Western Animation / Brother Bear 2

Spoilers from Brother Bear will be left unmarked here.

The 2006 sequel to Brother Bear, which continues the story of Kenai and Koda, and became the last Direct to Video Disney sequel to take place after its predecessor.^note Disney's next three DTV sequels included a midquel, The Fox and the Hound 2, a What If? story, Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, and a prequel, The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning. Having woken up from hibernation and ready to go to Crowberry Ridge to eat berries, Kenai gets haunted by a memory of himself and a childhood friend named Nita. Said childhood friend is shown ready to get married to a chieftain's son from another tribe, but the spirits intervene, showing that she cannot marry him because of an amulet Kenai gave her, bonding them together. To get married, Nita reunites with Kenai (and Koda too), and they have to make their way to Hokani Falls.

This was Rick Moranis' final movie role before retiring from acting.

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Tropes

• Anger Born of Worry: Kenai scolds Koda for running off to a dangerous mountain. Koda replies that he was just scared that Kenai would abandon him for Nita, calming Kenai down as he reassures him.
• Arc Words: "Once you love someone, they stay in your heart forever."
• Armor-Piercing Question: Nita ask Kenai this question that not only hits him hard, but it causes Koda, who eavesdropped on the conversation, to run off, thinking that Kenai will abandoned him to be with Nita.
  Nita: Do you miss being human? Have you ever thought about changing back?
  Kenai: Yeah, I've...I've thought about it.
• Arranged Marriage: Nita and Atka had never met before their wedding ceremony.
• Beast and Beauty: Subverted with Nita and Kenai. Kenai is a bear (a literal beast), and Nita is his childhood friend. In the end, she transforms into a bear (courtesy of the spirits) so they can be together.
• Big Brother Instinct: Kenai risks storming into Nita's village and fighting off the residents to protect Koda, who's been run up a tree by the villagers.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rutt and Tuke pull off a BDH moment near the end when they help Kenai and Nita stave Atka off.
• Birds of a Feather: Kenai and Nita. Both are playful, adventurous, fun-loving individuals who can also be impulsive and stubborn.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Downplayed. When Atka throws his spear, it just catches Kenai's shoulder and leaves a visible wound. This injury later leaves a trail of blood that Atka follows to find Kenai.
• Bloodless Carnage: Averted - Kenai is bleeding when Nita's fiance Atka tries to kill him.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: When watching Northern Lights, Nita says that her mom is somewhere there. Koda says that his mom is there too. Nita then tells him the same words her father told her at the beginning of the movie.
  Nita: My mom is up there somewhere.
  Koda: My mom, too.
  Nita: Do you miss yours?
  Koda: Yes.
  Nita: But you don't need to wait for the lights to find her, Koda. She's always with you. (puts her hand on his chest) In here. Once you love someone, they stay in your heart forever.
• Brick Joke: When trying to get back Nita's amulet, Kenai is bombarded with pine cones thrown by Bering and other raccoons. At the end of the movie, during Kenai and Nita's wedding Bering throws pine cone at Kenai, and when he looks at him, Bering whistles while other raccoons start throwing flowers.
• Brutish Bulls: At the beginning of the film, Rutt and Tuke are escaping from angry female bison. The reason for her anger is that Tuke mistook her for female moose, despite his brother's warnings.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Kenai and Nita were close friends in their youth, and the bond they shared unknowingly stayed with them into adulthood. The film revolves around them rekindling their relationship as it blossoms into true love.
• The Chief's Daughter: Nita's father Chilkoot is the chief of their tribe.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Based on an accidental version - as children, Kenai gave a necklace to Nita, and the two swore to be best friends forever, despite living in different villages. Apparently the spirits considered them betrothed now, because years later they interrupt Nita's wedding, and won't allow the new marriage unless she tracks down Kenai and performs a ritual to annul the agreement. In the end, it's revealed that spirits had sent them on the quest in order for them to fall back in love. The spirits certainly work In Mysterious Ways.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Kenai's village and the characters from the original film in it, such as his brothers Denahi and Sitka, along with the shaman Tanana, are not seen or mentioned in this sequel, not even at Kenai and Nita's wedding in the epilogue.
  • This could however be justified with their village being far away of Nita's village and the surrounding area of it.
  • In case of Sitka he probably appeared as the spirit that transforms Nita into bear.
