Steven Universe: Not This Generation's Teen Titans

Ahhh, Cartoon Network. I grew up on cartoons and Cartoon Network was always there to fill the desire for toons for me when I was still in primary school. I still think the old stuff they used to show like “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Teen Titans” and “Samurai Jack” is going to be the best stuff they will ever air in their life span so it should be no surprise when I say that their newer stuff has definitely been hit and miss for me. I will try not to mention the bastardization which is “Teen Titans GO” or that new “Powerpuff Girls” reboot but their newer IPs like “Adventure Time” was definitely one of those misses although I do like what they are doing so maybe one day. “The Regular Show” was closer to a hit but still missed since I feel like it lost some of its adult charm from its original concept video “2 In The AM PM” but “Steven Universe” was a hit for me right off the bat before it slowly became a miss and no, it’s not because of the lesbians that form Garnet. We will get to why I think this show is worth talking about and why I consider it a hit but first, we need to give that basic as plot rundown so if you haven’t seen the series yet, go watch at least the first season to have an understanding of the show and plot because this is going to be full blown spoilers as per usual with these reviews. Now with the spoiler warnings out of the way, let us move onto that Garnet Rule Thirty-I mean plot summary.

I’m about to summarise five seasons worth of “Steven Universe” for you all so prepare for this. “Steven Universe” is about a kid called Steven Universe who is part of a group of gems known as “The Crystal Gems” who consist of Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst with Steven also being part gem. A gem is alien humanoid being from a different planet who are based on a gem and have superficial powers like weapon creation and fusioning with other gems to make bigger and unique gems. The series follows these four as they protect the earth from hostile gems but for only 20% of the time because the remaining 80% is boring slice of life crap where they have to do some form of character development with Steven being a childish idiot. Most of the series up to season four is just Steven learning new gem powers, telling backstory through flashbacks or fleshing out characters, important or not. You can actually probably just skip a lot of these episodes because most of them is just pointless filler for side characters because it feels like the series’s creator, Rebecca Sugar, has a serious allergy to plot development and deliberately avoids any form of progression in most of the earlier episodes. Around to the end of season 2, you can see there is bit of a shift to more the plot side but still has a massive inversion to it and when it does do some form of plot progression, it’s mainly so the writers has a new character to use as an excuse to procrastinate do more character development with. When it actually decides to stop procrastinating and actually continue with the plot, it’s not boring but it’s not really exactly interesting but it’s still the best part of the series since it builds the universe the series is set in, which is the best stuff in this series and is the only way I can justify having the flashbacks padding out the seasons. Worldbuilding is an incredible tool if used properly and I am fortunately able to say that “Steven Universe” gets it right. While some of it is the fluffy backstory for characters, there is a lot of little worldbuilding moments scattered across the series, through either interactions with other characters or in plot progress and although this method is slow, being a tv show does have its benefits so they can afford to take the time to establish this “universe” (hehehe). The only time the worldbuilding moments bothered me is when they take up the whole episode or it’s done through heavy handed exposition and while the latter is rare, the former happens a lot more often and it’s usually just more pointless character backstory. I do have more complaints about how the plot is handled but let’s move onto the characters that they so love to flesh out.

Contrary to my previous paragraph, I don’t mind the characters or their backstory junk that much but that’s only when it’s for the main cast. If I was to praise anything character related, I would begin with how Garnet was handled. If you didn’t get it from my intro, Garnet herself is a fusion of two female gems known as Ruby and Sapphire and it’s both heavily implied and said out loud that the two share a romantic relationship. You may call this “SJW bait” which I’m not deny the possibility of it but I think it’s a remarkably large step for progression in our media culture. We are allowing far more progressive social trends not only in our kid shows and I think that’s a good thing at least. If I was to say anything else, I do like how Garnet was handled with her being the makeshift leader of the group and pseudo mother to Steven since his real mom gave herself up to give birth to him. Pearl is also good but my gripes with her are simply the fact that pearls aren’t gems since they aren’t minerals found in the Earth’s crust and the fact she acts a second mom. We already have Garnet being the cool and trusting mother to Steven so we don’t need her being the opposite to that and she loses even more purpose in the group when Peridot joins and takes over the role of engineer from Pearl, leaving Pearl with “weapon instructor” which she can’t even do right as we see in the episode covering that topic. Pearl ends up just being there so she can act as the “accidental hindrance” which is taking another role from another character known as Amethyst. What I like about Amethyst starts and ends with how she acts as a older sibling figure to Steven to complete the figurative family cliche. She is the most carefree of the Crystal Gems and because of this, she becomes the other cause of problems in the slice of life episodes just like Pearl. There is Peridot but after they befriend her in season two, she goes from an asshole villain to an asshole midget helper who serves as nothing but more characterisation fodder. I also nearly forgot Connie is a thing but she is simply love interest and the foil to Steven’s stupidness so just think Pinky and The Brain but Brain is replaced with a tanned loli. There is other characters like Steven’s dad who is fun to watch on screen and Lars who is not important until the newer seasons but the only character I liked was Lapis Lazuli. Well, admittedly this was before she was rescued from a forced fusion with a Jasper in Season 2. She was pretty much a generic depressed, sad archetypal character but I found her relatable enough but after the obligatory “character development” episode, she turns into a sarcastic asshole and as much as I am a sarcastic asshole, it just ruined the character for me. It just feels like each character was written by someone who had zero contact with the rest of the character team so it leads to unnecessary and sometimes, conflicting character designs and this wouldn’t be such a problem if most of the show focused on the action and plot side of things but the writers want us to feel for these characters most of the time and that’s just a flaw that leads into another flaw. Conflicting characters aside, I think the characters are still kind of likeable and I guess they can be relatable enough for their target audience but as a seventeen year old with a slight nostalgia for cartoons, it doesn’t cut it for me.

