Mythcreants places a lot of emphasis on ANTS, the four elements that we’ve found make stories popular: attachment, novelty, tension, and satisfaction. These are really important for new authors to consider, but we can also look at popular stories and see how they score. Last time, we graded Marvel’s new batch of Disney+ shows, but today we’re reaching a little further back to find three cartoon shows with similar vibes. They are Voltron: Legendary Defender, The Dragon Prince, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
We’re focusing on the first season of each show; otherwise, we’d be here all day. Each show gets a grade in the four ANTS categories using a scale of 1 to 10. A 1 means that aspect of engagement basically doesn’t exist, while a 10 represents true excellence. None of the Marvel shows managed to score any 10s; let’s see if this crop of contestants can do better.
Voltron: Legendary Defender
This show is a reboot of a popular ’80s toy commercial cartoon, which was itself made by dubbing and re-editing a C-list anime called Beast King GoLion. The list of what they changed is fascinating, but in the modern incarnation, the story is fairly simple: five humans are chosen to pilot a giant robot called Voltron so they can overthrow the evil Galra Empire. Naturally, Voltron is a humanoid robot that is formed by combining five lion-shaped robots together, as one does. Our heroes are joined on their quest by Princess Allura and Coran the mechanic, and the seven of them set out to save all of known space from Galra tyranny.
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We’re not off to a great start here, mostly because the five pilots are surprisingly bland. Each of them has exactly one identifying trait, and they aren’t very interesting. Observe:
- Hunk eats a lot.
- Lance makes jokes, but so does everyone else.
- Pidge likes technology.
- Keith is an edgy bad boy, but only sometimes.
- Shiro has a secret backstory that doesn’t come up much in the first season.
That’s about it. The interactions between different pilots have almost no dramatic flair, as none of them have anything interesting going on. It looks like Lance and Keith will have a rivalry at first, which could have been cool, but that peters out within a couple of episodes. Pidge occasionally wants to find her missing family but isn’t allowed to until later seasons. Shiro’s backstory has potential, but like Pidge’s family, it’s mostly kept in the background. There’s a brief moment where it looks like Pidge might be a trans guy, which could have helped, but instead we find out she’s just been pretending to be a boy for the flimsiest of reasons.*
Nor do the characters have anything special to offer in the sympathy or selflessness departments. They’re all fighting to defeat the Galra Empire, which has a certain measure of selflessness, but no more than heroes are expected to have. Most of their problems involve not fully understanding how to pilot their lion-robots, which isn’t compelling on its own. None of them are actively annoying, but they don’t do anything to grab your attention either.
Allura is a little better, as her family has a long history of conflict with the Galra. She’s the last survivor of her house, and nearly of her entire species,* which puts a lot of pressure on her and is good for creating sympathy. Unfortunately, she’s not one of the lion pilots, at least not yet, so her problems aren’t the story’s focus. Meanwhile, Coran is another comic-relief character in a show where lots of characters make jokes.
Final Score: 4
Novelty
Voltron benefits a lot from its beautiful animation. Everything looks good, from the characters to the backgrounds, but especially the space battles. The laser and shield effects are truly gorgeous, and I would love to see that quality of animation brought to other scifi cartoons.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the show has going for it. The characters have little that’s new or exciting to offer, and the setting is pretty generic space opera. The Galra Empire has little to distinguish it from the countless evil empires that have come before, and most of the planets are your standard one-environment scifi worlds. Except for the planet that was actually a giant space turtle. That one’s pretty cool.
Then there’s Voltron itself, which is certainly different from most scifi settings. But that difference actually works against the show, as Voltron is seriously breaking theme. No one else in the setting uses animal-shaped robots that join up into a humanoid robot; they all use conventional space-opera ships instead. If the Voltron design is so powerful, why doesn’t anyone else use something similar? It’s like the Transformers suddenly appearing in Star Wars.
As a consolation prize, Allura’s spaceship-castle is pretty darn cool. It looks convincing in both forms, whether flying through space as a ship or sitting on the ground as a castle. My only question is why the orientation of the interior rooms never changes, since the castle technically flies with its roof facing foward. If this show were called Castle-Ship: The Legendary Defender, I’d probably give it a better rating.
Final Score: 5
Tension
Voltron continues its trend of getting steadily better. While the rank-and-file Galra soldiers are fairly pathetic, our heroes also encounter a series of powerful robots and monsters that actually pose a threat. Usually, these are defeated by unlocking some new function of Voltron, which is a perfectly serviceable way to win fights in a show’s first season.
