Some stuff that was in that making-of video:
- A prop sheet for the windmill is labelled as being from "Scene 93", "Season 1076", "Episode 000a" and the "episode title" is "Movie - Act 1". By comparison
, the scene number seem to restart with each "act", season numbers seem bizarre and incomprehensible, the episode number is unique because it's a movie, and it's anyone's guess how many "acts" the movie will be divided into.
- The heart gem has a closeup in "Scene 278". She's also possibly talking, but it may just be another growl.
- As Lamar Abrams is talking, a screen in the background shows an animatic of Bismuth, Lapis, Peridot, and Steven posing on a warp pad.
Well, all Gems can shape-shift, it's just that some are better at it/do it differently than others. Steven seems limited to just stretching his limbs or changing his age, which is probably more linked to his human side. Garnet mostly just stretches out her arms or makes her hands big. Pearl shape-shifted to take Rose's form. Topaz uses shape-shifting combined with fusion to trap people inside her fused body.
Of the gems we've seen, the best shape-shifter is Amethyst, who can change her size, shape, properties, and she can transform into animals or machines. The new movie villain's shape-shifting seems to have a springiness, stretchiness, and bounciness to her, kind of like Plastic Man (as mentioned earlier), but the springiness actually reminds me more of Luffy.
The villain showing up out of the blue to fight right away raises questions about the general pace of the film. Do they defeat her and spend the rest of the movie getting rid of the ooze, or find some way to delay the confrontation?
I started my series rewatch tonight, and collected a few thoughts. (It'll be a while until I reached the episode I haven't seen like four times, but it's been long enough that there's stuff I don't remember.)
- The first scene in front of the fridge shows Steven's face head-on. He doesn't look as weird from that angle as Pearl, but his nose is still quite strange.
- One of the Crying Breakfast Friends (the crescent roll) appeared on Steven's TV. Perhaps it was just a random thing someone put there before it became a Show Within a Show.
- This has the first times we see Steven go starry-eyed, but it's used a bit more randomly than the "totally amazed" expression it usually is. The very first time it's almost like an Idea Bulb.
- That whirling debris effect when the Red Eye is closing in is amazing.
- I can't quite tell—are the Crystal Shrimp animated in CG?
- "Gimme Gimme"
remains one of the best tracks in the show.
- I wonder if the Crystal Heart will ever get any kind of significance, or just remain a bizarre background element.
More generally, the most drastic change in the art may not even be the character designs but the background. They were way more impressionistic early on.
It's definitely not CG.
They're very weirdly out of place lookin'.
Edited by randomness4 on Jul 19th 2019 at 8:49:39 AM
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.So I'm guessing the movie's villain takes out whatever means Steven has of communicating with Homeworld early on into her attack, hence the lack of an army of Homeworld gems and/or the other diamonds showing up to kick her ass. That's unsurprising and fine for now, though I hope the series doesn't come to rely too much on Deus Exit Machina contrivances like this now that Homeworld and the other Diamonds are on team good.
Incidentally, if this particular character is going to remain a threat going forwards into season 6, my guess is that Steven and friends destroy her injector, but are unable to do anything about the life draining gem essence that was already pumped into the Earth. Then Homeworld gems start showing up after someone noticed the lack of communication from Earth as a sort of Belated Cavalry just in time for our new baddie to pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, and Homeworld helps clean up the disaster to further establish their new role in the story.
Edit: I also somewhat dislike how they seem to have completely skipped over reforms to the Gempire and had that happen off screen. The end of season 5 really set up Homeworld as a sort of dictatorless dystopia
*, a society in which everyone including the ruling class is miserable and oppressed, but where the system somehow fails to collapse.**
* At least up to the level of the chromatic diamonds. White Diamond herself wasn't miserable, but she was delusional and flat out in denial about how bad things were/had gotten.
** Now that the system HAS collapsed, I hope they go into the why it was able to survive in such a state for so long; was it out of a shared sense that the alternative would be anarchy and chaos? Or perhaps it was sheer bureaucratic inertia, supported by the work of billions upon billions of middle managers and bureaucrats each dutifully doing their part leading to a Kafkaesque nightmare of a society?
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jul 20th 2019 at 9:59:18 AM
The new antagonist's design reminds me of Mega Man (Classic) in how her hair (not the pigtails) looks like a helmet, along with a similar general eye shape, and the markings on her face.
How she's animated gives me FLCL vibes, though, even though I know she's based off of Rubberhose cartoons.
EDIT: My sister thought that she was a freaky clown of some sort.
