I'm sure the new(ish - it's kind of old really considering how long it's taken me to bother) She-Ra was the result of one imaginative person looking at the original unfinished series thinking, there's something here buried under this joke of a toy commercial, some kernel of awe-inspiring feminist punk rock/princess fantasy that'll appeal to kids now while satisfying fans and casual watchers, like me.
Full disclosure - I really don't know/remember much of the show. I think I saw some episodes but I can't tell you much outside who She-Ra is in relation to He-Man and what her horse was called when it was a flying unicorn I wanted as a toy so fucking badly. I never wanted the dolls, I wanted their goddamn horses. I wanted Barbie's horse, Rainbow Bright's horse, and She-Ra's fucking unicorn Pegasus. Because Christ that's the epitome of every six-year-old horse lover's toy, especially one like me who couldn't sit on a real horse (pony) unaided without falling off. I feel like I could try riding a horse again, maybe just walking not sprinting, because I remember what I did wrong. But then I'd probably show up and go, no. They're good therapy though.
Anyway, getting a toy horse that looked like an actual horse was my goal, but I'd have loved a Swift Wind toy. I had a cardboard cut-out of Spirit I could put paper hook-on accessories on to make it Swift Wind. It just wasn't the same.
Anyway, the new She-Ra turned out to be rad. I've run out of stuff on Netflix etc to watch so I thought screw it (and I was inspired by some DeviantArt, finding out I have a thing for certain "reimagined" cartoon characters has been illuminating) I'll check this out. I really like the aesthetic even if it's borrowed a lot from Last Airbender, probably leaning more into the anime tropes at the same time. I'm in danger of getting sick of this amalgamated style the way I got sick to death of Pixar/Dreamworks style movies. Like, I'm fucking sorry, but you can tell they reuse assets for characters, that under Disney Pixar lost so much creative freedom as it was forced into multiple sequels they swore not to make. So, if this art style is really becoming the norm I'm not going to love it. I was underwhelmed with the cartoon style of Invincible until YMS pointed out it was in the style of Saturday morning cartoons, the deliberate lack of detail and sort of bad lip-sync gives it a certain charm in that regard, plus it ended up being a trauma ride not for kids, had interesting bad guys and flawed good guys and a decent enough hook with a frustrating love triangle, the kind you get from Saturday morning cartoons.
She-Ra, for some reason, has the best baddies, the kind you love to hate. Rather than stick with one dimensional Hordak as our main antagonist, we get a very nuanced, well-structured Catra, who was relegated to henchman in the original. We get a female based rivalry based on betrayal, Catra a better foil for She-Ra, with Hordak kinda hanging out in the background making more tension for Catra overall. Also, we've avoided the villain of the week and they've managed to develop a relatively engaging story with good twists and turns. And the gay kids finally get the ships and reasonable representation they deserve (to be fair, their only NB character's probably a little too camp/sexualised in the way you can oversexualise an androgynous character, but Double Trouble is still an entertaining far cry from the original as well, and they've gone to the trouble (boom-tish) of casting appropriately as well).
We have princesses but they've all been revamped into gutsy teens with various teen traits that don't make them uninteresting in any way, and they all have their awesome powers and realistic flaws. Entrapta has an obvious neuro- divergent slant, Frosta's now a spunky
little 13 year old, Perfuma's more of a neurotic mess disguised as a
hippy, I guess Scorpia's more sympathetic comparatively even if she's sappy and a little too clingy. Mermista's the Daria of the gang. Netossa and Spinarella were put in the background as lesbian wives (Bow also has gay dads, one of which looked a lot like a Dream Daddy character, also you get a short king out of King Micah, who's like half a foot shorter than Angella, they really wanted to cater to all the marginlised groups*). They've made a
deliberate move to really keep with the higher ratio of female characters, Bow, Seahawk and Swift Wing are the bois of the crew, and they're not forced into relationships right away, Bow and Glimmer are good childhood friends, there's not a huge amount of underlying romantic stories between them. Also, Swifty is stuck as Swifty permanently, there's no reverting back to "horsie" mode, and instead of making him a pretentious asshole he's just campy, sarcastic, sassy-ass fun, meanwhile he still gives a shit about everyone and I'm sure he didn't in the original.
Shadow Weaver has a developed arc as a conflicted villain you're still unable to trust in terms of motivations. The Horde is still a problem but they seem more formidable, plus they're humanising the bad guys in terms of "who deserves to live or die in a war". You have moral quandaries over constant good versus evil fights, I'm into the story, there are stakes and tension you didn't get from a lot of older cartoons. What you do get is that hatred for the villain whenever it looks like they're winning, which was such a driving factor of those shows. When you weren't bugging your parents for the toys you were thinking about how evil the bad guys were. Well, these guys are genuine assholes with more than half a dimension. Admittedly, you're not always on She-Ra's side either. She's entertainingly flawed, she's not always winning, much like Buffy, she's the chosen one who is only truly strong alongside her friends. The reveal on her purpose is paced really well, the conflicts later on between the good guys aren't too contrived either.
