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.

  • booty [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It’s really interesting to me that you compared it to AtlA because other than being a Good Serial Childrens Cartoon I never really considered that they have much in common, but they definitely do share more similarities beyond applying The Hero’s Journey narrative framework to a fantasy setting. In particular, the enemy being an imperial power with more advanced technology compared to the heroes.

    Not only that, but that Adora is the latest in a long line of reincarnations of the same hero, who is told by mentor figures to embrace a destiny she doesn't really want based on the conditions of her birth. Tasked with "bringing balance" to the various elemental forces of the world as part of that destiny.

    I understand the comparison from a “guy with no magic powers in a crew of people with magical powers”

    Beyond that, he's the 'funny guy' who cracks jokes and embraces the comic relief side characters where the other main characters won't give them the time of day, who is also the smart guy inventor who is constantly looking for new gadgets/tricks he can use to bridge the gap between himself and those born with powers.

    it’s absolutely fascinating to me that it reads as subtle to you!

    Yeah, I mean, I guess most of Scorpia and Catra's friendship takes place pretty early on in the show, when it's unclear to me how hard they're going to commit to the idea of friendship as opposed to more intimate relationships. But something I like about this story is that it seems to respect that any intimate romantic relationship is also a friendship, and that the two might not always be easily distinguishable.

    But yeah, if I were in their world and witnessing Scorpia and Catra's interactions I'd definitely be nudging Catra like, "hey, so, what do you think of the big lobster lady? like, really?" but in the context of the narrative I thought it was on the subtle side. Like, I'm more than familiar with the aesthetics of a crush being played for laughs, where a character has no romantic feelings whatsoever but "haha that was kind of gay" is considered a joke of its own. So in a show almost devoid of romance to that point, I wasn't confident the story was actually taking Scorpia's behavior seriously, if you get what I mean? Or, like, the writers were being more deliberate than I gave them credit for, is another way of putting it.

    Perfuma loving butch women — she gets all star struck about She-Ra when they first meet, and again about Huntara when they team up in the Crimson Waste, and then develops a big soft spot for Scorpia after she joins the Princess Alliance

    I definitely noticed that reaction, but I guess in a similar way I didn't connect that sort of deliberate meaning in my head.

    Kyle and Rogelio (the lizard guy) — this is more of a background ship for the most part, not really one that I personally ever payed much attention to, but they’re often seen doing kind of cute things together and I think there are some other nods to their relationship

    Funnily enough, this is the one that I did catch as an explicit thing, because, uh, Scorpia kind of outs them by accident. While trying to brag about how good she is at keeping secrets lmao

    But I admit that it came out of nowhere for me, I hadn't thought of them that way at all before Scorpia said it.

    Bow seems to have a bit of a crush on Sea Hawk, especially at first

    I would never have thought of this at all. I figured Bow was just enamored with the idea of a successful 'normal guy' adventurer who hangs around with princesses without feeling like an obvious dead weight, like him.