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.
A terrifying lack of She-ra emojis in this house
Monarchist propaganda! In this essay I will discuss how Great Women Theory is no replacement for Great Man Theory and how... nah, I enjoyed it. Sadly, doesn't look like we're gonna get anymore out of it.
She-Ra is my favorite show so I strongly agree! Good post! I also really appreciate it because of the themes of escaping abusive family dynamics/religious environments, which resonate with my own life experience as a lesbian ex-Catholic
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.
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
You're very welcome! Hope you enjoy if you do give them a shot :stalin-heart:
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
I’m pretty sure avatar holds up. Don’t know about teen titans or batman beyond etc.
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.
I watched Avatar when I was in my mid twenties. Really enjoyed it.
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.
HELL YES!!! I love Lesbians Forming Coalitions To Defeat Fascism, it's my absolute favorite show, super down to talk about it with you!
I really enjoyed your analysis and write-up, thank you so much for sharing :stalin-heart:
No pressure to respond to any of this, media analysis discussions are some of my favorite things so I just went ham on some of the parts that stood out to me the most in your write up:
I suspect the target audience was weirdos like me who watch children’s shows and not children
I suspect the target audience was queer people, queer women in particular lol — you know how the saying goes, lesbians will watch anything with lesbians in it
Also not sure what your relationship to the word weirdo is — I'm a proud weirdo myself, but that said I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with enjoying children's shows as an adult. I think that being geared towards children puts a lot of restraints on the show that forces the writers and designers to be more creative than media targeted towards adults, especially with the trend in adult media towards being ~ grimdark ~ or whatever. It keeps the writing from being lazy or pulling cheap punches for the sake of drama (like, say, having characters brutally murdered for the shock value) and you can end up with some really interesting metaphors for certain heavy topics, like death or whatever.
it made me think of Avatar: The Last Airbender
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.
I find She-Ra's takes on the adventuring aspects to be way less exhausting than Avatar's personally, since I tend to be very "are we there yet" about travel and resource management in fantasy settings, and that's a big throughline of AtlA — they're always on the run, they're always trying to find food/shelter/etc. I like that the gang in She Ra has a home base and can usually get between destinations on the relatively-small planet with ease. I also like that there's less focus on trying to learn or master their magical skills — it comes up sometimes, but it's not so frequent that it feels stale or tiring (i.e. no need to rinse and repeat for two additional elements, or for additional characters.)
But also, maybe Bow is just a sub-par Sokka
I understand the comparison from a "guy with no magic powers in a crew of people with magical powers" but they're wildly different characters to the point where it doesn't really make sense to compare them IMO. Sokka is sarcastic and heavily cynical — he's been dealing with a huge amount of responsibility since his dad left the southern water tribe for the war and his mom was killed, back when he was still like 12. He doesn't really have as much of a choice to do what he's doing because he has this responsibility. Bow on the other hand is usually positive and upbeat, even though he's still cautious and the voice of reason. He's been actively concealing his involvement in the rebellion from his dads, and choosing to be part of the rebellion because it's the right thing to do. Also he probably texts people at 3am to remind them to respect women, whereas Sokka has to get the shit beat out of him several times to take women seriously. They don't usually have the same narrative role in their respective stories, apart from being the voice of reason for the group occasionally.
Of course, there’s plenty of gay shit going on in the show throughout
Yesssssss!!! I think during an interview around the release of the first season the showrunner explicitly said to assume everyone's queer unless otherwise stated :sicko-yes:
subtler stuff like Scorpia maybe crushing on Catra (am I reading too much into that dynamic? possibly)
This made me realize that I've only ever talked about this show with queer women before lol, it's absolutely fascinating to me that it reads as subtle to you! (Unironically fascinating, your perspective is really interesting!)
