the episode an eight out of ten and praised the writing and story, highlighting the actions during the minigames and stating that "this episode shows that a sequel episode to a previous episode can be pretty amazing when done well" and adding that she "hoped for more episodes about the minigames." Ellis Robinson ranked the episode third on his list of the best episodes from the second season, praising the animation, particularly during the minigames, and stating that "this episode does an amazing job at showcasing the minigames as a whole and making the actions look perfect and well-paced in comparison to the previous episode." Frederick Robinson gave the episode a "B+" in a February 2023 review.