She-Ra and the Princess of Power - sjw bad animation reboot of shera

[Sinner's Sandwich]

You missed the point about nurturing children's minds, which is a euphemism for indoctrinating children's minds. Just like when they screech video games should be educational when what they really mean video games should push a certain political philosophy.

It's always just anti capitalism/lgbtqaxyz/Anti white shit. Nothing else.

 

[The Silver Shroud]

Just replace the Bible with Harry Potter books and televangelists/Joel Olsteen with Steven Universe, and the similarities become striking.

Except trendies are at least trying to preserve western civilization, while Tumblr peeps are trying to actively degrade their own culture.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

This is probably just the autism talking, but whenever people like the above Twitter user write off toy-driven cartoons as worthless, mass-produced shlock, it feels kinda...rude? Like, I know virtually all of them are quite shallow and hastily put together, and the vision comes from a toy company executive rather than a passionate artist. That much is obvious. But you still need people to plan and create every aspect of the show, just as you would for a show that doesn't need to sell toys.

Shows like He-Man and Transformers were not fabricated by robots programmed to create cartoons that rot children's brains, they were made by people. People who probably wanted to do the best they could with what they were given to work with. Just because the show wasn't helmed by an artist with a specific creative vision doesn't mean it was made by people who didn't care.

Again, kind of an exceptional rant, but that's just something that always kinda bugged me. If you really want to talk about how much you hate toy-driven cartoons then aim it at the executive bigwigs who perpetuated the "cartoons are lowbrow kiddy fodder" mindset, don't take it out on the people who were just trying to do their job. Also lol at how that idiot labels nerds as "reactionary" when people like them immediately jump to the same tired, intentionally misrepresentative counterpoints literally every time one of those "lol angry nerds" controversies pops up. 'Cause why have an honest discussion about nostalgia and fandom entitlement when you can pwn an epic nerd strawman and get asspats from your Twitter echo chamber?

Thank you for pointing this out.

I was a kid when these "toy driven cartoons' were coming out, and I never understood the criticism or people turning their nose down on it, especially when the next group of kids after me sperged out over Pokémon, which has got to be the most capitalist thing ever. Catch 'em all! Buy EVERYTHING!

Okay, so the shows I liked as a kid were used to sell toys? So what? Doesn't that just mean more jobs for everybody? The animation industry has more jobs and the toy companies have to employ more people as well. It isn't like there is something malicious or devious at work here. People need to work and this was a big avenue to find work. What's the problem?

And going over these shows I liked as a kid, again, yes, they were commercials for toys, but the ones that I liked and the shows that really stuck with me I felt were made by people that wanted the shows to be more and legitimately tried to make something more.

He-Man, She-Ra, and Optimus Prime weren't just toys or cartoon characters to young me. They were role models. Speaking of Prime, Transformers the Movie taught be about death and loss at a very young age. I know it sounds silly to say that the death of a cartoon robot helped me learn to deal with death, but it did. At 5 years old, it isn't like I had much experience with losing important people in my life, so losing Prime was my first small taste of that.

He-Man and She-Ra typically walked the straight and narrow and taught me good life lessons. Very simple life lessons, but I was also 4-6 years old when I started watching, so it was the perfect time to grasp that kind of stuff. To this day, I still credit an episode of He-Man (where the most powerful man in the universe, without hesitating, got down on his hands and knees and begged a powerful being to let him pass so he could have a chance to help save his friend's life) with teaching me humility and an episode of She-Ra (where she cries for the man that stole her childhood, Hordak, which breaks a spell and saves his life) as how to have empathy for those that have wronged me. That is way more powerful to me than worrying about the sexual habits of characters in a show intended for small children.

And some other examples, Ninja Turtles taught me how to get along with my siblings despite us having different and clashing personalities. Thundercats taught me, though Lion-O's lessons and journey, how to listen and learn from mistakes. And BTW, Thundercats was a great example of a show that I loved that had toys that I hated. I was NOT a fan of the TCats toys when I was a kid. Masters of the Universe and Ninja Turtles? Couldn't get enough of those, but T-Cats? I had a couple, but didn't really care for them that much and didn't go out of my way to play with them. Meh. Loved the show though.