Scorpia has a huge and obvious crush on Catra up until around when she finds out that Catra betrayed Entrapta — I think she even asks her out in the Season 2 episode where they're looking for First Ones Tech in the really frozen region, after acting really jealous of Adora while babysitting her, having her moments of commiseration with Sea Hawk who's been feeling super dejected about his relationship with Mermista, and choosing to destroy the virus-infected tech to protect Catra over the course of the episode. That episode IMO is where it's most obvious/explicit, and from a narrative standpoint it reads as super intentional.
A couple other more subtle dynamics you might've missed:
- 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
- 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
- Bow seems to have a bit of a crush on Sea Hawk, especially at first
“lol you thought we were chicken? actually the gay kiss is the most powerful magic you’ve seen in the entire show.”
Hahahaha yeah, perfect summary! The showrunner talked about very intentionally making the culmination of Catra and Adora's (explicitly, canonically gay!) relationship central to the plot of the whole story so that it couldn't get censored or cut at the last minute by studio execs.
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.
I think my favorite thing about She-Ra is that all the cutesy romantic gay ship memes ARE CANON FOR ONCE.
Harsh setting critique
As much as parts of it were enjoyable, I just can't get past all the really problematic shit in how its setting was put together. Typical liberal-fantasy monarchist apologia aside, the villains were a red-coded industrial state full of ethnic minorities that we only ever see existing on the margins of society outside it or which we never see elsewhere (like what even is Catra? There are no other cat people and no one ever mentions them), and there's explicit "oh yeah we were actively discriminated against and ostracized" stuff from Scorpia, and to top it off their big sinister plan is to join up with a literal hivemind that's straight up Heinlein-grade Cold War caricatures.
It's like someone mashed up Tolkien and Heinlein's brains in a jar and had it build a world for some milquetoast libs to write a kids show in. It's as bad as when MLP did explicit Manifest Destiny apologia.
Also Adora was objectively a huge piece of shit whose negligent disregard for others was a driving, consistent problem that never really got sufficiently addressed or resolved, and her relationship with Catra was toxic and one-sided: Catra was clearly obsessed with her the entire time in a way that mixed up pain, rage, and longing in someone who's shown to have trouble dealing with emotions in general, while Adora just repeatedly did not care to a very weird extent considering they start off as close friends and were only physically apart for a few days by the time Adora just stopped giving a shit. I think that their relationship ultimately got rushed to the conclusion everyone wanted but the way it was strung along through the seasons wasn't handled well and I didn't feel like they sufficiently resolved that.
Like it felt like the progression went from Catra being obsessed with Adora while Adora just seems to think of her as a casual acquaintance who's just being a dick for some reason, to Adora just being like "oh ok, sure" when Catra finally confessed her feelings to her. I just think it needed a better build up and resolution than that, even just some dialogue here and there to highlight the internal conflicts that are implied to have been happening by the ending but which were otherwise omitted completely.
Yeah that's fair criticism, more and more I wish show runners would take care in actually showing what a evil empire would be like (Steven Universe also has similar issues along with other issues in how it addressed what started out as a evil all consuming resource hungry empire).
I have to agree with the setting shit, it goes hard liberal, and the teams have a problem of one being vaguely evil for vague reasons, with the other being straight up monarchy romanticism.
Adora literally just abandons her lifelong friend to an abusive place and highly abusive person when she could have easily gone back for her, or at least tried harder.
Catra is best girl, and a few more twists could make her easily a protagonists. If the show is redone in a socialist future.
when she could have easily gone back for her
Catra was never stuck there, she could have left just as easily as Adora did. She didn't need saving, she needed to decide to leave.
Catra felt betrayed by the one person who might have cared, doesn't excuse her actions, but gives it context. Adora literally could have framed it as "lets get away from shadow weaver" and it could have gone well.
Adora literally could have framed it as “lets get away from shadow weaver” and it could have gone well.
