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thanks poka

Series 36. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Season 1, 2018, 13 episodes)

She-Ra is one of those shows we picked up and watched fairly quickly but never got sucked into. It's an animated fantasy/sci-fi show that blends some classic fantasy magic powers and somewhat futuristic weaponry. The protagonist, a teenage girl in a military academy, winds up inheriting the power of She-Ra, a dormant warrior demigod, and realizes that perhaps the nation that keeps trying to colonize the people of the forest is bad.

I think the principles of She-Ra are pretty great. There's flame-forged friendship, battle, superpowers, betrayals, anti-war sentiment, and politicking. The technologies that they use are pretty creative - one of the Princesses of Power designs new ones all the time and winds up becoming the driving force of the bad guys' armies. But it is also kind of clearly a show made for seven-year-old girls, and practically everything about the execution is off-putting or overly simplified for my taste.

For example - and I suppose this qualifies as a spoiler, though the plot is so barebones I'm not sure it'll matter too much - there's a very cool, near-climactic sequence where Adora and the rest of the Princesses all storm the military fortress. They wind up abandoning Entrapta there as they flee. This winds up with Entrapta flipping over to the bad guys. This has all the makings of a cool character arc as you consider sacrifices, the costs of war, the feelings of betrayal. But it's all executed in a painfully simplistic manner, and one that doesn't even make a lot of sense. (It's been a while, but it seems like the princess gang thinks Entrapta is dead - but she's insanely competent up til this point, so it's a bizarre assumption.)

Or take Shadow Weaver. She's a pretty classic archetype of an abusive parental figure with something to hide. But her lines, appearance, and voice are so hammy that it's cringeworthy more than dramatic any time she's on screen.

Or even the theme song. I love a good theme song, and often a theme song that I watch many times can grow on me. Over the course of thirteen episodes... that did not happen here.

I only got one season into a five-season show, and it did show a lot of storyline promise. I actually wasn't a huge fan of the vast majority of S1 of Avatar, either, and it became perhaps my favorite western cartoon of all time. But it's a little hard to subject myself (and a fairly unwilling watching partner) to more for now. Maybe someday we can revisit.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness