She-Ra and The Princesses Of Power

I just re-watched this cartoon & realized that i forgot to post my original review of this show. below it is my updated review.

Jul 6, 2021

I own the original She-Ra cartoon on DVD & all the She-Ra action figures (& fashions). I suffered through all the netflix episodes to see for myself how Dreamworks ruined She-Ra.

I'll start with the positive parts of the show that I liked:

Not keeping Adora's transformation into She-Ra, a secret

The action sequences were well-done

The powered rebellion members are all princesses of their kingdoms

Seeing so many princesses in so many episodes

Incorporating Mara from New Adventures.

Limiting Madame Razz to a few episodes

Hordak & Etheria were cut off from the Horde

The idea of Horde Prime being the original of a bunch of clones

Having Catra be an actual force captain

The Crimson Waste

Glimmer using one of her powers

Scorpia's personality

The theme song

And now for the negative parts of the show. Of course this list is longer, I didn't set out for it be longer, the show was just hell-bent on pushing it's SJW propaganda agenda in every single episode that it overshadows anything positive they did. Things I hated:

she-ra is gay

catra is gay

huntara is gay

the crimson waste waitress is gay

netossa is gay

spinerella is gay

Two gay dads for Bow

1 gay dad looks exactly like original bow

Bow was blackwashed

lonnie was blackwashed

mermista was blackwashed

she-ra's boy shorts costume

catra's thrift store scraps costume

double trouble was turned into an alien

double trouble's entire personality, speech pattern & mannerisms

jewelstar was turned into a boy

peekablue was turned into a boy

peekablue never really appeared.

flutterina was turned into a fairy

flutterina never really appeared

octavia only appears in flashbacks

straight white males were turned into annoying buffoons: seahawk, kyle, swiftwind

Tung Lashor appeared only to be mocked

scorpia was shooting electricity

glimmer mostly just teleported

glimmer had to recharge her power

glimmer was using magic

glimmer didn't use her light powers

castaspella was barely used

king micah was over-used

beast island was nonsensical

the prom episode

every single villain except horde prime was redeemed in the end:

entrapta was forgiven & turned into a hero

scorpia was forgiven & turned into a hero

catra was forgiven & turned into a hero

shadow weaver was forgiven & turned into a hero

hordak was forgiven & turned into a hero

"wrong hordak" was forgiven & turned into a hero

double trouble was forgiven & turned into a hero

the show just glosses over the fact that catra & the horde on etheria destroyed etherian lives & killed etherians, in order to make all the females into heroes at the end.

it intentionally confuses children, conflating friendship with sexual attraction. catra & adora were just friends, who were raised together as sisters, from a young age. it's almost incestous what the show did.

the shows sends the additional message that it's justified to be violent & selfish if someone else wants to pursue their own goal. they showed, catra punhching & scratching adora/she-ra in almost every episode, until the final 13 episodes, because adora was trying to be her own person.

catra was a violent, controlling, hurtful, selfish lesbian. she never should have been forgiven. the show portrayed an abusive relationship as loving.

i re-watched the series on my DVDs after it was pulled from streaming & a few of my opinions have changed:

1) I appreciate the redemption of characters. People don't have to remain Evil. Of course, people should be punished for their past deeds & pay penance. the show didn't really do that, which is why it bothered me so much the 1st time i watched it. 

2) i like how they slowly brought out the villains: shadow weaver, then hordak, then horde prime

3) the background music on the show was also good, i didn't notice it the 1st time i watched.

4) i noticed a couple of lore mistakes. (a) In the beginning they state that the Horde members are mostly crew members from Hordak's ship which landed on Etheria-L, but in later seasons they make it seem like Horde members were native Etherians. (b) When preparing for the All Princess Ball, Adora studied the Star Sisters, but then in the last season they are aliens from another world that everyone meets for the 1st time.

5) i hated the way She-Ra broke the sword of protection (with a stabbing motion instead of breaking it along the flat side) & i hated how she created a magic sword with a costume change.

6) it's telling how they made the two black characters attracted to the only two overweight characters.

7) instead of inventing rogelio & kyle, they could have used octavia & shakra

8)  i can't understand how viewers think Catra is cool, she's a selfish, whiny, loser who is abusive & anti-social. she pushed people away & doesn't understand helping others. even in the last episode she says "what are you doing?" when someone is coming to the rescue. she genuinely doesn't understand doing the right things or sacrificing yourself for others. or being heroic, even in the last episode after she's joined the good side.

people would have noticied that this show was actually well-written, (for example, at first i hated double trouble but he was written well.), if they had not focused so much on misandry, homosexuality, attacking old fans & lesbianism (spoiler alert: it's sapphic love that saves the day in the last episode, not heroism nor determination nor honor). 

i enjoyed it more the 2nd time, maybe i was able to have a more open mind re-watching it this time because this cartoon with it's heavy handed agenda has been forgotten by almost everyone & has had zero cultural impact.

The Scepter and The Sword

Masters of the Universe Revolution

S01E05

The Sailor Moon transformation returned for the last episode. They avoided it the last 4 episodes but they gave him some lion motif with the symbol from the CGI cartoon. That was a mistake, the symbol they've been using from the original battle armor is what they should have continued to use. His mullet looked terrible. Teela got even more powerful as He-Man gave her some of the power of Grayskull like he does with Battle Cat. So technically he saved her from being consumed by the 3 ancient gods & she got yet another outfit. Are they really going to make toys out of all these variant looks?

Evil-Lyn is made a cosmic enforcer? That was incredibly stupid. Not only was she evil her entire life, doing bad things as Skeletor's girlfriend for decades, she killed everyone in heaven, but because she fought along the other guys, she gets made a cosmic enforcer!? Then they made her the blue cosmic enforcer from the comic book who was already named Apokrifa. This cartoon does not respect any existing ideas. They should just make blackternate Andra an enforcer too, after she becomes president of Eternia of course. That scene with everyone worshipping her was really out of place & stopped the whole episode as everyone bowed down to the diversity hire.

Granymyr the Monstrous gets to go to heaven too because he fought one robot? Seeing Monstroid was cool, I think the other monsters might be from the old Christmas special, but this show isn't that good for me to care enough to confirm.

Everyone is excited about Despara because they want to see She-Ra. Despara is available to be the next Big Bad before she's revealed as Adora & King Hiss is also still available as a Big Bad, but no, this terrible show decided to make Hordak survive an impalement through the heart, another stupid decision.

We get a shot of heaven that basically says "look at all the people that this awful show murdered." What's the point of dying if they can all come back & punch things!? - also stupid but I guess it's necessary in order to have yet another person rescue He-Man. What's the final count in only these 5 episodes? He-Man was saved by Randor, saved by blackternate Andra & saved by Keldor. tHaNkS Kevin Smith!

The Dogs of War

Masters of the Universe Revolution
S01E04

Everyone keeps acting like Evil-Lyn is a good guy & blackternate Andra rescues Adam because she's the best at everything, and suddenly Orko's magic is so powerful he can defeat Leech, Grizzlor and Mantenna all by himself, even though we just watched them kill Rokkon in the last episode! Just ridiculous.  Orko is as strong as She-Ra now. And it looks like Teela, not He-Man, is going to save the day again, just like last season. And like last season: what has He-Man actually done?

The only good part of this episode was Mattel fixing failmations demotion of Skeletor from the Lord of Destruction into a lowly "acolyte" of Hordak. The retcon is that Hordak couldn't understand & wield magic so Hordak needed someone else to do it. Not bad, I always hated that diminishing of Skeletor by the She-Ra cartoon. Then Skeletor killed Hordak, which was actually very good. It would have been better if Skeletor had restored himself using Havoc magic to get rid of the Skeletek parts. but still, seeing Hordak be killed by Skeletor is something I always wanted to see. It's also good to see Teela looking feminine like the old cartoon.

Mother board was killed too and Man-at-Arms looks like Gladiator but he called himself Man-at-War instead of War Wraith, another missed opportunity. But I'm not really a fan of Man-at-Arms like some people are.

All the little Easter eggs don't impress me as much as they seem to do everyone else who keep overlooking the plot mistakes & problems.

More Thing in Heaven and Eternia

Masters of the Universe Revolution
S01E03

There is no Heaven on Eternia, it's called Preternia. Do they even keep track of their own show? instead of showing us a character that's never been animated we get Rokkon who was in the old cartoon. Rokkon doesn't create full rock armor, his armor is on the back parts, not covering his face & he turns into a large asteroid, but I shouldn't expect these people to know anything about He-man. They think because they put Saryn & Tytus in a wall mural that viewers will forget all their other mistakes, ugh. Last season Teela was able to defeat Evil-lyn - who had the full power of Grayskull - without training to learn Zoar magic but for no good reason she needs to train in Snake magic from Evil-Lyn, who has absolutely zero connection to Snake magic. Instead of showing Skelecons at Snake Mountain, we get anonymous people in those dumb robes.

So they are using the Keldor story after all, that's good. It was good to see He-Man using his axe with the battle armor. But the easy way that Screech got into the castle was dumb, maybe because Teela was using Ka instead of Zoar? But I shouldn't try to explain away their mistakes. Where is Blast Attack and Trap Jaw, the actual tech bad guys, instead we get cyborgs of characters who were in the 80s show. Evil-Lyn is still annoying and Teela is suddenly an inexperienced amatuer taking advice from a murderer, it's too much of a difference from last season.

blackternate Andra created the battle armor, what else can she do? Why bother asking Gwildor for help, I'm sure fake Andra can do it. All right, finally He-Man is going to go on the offensive & attack Snake Mountin, but that was disappointing too. The fighting at Snake mountain was short and from far away because they spent more time showing Gwildor and Orko meeting, this cartoon is for adults, that's not what people are interested in. Who was sitting on the edge of their seat thinking "I hope we get to see Orko & Gwildor on screen together!" (nobody)

Ascension

 Masters of the Universe Revolution
S01E02

So they brought the Keldor, Miro story from 200x into it, that was cool, and Shatner was great. But Adam just crowns him without any kind of verification of his story? 

