I watched the whole thing over the last couple weeks. It's good, especially looking at it as a children's show. Even though I suspect the target audience was weirdos like me who watch children's shows and not children. Regardless, it did an impressive job of adapting a silly character designed to sell toys to children in the 80s to a more serious story without losing all the charm of the dumb 80s children's fantasy setting.

In particular, it's kind of refreshing to see a very unironic "power of friendship" story. Love and friendship are strong and the characters seriously, genuinely embrace that. And even the big bad evil guys make friends and have understandable motivations even when those motivations lead them to unforgivable actions.

For a significant chunk of the first few seasons it made me think of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but in a negative way. Like they were trying to imitate it in a sense, and not quite nailing it. However, I'd bet that (as someone who hasn't watched any of the popular / "good" kid's shows between Avatar and whatever's popular now) I'm probably missing some context, and that what I see as imitating Avatar is probably more accurately following tropes that Avatar helped to cement. But also, maybe Bow is just a sub-par Sokka. Both are possible

Something that pleasantly surprised me, on the other hand, is how well executed the ending was. Avatar was fantastic all the way through, and then really fumbled the end. And it wasn't a terrible ending, but it was confused and muddled and just not executed very well. The second half of She-Ra's final season was flawlessly executed imo. It delivered on everything it had been setting up in such a satisfying and sincere way.

In particular, I was so happy to see the relationship between Catra and Adora actually ... follow through. Throughout the entire show that shit has been building up, and I was really concerned they weren't going to be particularly explicit about it. Of course, there's plenty of gay shit going on in the show throughout, from Bow's dads to Netassa and Spinnerella to subtler stuff like Scorpia maybe crushing on Catra (am I reading too much into that dynamic? possibly) but even these didn't convince me. Because the theme I noticed is that they never wrote romance. All the couples were already couples before the events of episode 1. They don't usually say anything particularly romantic to each other, with the exception of Sea Hawk which is played so silly that for most of the show it's not even clear whether there is any mutual affection at all.

But then they were just like "lol you thought we were chicken? actually the gay kiss is the most powerful magic you've seen in the entire show."

the kind of ending which elevates an otherwise only pretty-good show to ... idk. really good.

its good folks.

  • LiberalSocialist [any,they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I wanna get into this mid to late 2010s renaissance of good kids tv shows but I feel I’m too old to appreciate it like I did Teen Titans, Avatar etc.

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I was also the target audience demographic for Avatar, Teen Titans, etc, when they were airing, but never really stopped watching cartoons. If you want to give some a shot, here's what I've enjoyed since then:

      Unless otherwise stated you can probably give all of these shows 1-2 episodes to see if you like it and if you don't, then it probably won't be for you

      • She-Ra — this took and still holds the title of My Favorite Cartoon. I am more the target demographic for this than most of the other Cartoon Renaissance shows (:flag-lesbian-pride:, :hammer-sickle: ) so I am a little biased here, but this one is IMO definitely worth a watch.
      • The Owl House — up there with She-Ra! The first episode knocked my socks off with the way it subverted my expectations. Incredible characters, kind of seasonally appropriate right now too. It's still airing, but it's in its last season/wrapping up because of meddling Disney execs
      • Kipo: Age of Wonderbeasts — really fun and creative setting and worldbuilding, genuinely delightful characters
      • Steven Universe — gets a lot of flak, deserves about 30% of it, still an incredibly well-done show, especially if you like incredibly intricate character development and moral quandries. It's probably better going into it without knowing much of anything. It starts a little slow — unless you really can't stand it, I'd recommend giving it until the episode Giant Woman before deciding if you want to keep going or not. (That's season 1 ep 12, but the eps are like 10 minutes long so it isn't a huge commitment — great for doing Saturday Morning Cartoons)

      Edit:

      Cannot believe I forgot:

      • Dead End: Paranormal Park — also very seasonally appropriate rn, the characters are excellent, there's some great hijinks. Season 2 was just released a couple weeks ago
    • booty [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      I watched Teen Titans, and Avatar as it was coming out, when I was the target audience for these shows. Later on I rewatched Avatar a couple of times and I would still consider myself a fan of it. When I tried rewatching Teen Titans the same way it just rubbed me the wrong way, and that was probably the moment where I was like "okay, ive officially outgrown kids shows." So I just never even looked for a second at those shows. Maybe I should as well

        • booty [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Yeah, that's what I meant by I still consider myself a fan of Avatar. I think it holds up, mostly. A lot of season 1 is paced kind of poorly, and there are some entire episodes which just haven't aged very well into a modern context (S1E4: "The Warriors of Kyoshi" is a good example. imagine needing an entire episode to explain that women are, in fact, capable of fighting. I just watched an entire cartoon about a magic sword lesbian being the most powerful entity in the universe). Overall it's still a very solid show. But I definitely remember feeling like Teen Titans did not hold up the same way.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I feel I’m too old to appreciate it

      Nah don't worry about that. You're not too old for Avatar or Voltron or She-Ra or Gravity Falls or Hilda or any of the other great cartoon from that era.

      Survivor's guilt from being the sole survivor of a genocide is a theme in Avatar. There's plenty there for adults.

      And you get deep, compelling stories with excellent characters without any of the torture porn and fridging and "every character is a loathsome asshole" of prestige TV shows.