She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Yeah, when I was a kid, a lot of the (male) kids I knew had figures of characters like April O'Neil, Jinx, Baroness, and, tying this into MOTU, Teela and Evil-Lyn. Most kids (At least when I was young) are satisfied with owning all the figures in a given toyline, regardless of gender

Well Voltron got a bunch of seasons one way or the other.

One of the good things about this series is actually how it doesn't look like it was made exclusively to sell toys. Hell, every woman in the old cartoon had the exact same bodyshape because they only had the one plastic mould and they all needed to look like that. Also being a Netflix show wouldn't Netflix be the primary deciding factor? Not that inter-company politics haven't ended their shows before cough daredevil.

That said I'm totally down to buy some merch if it shows up.

Voltron got its ginormous order up front. The commitment was already present back in Season 1 when Playmates and Dreamworks were bullish on the ability to sell toys (a Reddit rumor was the original toy sponsor was Bandai, but they butted heads with the EP’s who wanted less Voltron while Bandai presumably wanted more given their success selling such and eventually Bandai bounced). The problem is everything that wasn’t Voltron flopped, and the deluxe gifset of all five lions was a Toys R’ Us exclusive, making their closure was a huge hit. So they were committed to Netflix to shell out a ton of episodes for a franchise kids weren’t watching and wasn’t selling merchandise. Now this holiday season, the only Voltron toys selling are of classic Voltron, that huge LEGO deluxe Voltron and a Bandai produced model kit.

But hey, live and learn, right? Honestly, playing it safe and introducing the toys with a demand rather than no demand and no toy sales making Mattel, a toy company which probably views said toys as the primary revenue stream likely to cancel the show, is a lot wiser. They foster a demand and make the kids come to them if they are watching.

Edited by Beatman1 on Dec 6th 2018 at 3:20:26 PM

Huh. I am legitimately curious where one comes by this kind of information. Corporate deals are always kinda insane.

I've yet to see a toy for the new Voltron.

Well most are no longer available except through the official online store because no one bought them. Playmates actually sent an email where they announced the line was discontinued because the sales were in the dirt.

https://twitter.com/markoliver023/status/991715632449245186?s=21

While I don’t know what Mattel has planned for She-Ra (it apparently didn’t come up during NYCC), I imagine that the previous flop from Dreamworks probably has them second guessing when and if to release the toys.

I watched the opening two-parter, and it looked pretty fun.

A really nice short moment in the last episode of the season regarding Entrapta. When She-Ra has gotten tied down by the electric whips and the Black Garnet continues to sap power and destabilize the network and Entrapta is working at it, her facial expression shows a fleeting "what have I done" kind of concern, but then she promptly puts on her "For Science" welding mask and continues at it. Lovely detail.

I'm in the "here for Godzilla" / "Rooting for the Empire" camp. There's a lot of Care Bears type cringe to endure through, but the great villains make the series worth watching.

Edited by Skaven252 on Dec 9th 2018 at 9:10:38 AM

Just finished the first Season of She-Ra. The ending honestly felt like a bit of a cop-out and Deus ex Machina, but other than that, it was still an amazing show. Now give us the second season, Dreamworks.

Wild Mass Guess: Entrapta will end up dissecting Imp. To Lord Hordak's chagrin.

It makes perfect sense. Entrapta has previously expressed a will to dissect a subject for data; she is into audio recorders; and would therefore certainly want to figure out how Imp is able to record voices and play them back.

It inevitably turns out that organic tech is too wet and squishy to reverse engineer, so the result is a mess.

Entrapta will however build Lord Hordak a new stealth voice recorder spy-bot that is "just as cuddly" as Imp.

Later this tech will be developed further into a swarm of flying stealth spy drones, as an engineerable alternative to Shadow Weaver's shadow spies.

Edited by Skaven252 on Dec 11th 2018 at 3:21:17 AM

So I was browsing through the YMMV page for She-Ra — specifically the Draco in Leather Pants section — when I came across this:

As someone who actually is autistic, that is somewhere between being incredibly ignorant and pretty damn offensive. Being autistic does not automatically excuse you for your actions. It can make them more understandable to a point and maybe even give you some leeway, but it only goes so far. And I'm pretty sure helping out an Evil Empire build a doomsday weapon largely because you're obsessed with ancient tech (and to be fair, I've had some irrational obsessions myself, but even then...) doesn't cut it.

Edited by kkhohoho on Dec 11th 2018 at 7:48:17 AM

As someone else who is autistic, I'd agree. I have no idea how common that view of Entrapta is or isn't, and I honestly have neither the time nor the inclination to go find out, but it profoundly irritates me when people treat autism as a get-out-of-jail free card for unacceptable behavior. It's extremely dismissive towards autistic people — and more broadly towards people with other mental conditions or disabilities — because saying that an autistic person can't be held morally responsible for their actions gets far too close to treating autistic (and depending on context other neurodivergent) people as fundamentally not having control over their own actions. If Entrapta chose to side with a faction of militaristic, warmongering conquerors, then while she does have extenuating circumstances around her actions her choice was her own to make and any eventual repercussions hers to bear, same as every other villain.

This all hinges on whether one does actually consider Entrapta to be on the spectrum, of course, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Wait...people are actually trying to excuse a character siding with a faction called the Evil Horde who have done nothing but live down to that name with their brutal warmongering conquest by claiming she's autistic? Never mind that she was never confirmed to be autistic...but wtf? Seriously, just...wtf?

That kind of attitude is incredibly patronizing towards autistic people.

Edited by M84 on Dec 11th 2018 at 10:52:11 PM

Yeah that is offensive as hell. I kinda assume though its because show portrays are as kinda sympathetic so people will just flock to whatever excuse they can think of. But yeah, seriously wtf.

Watched the rest of the season, and I really liked it so far.

Is it me, or is this show borrowing a lot of narrative beats and thematic elements from Avatar? A central Protector of the world who is inhererited by a new bearer every generation, said Protector having dissapeared from the world for a very long time, a battle between good and evil that involves the evil side ultimately wanting to wipe out the world, and the good side a pact of people from a diverse background, with a diverse roster of supernatural powers? A villain turning to the good side (potentially twice)? A Mad Scientist type with rather shaky allegiances who is happy to work for whomever asks him to? An intense and complex rivalry between the main hero and villain? A Princess with Ice Powers who looks suspiciously like the water tribes from Avatar?

Archetypes gonna archetype.

I can't say She-Ra does anything radically new with the whole hero's journey setup (Aside from being like, super gay) but the characters and interactions we get out of it are what I'm here for.

And is there something wrong with being "super gay"?

You clearly haven't been reading me in this thread.

I welcome out new grand overlord ship Catradora.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Dec 12th 2018 at 1:39:01 PM

Well, usually when someone says a show is "super gay", they don't mean it in a good way.

I'm not quite ready to applaud this show on it's LGB Tetc representation, though. All the relationships are pretty much all subtext or background. I'll cheer when I see two girls kiss, no earlier.

And the idea that Bow is trans... seriously?

Eh, I can see an asshole using "super gay" as a criticism or downside but I don't think it's intrinsic. Even without context, it's more than possible for someone to use it positively.

I've seen it used way more in a positive sense than negative, but perhaps that is just the areas I hang out on the internet.

Me too, though I know that it's from the areas I hang out in so that doesn't really say much.

Bow binds his chest when he takes off his top, and his voice cracks a few times.

Well, that seems a bit more credible, though again seems more like subtext than anything else.

I'm not sure how much voice cracking does or does not mean. The main characters are teenagers — if we're assuming they average out at sixteen years or so, they're at the point where their voices would be cracking anyway.