#ALSO I FINALLY GOT TO DRAW MERMAID HOWDY.. I may or may not draw a more legit one but for now this is good

[xx-sketchy-xx]

He turned into a panda almost immediately afterwards

[slothcritic]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Episode 5 Review

The episode features boats. And two new amazing characters!

With the Flower Power Princess in their alliance, Brightmoon now turns to the sea in the hopes of recruiting Netflix’s Ariel, the Little Mermaid, to their side. 

However, as expected of a mermaid, she lives in the ocean. This means that the wonder trio is in serious need of an experienced sea captain if they want to rock that boat.

The Queen explicitly requests no violence or collateral damage, so I get the feeling we all know how that’s going to pan out.

I feel like I’m slowly falling in love with Adora’s puffy-shoulders overcoat. I’m sure there’s an actual fashion name or term for that. But it looks cool.

When the wonder trio enters the briny fishy bar, they meet some rough looking characters, and at one point Beau’s voice breaks. Like the voice actor delivers a line and the voice just pitches through the ceiling. But you know, I think that really fits his character, so that’s probably why they left it in.

Among all the bruisers and rough-housing animal and fish people, we’re introduced to a suave, majestic debonair of a daredevil that looks like the offspring of Miguel from The Road to El Dorado and Varrick from The Legend of Korra. And boy howdy does the attitude match the appearance. 

He is exactly what they’re looking for, but he is not cheap, even by royal treasury standards. I can’t remember who it was, whether it was Glimmer, Beau, Adora or even Seahawk himself, but someone challenges someone to arm wrestle, and Adora squares up against this smooth talking snake-oil seas-man.

Right here, I wanted her to go She-Ra and just destroy him, but turns out she doesn’t even need the power-up and flexes on him without issue. 

Seahawk stammers and stumbles over his words for a moment before agreeing to help, and we get our first glimpse at the idea that Seahawk may not be all he claims to be.

Back at the danger zone, Demontwister is still extremely buttrumpled over Adora up and leaving, and sends Catra to dispatch her. After some back and forth sass, Deathwalker informs her that she will not be going alone. A massive, imposing shadow looms over Catra, and we see a pair of massive lobster claws emerge from the shadows...

Right before they hug her. This is Scorpia. She has lobster arms. Well, scorpion arms, because her name is Scorpia. That’s pretty cool. 

Scorpia, as it turns out, is an absolute delight of a character. They managed to make a zany, endearing character without making them “lul sO rAndOm!!” and her antics drive Catra up the wall. Catra is now the straight man in this duo, and this is a great change of pace from being the wild card to Adora’s straight man. It also doesn’t help that, hey, they’re also on a boat! And Catra, being part cat, hates water.

We’re sailing, sailing, sailing on the ocean blue. Seahawk almost sings a shanty several times, but keeps getting cut off for one reason or another. However, when he finally does pull it off, Beau is there to back him up with the violin.

Beau is really just the flow with it, be everyone’s friend character. Though considering this goofy scene more, I hope we see more out of Beau as a character than just being the amicable comedy relief and voice of reason. Some substance to his personality would be nice. It’s very easy to write the virtuous, pure of heart, yada yada character. It’s not an issue yet, after all we’re still only at Episode 5, I just have high hopes and expectations for his character development.

We’re here! No we’re not! It’s a sea serpent. Adora turns on the spotlights and dives bravado-first into the ocean to kill it. Bye She-Ra!

The more watch this show, the more I like its art style. I found it very pretty just in the first episode, but the longer I pay attention to how it’s drawn and how the animators move the characters, the more I just appreciate looking at it. It feels unique, but also refined, focused and not too dramatically exaggerated.

Granted, it’s still very basic. The drawings are simple and the art style lends itself to being quickly and easily animated. It’s not a master class of animation or anything, and the art style isn’t completely breathtaking, after all it’s mostly flat colors with limited shading, but I still like it because they were able to take something basic and present it with a neat bow on it. Perhaps I’ve just got Star Vs The Force of Evil and Steven Universe on the brain but this style just looks so much better than those. Maybe if I watched something else, like a bunch of Studio Ghibli movies right before diving into this, I’d have a much harsher opinion of the art in this series. But for a campy Saturday morning kids cartoon, I like it and I find it’s growing on me.