The heroes also lose a few fights, which helps establish the Galra as a credible threat and raises tension. Granted, few of the lost fights are of real importance – nothing like the fall of Ba Sing Se in Avatar – but every bit helps. Allura even gets captured toward the season’s end, requiring the other heroes to go on a rescue mission that’s great for tension. It’s less great for gender dynamics, given that Allura is one of only two women in the main cast and she’s getting damseled, but that’s another conversation.
The biggest obstacle to tension is actually that the Galra feel too powerful as an enemy. Their empire is so huge that it extends beyond the galaxy, so it doesn’t feel like the heroes can possibly win. You’d think that would increase tension, but it does the opposite. Tension springs from uncertainty in the story’s outcome, and when it feels certain that the heroes will lose, tension drops.
At the same time, it seems like the Galra could overwhelm the heroes at any time but don’t for unexplained reasons. All they’d need to do is send two giant monsters rather than one or divert an overwhelming fleet from elsewhere in their inconceivably huge empire. It feels as if the bad guys are going easy on our heroes.
Final Score: 6
Satisfaction
Things were looking up for Voltron, but now they’ve come crashing down again. The first season is fairly episodic, so it doesn’t feel like it’s building to anything. That could be fine if each episode had a satisfying payoff, but they rarely do. Our heroes liberate a few planets, but against such a massive empire, that hardly matters. The unspoken assumption is that the Galra will come back the moment our heroes go elsewhere.
The only episodic satisfaction comes from the times our heroes learn a new Voltron power. These new powers usually form the turning point of a major fight, and they make Voltron better at fighting, which has ramifications for the rest of the story. Still, this isn’t nearly enough. Normally, we could fall back on character arcs for satisfaction, but that cupboard is bare unless you count the writers’ arc where they’re about to make Lance and Keith rivals and then decide not to.
Then we have the season finale, which isn’t much use either. It’s a rescue mission for Allura, which at best means a restoration of the status quo with Allura no longer being captured. The writers try to spice it up by throwing in a wormhole malfunction that sends our heroes into the unknown depths of space, but that’s just a cliffhanger. Satisfaction is derived from conflicts being resolved, and almost nothing is resolved here.
Final Score: 3
The Dragon Prince
This next show is an epic fantasy extravaganza written by one-third of the creative team that brought you Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s a story where two princes and their unlikely elf friend have to deliver a dragon egg back to its home. If they don’t, war will engulf the land. What could go wrong? A few things, as it turns out.
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Our protagonist Callum is a pretty good character, all things considered. He has a very Sokka-like personality, full of sarcasm and self-deprecating jokes; he’s even got the same voice actor. His main goal is to learn primal magic, something that humans normally can’t do on account of not having the elves’ inborn powers.* This is really sympathetic; he’s putting in hard work to learn something that’s been denied to him by an accident of birth.
The issue with Callum being like Sokka is that everyone in this show is like Sokka. Seriously – I cannot think of a single character who doesn’t have Sokka’s distinctive sense of humor. It’s a great sense of humor, but when everyone’s doing it, the bonus likability turns into annoyance. Worse, it sabotages two of the show’s most important characters: Rayla and Viren.
Rayla is an assassin who joins up with our other heroes to form the core of Team Good. She hasn’t killed anyone yet, but she’s still a trained badass. That is, until it’s time for her to make a Sokka-style self-deprecating joke; then she suddenly doesn’t know what a whetstone is. Viren, meanwhile, is our main villain. When he gets all unsure and flustered, it just seems like the heroes will have it all their own way. Viren’s attachment further degrades when the show can’t decide if he’s supposed to be sympathetic or entirely evil. Sometimes he agonizes over his difficult choices; other times he orders the unnecessary deaths of children.
Our final good guy is Ezran, Callum’s eight-year-old brother. He’s… definitely in the show, which is about the most I can say for him. He isn’t grounded enough to come across like a real eight-year-old, but he doesn’t contribute anything to the quest either. In fact, he occasionally does the opposite, with his pet glow toad getting Team Good into trouble, which makes them both actively annoying.
One more character of note is Claudia, Viren’s sorcerous daughter. Unlike her father, Claudia actually manages to be a sympathetic antagonist, mostly because she doesn’t know the really evil stuff her dad gets up to. She’s also got autistic coding, which not only gives the show additional representation but also adds to her character. If all the characters were as good as Callum and Claudia, Dragon Prince would be flying high, but the rest pull it down.
