She-Ra and the Princess of Power S1 Review (Netflix Original Series) · 4:01pm Nov 14th, 2018
Hey Adora.
Before we get into this review, I have a confession to make:
All I know about She-Ra from the original series is, well...her name. And Hordak and the Evil Horde. And her transformation phrase. You see, where I lived growing up? We got She-Ra for maybe all of a week or two. And I was never the biggest He-Man fan, so I more or less just ignored She-Ra as a kid.
So this review won't be one of those "how does it compare to the original?" things. This will be a completely nonprejudicial review, based on nothing but the new series itself, on its own merits.
With that out of the way, let's get to it:
If you're in the same boat I am and don't know any version of the tale, it goes like this: A teenage girl named Adora who's a soldier for the Evil Horde learns, one day, that the brainwashing propaganda she's been indoctrinated with her entire life is a lie, and the "evil rebel princesses" she's been trained to fight are the good guys. She finds a legendary magic sword which transforms her into She-Ra, a powerful warrior intended to champion the cause of all things good. Now determined to stop the Horde, Adora befriends the various princesses/warriors of Etheria to fight for peace.
So with that out of the way, let's talk about the show in depth.
STORY:
The story writing and pacing here is amazing. In one 13-episode season, we learn a lot about all the main characters, their pasts, their motivations, their fears. We watch Adora go from Force Captain of the Horde to She-Ra, Princess of Power. We watch her struggle with her new role as she tries to assemble the Princesses to fight the Horde. We meet a bunch of characters and get a ton of adventures, culminating in an epic battle to protect Bright Moon's Runestone from the Horde. We're also steeped in series lore, with mind-boggling depth given to the world of Etheria over the course of thirteen 24-minute episodes.
CHARACTERS:
Every character we meet in this vision of Etheria has depth, quirks, and are as fully fleshed out as time allows. We get to know most of the Princesses, and the main characters get a lot of attention and complexity. Even relatively minor characters aren't simple walking paper dolls.
And boy, is this cast memorable and diverse. Just among the Princesses and not even touching the villains and side characters, you've got:
- The adorkable newbie hero with a tendency to lampshade and snark everything around her
- The try-hard with parental issues who goes out of her way to cover her insecurities with bluster and tends to be a bit of a butt monkey
- The third leg of a Three Amigos triumvirate who's usually level-headed and sensible but also has faults, fears, and failures
- A mermaid princess/waterbender with a laconic personality that's essentially a mix of Maud Pie and Inky Rose
- A love freak flower princess who's surprisingly one of the more competent when it's mission time
- A frosty, imperious literal Ice Princess who commands (and demands) respect
- A scatterbrained gadgeteer genius who's obsessed with inventions, science, and machinery and maaaaaaaybe doesn't have the best grasp of the whole morality thing which is partly how she ends up defecting to the Horde before the season ends
And a goddamn talking horse.
Of course, villains need to have depth and complexity too, and there's no shortage of that on the Horde side, though it's come at the expense, thus far, of a relatively low concentration of named Horde members who've had screen time. The antagonist with the greatest amount of screen presence and character development so far is Adora's childhood friend and partner, Catra. Catra is either the Zuko or the Azula for this series, depending on how you look at it.
WRITING, ANIMATION, HUMOR, ETC.
The writing for She-Ra is solid, and shows some definite influence from the two Avatar series, most notably Korra. The character designs and animation are clean, fluid, and engaging--if I have one complaint about the character designs, it's that almost every character has a dark patch across the bridge of their nose and under their eyes that makes it look like Etheria's gene pool was seeded by trash pandas at some point. The action scenes are well rendered. The humor is on point, with a good mix of awkward teen humor, character quirk humor, slapstick, and general situational humor. She-Ra keeps a light, quirky tone at almost all times except when things are at their most serious.
And when things get serious, they get serious.
Oh, and Adora makes some of the best crazy faces.
OVERALL/CONCLUSION:
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is an absolute must watch for fans of MLP:FiM and/or Avatar: the Last Airbender. Or, y'know, She-Ra fans. I binged all of season one in a single evening and I'm anxiously awaiting season two already.
For the honor of Grayskull!
First you had my attention
Now...
You have my erection.
-DBZA Perfect Cell
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Don't you mean attention?
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You know when I'm about!!
I've only seen the Netflix trailer at some point. Here's the big thing that stuck out for me (and not in a good way.)
In the original series, stock footage and all, Adora is a twenty-something adult who takes on some fairly serious issues while trying to save her world, all while balancing the needs of Etheria with the fact that she has a whole family she only just discovered she had on another world, who she can't see if she's going to protect her world.