• Creative Closing Credits: The first half of credits is depicted as cave paintings.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: The baby raccoon lets out a piercing scream of "MAMA!" after Nita gets her amulet back from it.
• Continuity Nod: The first film indicates that Kenai's brother, Denahi, will pass on the tale to future generations after he becomes Tanana's apprentice. While Denahi himself is not present in the sequel, his story of Kenai's transformation into a bear has clearly spread beyond their village and is now common knowledge to neighbouring tribes, including Nita's.
  • Kenai and Koda riding on mammoths in the first movie is brought back, when they (alongside Nita) ride on them during "Feels Like Home".
• Cub Cues Protective Parent: This happens in with a brother instead of a mother. When Koda gets chased up a tree, it only takes a roar from Kenai to realize that he's here to save Koda. Later, when Nita goes to get her amulet back from a raccoon's nest, she finds a baby clinging to it. She knocks the baby back into his nest, only for the baby to yell for his mama, causing every raccoon to turn on her.
• Death Glare: Kenai gives an brief one to Atka after the latter's spear scratches his shoulder.
• Didn't Think This Through: Koda encourages raccoons to throw out all the pine cones on Kenai. When Kenai says that they're in pine forest, Koda says that it may take time to do it.
  Koda: Go ahead! Hit him with all you got. He can take it.
  Kenai: Koda, what are you doing?
  Koda: I'm tricking them into using all their pine cones.
  Kenai: Ow! It's a pine forest.
  Koda: Oh, right. This could take a while.
  Kenai: You think?
• Disney Villain Death: Not to a villain, but to Kenai, who gets shoved off a cliff by Atka.
• Disposable Fiancée: Atka has little to no dialogue, and isn't given a very distinct personality. His most prominent scene in the film is his fight with Kenai in the climax, but even this is only a misunderstanding where Atka is completely unaware that the bear he's fighting is Kenai. Nita doesn't even have any scenes with him, and her marriage is mainly a plot device to get Nita out looking for Kenai.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Koda tells Nita that Kenai has dreams about her, now as an audience we know that Kenai's dreams are simply his childhood memories of her, but Nita doesn't and the way that Koda describes it really doesn't help. In fact, the way Koda describes it makes it sound like a different type of dream, Kenai even acknowledges this by going scarlet (Well as scarlet as a human-turned-bear can) and covering Koda's mouth and Nita starts giggling.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: When she initially sets out to burn her amulet, Nita has her hair in a long braid; as the movie progresses, she eventually lets her hair flow freely, showing her old self is re-emerging.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: Kenai and Nita slowly fall in love during their journey to Hokani Falls. Behind them, a jealous Koda tries to keep up with them.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Rutt plays responsible sibling to his brothers foolish, such in the moment when he tells him that he warned him that the female bison isn't moose. Color-wise this gets inverted with their love interests - Kata is bubbly Genki Girl while Anda is serious and calm.
• Freak Out: Rutt has one, when he and his brother try to impress Anda and Kata with their frienship with Koda.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • While Kenai escapes with Koda from the villagers, Atka hurls his spear at the bears, grazing Kenai's shoulder. At that moment, blood actually sprays from the wound, averting Bloodless Carnage as it usually is in Disney sequels. The blood shows up again when Kenai tries crawling through two rocks to escape (where it smears the top rock), and again when Nita cleans his wound after he's shoved off a cliff.
  • During the dream flashback Kenai is having, during the scene where he and Nita as children watch Aurora Borealis, you can spot that Nita's amulet glows briefly. This also serves as Foreshadowing that the Spirits consider them betrothed.
• From Dress to Dressing: Nita does this to Kenai after he survives being pushed off a cliff by Atka, just right before the Great Spirits turn Nita into a bear as well so that she and Kenai can finally get married.
• From the Latin "Intro Ducere": Nita tells Innoko "You are the wisest shaman", to which she replies "Sha-woman, okay? "Wise" and "man" don't even belong in the same sentence." The gag about men being foolish may well be true in the context of the film, but the word "shaman" does not derive from the same kind of root as "postman" or "seaman", and the "-man" part of it is not a male suffix. You can have a male shaman and a female shaman, but it's just coincidence that it sounds like a male term, because it's actually gender-neutral.
• God Is Displeased: Or spirits, in this case. Due to Kenai giving Nita his amulet as children, the spirits considered them betrothed. And so, during the Nita and Atka wedding the storm strikes, creating the ravine between the fiancées. Even the villagers call it "a sign from spirits".