Final Score: 5
Novelty
The world of Dragon Prince is fairly generic high fantasy, if I’m being honest. The elves come in different flavors, like Moonshadow and Sunfire, but they’d still be right at home in Middle-earth. The dragons are of the talking rather than the monstrous variety, but that’s not exactly breaking new ground either. It’s still neat, just not particularly engaging.
The competing magic systems are much more interesting. Primal magic draws its power from environmental sources like the sun and the moon, while so-called dark magic gets power from sacrificing magical plants and animals. Elves only use primal magic, and they denounce dark magic as evil, which is convenient for them as humans are limited to dark magic alone.
That’s pretty cool and adds decent novelty to the story. The downside is that neither form of magic is very well themed. Primal magic includes the sun, moon, and stars, but also the sky, which is different somehow. Meanwhile, dark magic seems to do whatever the writers want it to do in a given scene. We also have a setting that appears not to have been changed much by all the magic flying around, and the show is frustratingly vague over why dark magic is supposed to be evil.
Animation-wise, Dragon Prince is very pretty, but the first season has a strange effect that makes it look like the video is constantly lagging. Apparently, this was done on purpose to give the action more weight. I can’t say if it succeeded or not, but I can say that it constantly had me checking my internet connection to see if something was wrong. The good news is that season two doesn’t have the same problem, but that’s too late to help the show in this article.
Final Score: 4
Tension
Here Dragon Prince reaches its lowest point, and it’s all due to one factor: Viren is a terrible villain. His motivation and plans are often muddled, but the real problem is that despite powerful magic, he’s completely incompetent. He’s trying to take over the main human kingdom so he can go to war with the elves, but just about everyone he talks to sees right through his plans. The only time he makes any progress is when his enemies inexplicably make terrible choices, like when a rival general leaves just one person to watch him.
Even if Viren were better at politics, his eventual goal doesn’t give us much reason to be worried. He wants to attack the elves, but everything we’ve seen suggests that any such attack would be easily repulsed on account of how overpowered the elves are. The show opens with a small team of elven assassins going after the human kings, and despite plenty of forewarning, the humans are powerless to stop them.
Viren does have minions in the form of his children, Soren and Claudia. Soren is presumably a good fighter, but he spends too much time goofing off for that to really shine through. Remember, most characters in Dragon Prince are Sokka to one degree or another. Claudia has powerful magic, but it’s so vague that both her victories and her defeats seem arbitrary. Rather than tensely anticipating Claudia’s next move, we’re just waiting to see if the writers will give her an auto-win card today.
Of course, there are sources of tension other than Viren and his minions. The main characters get into trouble each episode, usually by upsetting a local monster. But those conflicts aren’t very important compared to Viren’s plotting, so they don’t help much.
Final Score: 3
Satisfaction
Believe it or not, Dragon Prince’s fortunes are about to improve because it actually resolves problems in the season finale. First, we have the problem of Rayla’s hand. You see, at the beginning of the season, she got stuck with a steadily tightening magical band around her wrist. If she can’t find a way to remove it, she’ll lose the entire hand.
I have reservations about a plot where the main consequence of failure is gaining a disability, but it’s at least a problem that Rayla struggles with over the course of the season and then resolves in the climax when she is finally able to get the band off her wrist. Yay!
We also get some resolution on the egg plot, even though our heroes are still far from delivering it. How does that happen? First, a problem occurs where the egg appears to be dying, sending our heroes into a scramble for ways to heal it. This problem is resolved in the finale when, thanks to the characters’ efforts, the egg hatches into a baby dragon. This hatchling still needs to be returned to his home, but a major child arc has been resolved.
In both instances, we have resolutions that change the status quo. Rayla’s hand is no longer in danger, and the egg is now a living dragon. These changes give the ending weight, unlike what happened in Voltron, where the heroes restore things to the way they were before.
Final Score: 7
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
It’s our second adaptation of a beloved children’s cartoon from the ’80s, only without the anime backstory. That’s disappointing, but we must soldier on. In this reboot, we see Adora defect from the Horde, find a magic sword, join the Princess Rebellion, and discover that the real rebellion was the friends she made along the way. Also, the magic sword lets her put on about a foot of height and fifty pounds of muscle, so that’s nice.