I honestly have no idea what role the princesses served in the original series, either. I remember Glimmer but honestly she didn't look familiar until the episode they spoofed the original, which was fun. My biggest issue was random rock songs that take up two to three minutes of the episode. Use these sparingly, I beg you. (PS they did). I quit Bob's Burgers from there being a musical number every episode after they did their own "full musical" episode. Honestly, I don't find that shit funny. Simpsons was better at pulling that shit off sporadically, like the Monorail number or the Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart, or See My Vest, or the Flaming Moe's song, or anything off the B-Sharps episode. I don't know what it's like now but they knew when to use a musical number. I don't really understand other cartoons doing this on a regular basis. Like if you have actors who can sing, that's swell and all, but do we need this interlude or were you struggling to fill the time?
So, I guess this show just has to quit it with the musical numbers and keep entertaining me, and I'll stick around until the end. I've kinda spoiled a particular arc because my dumb ass thought the still was someone's DeviantArt ship fantasy and was an actual scene in the show, but I'm looking forward to how we get there based on where we're at now. Some smarts have gone into this, as well as a good dose of charm.
Okay, that actually paid off really well. Semi-spoilers from here, and this is even after I spoiled shit for myself. I feel like this ending was the one She-Ra deserved from the very start, and I mean the VERY start. I doubt this was canon, that it was intended, I don't think they had a plan for the original show, most of those shows probably weren't ever designed for storytelling on this level since they were always cut short by the lack of toy sales (even Avatar suffered for this). But the new version was genuinely great, it was sincerely heartfelt and emotional without being hackneyed or schmaltzy. I was invested in the way I've not really been with other shows. What I assumed would happen didn't, expectations were subverted. There's a redemption for some and the final boss takedown is really special, it's not a drawn out battle, I like that about it. There's a lot of rainbows but it's nice, you feel good and not kinda overloaded with sappiness.
Whoever planned this, (I'll say Noelle Stevenson carried this as its her creation) I take my hat off to you for actually giving She-Ra the ending she was worthy of 30 fucking years ago. I take it all back, she was done dirty and this makes up for everything. I wouldn't even bother with the original since it would be painful to watch with how little they did with She-Ra. You didn't marry her off or ship her with any particular male character. You didn't sacrifice her but made us think she would lose, for all her OPness, there was still a solid character there we were at least invested in and wanted to see succeed. Her "I'm the only one" shit wasn't played out to death like with Buffy, they saved that for the end. There were a lot of dark scenes I think (hope) people wouldn't be upset by, like I get the point of trigger warnings but I don't think there was inherent intention of causing harm, in some ways it refused to pull those punches other shows do.
And if you're a Korra fan, guess what, you got your damn kiss at last. So that's two for the price of one. I think this show is lacking the recognition it deserved for bothering to be diverse enough and turn shit on its head. You can say it was pandering but I'll give it so many passes for how well it did it, I don't think it was condescending in its approach. It played it subtly until there was a sign they could finally wave those flags. This actually would've made me cry in the way Wonder Woman never can or will. I mean, this deserves its Rotten Tomato rating. It deserves its fan base. And I did not feel that way about Wonder Woman in the slightest, or even the Harley Quinn sequel. (I'm not kidding, throw them both in the trash and watch the new Harley Quinn animation, it's really good). They both had an opportunity to do more with what they had, whereas She-Ra really feels like its heart was carried through to the end, left intact. I enjoyed this about as much as I did Avatar. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again, it'd be interesting since I've never felt a huge urge to go back to Avatar or Legend of Korra, I haven't been sucked into other animated shows. For all the anime out there that this borrowed from, it didn't suffer from pacing issues or just being compelled to continue an existing manga until the end of days, because the manga had no end.
Anyway, faith restored for now. Something Netflix got right for once. This was a show for people who really thought those toy commercials were meant to inspire them, for the writers who believed in those stupid characters and wanted to be creative. And for those little girls (and boys - I discovered the other day drag star Courtney Act wanted a She-Ra doll so badly for Christmas, but hilariously, she got a Swift Wind, and I got the She-Ra doll. If we'd been friends, I'd have begged her to swap) who deserved a strong female character who was a princess who kicked ass and still had a heart, it was for you.
She's the hero we all deserved, then and now.
*Speaking of catering I have to say I think some of the cast were like meh they could be about character's alignments. Saying you "do think they are..." doesn't mean they are any more than Lando's pan. It's of no massive consequence now to drop those hints. I really do hope people have gotten what they wanted from this, that it's a normal thing in the show, that people don't feel pandered to.
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