YMMV / The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

• Adorkable: Melody falls into this due to how she's a cute, sweet, and socially awkward young girl.
• Awesome Music: "For A Moment", a Distant Duet between Ariel and Melody. Ariel's wish that she had shared her heritage with her daughter blends with Melody's sheer joy at being a mermaid. Both Jodi Benson and Tara Strong sing it beautifully.
  • Not to mention Chely Wright's rendition of the first film's signature ballad, "Part of Your World", which plays during the end credits.
• Broken Base: Fan reaction to the film varies, with some considering it among the worst of the DTV Disney sequels, and others who feel that (while not holding a candle to the original) is at least a decent film on its own.
• Contested Sequel: One of the most divisive Direct to Video sequels of Disney Animated Canon. On the one hand, it answers some complaints aimed at the original film (as noted under Improved Second Attempt) and is the only animated movie to feature the child of a Disney Princess. On the other hand, it’s also very derivative, borrowing so many plot points and concepts from the first film and others that it has difficulty standing out as its own entity.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Undertow. It helps that he is voiced by Clancy Brown.
• Escapist Character: Even more so than Ariel, Melody is a human who becomes a mermaid with her own sidekicks and singing number.
• Fanfic Fuel: Some fans just love to write fanfiction to justify Morgana's Remember the New Guy? status.
• Fanon:
  • The idea of Triton enchanting Melody's locket to allow her to transform into a mermaid at will is rather popular for Fanfics set after the movie, as is the idea that Melody ultimately does end up moving to Atlantica permanently as an adult.
  • Some fans will have Alex, the merboy Melody meets, as the son of Urchin. It depends on whether or not one believes the time between Ariel and Eric's wedding to Melody's birth is enough time for Urchin, implied to be a little younger than Ariel, to grow old enough to have a son around Melody's age.
• Fourth Wall Myopia: Melody sometimes gets hit with this for believing Morgana's story that the trident belongs to her and was stolen from her, then subsequently handing said trident over to her. Detractors typically point out how Obviously Evil Morgana is, but Melody is a character in the story, and so has no reason to take this into consideration after how well Morgana has treated her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Tip would later help fight against Undertow's tyranny.
  • Tara Strong voices Ariel's daughter Melody. About eight years later, she would voice one of Ariel's sisters in the prequel The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning.
  • While Ariel is the first Disney princess to have a daughter, Melody, ironically her live action remake counterpart's actress, Halle Bailey, would give birth to a son, Halo, months after said remake came out. Many people even think Halle really did Ariel well right down to having a kid.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • For what faults it has, the movie does rectify one of the complaints levied at the original film- Ariel's decision to leave her home and family behind to marry a man she just met three days ago and that this was treated as an acceptable thing to do. While Melody does demolish the wall that kept her family divided for so long, when presented with the same choice her mother was, her decision is to remain on land as a human, where her life, parents, and (ultimately) responsibilities are.
  • Though it's a result of awfully convenient circumstances, Melody doesn't know about Morgana's less-than-savory reputation when she meets her like Ariel did Ursula's. Morgana reaches out to her when she's completely alone and plays upon her insecurities like a real manipulator would, making Melody look less foolish for choosing to trust her.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Tara Strong's performance is the main attraction, due to her wonderful charm and enthusiasm bringing Melody to life. Melody is seen as one of the better sequel children that showed up in these movies, primarily because of Tara's performance. This extends to Tara herself, as she's cited Melody as one of her favorite characters she's voiced.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: While not to the degree of her mother, Melody is no slouch in the Toy Ships department. She mostly gets shipped with Jane from Return to Neverland, Peter Pan, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, or Jim from Treasure Planet.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Ursula's crazy sister!"^ExplanationSebastian shouts this when Morgana first appears. The line is considered by many to be a very cheap moment of rushed exposition to introduce a character that was completely unmentioned in the previous film, which has led to it being memed.
  • "And these WHOPPERS popped out!"^ExplanationAnother Sebastian line, this time used to describe how his claws grew during puberty. It caught on due to how Sebastian shouts when he says "whoppers".
• Moe: Melody, undoubtedly. Sounding like a younger Twilight Sparkle certainly helps.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Morgana crosses it when she holds a baby Melody over Undertow with the intention of letting him devour her, showing that she's not above killing children, even infants. There's a reason Sebastian calls her "Ursula's crazy sister".
  • Undertow crosses it by trying to eat Melody during the opening.