What about GI Joe? I loved that show, but I also loved the comics. I would put Larry Hama's run on GI Joe for Marvel as one of my all time favorite comics series, and that stemmed from a toyline. When people ask me who my favorite comic book superheroes are, I always list Snake Eyes, because he is that good in the comics. So an entire 150+ issue run in the comics gets invalidated somehow because it was conceived as a way to sell toys? I think that is an insult to the work and the quality of writing that went into them.

Sometimes these shows scared me and were my first exposure to horror (Mumm-Ra from TCats, House of Shokoti from MOTU, and a lot of The Real Ghostbusters). Sometimes, these shows made me laugh (Again, Real Ghostbusters), and most of them gave me my first taste of action and adventure. I keep going back to He-Man, but that was the first time I was really exposed to the idea of mixing sci-fi with sword and sorcery, which just blew my mind.

And what about the people that worked on these shows as writers? J. Michael Straczynski, Buzz Dixon, Paul Dini, Larry Ditillio, Bob Forward, Michael Reeves, and various others are very talented writers that took their work seriously. Why else would Straczynski get upset over the network making changes to Real Ghostbusters, something that he helped develop into a huge success? Yes, these shows were made in factory like settings and fast paced environments to make the content, and it was done with censors looking over their shoulders and limitations in animation, but there was clearly thought and effort put in.

Long spergy rant on my part, and I understand nostalgia comes with some rose colored glasses, but I feel like the whole "They were toy shows? Shut up!" is a snobbish response. Especially when I see shows like the new She-Ra. Okay, my shows were made to sell toys and your shows are meant to cater to neckbeards and tumblr weirdos who are, at best, obnoxious and, at worst, deviants I would never allow near a child.

 

[Miang]

I'm sure it's been mentioned already, but there's a neat documentary on Netflix about Masters of the Universe ("Power of Grayskull") that gets into the history of the franchise. I watched it a while ago and thought it was very well put-together (they even got Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella to give interviews for it), and I can tell that the nu-Ra fandom hasn't watched a second of it.

A few things stood out to me:

1. With Masters of the Universe, the toys came first and the cartoons came second. Common knowledge to MOTU fans, but apparently not to great minds like RS Benedict. While the cartoons were obviously tasked to sell more toys, it required no small amount of creativity to come up with them in the storylines. Including a cheesy "lesson of the day" requires you to sit down and construct a story where that lesson can be relevant - not to think of what new toy you can sell.

2. Lou Scheimer, a father to a girl himself, pushed hard to involve more women in the Filmation studio well before She-Ra entered the picture. He even had his wife Jay and his daughter Erika (more on her in a second) voice characters on He-Man. So when people like these nu-Ra fans denigrate the old shows, they denigrate the work of some of the first women in the Western animation industry.

3. Erika Scheimer is openly gay, described Filmation as "one of the gayest places in town", felt comfortable there, and her father and mother were both extremely tolerant. In the documentary, she has only good things to say about the experience and clearly takes great pride in what it meant for young girls who were fans of the MOTU. So keep that in mind when nu-Ra fans bash the old shows, too. They are dismissing the work of LGBT staff who lived in the 1980s, a time they routinely demonize as less tolerant than today.

4. Mattel developed She-Ra because their research showed, and I quote from a slide in the documentary: "Girls would like a line of toys designed for them to have primarily female characters." Actually, here's the full screenshot from the documentary:

In order to appeal to girls, Mattel first had to reach out to young girls and grown women (mothers) to figure out what they liked. Even before that, they made up a third of He-Man viewers. So Masters of the Universe was arguably one of the first animated franchises to pay attention to the interests of young girls. Yet this seems to be totally absent from the nu-Ra fandom's opinions of the early shows.

And I guess my point in all this is that dumbasses like RS Benedict (whose website bio is one of the crassest things I've ever read) and the nu-Ra fans who turn their noses up at the "clumsy" and "problematic" old cartoons have no idea what they actually owe to those cartoons and the wide variety of people (including women and LGBT) who worked on them. It's funny: they should love how welcoming MOTU/Funimation was to work and insights from people of demographics besides those eeeeeeevil Straight White Men, but, well, here we are.

