She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Was I imagining it or does Glimmer have tiny wings?

She does. Like her mother has massive ones.

A neat little bit of detail.

What is Angella exactly? An "Immortal Queen" yes but does that make her an Angel like her namesake? A deity? Just a particularly powerful spellcaster?

So, I finally saw the whole thing. It was okay. Not great, not awful, just okay. While I never was a huge She-Ra fan, I did watch some loose episodes here and there, so I'd like to think I'm unbiased on that front.

While I love the color palette and background artwork, I find the character design lacking to my tastes (not in a "not sexy enough" kind of way, but more in a "shapes are too basic and everyone has a permanent Blush Sticker on top of their nose" way).

Character-wise, Catra and Adora were the most interesting characters, with their conflict being the emotional and climatic center of the season, rather than saving Etheria, getting the Princesses together or learning to control She-Ra's power. while I enjoyed the other characters and their quirks, only Glimmer and Angella came close to having as much complexity as those two.

There's also the fact that the Princesses more or less are their kingdoms, which feels shallow. Perfuma's opinions on She-ra are shared by all of her people like a monolith. If she changes her mind, all of her kingdom cheerfully agrees with her, even though they were in the middle of doing the opposite of what she just suggested.

Finally, the plot. Aside from the Catra-Adora conflict, the plot is a very simplistic "Gotta Catch 'Em All and fight The Empire", the Horde never wins, but the heroes never come any closer to actually stopping them, but it's the first season, so I'm willing to give it a pass. I'm actually very interested in seeing how they'll tackle Adora's origins, what with MOTU being Exiled from Continuity for now. I'll be keeping up with this one, since it did have enough good things to keep me interested.

I really enjoyed the series. Having only passing familiarity with the original via Trope pages.

Entrapta was probably my favorite Princess. When she first appeared I thought her alignment was pretty much Chaotic SCIENCE! So her changing sides made sense to me.

My god do so many of Catra's lines come off as scorned ex girlfriend. Someone above commented on a large LGBT+ fanbase and lots of Tux!Catra fanart. I can 100% see why.

I really enjoyed the structure of this season. I'm glad to hear about the likelihood of more seasons/arcs. I'll definitely be watching in the case of a renewal.

The thing I want most next season is some more focus on character development for the other Princess's. I think.

I want more Mermista.

So, since I come from the old school era of She-Ra (I first became familiar with her through the old Secret of the Sword movie where He-Man crosses into her world to find her), I gave the first episode a look.

Not much to say really. In this age where grown men can watch shows about Ponies and not be ostracized, Rob worries not about being part of a periphery demographic (it helps that someone else older than me decided to give it a look).

Seems interesting. I get the feeling that the Adora / Catra relationship will be a reference to how they were supposed to be rivals in the old toyline (something the series dropped). I'm wondering if they are gonna address the He-Man connection. This show is so opposite in tone from any He-Man series I've seen that I can't picture it being a thing.

The He-Man connection is likely to be unaddressed because their are currently a lot of rights issues with He-Man and they are likely waiting for any kind of animated series until after the movie gets made so it can tie closer to that.

They're making a He-Man movie?

Come on! We're ridden this ride already! It didn't work back then either.

Finished not even twenty minutes ago. Here's my very brief thoughts on it. I can expand on my reasons for disliking Glimmer if anyone's curious about that but for now, that tweet is really all I have to say aside from the fact that I hope we get a second season.

I do find that Adora and Catra are the most interesting characters, which is important because they're the Protagonist and Deuteragonist respectively. Usually in these sort of action shows I find the lead incredibly boring compared to their colorful supporting cast but Adora busts that problem over her left knee. I'm interested in her growth, her ambitions, and her decisions.

I do find some of the scripting kind of awkward in places though. While she's a pretty good lead, she's all over the place in the penultimate episode alongside Light Hope. Something fell apart in the writing room on that one.