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Spoiler alert: it’s pretty darned high. She-Ra has a big cast, and it’s honestly impressive how distinct the characters are. Adora, Bow, and Glimmer are the most prominent faces of Team Good, and they’re rarely in danger of getting mixed up. On the surface, Glimmer is impulsive, Bow is methodical, and Adora is unsure of herself. That’s good for keeping them memorable, but they each get plenty of depth as well, exploring issues like Glimmer’s conflict with her mother and Adora’s guilt over serving the Horde.
The secondary heroes don’t have as much screen time, but they’re still pretty memorable. The princesses each have their own schtick, be it elemental theming or an obsession with machines. The only characters I’d rate as subpar are Sea Hawk and Angella. Angella is an annoying hindrance character, with little purpose in the show other than shutting down the heroes’ ideas. Meanwhile, Sea Hawk is a persistent suitor, pressuring Mermista for a relationship long after she’s said no.
In a difficult feat, the villains also have a high degree of attachment. Catra is the standout pick, as her feelings for Adora conflict with her loyalty to the Horde. She’d be even better if it were clear why she’s loyal to the Horde in the first place, but she’s still a great character. Shadow Weaver is also surprisingly compelling. She’s clearly an abusive parental figure to Catra and Adora, so we’re not cheering for her, but she’s fun to watch anyway. Secondary bad guys like Scorpia and Adora’s old squad also help humanize the villains.
A final benefit is just how many characters in this show are queer. Most of that comes from coding in the first season, but that’s okay since the show doesn’t give preferential treatment to straight relationships. When Bow* goes to a dance with Princess Perfuma, Catra goes to the same dance with Scorpia. While queer representation is getting better, especially in the arena of children’s cartoons, this is still enough to give She-Ra a boost.
Final Score: 8
Novelty
Not too shabby, all things considered. She-Ra’s world features a creepy haunted forest and an interesting juxtaposition of modern magic and ancient technology. The various princesses’ realms are all well themed, if a bit one note. Plants for the plant princess, ice for the ice princess, etc.
Meanwhile, the bad guys’ Fright Zone is very cool looking, if a bit confused in its purpose. The whole place is made of rusting pipes and shadowed towers, signaling its evil for all to see. The problem is that this is supposed to be a setting where otherwise reasonable people like Adora and Scorpia can be convinced to fight for the Horde, and that’s hard to swallow when the bad guys’ headquarters is so obviously evil and also called the “Fright Zone.”
That’s one of several areas where the show struggles with the baggage of its adaptation. The original cartoon had a super evil Fright Zone, so the reboot needs one too, even though it doesn’t fit with this new version of the Horde. Adora’s transformation into She-Ra has the same problem. She looks a little different, but she’s still the same person, so why bother with a new name?* And why does she shout “for the honor of Grayskull” when there’s no such thing in this show? All holdovers from the original.
Fortunately, the other characters have a bunch of pretty cool powers to help make up the difference. The princesses each have a different type of elemental control, Glimmer has teleportation, and Bow has… Well, he has a bow, but also so many different types of arrows that it makes Hawkeye jealous.
Final Score: 6
Tension
She-Ra doesn’t fare so well in this category and is essentially the inverse of Dragon Prince. Where Viren is powerful but incompetent, Catra is really smart but doesn’t have enough power. To be fair, it’s great for villains to think on their feet and adjust to new problems, something Catra does very well. But they also need a base level of strength, and Catra doesn’t have that.
Against just the main three protagonists, Catra is always at a disadvantage. She’s fast and agile but not supernaturally so. Meanwhile, Glimmer can teleport and shoot lasers, Bow has more arrow types than there are stars in the sky, and Adora is an unstoppable juggernaut. Catra has Horde soldiers and robots, but those are consistently useless. At least in the intro, she has purple lightning coming from somewhere. Why isn’t that in the show?
Tension drops further when the other princesses get involved, as each of them is like a master-level bender from Avatar. The good guys theoretically have minions as well, but they’re never needed. The only way our heroes ever lose is by making obviously bad choices, like when the various overpowered princesses decide to isolate their realms instead of fighting together.
Other villains like Hordak and Shadow Weaver do have some impressive powers, and that helps, but Catra is the one our heroes fight most often. That’s great for drama between her and Adora but less great for tension. If only Catra had some purple lightning.