• Narm: Within the first few minutes, Morgana crashes the heroes' party and abducts Melody. Sebastian's reaction is simply to shout "Ursula's crazy sister!" Not only does this forced exposition kill the drama a little bit, what with the Inherently Funny Words coming out of his mouth, but it feels like the writers were outright admitting Morgana's more or less a discount version of her sister. It's narm because this is meant to be a dramatic scene, what with Morgana kidnapping a baby and almost feeding her to a shark.
• Never Live It Down: Ariel and Eric get a lot of flak for keeping Melody's mermaid heritage hidden from her and keeping her walled off from the sea, Ariel especially after her own experiences with an overprotective parent. Ignoring the differences between Ariel's situation and Triton's, Melody is only turning twelve when the film starts and is already shown to be at odds with obeying her parents' rules. Ariel and Eric admit that they planned on telling her eventually and were simply waiting until they thought she was mature enough to handle it; the night Melody ran away is the night they decided it was time. Plus, there was the matter of Morgana bargaining with Melody's life when she was a baby and trying to hunt her down for twelve years, so they do have every right to be overprotective.
• Questionable Casting: Rob Paulsen, a voice actor known for his goofy roles, as Prince Eric of all characters. Also bizarre they couldn't get Christopher given he'd go on to play Prince Charming in the Cinderella sequels just two years later.
• Replacement Scrappy: For some fans, Morgana, due to being a very blatant Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Ursula and her Remember the New Guy?'s status in the movie. In fact, others believe the only reason Morgana was created is that Pat Carroll wanted to return for the sequel despite Ursula being long dead. The hate's died down due to Morgana's own threat factor, as well as the fact there's a strong implication of Parental Favoritism in regards to her family life, giving her a bit more to her than someone like Sarousch.
• Retroactive Recognition: Tip is voiced by Max Casella, whose most well known role is Daxter. A bit later, he'd go on to voice Zini.
• Sacred Cow: Melody is completely off limits when it comes to criticism, mainly due to Tara Strong's extremely well-acted performance as her. You can hate anything else about the film, but saying you dislike her is a quick way to get flamed.
• Salvaged Story: The movie shows Ariel and her family kept in contact, and that it was fully possible for Ariel to turn back into a mermaid if she wanted to go home.
• Sequelitis: Although reception to the film has warmed somewhat, general consensus is that it can’t quite measure up to the first one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The first film establishes Prince Eric as a mariner who loved sailing the sea and felt somewhat trapped by his responsibilities as a prince, something that should have let him relate a lot to Melody's problems. However, despite being just as involved in the conflict as Ariel is regarding the safety of their daughter, he doesn't have much screentime and merely wishes Ariel good luck. It wouldn't have been too hard to turn him into a merman and let him accompany Ariel.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: To date, Ariel is the only Disney Princess to become a mother. That premise full of possibility gets spent on Ariel making all the same mistakes as her father, for the sake of rehashing the same plot of the previous movie. What’s worse, the sequel’s poor reception was possibly a factor in no following Disney Princess movies telling further stories of a protagonist who is a parent.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • While the film's quality is up for debate, Tara Strong puts so much effort in that she's near-universally loved in the part of Melody — even by people who dislike the rest of the movie.
  • This extends to basically the entire cast to an extent. From Jodi Benson's performance as Ariel not having missed a beat in emotion or joy in the decade since the first film to Clancy Brown hilariously Playing Against Type as a Butt-Monkey who spends a majority of the film being mocked for his size to Pat Carroll hamming it up as Morgana almost even more than she did voicing Ursula. Really the only actors that could be considered not giving it their all are the occasional random background extras.
• The Woobie:
  • Melody. Her parents forbade her from going into the sea without an exact reason. Because of her mermaid heritage (which allows her to do things like speak to marine life), many of her peers think she's weird, and this leads to her being publicly humiliated at her twelfth birthday party and leaving in tears. Then, she gets into an argument with her mother about the locket and why she can't go out to sea and runs away. Then, she's tricked by Morgana into stealing from her own grandfather and is trapped in a block of ice until the spell keeping her as a mermaid wears off, which nearly drowned her. This girl seriously needs a hug.
  • Ariel also counts due to having to keep her daughter away from the sea because of a madwoman who tried to use her as a bargaining chip. She had to keep her hidden for twelve years, and Morgana still found a way to get to her. She was essentially put into the same position Triton was all that time ago, not long after Melody's birth.

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