Edited by Etheru on Jul 20th 2019 at 11:32:32 AM
Well, I just saw the new trailer recently and while I might just be able to get used to the whole timeskip thing, the trailer did still give me a fearful vibe that Connie will be leaving for whatever reasons
Also, does this mean that Homeworld has ceased to be an empire and that the Diamonds no longer hold absolute power anymore? Something akin to how most historical monarchies on Earth have become more centered around republics and democracies?
Even if all four Diamonds were hanging out in Beach City again, the heart gem could have planted the injector anywhere else on Earth (the mechanics of space travel being vague enough that we don't know if gem tech would have kept her away). Landing her ship directly on top of the Crystal Temple may have just been a "screw you".
So far we've seen Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Steven, Greg, Connie, Peridot, Lapis, and Bismuth. I'm hoping they'll briefly establish how everyone in Beach City is doing (e.g. if Sadie Killer and the Suspects are still active, the general situation with Lars and the Off Colors (re-)adjusting to Earth), but leave some of the others off-world (like Topaz or the Zoomans) to revisit next season.
On a related note, the new town looks like it's uninhabited because they're just finishing construction. Wonder where it's planned residents were before.
Rewatch thoughts, day two:
- God, I still love Peedee's hilarious cynicism/mopeyness and histrionics. His character arc ending in a single episode is probably why he's still not gotten another major role, but I guess it was important to show Steven could have a positive effect on people's lives.
- There are a some shots where Pearl's hair points downward on the side, which kind of makes them look like sideburns.
- As has been pointed out on the Talking Simpsons/What-A-Cartoon! podcast, this is one of the last times a children's cartoon could just flat-out show a bare ass.
- This is technically Sour Cream's first voiced appearance, but his barely-audible yell was provided by Peedee's voice actor. Oddly, the credits spell his name "Sourcream".
- Pearl outright said she and all gems could shapeshift.
- As mean as it was, "It's just like you, Steven!" is a pretty hilarious line.
- That Steven can turn parts of his body into independent organisms kind of makes more sense now that we know he has the power of creating life. Jesus, does that mean a Diamonds' power could inflict the same on someone else?
- It's odd that Garnet tells Pearl they should have trusted Steven to take care of himself, but he doesn't thank Greg for his help.
Well, it's not really manpower deficiency as much as it is that while Steven has a small army of uncorrupted gems living on Earth now, (though who knows how many of them went back to Homeworld now that it's willing to accept them as they are) that's kind of peanuts compared to the resources of an interstellar empire, and while said empire is being "dismantled", Homeworld itself is a Ecumenopolis, and could realistically be home to trillions of gems.
I don't really know if Steven Universe is really very "realistic" sort of media. From "Space Rocks" to "Space Rocks deflecting light and that's how they able to create a form, with no answer what will happen if there is no light around" to "Gem's level of strength is varied depending on a episode" and ec. (in more simple terms, cartoon's premise is already unrealistic, which is not a bad thing, since it is a fantasy).
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Jul 21st 2019 at 10:35:11 PM
When people are talking about "realism" with shows like this, things like that aren't what they're referring to. That should be obvious.
They're talking about things like do the characters feel like actual people, with relatable problems, and how those problems are addressed and dealt with.
In that metric, it's entirely possible for shows dealing with magic/aliens/superpowers/etc to feel "realistic".
Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2019 at 2:37:37 PM
I'm referring more to things like people estimating the manpower and logistics of "Space Empire" (or how powerful it is, basing on headcanons), which things are pretty relative in this sort of media. I'm not convinced that creators themselves bother with such things. While emotional problems and personalities and feelings are pretty realistic in Steven Universe, this sort of things i think is pretty "low on priority for believability" in creators list and they can make Gem Empire consist out of few thousands of soldiers if they want.
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Jul 21st 2019 at 10:47:59 PM
That the Diamonds have an empire spanning hundreds of worlds is just an established fact. As is there clearly being more than "a few thousand soldiers".
Whether or not we go into what happens with all of them really doesn't have much to do with realism either way.
I admit the hard logistics aren't a thing they're concerned about, but what you're describing isn't even that.
Edited by LSBK on Jul 21st 2019 at 2:50:20 PM
Most of those hundreds of worlds are pretty dead now as far as we aware. There is also established fact that their Empire is low on resources or has big problem with resources, which suggest that most of their worlds are in such conditions that they pretty much useless (and with worlds themselves, all Gems bases on these worlds are pretty much dead too).
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Jul 21st 2019 at 11:02:23 AM

This makes me think that her being silent in the trailer is deliberate to hide something from us, like maybe her presentation in the trailer is misleading in some way.
Good catch! Tracking Clothing Damage is one of my favorite ways to analyze trailers.