Final Score: 4
Satisfaction
She-Ra’s first season builds up to a big Horde attack on Bright Moon Castle, the good guys’ main base of operations. This is reminiscent of how Avatar’s first season ends with the Fire Nation attacking the Northern Water Tribe, but it just doesn’t have the same impact.
The first reason is that the Horde’s chances of success don’t seem very high, on account of how underpowered Catra is. The writers do the best they can, showing that the Horde has more powerful robots now, but Catra’s lack of threat has already been firmly established. There is some satisfaction to be had from the other princesses deciding to help Bright Moon after all, but since their initial reluctance was so contrived, the effect is limited.
One point in She-Ra’s favor is that winning the battle does at least change the show’s status quo, as Bright Moon is safe from further attack for now. That’s better than nothing, but it would have meant a lot more if the good guys had taken out a major villain. Instead, Catra fails up, somehow getting a promotion despite losing the battle.
Final Score: 4
At 18 for Voltron, 19 for Dragon Prince, and 22 for She-Ra, our three shows largely lag behind Marvel’s live-action series, but that’s actually to be expected. With shorter episodes and a fraction of the budget,* it’s no surprise that these cartoons are a bit behind. Being aimed primarily at kids also limits what the shows can include, though that can help as well, with writers being less inclined to go grimdark for no reason. In fact, kids’ shows have been getting better across the board, so it’s only a matter of time before I rate more of them.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
I don’t see how the budget’s a problem here with these shows; while the budgets of animated series vary, the estimates I’ve seen range from about 300k per episode at the lowest to around 1 million per episode at the highest. (I’m specifically talking about Western Animation; with anime, the budgets tend toward ~100k per episode.)
Apart from that, I don’t see how a higher budget could fix the writing problems you mentioned. And with animation in particular, the budget affects what the writers can do even less: there have been many live-action shows that had to change aspects of the plot due to budgetary restrictions, but that’s much rarer in animation because with animation, it’s not how fantastical the thing you’re depicting is that matters for the budget, but how complex the thing moves.
Sorry in advance if my comment’s a bit rambly and unfocused; I just had something to say about the common misconception that bigger budget = better quality. (Just to clarify, a bigger budget still makes a show better most of the time, as the quality of the visuals, sets, costumes, and effects goes up, but it can’t do much for the writing; bad writing’s bad writing, no matter how many millions of dollars you throw at it.)
If you’re taking suggestions for (animated) series to consider in the future, then let me suggest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Steven Universe, and Adventure Time. All three shows were really popular during their runs, had a similar aesthetic (saccharine worlds with dark antagonists, as a gross simplification), and a third thing that I’ll come up with later. (If you’re going to tackle My Little Pony with the same one season rule, then I recommend doing the first 28 episodes (season 1 and the 2nd season opener), as due to behind-the-scenes problems (maybe; I had thought that that was the case, but I can’t find any information about that now), the planned finale for season 1 got shifted to season 2 (again, maybe; I don’t know that this was even the case, but it still feels like that was intended as the finale; there’s even some animation differences between those first two episodes and the rest of season 2), so it would make more sense to tackle those together. (Also, there’s a moment in the season 2 opener where the events of season 1 become relevant to the plot, which is another piece of evidence to support my theory about it being moved.)
Whew, sorry about that last paragraph. (And about this comment as a whole; whenever I thought of something new to say, I just added it in. Sorry if it feels rambly as a result.) I actually have some more suggestions for animated shows to cover in the future, but that’s another comment. Anyway, it’s great that you’re finally devoting more attention to these shows, because they were really popular (and in the case of Dragon Prince, still is), and a lot of people were doubtlessly inspired by them, so it’s nice to see what these shows did right, and what they did wrong.
Well, I’m going to finish up this comment now; thanks for the article, I enjoyed it, and I can’t wait for the next one in the series.
I’d like to add an addendum to my previous comment; I hadn’t realized that you probably don’t have an easy way to watch Adventure Time or Steven Universe, and that all three series you talked about here are available on Netflix (My Little Pony is on Netflix, however).
With that in mind, I’ll pivot my recommendation to three series on Disney+ (because I know you either have or have had that service in particular): Ducktales (the 2017 reboot), Gravity Falls, and The Owl House. All three are fantasy adventures with a heavy mystery element, and all three have a similar episode count for their seasons, so that should make a comparison easier.
Again, loved the article, and can’t wait to see where you go next.