Also where all of Brightmoon's guard asleep or something during the siege or what.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Nov 17th 2018 at 3:02:37 PM

Hey! Frank Langella was a magnificent Skeletor!

I noticed that too.

It sorta bugged me that we didn't even see any regular citizens running away, much less any guards fighting back.

You can tell he was having the time of his life. A lot of "serious" actors love getting to cut loose in goofy Ham and Cheese roles because it gives them a chance to overact like crazy (it was part of the reason so many famous actors guest-starred on the 60s Batman show, for instance).

And honestly, a lot of the problems with the movie stem from it being directed by an inexperienced filmmaker who had about 8 dollars to work with. It was made by The Cannon Group, a studio famous for churning out schlocky cash grabs that were done on shoestring budgets and insanely quick production schedules. A He-Man movie with an actual budget, competent directing and a reasonable amount of time to actually film the damn thing could be pretty good.

I definitely agree. There's a lot of characters who could stand to get some fleshing out in future episodes.

Edited by comicwriter on Nov 17th 2018 at 12:04:20 PM

The He-Man movie is likely pushed forward by Mattel execs with dollar signs in their eyes that saw how much bank the Transformers movies have made over the decade and went "Hey we have a nostalgic 80's franchise based on a line of toys too right?"

I feel it won't end up working. If they try and make it serious it'll just be another action movie but if they try and run with how ridiculous it is I doubt mainstream audiences will bite. But hey, Venom is a huge hit so who knows what could happen.

Back to She-Ra; I find it surprising that the supporting cast didn't get a ton of focus. They very clearly called this She-Ra and the princesses of power but it has more limelight given to the lead than is even expected in a kid's show like this. That's not necessarily a bad thing, they work fine as background noise, but it's not what I expected.

The He-Man documentary on Netflix goes into the numerous struggles the movie faced, a reliance on practical effects making certain characters like Orko impossible to make, Mattel being very heavy handed on what could and couldn’t be done, and them running out of money at the end.

Funny enough, no one mentions Courtney Cox and her stupid high school subplot taking up half the film, even when it shows early He-Man sketches that were apparently drawn by freaking Mœbius.

@Envys: Main reason why I thought it was contrived was so WHY exactly did they think she was dead for sure considering how she apparently survived with no problem? And if she survived that easily, shouldn't she have had some method of following up on them or contact them?

You do gotta wonder how she survived exactly. That door shutting and then venting flame qualifies as a minor case of Nightmare Fuel in my book.

With Netossa being a princess in this version that means Lonnie is the only female Badass Normal on the show. Funny how she, Kyle and the lizard guy are just "Cadets" despite being better at their jobs than the actual Horde soldiers.

So Catra's actually a princess right? She's gonna tap into those powers at some point to keep up with She-Ra undergoing Time to Unlock More True Potential right?

Either that or she's going to find some way to tap the power of the Black Garnet, possibly with tech from Entrapta to avoid the crippling addiction like Shadow Weaver has/had.

Oooh, I'll bet she'll need help from someone who knows all about the runestone: Shadow Weaver.

Maybe her hair is indestructible and she just balled her self up in it?

Edited by alanh on Nov 18th 2018 at 6:49:31 AM

I think that whole squad was officer cadets. Not regular soldier cadets.

So before I binge this, I gotta ask...how's the fight scene quotient? Still a little unsure what to think when the main character's main weapon is a sword and I have no idea if it has Mecha-Mooks to slice through yet. Planning to watch it either way, just wanting to temper my expectations on that front.

I'm not sure what you're asking. Quotient implies you want to know how many there are in which I can say quite a few. But you might also be asking how good they are in which case...they're okay. Not really anything to write home about but good.

Fight scenes are common enough. The horde employs a number of robots and vehicles to safely cut up.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Nov 19th 2018 at 5:05:21 AM

I just watched the first episode of the reboot and thought that the backgrounds and a few scenes looked like they had been drawn by Mœbius. And then everyone knows already .

Edited by gropcbf on Nov 19th 2018 at 8:45:12 PM