Sure, but that's a believable flaw that I don't think is really a problem with the writing. All Adora needed to leave was the knowledge that the organization she was with was doing morally wrong stuff. Catra wasn't quite as oblivious and had already figured that out, and she simply didn't care. Catra needed a different motivation to leave, and Adora didn't understand that. It's possible a more socially capable and manipulative Adora could have convinced Catra to come with her, but I don't think it was her responsibility. They both had access to the same information. Catra made and repeatedly reaffirmed her decision to stay on what she saw as the winning side. And the moment Catra took the slightest step away from that mentality Adora was like "alright guys we're going to the most dangerous possible location in the entire universe to go get her."
while Adora just repeatedly did not care to a very weird extent considering they start off as close friends and were only physically apart for a few days by the time Adora just stopped giving a shit
I always got the impression that Adora cared, and was severely bothered by the circumstances separating her from Catra (though, admittedly, this didn't start to cause her any tangible problems until the final season) but there was basically nothing she could do about it. Adora wasn't willing to go back to the Evil Empire of Evilness led by Mr. Evil and his evil shadow wizard, and Catra was unwilling to give up the position of power she had worked so hard for and wanted Adora to just come back and take over the world together. They were at an impasse, and each saw the other as being unwilling to compromise. And, like, obviously taking over the world with the Evil Empire of Evilness is the wrong side to be on, so Catra was always the one who would have to give.
while Adora just seems to think of her as a casual acquaintance who’s just being a dick for some reason
I don't think you're giving enough credit to ... some of the writing. Admittedly there are parts that come off like this. When they coincidentally meet in the field because they're both after the same thing, Adora can definitely come off as strangely uninvested. But particularly in the final season, it's clearly foreshadowed that Adora's distance from Catra is not only hurting her, but is tangibly weakening her. I particularly loved the parts where Shadow Weaver offers her take on things. She thinks it is Adora's feelings for Catra making her weak, but the only thing making her weak is that she hasn't addressed and embraced those feelings. She's confused and distracted not because she likes Catra and needs to give up, but because she and Catra are maintaining this cold distance despite what they actually want.
I think that's a valid criticism of some parts of the show, but definitely not of the final stages. There's no 'acquaintance' in the way Adora thinks about, talks about, and treats Catra in the final season.
Hell yes
I have watched it literally 6 times and will watch it a seventh. I've never read fanfiction before it, but now I have a library on the stuff. I've never written fanfiction before, and now I do.
Im not super old, but getting there, so why am I doing this? Over a cartoon? It doesn't matter, because I won't stop. Because it is that good. It deserves it for sticking a middle finger in the face of netflix by shoe-horning in all possible gayness into the 5th season.
Its amazing.
Cartoons are great. The idea that cartoons are "Just for kids" is so unfortunate and it's never been true. Looney Tunes from seventy years ago are full of sex jokes that kids would never understand. Cartoons from the early 90s are full of extras and in jokes for the adults. And we're currently in kind of a golden age of cartoon storytelling where there are a lot of cartoons with really solid, deep storytelling and well constructed characters that offer a lot of substance for all age groups.
I'm overdosing on hater rn and I shouldn't let it show but I see everyone in here and I can't not. I very much liked, although didn't finish, She-Ra. I like cartoons generally and don't say out of meanness: Avatar The Last Airbender is really pretty bad and Legend of Korra is worse. Not saying you can't enjoy them or anything, and I don't mean for the gross politics, just that someone liking those pretty much discredits their other opinions on anime/cartoons for me personally
Legend of Korra is bad. I do think ATLA is good though. Why do you say that?
I think it invites too much comparison with anime in my mind and then fails to live up to that (pretty low) standard. But I don't know. Everything in avatar (except the buffalo) seems like the simplest, lowest-effort version of that idea.
I've watched a decent bit of anime, and ATLA definitely beats a significant chunk of it. Could you expand on what you mean?
Idk yeah I guess anime is pretty bad too now that you mention it. I don't really care to expand on this position. But I think whatever problem you have with Korra, just extrapolate that backwards and there is my answer because I believe they are both mid and not very different.
