It is a completely different show with completely different characters (and some of my favorites left out completely) but we knew that already and 2018 She-Ra is so SO good at storytelling, character and emotion.
Despite being mostly unrelated to one another, it has a lot of aspects I originally wanted from Steven Universe, or thought Steven Universe was building towards before it kind of dropped them. A really solid balance of intense drama and wholesome fun.
SPOILER FREE OPINIONS ON THE 2018 VILLAINS:
HORDAK: we don’t see him a whole lot. They basically just made him much more serious and spooky and held off on him as much as they could so he’d actually feel important. No strong opinion on this, it works for what this series is going for.
IMP: holy shit they made him deliberately and successfully UNSETTLING.
CATRA: completely forgettable in the original series, now She-ra’s former best friend and the most complex character in the show. Story arc gets heartbreaking with some strikingly realistic depictions of growing up psychologically abused.
SCORPIA: original Scorpia was a mean, simple-minded brute villain and I loved her. She had a Boston accent for no reason. New Scorpia is basically a scorpion girl Kronk; huge and strong and not very smart and part of the villain team but completely sweet and nice. I also love her. She is one of the best “villains” in both series but in the new series she’s also a sympathetic one with more importance and kind of makes the show as soon as she comes in.
ENTRAPTA: this one WAS a villain in the 80′s show, her only known traits being her tentacle hair and that she’s good with machines. Both of those apply to 2018 Entrapta, but now she’s one of the princesses instead of one of the villains. She’s just dangerous because she’s kind of “unaffiliated” to anything other than her love of science and she is absolutely the most entertaining character in the new show.
SHADOW WEAVER: I still like her simpler old design and nasty, raspy voice the best, but the new one is extremely cool in only slightly different ways. She’s still the most evil and menacing character in the Horde, and this time there’s much more emphasis placed on the fact that she raised our heroine like a foster mom, something only fleetingly mentioned in the 80′s cartoon and never touched on again.
Overall, you would think some fans would be more receptive to such a drastic “reimagining” when Ninja Turtles has done it fifteen million times by now. I love both shows for completely different reasons. I’d probably also love a “more faithful” remake but I wouldn’t love it “more” than this remake. It’s doing its own thing.
And if you see someone complain that the new show has a “liberal agenda” then you know they weren’t really a fan of the original shows at all, since both He-Man and She-Ra were loaded with what Filmation’s writers intended (by 80′s cartoon standards) to be progressive messages about peace, diversity and tolerance. The only big difference is that the old show devoted whole episodes to these messages, then had characters talk to the audience about them before the end credits, so….the new show is only subtler about it.
Big Gay Dracula Does a Shitpost 