Is Magic School Bus Rides Again Canon

The Magic Schoolhouse Bus (shortened to The Motorcoach or merely Bus) is an eponymous high-tech, sentient, and anthropomorphic school coach with Magicware that The Frizzles' class and Liz use to go along field trips. It is most often piloted by the Frizzle sisters or Liz, but occasionally, in the original PBS television series, 1 of the kids will accept the cycle, or it will take on a shape (such every bit an animal) that allows it to "drive" itself. Along with its power to travel on land, in water, through the air, and fifty-fifty deep space, it is also able to alter its size and shape.

Its computer organisation is voiced past Kate McKinnon, the voice of Ms. Frizzle.

Technical Details

Basis

Books by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen

The Magic School Bus is somewhat based on a 1970s Ward International school bus with fender skirts on the rear wheels, and the front windshield being 2 different windows. Its overhead sign shows a "message" depending on the language, such as "WAHOO" or "BLAST OFF" in English, very similar to electronic "welcome" signs.

Original series

In this incarnation, the Bus does retain some qualities from the original books, being based on a Ward schoolhouse bus. It retains everything listed above, however the only new addition is a grille spine going down the center of its grille nose. Instead of showing words, the electronic sign overhead shows a motion picture.

Rides Again series

The Bus has been "upgraded" to a modernistic American school bus. Similar to the original books, the grille spine is lost. Some new changes are 1 rearview mirror instead of two mirrors, a radio antenna, and a roof-hatch. Its overhead sign is colored black, and information technology does not prove automated letters or pictures, nor does it read "school omnibus".

Livery

In the original idiot box serial and the book series, the Autobus was painted fully Walkerville yellow. In The Magic School Bus Rides Again, it is painted in the common North American Schoolhouse Motorbus yellowish with blackness stripes. In the original Television serial and books, it sports decals that relate to the topic. Information technology doesn't have this prepare of decorations in Rides Over again, reserving the scientific flair for Ms. Frizzle.

MagicWare

It isn't very clear how the Omnibus works, but there are diverse hints. We can see how fuel gets to the engine in the TV episode, "Revving Up", but in another episode, "Gets Ready, Set, Dough", it is revealed that its magic comes from various devices, with the most used ones being the Shrinkerscope and the Mesmerglober, and in newer media, the Warp Drive, which controls the Omnibus' teleportation and warp-speed when traveling through space so that it doesn't have the students many years to travel from Mercury to Neptune or Pluto.

The Shrinkerscope serves mostly equally an internal method of size manipulation from the Bus itself. In the episode "Butterfly and the Bog Beast", information technology is revealed that in that location is a 2d size-manipulation device: the Porta-Shrinker^[ane], which is a pink ray gun that is mainly used for shrinking someone without shrinking the Jitney. When someone attempts to activate the Porta-Shrinker when it is damp or moisture, a dew-dinger alarm sounds.

The Mesmerglober controls the Omnibus' ability to shape-shift, irresolute it into various vehicles or animals at the driver's will. It is activated by a red or gray lever on the dashboard, and besides buttons on the touchscreen. Most of the time, when it transforms, the charabanc stretches and squashes, then spins around fast. When the double-decker stops, it's in it's new grade. In "Flexes its Muscles", it is revealed that the Autobus starts transforming uncontrollably if the Mesmerglober doesn't piece of work. The Mesmerglober and the Shrinkerscope oftentimes work together to transform the Bus into animals, such as a frog in "Hops Domicile", a salmon in "Goes Upstream", and an eagle in "I Spy with My Animal Eyes".

The source of the Autobus's magic is different from canon to canon. In the Idiot box series, the Charabanc'south magic comes from a software called MagicWare (In the Zone). If the MagicWare is updating, sometimes the Jitney glitches, the kids modify into animals and plants, abound up into adults or revert back to an infant, and the Bus goes south. All the devices that run MagicWare, like the Mesmerglober and Shrinkerscope, are powered by a MagBatt (Making Magic, short for magic battery), which runs on energy from the middle of the Sun, as well as true courage and perseverance from the Frizz and the kids. When the Bus doesn't update, it freezes and loses its magic, becoming a normal school bus without any anthropomorphism. In the canon of the books, the Charabanc runs on "Magic Gasoline".

In the holiday special, it is revealed that nearly of the MagicWare devices are made of plastic.