No good work goes unspurned by the perpetually miserable.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

Do you think the show is smart enough to pull it off? Speaking of Glimmer, I find her hair kind of cute.

Well, honestly I probably don't dislike the show as much as most of the people here. Don't get me wrong, it has plenty of glaring flaws but over all I don't think it's all that bad. I like it better than the original at least, though that's not saying much. Though, that said I'm a lot more forgiving than most when it comes to animation if they can make a halfway decent story out of it.

I liked most of season one with the exception of the final episode. I personally think the animation fuck ups and continuity errors are part of the charm for me in the same vain as the absurd and creepy things in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The final episode of season one I felt killed any stakes there might have been from the build up. It was a very My Little Pony ending for what had up to that point in my opinion been a semi-serious low budget Dreamworks style adventure.

The second season has to be the worst so far. It was the first time I got genuinely disgusted with the writing staff. Now more than ever it felt like the characters were winning where they really shouldn't be capable of doing so. The immaturity and spite was really ramped up in this season resulting in the characters being horrible to each other and then succeeding in spite of the fact that the enemy has every advantage. There were no consequences and no stakes leaving the season feeling like hollow filler. Fun fact: This season didn't have a single man on the staff but season one did, as did season three.

Speaking of season three, it's easily my favorite so far. They fixed most if not all of the problems I had with seasons one and two save for the ever goofy animation in some spots that make it painfully clear that they have one good artist for specific short scenes and some Korean guy for everything else. Anyways, this season had high stakes and took time to help us relate with most of the main cast. It did a lot to humanize the villains too who really have always been the heart of the series in an odd way. I do wish they wouldn't lean so hard into basically everyone being gay but for me I guess it isn't such a big deal. I mean Entrapta seems to be budding a 'friendly' relationship with Hordak that borders romance soooo that's kind of interesting. They're definitely playing things very fast and loose and on some level I kind of like that.

Overall I don't think it's as bad as everyone wants to make it out to be, but realistically that's not why we're here. We're here to make fun of it. However, to answer your question: I think it all really depends on the staff. I think they've made smart decisions in the past. Specifically I think the villains are incredibly likable,especially by comparison to our heroes who are honestly a bit bland. So I guess they DO know how to write well, they just refuse to some cases or prioritize propaganda.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

Just replace the Bible with Harry Potter books and televangelists/Joel Olsteen with Steven Universe, and the similarities become striking.

No shit. These people hate Baby Boomers and their parents but what they fail to realize is that they ARE them. They make the same mistakes in different ways and contexts, but overall it's the same thing. They're just doing what every generation of children has done for the last 60 or so years, they're rebelling. The irony is that they think that it makes them unique and their parents and the baby boomers think they're so different too, but that's only because they can't see the bigger historical significance. They're simply playing the roles society has told them they were meant to play. A product of society in which people have forgotten how to think for themselves and evaluate their thoughts.

 

[Son of Sparda 84]

Fuck off Ren

 

[Xerxes IX]

View attachment 911932
Fuck off Ren

Assuming a "dude" made this because a woman couldn't make these designs, a sexist MAN who can't stand the idea of lesbians or girls he finds personally unattractive must have, I see.

Interesting because her She-ra redesign isn't even that "un woke", she has more of a muscular/amazonian body type and her outfit even covers up more than the remake one does with the pants. Not to mention that in any other context (ie not replacing their beloved nu-ra), Twitter lesbians would be going crazy over her short haired (and therefore butch-coded) Adora design.

 

[Bread Fetishist]

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Fuck off Ren

No it isn’t.

 

[Hummingbird]

IT's that time again...

 

[PopRocks]

IT's that time again...

You know, I would feel more Catra's predicament, if only she wasn't such a mega bitch.

 

[Private Pyle]

View attachment 911932
Fuck off Ren

Weird how modestly clothed women is somehow the same as Kill la Kill.
Seriously, how can you look at this pic and immediately think “FANSERVICE”?

