What I'm Not Watching: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Yes, OK, show for little girls. But He-Man was awesome, Boris Vallejo & Robert E Howard brought to life, and classic She-Ra wasn't bad, glossy-looking but often smarter than the main series; not having Orko made it better by default.

I can't stand the art style of this new show, though. Everyone looks stupid, like that Steven Universe show the kids like (the kids are wrong). Most backgrounds are blank pastel voids (there are a few matte paintings which aren't bad), their faces have a weird spray-paint pattern under their eyes, eyes are bigger than anime but flatter. Really just a hideous look. Cartoony works for things like Adventure Time, but this half-real/half-plastic-toy look is creepy. Many characters have a boneless wobbling "walk" that would look silly on Jake in Adventure Time, let alone a supposed Human.

Editing and continuity is awful. Bow will have 2 arrows in his quiver one shot, and 5 seconds later there's 4; he makes one more shot and he's out of arrows. The sword changes size semi-randomly between shots. There's mirroring in scenes rather than redraw them left-to-right. Just shoot the animators, seriously.

Starting with Adora as a Horde soldier is interesting. Kind of a "Hans, are we the baddies?" bit with Catra and the spoopy shadow witch. But we don't get enough time in the Horde's "Fright Zone", there should be 2-4 eps of just them doing Horde stuff.

Sadly, the show then gets Adora to meet Glimmer, the most annoying whiny "princess" yet, and a good argument for sterilizing "royalty" so they can't make any more of them, and Bow, a boy so dumb he doesn't even have a name, just his weapon. I guess his brothers Shovel and Pitchfork had to stay home on the farm. They steal She-Ra's horse from a village of dead satyrs and wisecrack about it. Too dark for the tone, man.

New transformation sequence is classic-cheesy, but the She-Ra form is still a little girl and in the same crappy style as everything else.

Hard pass on this.