Re-review time!
I liked the tribal, Africanish music.
Same.

And, as trexmaster noted, very appropriate for a prehistoric jungle.
When the gang ran away from the fire...did anyone else think the animation was sped up? Never seen Spike or anyone else run so fast in all my life.
Ah, yeah. I didn't notice that the first time I saw the episode, but it stuck out to me on my rewatch.

When was the last time fire appeared in the series? Wasn't it LBT 3? Why did they keep such a dangerous thing off for so long? It's so great to use. :^.^:
Haha, I agree. Fire should appear in the series more often.
What happened to Petrie? It's bad luck this and bad luck that! It can be funny at times, I'll admit, but Petrie seemed a little ridiculous at times. "This all Spike's fault!" (Falls into water.)
Indeed. In
The Secret of Saurus Rock, I liked the creepy, mystical aspect of the Saurus Rock statue containing a curse. Here, however, it does seem kinda silly that Petrie would be so worried about bad luck being caused by simply eating a certain type of plant.

But I do love the bad luck concept in general. Kinda makes me wish the series had used it more often.
I do notice, in both cases, they ultimately left it ambiguous whether it truly was a bad luck curse or if it was just a series of bizarre coincidences.
Speaking of which, I notice this is the first time in the series that we see red tree stars. I've seen fellow GoF members joke about how eating red tree stars is basically their equivalent to consuming hallucinogens. At the time, I only knew about the regular green tree stars and so I thought the concept of red tree stars was just something that someone in the community came up with. I was kinda surprised to later discover that they
are actually official LBT canon... albeit probably not with the same psychedelic effects.

I don't get why the jumping water made it into this episode. It seemed like it was there to just be a place for the kids to go see. Didn't add much to the story. I don't get why it's called "Meadow of Jumping Water." The episode seemed to show that bad luck is superstitious, but the name didn't fit that theme.
Another good point. I guess the jumping water was there to kickstart the journey in the first place, whereupon everything else happens. But yeah, they already had enough of a plot hook with Red Claw and the bad luck that they could've just built the episode around that.
Overall, though, I thought this episode was pretty good.
I had a good laugh at Red Claw and the Fast Biters' reaction to stinky Spike.
And seeing it a second time made me laugh again.