List of features

Mesmerglober - allows the Omnibus to transform
Shrinkerscope - shrinks the Autobus
Plangdabber
Dinplonker
Blagblatter
Cadybager
Iotoscope
Enormomometer/Bigifier - returns the Bus to normal size
Dew-Dinger - if the Bus Remote is wet and one tries to use it, an alert sound is heard.
3-Phase Hydrolated Displacement Pumpulator
MagBatt - battery that controls the MagicWare functions
Warp Drive - allows the Omnibus to teleport between locations or travel instantly through space
Bingbongifier - powered by vibrations like audio, this tin can reboot the Bus in the outcome of a software crash
Nocanseealyzer - makes an object invisible
Un-Mothilizer - in "In the Zone", the students, as moths, became human being again with this
Disco Ball - the first part of the Double-decker to be installed; this acts as a normal disco ball would and removes the seats on the Jitney to make room for a dance flooring. It is controlled by the Bus Remote.
Pause button - stops the menstruation of time of an object or living matter.
Shriekamaker - plays an earsplitting dissonance through the Omnibus Remote loud enough to make a person scream in fearfulness
Arnold's size controls - fabricated Arnold big enough to square off with a Tyrannosaurus male monarch in "The Busasaurus"
Regular Cellinator - makes the Bus incognito to a person'due south antibodies past transforming into one of his/her red blood cells

Trivia

In official Scholastic media, the Passenger vehicle's common name is capitalized (e.g., "Where volition the Motorbus take you?")

The double-decker was able to float around in lava. This may lead to the fact that the bus may be physically indestructible.
The Omnibus cares securely about its passengers, such as in "Gets Ants in Its Pants" when it was concerned about Keesha when she gave upwardly beingness the manager of the ant film and ran outside the anthill in the rain.
The Passenger vehicle is sometimes referred to as its current transformation. This mostly happened in the Joanna Cole books and the Scientific discipline Chapter Books. However, information technology has happened in the television series. In "Cold Anxiety", the Passenger vehicle was referred to as "The Busigator".
The Magic School Motorbus appears to exist sentient, mainly due to having a face (headlight optics, grille olfactory organ, bumper mouth, rearview mirror ears). This is farther shown in Taking Flight when information technology gets angry at Liz for constantly making it crash when Tim and Phoebe were trying to save the rest of the form, in the opening when it looked a bit scared upon seeing an octopus, and in Gets Lost in Space when information technology felt exhausted upon Janet overloading information technology with "proof" she went to all the planets of the Solar Organisation. It is shown The Magic School Passenger vehicle is incapable of talking, merely it is capable of panting and cough. Information technology does communicate by honking its horn, its "language".
While the Bus has no gender, some of its transformations include a female person eagle (in I Spy with My Animal Eyes) hen (in Cracks a Yolk) and a female salmon (in Goes Upstream). This may imply that the Bus is female person. This would also be in line with English vehicular parlance, in which vehicles are often referred to by female person pronouns.
The Magic Schoolhouse Autobus has few modifications throughout the series, which include:
- [[1]] (Original books, Microsoft video games, 1994 Goggle box serial,)
  - It had fender skirts roofing its rear wheels.
  - It is based on a 1970s Ward International school bus.
- 2017-present (Rides Again TV serial, Rides Once again books)
  - Its fender skirts are removed from the rear wheels, thus revealing its rear wheels.
  - An antenna and a roof hatch are added.
  - On the dorsum, it has 2 doors instead of one.
  - Its bottom lip is a darker shade of silverish than its top lip.
  - Its headlight optics turn light aqua.
  - It now has ane extra window on its sides.
  - It is based on modernistic American school buses.
- The Bus's original 1986 design returns in the 2021 original-series book "Explores Human Development".
- The Double-decker has many similarities to anthropomorphic vehicles across fiction.
- It is revealed in "Three in One" that the Frizzles built the Jitney during a Gizmos that Go contest almost magic.
- Information technology's revealed in "In The Zone" that it reverts dorsum to being a normal bus when it loses its magic.
- The Magic Motorbike shares many similarities with the Bus.
- Starting with the Season ii episode, Kids in Space, and the rest of late Flavour 2, the Bus is animated in CGI, however it sometimes it animated in second whenever a character straight interacts with it (e.one thousand. opening its hood)