• Good Parents: Chilkoot, Nita's father. When Nita decides to turn into bear to be with Kenai, Chilkoot tells her that no matter what, she will still be his daughter.
  Chilkoot: Is this what you want? Will this make you happy? You are my daughter, and I will love you no matter what you choose.
• Green-Eyed Monster: While he bonded with Nita at the beginning, Koda becomes jealous later in the movie when Kenai and Nita stop noticing him. After Rutt tells him that he will be all alone when Kenai and Nita will end up together with each other, he starts to think that Nita will take Kenai away from him. After he runs away (while later accidentaly starting the avalanche), and seeing how Kenai is sad without her, Koda asks his mother to turn Kenai back to human, so he can be happy again.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: Koda triggers one while shouting at Nita to leave him alone.
• Happily Married: Kenai and Nita at the end of the movie.
• Held Gaze: Nita and Kenai run into each other, and after nearly trying to kill each other, gaze into each other's eyes for a long moment.
• Hereditary Wedding Dress: Nita wears the wedding dress of her deceased mother during her intended wedding, whom she and her father held great respect in their hearts.
• Inertial Impalement: Defied. When Kenai and Nita don't recognize each other (Kenai mistaking Nita for a hunter and Nita mistaking Kenai for a rogue bear), she grabs her spear and holds it out to defend herself when he charges at her. Kenai, however, has already learned this trick and swipes the spear away.
• Innocently Insensitive: Sure, Koda was going overboard with scaring Nita with the salmon, but he has no idea that Nita was scared of water and thinks she's scared of fish.
• Interspecies Romance: Kenai and Nita first fell for each other as children, but they rekindle their bond as adults when Kenai is a bear and Nita is still human. At the end of the movie, Nita also becomes a bear so she can be with Kenai.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Koda asks his mother to turn Kenai back into a human so he could be with Nita. He even says that he'll be fine on his own.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: Similarly to the previous movie, mammoths appear to prove that the movie takes place during the Ice Age.
• Meaningful Name: Nita's name means "bear" in Choctaw (which likely foreshadows her transformation into a bear at the end of the film).
• Missing Mom: Nita's mother passed away before the events of the movie. In fact, Nita wants to honor her by dressing in her ceremonial clothes, during hers and Atka's wedding.
• Mood Whiplash: Happens during the flashback dream Kenai is having, which has Kenai and Nita as children playing together, but gets dramatically interrupted, when Nita falls into water and almost drowns.
  • The second happens during Nita and Atka wedding, when Great Spirits intervene, due to considering Nita bethroned to Kenai.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Nita goes to get her amulet back from a raccoon's nest, she finds a baby clinging to it. She knocks the baby back into his nest, only for the baby to yell for his mama, causing every raccoon to turn on her.
  • Kenai gets one when Rutt and Tuke tell him that Koda went to Nita's village.
  • Koda has this expression after seeing Kenai snap at him for mocking Nita about her fear of water.
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Kenai gets one, before raccoons start bombarding him with pine cones.
• Leitmotif: Bering has country guitar riff as his leitmotif.
• Orphaned Etymology: The pun about "shaman" containing the word "man" only works in English, which the characters are obviously not speaking in-universe.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: The female moose Anda and Kata, are a much lighter shade of brown than those of Rutt and Tuke, a pair of male moose. Also, at the end of the film, Nita is actually given lighter-colored fur after being turned into a bear herself so that she can be with Kenai forever.
• Pick Up Babes With Babes: Taking advice from Nita, Rutt and Tuke try to impress Anda and Kata with their friendship with Koda. It is surprisingly successful.
• Pinky Swear: Pinky swears are apparently a thing Kenai and Koda partake in, showing how their relationship has grown from the original film.
• Polyamory: Tuke manages to win feelings of both Anda and Kata, and later Rutt manages do to the same. Keep in mind the fact, that in real life mooses are polygamous.
• Pop-Star Composer: Melissa Etheridge succeeds Phil Collins as the film's songwriter.
• Rascally Raccoon: A raccoon named Bering appears in the middle of the movie and steals Nita's amulet. Turns out he brought it to his hideout, where MANY OTHER raccoons live.
• Relationship Upgrade: At the end of "Feels Like Home" after Kenai helps Nita cross the river and overcome her fear of water, she hugs him and thanks him, officially setting their relationship.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: Kenai pretends to be a ferocious bear for Rutt and Tuke to defeat. When he says "I'm gonna rip you to shreds," it takes a repetition before both moose go in to "defeat" him.
