My roomie and I binged this series this morning. As each episode's only about 22 minutes long, it took about two hours.
I kind of want those two hours back.
Other shows like Dragon Prince, the new Voltron series, and the rebooted She-Ra manage to pack a lot of story and plot in short episodes.
This series feels like there are missing episodes, like it should have been 8 or 12 episodes, and every other episode has been misplaced.
The animation style's okay, and fairly fluid, and the voice acting is... okay, I guess? With good actors, you can forget they're acting. Everything came across as slightly stilted, and there was a lot of verbalized exposition from characters explaining things that were very obvious.
And then there's Shaun.
Okay. I watched the original show as a child in the early 90s, and while I don't remember a lot, one of the things I have vivid memories of is the character of Shun. I was all of 8 or 9, and I remember being confused as to why Shun was a boy, when he was so pretty. Then I realized that meant boys could be pretty, and that it was okay that *I* wanted to be pretty. I also loved how he was pacifistic and preferred not to fight, because I also didn't want to fight.
The character also had a romantic relationship in the original series with another male character, which ALSO let me know that boys could love boys. This meant a lot to me as I struggled with both sexuality and gender.
As my older brother is gay, I suspect this is why we watched the series.
In the new show, Shun has been replaced by a doppelganger, Shaun, who looks very similar, but is a woman.
The problem with this is that Shun's character was subverting gender stereotypes by placing a feminine soul in a male body. By making the character a girl, all you've done is lean into tropes about women being delicate things who can't really fight. Had they really wanted to challenge stereotypes and make a knight a girl, there were other knights they could have chosen and it not mattered.
I'm not going to cry that my childhood is ruined, like others may have, but I'm sad that a new generation of kids, gay, straight, trans or non-binary all have been robbed of a potential rolemodel that ironically MY generation had.
They decided to straightwash a queer coded character and a queer relationship, which makes no sense with Netflix, who are a very Queer positive company. Look at the Voltron series!
Combined with all the other issues, the disjointed storytelling, etc... I'm not expecting to see this show get a second season.
I kind of want those two hours back.
Other shows like Dragon Prince, the new Voltron series, and the rebooted She-Ra manage to pack a lot of story and plot in short episodes.
This series feels like there are missing episodes, like it should have been 8 or 12 episodes, and every other episode has been misplaced.
The animation style's okay, and fairly fluid, and the voice acting is... okay, I guess? With good actors, you can forget they're acting. Everything came across as slightly stilted, and there was a lot of verbalized exposition from characters explaining things that were very obvious.
And then there's Shaun.
Okay. I watched the original show as a child in the early 90s, and while I don't remember a lot, one of the things I have vivid memories of is the character of Shun. I was all of 8 or 9, and I remember being confused as to why Shun was a boy, when he was so pretty. Then I realized that meant boys could be pretty, and that it was okay that *I* wanted to be pretty. I also loved how he was pacifistic and preferred not to fight, because I also didn't want to fight.
The character also had a romantic relationship in the original series with another male character, which ALSO let me know that boys could love boys. This meant a lot to me as I struggled with both sexuality and gender.
As my older brother is gay, I suspect this is why we watched the series.
In the new show, Shun has been replaced by a doppelganger, Shaun, who looks very similar, but is a woman.
The problem with this is that Shun's character was subverting gender stereotypes by placing a feminine soul in a male body. By making the character a girl, all you've done is lean into tropes about women being delicate things who can't really fight. Had they really wanted to challenge stereotypes and make a knight a girl, there were other knights they could have chosen and it not mattered.
I'm not going to cry that my childhood is ruined, like others may have, but I'm sad that a new generation of kids, gay, straight, trans or non-binary all have been robbed of a potential rolemodel that ironically MY generation had.
They decided to straightwash a queer coded character and a queer relationship, which makes no sense with Netflix, who are a very Queer positive company. Look at the Voltron series!
Combined with all the other issues, the disjointed storytelling, etc... I'm not expecting to see this show get a second season.