As its own thing, this new show is a mediocre Steven Universe knockoff; as a reboot of She-Ra, it's godawful. Now, before anyone uses the oh-so-convenient deflection of me being a sexist/homophobic pig, let me preface my review by saying I'm a progressive 27-year-old gay dude who watched the original She-Ra on VHS in the nineties.
*ART: Simplistic and unappealing, with changing proportions and heights from scene to scene. Although I found Hordak's and Shadow Weaver's new looks pretty cool, the rest of the cast is just ugly (moon boots, really?). Derpy animation that constantly makes characters look deformed is the icing on this bland cake. Now, the original show was full of reused sequences and stiff animation, but it worked on a shoestring budget in a time where everything had to be hand-animated, yet it still managed to have some beautiful art. There's no excuse for the new show to look like a cheap webtoon. The backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous, though, so I guess that's where the money went.
*WRITING: Despite the creators stressing how much deeper this show would be, a very important part of Adora's backstory is cut out and replaced with her randomly stumbling upon a magic sword. The tone is all over the place, nothing makes sense (Partying? Princess prom? What kind of juvenile fanfiction is this?), and all jokes rely on the "LOL, how random!" type of humor or outright slapstick, which makes almost every character look like a bumbling idiot. Funnily enough, I caught myself rooting for the bad guys because the princesses and their crew were so irritating.
*VOICEWORK: When it's not being chock-full of the "OMG! This is, like, sooo cool" millennial speak, the "acting" ranges from annoying whining to screeching and/or yelling.
*MUSIC: The new soundtrack is very dull and unmemorable. No trace of the iconic transformation theme - instead, it's replaced with a generic score that could serve as intro music to a game show. The original had some fantastic synth- and guitar-driven tracks, yet for some reason She-Reboot's staff didn't seize the opportunity to modernize and include those.
*CHANGES/DIVERSITY: Due to budget constraints, the majority of the original characters had to have a similar body type, so it makes sense for the reboot to diversify its cast, HOWEVER, the creators tried to score some woke points by blatantly pandering to minorities & the SJW crowd and then using it as a shield from criticism, which comes off disgustingly calculated. Some changes, like adding lesbian undertones to Adora/Catra's relationship or giving Spinnerella a fat body with a slim neck/face, were just unnecessary and, once again, seem like a desperate attempt to appear inclusive. The problem is that the show has almost a checkist-like approach to its characters, and stereotyping is not the kind of representation I want. It's disingenuous, not to mention insulting.
*OVERALL: Princesses of Power could've been a wonderful reimagining of the eighties classic, but it fell victim to its creators' narcissism, oversimplified art, unnecessary redesigns and changes, dumb humor, lack of respect & care for the source material, and shoehorned politics. On top of that, instead of listening to upset fans or trying to involve the people who worked on the original show, the studio decided to demonize all critics and trash talk the very thing it was rebooting. Disappointment doesn't even begin to cover how I feel about the end result.
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