My Review of Steven Universe · 1:16am Jul 1st, 2021
My TV Show Rating Score:
5/5: It is an awesome show!
4/5: It’s a good show with minor flaws
3/5: It’s overall okay/guilty pleasure
2/5: It’s bad but not awful
1/5: Look, up in the sky! It’s super bad!
0/5: MY EYEEEESSS!!!
Greetings to you, precious ones! Mr. J here with another show review for tonight! I will finally talk about what I thought about this show from Cartoon Network: Steven Universe. As some of you may recall from my review of Steven Universe: The Movie, the film was my introduction of this series since I have never watched this show before. After fully enjoying the animated TV show film, Anthro Fanatic actually recommended this show to me which I gladly accepted and began to watch with an open mind. I watched both the main series and the epilogue series called Steven Universe: Future (which took place after the events of the movie). Now that I have watched this series as a whole from start to finish recently, I must say... it is a really good show. I'm only going to talk about the main series whereas SUF will be a separate review in itself next week.
First off, the animation of this show is really well done; I mean, I actually love the cartoon style, the backgrounds, and the character designs for almost everyone. Most of the songs featured in this show were catchy at best but average at worst. Only a few of them were really good though.
This show tells us the story of a half-human, half-gem boy who lives with and is protected by three Crystal Gems: Garnet, a fusion between Ruby and Sapphire; Pearl, and Amethyst. The Crystal Gems work as a team to defend planet Earth from danger and fight against a whole force of corrupt gems or gems from Home World who seek to destroy Earth. If I have to choose which of those three gems are my favorite, it would easily be Pearl. I just love her design and personality despite her annoying, overprotective, pontificating mannerisms. As far as Steven himself is concerned, I like him more when he is a grown teenager as shown in the movie and in Future.
Ever since season one, he was an absolute annoying little shit with little to no sense of personal boundaries. However, the further he progressed as a character all the way from seasons three to five, he became much more likable and relatable to a degree. The main thing I like about him is that he sees the good in everybody especially the main villains of this series and tries to do everything in his power to bring them to the light and give them a chance at redemption. Sadly, it led to one major problem which even My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic suffered from: nearly every villain gets redeemed.
Twilight and Steven would become the best of friends, wouldn't they? Rebecca Sugar, the show's creator, stated that there are no irredeemable villains. In my humble opinion, that is extremely unrealistic and completely bullcrap. While you can have tragic, sympathetic antagonists whom we can relate to, you cannot simply just make every single baddie out there turn over a new leaf and expect everything to end with sunshine and rainbows. That is not how it is in reality. As I said before in my Frenemies review, there are people out there who simply do not want to change no matter how hard you reason with them. That makes me very happy Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow could prove Ms. Sugar wrong (that's simply the highest compliment I can give to the MLP series finale).
Although I do have to admit that if it weren't for Steven's efforts, we wouldn't have the cute and adorable Dorito Peridot and the beautiful Lapis who are also amongst my favorite characters of this show. Seriously, any episode that features those two (mostly Peridot) instantly becomes my favorite.
The very quality of the show began to improve by the end of season one until it got good, then great, and then awesome around season 4. Season five wasn't entirely bad per say, but to me, it got somewhat questionable in terms of the writing. The worst part of it was the Pink Diamond twist who was also Rose Quartz which is one of the two things I am not a fan of, the second thing being the rushed reformation of White Diamond despite all the genocide, pain, suffering, and tyranny she carried out for ages. Considering what Pink had done to Spinel prior to six thousand years in the film and all the things she caused through the show, it actually made her my least favorite character ever.
Despite the flaws of this show and the issues I brought up, it is still a very good show when it comes to good morals, the intriguing story, the character development, the action, and the entertainment. Therefore, it gets a 4/5: really good. Props to the voice actors/actresses and to Rebecca Sugar for bringing life to this show and making it one of the most legendary cartoons of all time.
Peace!
I never got into the series.
5545845
If you're interested, give it a shot. You might find it intriguing.
5545848
Can do. BTW, if you decide to review Video Games, let me know. I know the prefect one to start with.
5545852
I don't review video games. Sorry. You can ask Leo though.
5545866
Fair enough. Just a friendly offer.
What I love about Steven Universe is that they always attempt to redeem the villains like Steven managed to redeem the Diamonds and now they take care of Spinel. Something that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 9 Finale didn't do which made me a little disappointed. Reforming villains is kinda a guilty pleasure for me haha.
@TheClownPrinceOfCrime You've forgot to say something about Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond hehe. This is one of my favorite scenes from the episode "Change your mind"
5545904
No, I didn’t forget. I prefer not to mention them.
5545905
Explain.
5545949
Because those diamonds are also amongst my least favorite characters especially after everything they had done and how rushed their development was. Not to mention their character designs are mediocre too.
While I haven´t watched this show faithfully as I did with MLP, I did watch some clips and knew what happened. It´s a really good show. The characters are enjoyable and the storyline is also good.
Now that you mention it, my sister and I talked about it the other day. Nowadays, no one´s letting villains be evil. While backstories are interesting and necessary, you have to be careful because as you say, not everyone is reedemeable. Sometimes people are assholes because they are assholes. That being said, I´m not against villain redemptions but depending on which ones...
Sounds like MLP has had a greater balance of redeemable and irredeemable villains than this show does. If there really are no irredeemable villains in “Steven Universe”, then that’s honestly one of the new reasons as to why I’m not interested in seeing this show.
Watch good amount of it and I love the series
5546766
What are the other new reasons? Just asking for the sake of curiosity.
5554042
Same as “The Owl House”, really. Too much political correctness and pushing of LGBTQ+ agendas.
5556846
Oh, I see.
5556860
I’m sorry if this shocks you. I was afraid you’d be angered by my explanations because normally people wouldn’t respond very kindly if I did. My beliefs and relationship with Jesus are important to me, and I’m not wanting to trade it all away.
5556863
Hey, it's alright. We all have different perspectives on many topics. I'm not gonna be angry simply because of an opinion. You're all good, bud.
5556866
Thank you. That means a lot to me.
5556868
You're very welcome, friend.