Keldor was on some random surfboard instead of it being a Jet Sled, that was a missed opportunity. blackternate Andra is one again the best, of course only she could have shot the big robot in the right spot. Nobody else could do it. This was another wasted opportunity, instead of making the robot a huge Twistoid, it's some random forgettable robot.

Genocide queen: Evil-Lyn killed everyone in heaven and she's punished by being exiled to Trolla, but she's on Eternia violating that! Teela barely reacts to seeing the war criminal & instead of just imprisoning her on sight with magic starts chatting with her like they are friends. More girl-boss stupidity left over from last season.

I also thought it was presumptuous of Granynyr to assume he was going to heaven. At least he's not fat in this one. I admit the reveal of Motherboard as Skeletek was a surprise. So I was also surprised by Keldor being Skeletor, but I would have preferred the Keldor storyline. So stealing the crown is pretty lame because nobody is going to honor that, Keldor, brother of Randor, son of Miro was made king not "whoever wears this crown" so this plan seems dumb, unless it's to make people lose faith in Adam's decision making skills?

Even for Kings

Masters of the Universe Revolution
S01E01

This episode starts out ok, we finally get to see Rio Blast animated but he has the corny lines "even cowboys get the pews. as in pew pew pew" because it's written by kevin smith. black-washed Andra rides into battle smiling because she's a Mary Sue & she can't get hurt even though she's just human, so it's all fun for her. She also built a hulkbuster armor suit which King Randor wears into battle in Subternia. Then later in the very same episode Randor tell Adam that he can't go on adventures as king, even though we literally just watched the king go on an adventure. 

Teela & He-Man are flirting now, which makes this Teela seem like a completely different character from what we saw in Revelation. Last time, she didn't even care that Adam was dead, she was still a bitch to him in heaven(!) Instead of using the Blaster Hawk, they have some new birdplane. Teela is going to restore Preternia using Zoar, Ka & Havoc magic. It would have been nice if they mentioned Horokoth but the Havoc is from the CGI show so no complaints there.

Cyborg Skeletor & Motherboard are terrible ideas. I was never a fan of Hordak so I'm not excited about Hordak, but that's just me. I don't know how they are going to explain Keldor showing up, considering how the Revelation comic book returned Skeletor to his mini-comic origin of him being from a race of people from another world.

Just a "meh" episode, it would have been better if Scareglow stayed normal & actually fought He-Man instead of turning into a weird crab (that made no sense at all), while the other guys fought the shadow demons & other creatures. 

Comes with Everything You See Here

Masters of the Universe: Revelation
S01E10

He-man finally showed up in the very last episode of this garbage show. of course he's a Man so this show did it's best to make him as ineffectual as possible, because this has been the Teela & Evil-Lyn show from the beginning.

According to his show, you can keep the power of Grayskull once you get it. Dark-Lyn dropped the sword, Prince Adam picked it up & turned into He-Man but Dark-lyn remained, just stupid. Is there an infinite amount of power? Does He-Man only call for a percentage? Did Dark-Lyn's power decrease? The show doesn't care about things like that.

Then He-Man gave the power to Skeletor. so now there were 3 champions of Grayskull all at the same time. How incredibly stupid. but of course, the two men together still couldn't beat grrrl power. Sorceress Teela defeated her. The Sorceress who was always just "the guardian of Grayskull & didn't have as much power as The Champion" saves the day, because vagina. Remember, this is the Teela & Evil-Lyn show.

Orko is now some ribbon magician?? that was strange. Evil-lyn then keeps him from going back to subternia, how? Then she's forgiven even though she killed everyone in Heaven!! Just when I though they dropped that dumb tech storyline Trap-Jaw & Tri-Klops are able to overpower Skeletor even though he's back at full strength, for motherHorde? ugh.

After an entire episode where Man-At-Arms was tHe mOsT dAnGeRoUs mAn iN eTeRnIa, Andra turned out to be stronger than him, again because vagina. She was made the new Man-At-Arms even though she was only in one battle for the king, I guess because Clamp Champ is dead & this time, blck vagina. 

What a terrible show. The action we all hoped to see was lacking, a cool looking He-man that we all hoped to see was in only 2 episodes, all the characters that we hoped to see didn't appear & the few that did, were mocked or killed. If you think this was good, you should be embarassed that you have such poor taste in storytelling.