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I used to be a deranged child that would finish watching VHS tapes, rewind them, and then instantly watch them again. We had a pretty good selection of tapes at the time, so I'm not really why I behaved this way. Some of the VHS tapes I'd constantly rewatch included Kiki's Delivery Service, The Wilderness Family, Homeward Bound, and the weird episode of Pokemon where this magician guy tries to kidnap Misty using his Executor and makes her dress up as his aassistant. Also, The Land Before Time. We didn't just own the first Littlefoot movie though. We had them all the way up to episode 6.

I've been thinking about the concept of labels lately. The thought I've been entertaining is that every name we assign to an object in reality is just something that's been invented to simplify that object into a form that our brain can process. Nothing is truly described by the label that's assigned to it. I'm still piecing together how to really elaborate on this idea, but this post isn't about that- it's about dinosaurs.

The only reason I even brought that up is because this train of thought lead me thinking about the human obsession of ranking things. This too, is just another way for your brain to optimize the processing speeds. This pondering lead to something else entirely, though...

Out of the murky depths of my addled mind, Littlefoot suddenly emerged. The Land Before Time movies may be the first series of anything that I've ever ranked. It's probably been over 20 years since I've last seen any of The Land Before Time films, but I'd like to revist these rankings in my head and try to make sense of my preferences. I'll reference a plot synopsis, but I'm definitely not rewatching them. This means my brief descriptions of these films will likely be completely off. This is a very half-assed list, but I'm a half-assed kinda guy...

6) The Secret of Saurus Rock:

I'm going to be completely honest, I don't remember the plot of this one. I just know it features Doc, the lone dinosaur as a guest character and he's kind of badass. He's a Clint Eastwood-like Longneck that uses his tail as a whip, and it makes Littlfoot geek out all of the time. I remember as a kid always getting second-hand embarrasment from watching Littlefoot fanboy so hard over this guy that's just passing through. As a result I did not watch this movie nearly as much as the others. One of the songs in this is definitely the catchiest in the series though, and I hate it. Cera definitely has some of her best quotes from this movie, though. I found that as the series went on, her character got funnier and less unbearable. She's almost tsundere, but she needed 5+ movies for the dere to balance out the tsun. Something that was kind of awful about this movie that I vaguely remember was that Cera's dad seemed to kind of revert back to being an asshole. He's not as bad as he is in the start, but he's definitenly kind of racist towards Doc.

5) The Great Valley Adventure:

This is the first followup to Littlefoot's original adventure. Summary: Cera is a dumbass and the gang kidnaps a baby T-Rex and try to raise it as their own. What really happens is that they witness an Egg from Ducky's nest being stolen, and Cera suggests that they go after the eggsnatchers themselves to prove that they're not babies. She makes a huge fuss out of it. About two scenes later, when the eggsnatchers head out into the Mysterious Beyond, Cera completely loses her shit and wants to give up, which prompts Littlefoot to call her TF out. He decides for the group that they're sticking with the plan. Cera was probably right to call off the pursuit at that point, but I can't help but respect Littlfoot's malicious compliance. They end up scaring the shit out of the eggsnatchers, and cause a huge landslide that exposes the valley to the Mysterious Beyond. As a consequence of the landslide, Ducky's sibling happens to safely land back into the nest. The gang doesn't know this, however, so when they find an egg with the same pattern that's noticibly larger, they decide that it must be the same egg they lost.

The egg ends up hatching into the beloved ally, Chomper the baby T-rex. What I remember finding exstremely odd about this whole sequence was that, I don't think Ducky realized that her sibling's egg had been returned at this point. They all seem to accept Chomper as part of their new family, and completely forget about the potentially missing sibling. This is particularly odd because she shows great distress over the potential loss of her family earlier in the film. It's possible I'm misremembering this, but it's kind of one of the only feelings about that film that I do remember. The rest was kind of forgetable and unenjoyable. I know at some point Cera causes some huge drama because her tail gets slightly bitten. Chomper obviously feels bad about it, but she decides the cast him out anyways, despite completely accepting him a few moments earlier. Eventually, Chomper's parents come into the Great Valley to find him. They end up sparing the lives of everybody once they find Chomper. I think maybe they end up chasing after Eggsnatchers because they threatened Chomper? I can't exactly remember. It was a bittersweet ending, because Chomper, who seemed like he was going to be a new member of the reoccuring cast, ends up leaving to be with his parents in the end. Everyones on good terms, though. The time when I first watched this, I wasn't yet accepting of these sort of conflicting emotions in an ending. I wanted things to resolve perfectly, so I think the ending really docked off a lot of points for me. Also, I don't remember if they even aknowledge Ducky's new sibling, that as far as they know, is MIA at that point. Maybe they hatched and the count checked out, but it was still something that bugged me.

These were never supposed to be serious rankings, stop typing.