 

[LN 910]

Oh I thought it was because of “anime face”. Guess having chins the size of the average she-ra character’s waist makes you really defensive when someone’s draws sharp edges

 

[madethistocomment]

Weird how modestly clothed women is somehow the same as Kill la Kill.
Seriously, how can you look at this pic and immediately think “FANSERVICE”?

Because they hate healthy women's bodies and think that even hinting at the fact that a woman has a figure is the same as them parading around in lingerie.

 

[Private Pyle]

Because they hate healthy women's bodies and think that even hinting at the fact that a woman has a figure is the same as them parading around in lingerie.

It’s bizarre how hateful people have become of the female form. I actually remember seeing someone praise a show for drawing the women without any hips or breasts.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

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Fuck off Ren

why doesn't this bitch have a thread yet?

 

[Private Pyle]

why doesn't this bitch have a thread yet?

The bitch isn’t worth the extra attention.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Okay, so the shows I liked as a kid were used to sell toys? So what?

What kid's show/cartoon didn't in the 80s and 90s? As someone else pointed out, a number of these franchises had separate comic universes -- some of which existed before the TV show -- meaning the toys predated the show. Unfortunately, social media spergs and shills consider facts, logic, and reason as dirty words and online hate speech and they seem to think commercialism is the ultimate moral sin. I wonder how they'd spin it if nuShe-Ra were to start producing action figures contrary to their collective anti-patriarchy, anti-capitalist mindset?

Yes, these shows were made in factory like settings and fast paced environments to make the content, and it was done with censors looking over their shoulders and limitations in animation, but there was clearly thought and effort put in.

It's probably safe to say that any cartoon of the era had episodes that were clunkers or widely panned and they likely were produced as quickly as the voice actors and writing/animation staff could crank them out. However, everyone involved largely enjoyed what they did and tried to make the most of the experience. Heck, voice actors performing characters whose traits are different than their own likely had to work harder than usual to portray those characters properly and plausibly -- something that helped them grow in their careers.

Including a cheesy "lesson of the day" requires you to sit down and construct a story where that lesson can be relevant - not to think of what new toy you can sell.

Not every cartoon that had the required moral of the day at the end had one that tied into the episode's events (MASK comes to mind), but the point that not everything about 80s cartoons was focused exclusively on toy sales & promotion still stands.

If I recall, both He-Man and She-Ra ended around the same time and ended before the toys that corresponded to the final seasons/episodes could be made and sold. If we accept the nuShills' claims that 80s cartoons were solely about pushing and selling toys, why would the the shows be cancelled before the all of the toys associated with them could be made and sold? if that was the case, the writers and powers that be would have simply drawn out the shows -- even if it meant producing garbage or filler episodes until the end -- merely to get the last toys out and m1lk the franchises for every last dollar.

Meanwhile, people who praise the reboots for being progressive or woke overlook the fact the originals were far more groundbreaking or progressive for the time. As @Miang pointed out, Erika Scheimer worked during a time when her being a lesbian was something that wasn't yet widely accepted. Still, she was supported by her parents and a design studio where being gay was apparently seen as no big deal despite the prevailing attitudes of the time. That's more progressive than most of what passes as such now, and -- to use SJW terms against the naysayers -- it seems like a form of erasure to ignore the contributions of people such as Erika who faced more ostracism or blackballing from the industry than anyone would today over being a lesbian.

 

[Private Pyle]

I wonder how they'd spin it if nuShe-Ra were to start producing action figures contrary to their collective anti-patriarchy, anti-capitalist mindset?

Funny thing is, Nu She-Ra toys actually do exist.

Amazon.com: She-ra and the Princesses of Power - She-ra 11 1/2 Inch Poseable Doll: Gateway

Amazon.com: She-ra and the Princesses of Power - She-ra 11 1/2 Inch Poseable Doll: Gateway

www.amazon.com

Does this mean the new show is just a plug for toys and accessories for girls to play with? You know, the exact thing fans give the old show shit for.

 

[Son of Sparda 84]

Finished all the seasons of this reboot. Its meh

Catra is the best part of the show

I HATE BOW. SO SO SOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH

Adora is a lame MC

The animation is a total miss

Season 3 is a slight improvement