Animation and style wise, it’s fine. I don’t find the art style interesting or cutesy but it’s definitely an improvement from the older days of the network and I would say it definitely looks better than Teen Titans but that’s because the Teen Titan look was pretty much a western anime look so it’s easy to beat it. The animation is pretty smooth and there isn’t any weirdness throughout the series. I honestly don’t know what else to say because it’s the standard Cartoon Network look. If it’s not done in CGI, it’s this look. Should I just stop here and just roll out rest of the criticism because I think I should. I mean, what else is there to say apart from it's kind of colourful and I do like how the characters are designed but that’s about it so let’s stop floundering about and just get the rant section out of the way.

First, let’s talk about the run times. The average episode length for a “Steven Universe” episode is ten minutes and I am not a fan of this decision and this mainly because I feel like the episodes are too short because of this. I feel like they were to do the standard thing and extend the runtime to twenty minutes per an episode, they would be able to have their character development moments and still have time to advance the main plot but I guess if they did that, they would exchange the main plot section and stuff it with more pointless sub plots and talking about pointless subplots, I hate them. They serve no use to the plot most of the time and when they do, it’s very little setup things and it’s just contrived at points and there is so many subplots I hate. The first one that comes to mind is the one with the watermelon Stevens. The first episode, “Watermelon Steven”, only served to go “Look at Steven’s power to give life” as he made an army of sentient watermelon lookalikes which of course turns into chaos but don’t worry, it’s gets worse with “Super Watermelon Island”. This episode is just a mess in my opinion because it just raises so many questions around the watermelon Stevens like “Why is there male and female Stevens?”, “Why are they growing baby watermelon Stevens in fields?” And “Why is there a watermelon dog?”. It’s just a mess of an episode and only serves two purposes: Bring Lapis into the main cast and actually seeing the triple gem (or quad gem I guess) fusion of Alexandite do some combat this time since the last we saw Alexandite in “Fusion Cuisine” which was also pointless filler and only serves to introduce Connie’s parents and talking about Connie, let’s move onto “Beach City Drift”. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s an example of absolute pointlessness and plot filling. It would of served a purpose if they didn’t reveal the Stevonnie fusion in a much earlier and slightly better episode “Alone Together” but it serves no purpose to the plot and therefore it’s simply just stupid filler. There is so more things I rip into in terms of pointless, horrible filler but then we would be here all day and all the Steven Universe fans would be either crying tears or wanting my head on a pole depending on how much I offended them with this review so let’s just move on before I also become very frustrated.

I feel like there is nothing else I can say about this series. It’s certainly a Cartoon Network cartoon but I don’t like it and I guess my nostalgia can be to be slightly blamed. To me, it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like it’s has that same brand of quirkiness the older cartoons like “Samurai Jack” and “Teen Titans” had but yet again, this is made for a new generation and not mine so I guess there is that appeal for these younger kids and I could probably recommend it them but someone of my age, I’m unsure about it. When one of my friends heard that I was planning to talk about this show, he was excited so I guess there is an appeal for this in my generation but I guess it’s just not for me. Despite the criticism I gave it, it’s still a solid cartoon show so here’s your 5/10, Rebecca. You deserve it but please, stop with the fillers because you are making me go insane here with them.

Next week may not be the start of the “Saints Row” reviews mainly because I did get my hands on a copy of the original “Saints Row” game and after playing ten minutes of it, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up on it. What does this mean to anything? Well it simply means I’m delaying the review for a week for “Atlas Reactor” because with another friend of mine being interested in the game and how small the player base is, I think it’s worth talking about if it would help promote the game so I am sorry to zero of my readers who were looking forward to me talking about “Saints Row” and frankly, screw you, I’m gonna review Atlas Reactor and you aren’t going to stop me.