The advert I saw shows an eight year old running around with a sword and supposedly the power of Grayskull.
I was not impressed.
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Then you're making a poor judgment call.
So which one's the tsundere?
Moth, your recommendation got me to take a look. No regrets.
After first three episodes, I can safely say it's not nearly as bad as I imagined (I had LOW expectations), so I'm going to watch more and reserve my final judgement. It's not boring, so there's that going for it.
Also Cattra is worst girl in the best way and I want to pet her. She'll rip my face, but it's a small price to pay.
Just popped over to Netflix to watch the trailer, and yeah, I'm in.
Sidenote, if you liked this, you should watch the Dragon Prince. It's very S1 of Avatar.
I did watch the original growing up and I just watched through season one last night. I can do some comparisons.
1. For all the people complaining about the animation compared to the original just stop. The original was 90% stock footage. Filmation's definining characteristic was it was cheap as hell. That isn't to say that the new series isn't guilty of this at all as they like to pull that same transformation sequence out each episode.
That said, the new character designs are more expressive and more varied than the old ones. My biggest complaint is they make characters look younger than they are for some reason. While people like to point at Adora the most with this I think the biggest offender of looking too childlike is Glimmer and the Horde training recruits. They do look like teens, but younger teens instead of older teens. The original isn't blameless here though either as it tries to make everyone look like an adult in their late 20s early 30s and then claim they're a older teen. This set an unreasonable expectation for how characters should look.
2. Storywise the new series is strictly better. The old series was designed with no ongoing story in mind. Character development was largely non-existent in the original and many of the characters were downright annoying in the original to be honest. An example would be this one actually made me want to find out more about Madam Raz while the original made me want to cringe every time she came on screen--even as a kid I felt that way.
I'm eager to see what comes in season two.
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Dragon Prince is next on my hit list after I finish Assassination Classroom, which I really need to get back to after I rewatch She-Ra.
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Mermista is the closest to tsundere we've got.
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Now there just needs to be a femslash pairing, or at least hints of one.
Move aside ponies, there's a new Best Princess in town... Entrapta!
Is this the series most known for making She-Ra and the other princesses a bunch of 12 year old boys in drag? Because I've been really hesitant to give that a look, especially since I don't have an active subscription to Netflix.
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There already is! Princess Spinnerella and Princess Nettossa are a couple, and the currently unseen Sweetbee and Peekablue have been outright stated to be dating.
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Dragon Prince was a chore to watch, especially to Avatar fan. Unless you actually like animation at 10 frames per second. No, I'm not joking, it really looks like a video game cutscene on a potato PC. And that's not even the biggest problem it has.
That said, Rotten Tomato gave it a 100% positive ratings (out of 9 reviews, so not very reliable) so what do I know...
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Maybe it's because I have terrible vision, but the animation didn't look that bad to me. And I thought everything else about it was great.
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Netossa and Spinnerella are a couple, and there's another couple we haven't seen yet. Also, there's hints of it with like half the cast.
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Please don't regurgitate all the 4chan/Twitter hate for the show. That whole mess is really, really toxic.
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We'll have to politely disagree about this and never talk about it again
I'd stayed away from the series at first, partly because I'd never been familiar with the original or He-Man, and partly because I was put off by some assholes bitching about the new show
But now I'll definitely keep this new series in mind 
Btw, did anybody else notice the Star Wars reference in episode 5?
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What, you mean the blatant rip of the Cantina scene, or Sea Hawk making a boast parodying the infamous Kessel Run boast?
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The boast is what cements it, the rest of the scene seemed pretty generic to me, but then I haven't watched A New Hope for some time.
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Because I like to desk-check my assumptions, I watched the season. It's not as bad as I thought at first, although I still think they messed up the She-Ra transformation. To be clear, I'm not on the "oh, she's not hot," bandwagon. That's irrelevant. What I don't like is that they went out of their way to make her into a girl-manchild (is there such a word for girls?)
Adora looks like she's about 16 or so. Most of the other girls do, with the exception of Glimmer, who looks like she's still toting around most of her baby fat. But the moment Adora transforms, she becomes a six-foot 8-year old. It's embarrassing. And more than a little disturbing.
I get that the goal was to move away from the over-sexualized twentysomething She-Ra. But if you're going to have a 16 year old in a transformation sequence, at least make the finished product look like a 16 year old! Not a prepubescent with an unnaturally early growth spurt!
The show gets props for having Shego in the show. I mean, it's so blatant, I'm surprised Scorpina isn't just called Shego by everyone present. There's even a wonderful call-out the first time she fires a heavy tank blaster, when the entire top deck - and Scorpina - are recolored black and green by the energy fire.
I do like that there appears to be some unresolved romantic tension between Catra and Adora. Even while they're slowly drifting apart, things happen which reinforce how much they still care about each other. No clue how that's going to turn out, but I'm sure it'll matter eventually.
Ive seen the original. Im trying to make the time to see what netflix has done with it. Given there track record im hoping to be impressed.
Just finished watching, and my only real complaint is, like Voltron, no use of the epic original theme.
Looking forward to where things go from here though.
Just got back from accidentally binging it.
I love everybody in this show.
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ESPECIALLY Adora, Catra, and Entrapta. Oh, and Mermista.
I know, right?
So, I've heard She-Ra is a lesbian or something, and people be calling this show "woke garbage". I mean, I never really watched She-Ra, especially as the He-Man I grew up with was the 2002 version, but I',m willing to give this a shot
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I mean, I know Shadbase joked that She-Ra was being played by Ben Tennyson, but still, the art style is pretty good, vibrant. I reminds of another show, but I can;t quite put my finger on which
I would honestly give it a try if it didn't look like Tumblr giving itself a hand job.
I've seen clips and the art had no depth to it. Everyone has the same face, I can't tell anyone apart.
I've watched the original She-Ra so watching the reboot made me compare the two yet I must say that the reboot did an excellent job with the source material. There is better character development, character personalities, lore, humour, and more. I also like how core principles and affiliations from the original were brought over. As such, I knew how certain characters would turn out by the end based on knowledge of 1980s She-Ra.
I just finished it, and I loved it too. I'm wouldn't put it at Avatar/Gravity Falls level but it's definitely high-B tier.
The oddest thing though is that I find myself wishing it had focused more on the Villains, especially Catra and Lobserina. The interactions between those two were simply golden.
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I'm sure we'll be seeing a LOT more of Catra, Scorpina, and Entrapta as the miniboss squad of season 2.
I’ve watched the first three episodes so far and coming in with low expectations, I will admit straight away that the advertising for this show does not help show how good it actually is.
What do I like about it?
The story so far is really well written and the characters and their relationships definitely have grabbed me. Allowing us to empathize with the Hoard characters first allows some nuance with the “bad guys” rather than just having the evil to defeat. Getting me to feel for Catra was great.
Adora is an enjoyable character and her conflict with the Hoard, both external and emotional with her relationship to Catra, will get me coming back.
I’m also enjoying Bow’s character and while I’m so-so with Glimmer I’m willing to see how she progresses.
What I don’t like about it?
She-Ra herself. I still don’t like the design. I think it may be because the transformation to She-Ra is supposed to transform her into a mature woman. Her hair grows out and she increases in size, but she still keeps an androgynous look which seems out of place. She-Ra doesn’t need to have the busty look like the older cartoon, but the lack of more pronounced womanly features seems off.
I guess I’d be happy seeing more Adora and less She-ra.
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Just wait. The Catra feels train has no stops and no brakes.
I'll quote my own Twitter.
But my biggest complaint about S1 was 'Did we really need another Rainbow Blast Of Death? (Having everyone show up last-second is pretty much mandatory for the genre.) I'm hoping it's renewed, and I'm curious to see where this goes next.
And if the writing staff has the courage to not reform Catra.
We'll know there's a crossover audience when Swift Wind visits Canterlot.
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Pretty sure Bow and Mermista are straight.
I went and watched the whole thing and, well... it was boring. Even the finale was meh.
The character designs are bland and not interesting at all, The humor felt very flat, i never once laughed at any of the jokes.
As for the characters. Glimmer was irritating, Bow is...there, and Adora... remind me, why should i care for her again? Everyone else, not important.
Except for Catra. I really like her, and if it wasnt for her i would've dropped this half way through. She's the only likeable character in the whole show, has an interesting design that makes her stand out from everyone else, has a sad backstory that makes you care for her, her motivations and goals are understandable, and she's the antagonist!
If i had to give this a score it would be a 4/10.
Can we get a Catra spin-off series like: "Catra: Rise of the horde" or something?
I would much rather watch that than this snore fest.
I oddly started watching this because of a hate video, which is how I also found Steven Universe....I like to drop in after and tell them that their video was the reason I got into the show....it makes me laugh.
I laughed.
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boy do I have news for you
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heh.
I'm sad you never got to see the last season of this. Hope you're watching it in heaven buddy.