• Rule of Symbolism: At the beginning of the film (after the Walt Disney Pictures logo and before the movie's title) various animal couples (more specifically hawks, mammoths, squirrels and geese) appear, indicating the movie's theme of Eros (the Romantic Love) and the main plot of Kenai and Nita failing in love.
• Sand In My Eyes: Tuke manages to win the hearts of two female moose named Anda and Kata, leaving Rutt heartbroken. At the part with Tuke and the female moose watching the auroras, this exchange occurs:
  Anda: Are you crying?
  Rutt: No, I mean, well, yeah, so what, eh? The light's so beautiful, eh?
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Anda and Kata fall for Tuke after seeing him play with Koda, and concluding he will be a great parent. They later fall for Rutt, after being impressed by his sensitive nature.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: The Great Spirits temporarily grant Nita the ability to speak to animals so she can understand Kenai when she finds him. It wears off right after the amulet is burned. When the spirits show up again near the end, their presence allows both Nita and her father to understand Kenai, Koda, and the moose, leading up to Nita's decision to become a bear so she can be with Kenai.
• She Is All Grown Up: A somewhat wacky version. By the time Kenai meets Nita again, she's a pretty young bride-to-be, and he's a bear. It works out in the end; Nita becomes a bear in order to stay with him.
• Shout-Out: When Nita gains ability to talk to animals, the bear head that forms in smoke resembles Winnie the Pooh. Also, at one point in the movie, Kenai gets stuck to beaver dam, similar to how Pooh get stuck in Rabbit's hole.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Koda keeps teasing Nita with the salmon and unintentionally scaring her, Kenai (at first finding this funny) sees her look uneasy and tries telling Koda to stop. But Koda doesn't listen, so Kenai ends up yelling at him, "Koda, STOP!"
• Take a Third Option: Realizing that Kenai loves Nita, Koda tries asking his mother to have the spirits turn him back into a human so they can be together. When Kenai can't bring himself to leave Koda, Nita comes up with a third option: have the spirits turn her into a bear, so they can all be together.
• Tempting Fate: Lampshaped by Tug. When Koda tells him that they (him and Kenai) don't need girls, Tug tells Kenai that they can't escape from love, and soon, it will catch them. He is right, since afterwards Kenai has flashback dream to his childhood, when he gave Nita the amulet, kicking the movie's plot. At the end of the movie, when Kenai and Nita are getting married, Tug seems to be giving "I told you so" look and laugh.
  Koda: Aw, who needs girls? We're two footloose guys out on the tundra.
  Kenai: That's right. Kenai and Koda. We don't need anybody else.
  Tug: Okay, but you can't run from love.
  Tug's mate: Tug!
  Tug: It has a way of tracking you down.
• Trauma Button: Combined with Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?. Nita has a fear of water, after she almost drowned as child.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: One has to wonder if it was the Great Spirits' intentions from the start for Kenai and Nita to fall in love (or perhaps fall back in love) during their journey as well as Nita's transformation at the end of the film. They did seem prepared for it. Spirits apparently don't just work in mysterious ways; they work in sneaky ways too.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rutt. When Koda tells him that Kenai stopped noticing him after falling in love with Nita, Rutt tells him that his own brother also left him for a girl (two, actually). He then tells him to be careful or he will be alone too. This results in Koda being afraid of losing Kenai, and after hearing him and Nita talking about if he misses being a human, running away.
• Voice Change Surprise: The shamaness Innoko casts a spell on Nita to allow her to speak to Kenai, who is a bear. Nita gives it a try — and proceeds to trumpet like a mammoth/elephant. She tries again, only to chitter like a monkey. She gets it right on the third try.
• Wham Line:
  • In the scene when Great Spirits appear, we get two. First is In-Universe example after Nita founds out she can understand what Kenai is saying and later, when she decides to be bear.
  Kenai: The spirits?
  Nita: Kenai, I can understand you.
  Koda: I asked the spirits to turn you back into a man.
  Kenai: What?
  Koda: So you could be with Nita.
  Kenai: No, Koda.
  Koda: It's okay. I just want you to be happy again.
  Kenai: Nita, I can't.
  Nita: But I can.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Nita has a strong fear of the water ever since she almost drowned as a kid and Kenai saved her.