The wonder trio meets the water queen, a very no-nonsense, serious and drol woman. Seahawk, ever the extroverted and dramatic goofball, is madly infatuated with her. The clash here leaves a lot to be questioned. Princess Waterlily actually has the more interesting half of the relationship here. It’s not your typical, plastic writing for your everyday tsundere because it seems like a lot of the time she genuinely dislikes him. But certain situations leave her exasperated to explain why she’s still hanging out with him. It’s nothing explicitly stated, or inferred through omission, or even spoon fed to the viewers through contrarian yet obvious tropes, but more in the idea that they just keep showing up together for SOME reason.

Anyways, the crux of this episode is pretty much the same as the last. Go to new ally, use She-Ra powers to save them, they’re happy and join the Brightmoon alliance. Huzzah. Now, since the barrier is weak and on the verge of just breaking all together, all She-Ra has to do is save the damsel in distress and-- 

Ah, yes, this trope again.

It draws into question how useful these princesses might be to Brightmoon if they’re so inept on their own. Like, I know we’re gearing up for some Princess Battle Royale at some point in the future. That’s being telegraphed years in advance. I’m sure the princesses will kick ass when that happens, and it’ll be awesome. But are they just sitting on their hands right now, waiting for She-Ra or even just The Plot to come save them from their helpless predicaments? Isn’t Lady In The Lake badass enough on her own to be able to do something at all about her current situation? Anything at all? No?

Putting that aside for now, it goes without saying that wherever the main characters go, the horde is not far behind. Catra and Scorpia have a ship, which I’m certain has no innuendo, and any further shanties have been hereby banned. Beau boards the ship with ye old faithful CareBear bow, and of course Kyle gets shot.

While this scene plays out, Glimmer turns to Seahawk for his assistance and asks him to do the one thing he’s actually good at.

“Set your ship on fire!”

He gladly obliges and they kamikaze that son of a bitch right into the other player’s battleship. Don’t ask me why a flaming wooden dinky can completely sink a floating metal tank. Maybe that’s Seahawk’s special princess power.

During all of this She-Ra and Catra have been having some incredible sexual tension on the floating platform, where the shining goddess is attempting to use the power of magic and harmony and friendship or whatever to fix the rapidly eroding magical barrier around Misty’s Splash Mountain.

With the apparent defeat of a the horde for now, Catra just... backs off I guess. And they just let them.

Little Miss Seaworld is understandable thrilled that the wonder trio and yes even Seahawk have saved her kingdom, in her own lowkey and monotone way, and grudgingly thanks Seahawk for his contributions. As thanks, her butler provides a new ship for Seahawk, christening it with a bottle of wine and everything. 

“Try not to burn this one down too.”

“No promises!”

With that, we have Seahawk and Murmista joining the party!

Conclusion

Seahawk and Scorpia are amazing. This episode is in very good fun and the new characters provide some great humor. The last four episodes were a little slow to the punch, but I found it hard to find something to dislike about this episode. The forced helplessness of the princesses here is a little off-kilter but it didn’t seem off-pace for the series and only started to bug me when I really thought about it. Initial first viewing it damn near flew over my head.

If I had to nitpick beyond that, I don’t feel like they leaned into Seahawk’s character enough. Don’t get me wrong, he’s great, but I feel like he could’ve been better if they had committed more into him instead of keeping his personality light like La Croix. It is the first episode he appears in so I’m sure there’s more to him that we’ll discover, but it’s hard to say he isn’t a little one-dimensional in this specific episode. Just an endearing goofball with no real depth beyond comic relief. Scorpia on the other hand seems to have more potential at least from the outset. She appears to have a more diverse personality but we don’t get to see too much of it here.

Now, it would be fair to say that I’m basing almost my entire judgement of this episode upon the shoulders of two very campy new characters, and that would be an accurate assessment. It’s important to note that the primary purpose of a show like this must always be entertainment. You need to be entertained to want to keep watching. That can either be done through a gripping plot, tension, character development, emotional investment, or just through goofy, hilarious hijinks. At Episode 5, we’re too early into the series for pretty much anything on that list except for the last one.

This has also cinched that little itch in my back for me about “not being quite sold on the series yet” - Up to this point, it had simply been a point of curiosity, but now I feel like I actively want to keep watching just to see how these characters develop and what happens to them as the story unfolds.

Score: 75

Passing Thoughts

“Go fish” says the fishy dude.