Having recently finished Arcane, I’d like to throw that into the recommendeds. Coming into it as an outsider who has never played either of the games and has no prior attachment to the characters, setting or lore, my basic impression of it was “Lots of legit cool stuff but doesn’t really make you care about any of it” – I got the distinct impression that it expected you to already be invested in the characters and world – and I’d be interested to see a more in-depth analysis like this.
Second addendum: I looked at the article you mentioned when talking about the budgets for animated series, and it specifically said that the ~300k figure was for the average preschool show. I think for most animated series intended for a preteen-to-teen crowd, the budget is probably around 500k on average.
The answer will always be Onyx Equinox. It’s on Crunchyroll and blows everything else out of the water with its tight pacing, beautiful production, and excellent characters.
Autistic coding is NOT representation. There is no reason a fictional world can’t say the word “autism”.
I mean I don’t go around like “Hey, I’m Shirley, I’m autistic.”
If it fits the narrative and world to use the word “autism”, then I agree it should be used. But if it doesn’t come up naturally, don’t force it in, just keep the coding in the background; a character with autistic traits is absolutely representation imo. I’d even go so far to say that the coding is more important than the word (show don’t tell).
I would really like you to do Owl House, it’s one of those shows I want to really love but always finish it feeling somehow less than fulfilled.
Although, I am surprised that Dragon Prince did not get a higher novelty score than Voltron if only your write up under novelty seemed to favor dragon prince more except for art style which feels like a separate category which has less influence on the story and more on the stylization.
Dragon Prince would definitely have scored higher if the first season hadn’t looked like I was watching it over a bad connection.
But isn’t that separate from novelty? I feel like maybe there is a fourth area for visual mediums such as “presentation”.
Otherwise ANTS gets confusing as a narrative tool that is considered across mediums.
Or maybe visual mediums have PANTS? Lol
Presentation is actually present in every medium, and it can effect any of the four categories. In a prose novel, the closest comparison would be wordcraft. In this case, the poor animation choices reduce the quality of things like the setting’s portrayal and the fight scenes, both of which generally fall under novelty.
The problem is that this is supposed to be a setting where otherwise reasonable people like Adora and Scorpia can be convinced to fight for the Horde
Well… virtually all named Horde characters we see were raised in it from childhood, and are still barely out of childhood. Being raised as a child soldier in an abusive cult can definitely cause you to make some bad choices.
(This might even include Hordak, depending on whether we consider he even got a childhood to begin with.)
Just for the record, organizations that do this in real life still make every effort to appear as the good guys. They call themselves things like “The Lords Resistance Army” or “The People’s Temple,” for a start.
That is certainly true, and I’d love to see the Horde’s explanation for their weird-ass choice to name their home territory on Etheria “The Fright Zone”.
It’s pure head canon – does anone in She-Ra/He-Man lore have a head cannon? – but I always assumed that the Horde presented themselves as the oppressed, and the Fright Zone as ‘the prison that we chose to own when we rose up.’
We can’t have too much realism in children’s entertainment because one of the rules of American kid’s entertainment is that the bad guys must be clearly identifiable. The Japanese are better at this but just barely. The bad guys might have a better name for themselves but the color scheming usually shows their true nature.
Honestly, ‘realism’ isn’t the greatest metric for how evil somebody actually is. In fact, I’d venture that compelling villains are always a construct (for instance, the Lost Cause narrative of the American Civil War, or the myth that Rommel was a good man just because he wasn’t an SS officer) and never a reality.
Evil people in real life might sometimes act like they’re good, but their motives are never really understandable. They aren’t noble or misguided, and will gleefully do things like put children in cages, and then laugh because they got away with it. People’s actions always identify them far more than their attitudes or self-narratives.
So to me, personally, setting yourself up as the Dark Lord of something isn’t really far from what many of these people would do if they could. Though of course, the over-use of dark lords in imitation of Star Wars and Tolkien is an issue in storytelling. It is, however, different from what I’m talking about here.
Hmm, I’m not sure if I agree with the assessment of Viren. Mostly I don’t see him as having a big plan at all, which is an issue in itself, but it gives him a nice arc as he goes fumbling around down into ever more evil. He doesn’t start with a real plan to take over the realm, he just decides and does a bunch of random things. He always wants to attack Xadia because it means gaining new artifacts and magic powers (and yes, it’s pure hubris, no way he could pull it off). This means I don’t really see his selective guilt and lack of direction as incoherent, though it does make him a poor source of conflict for the main plot (for this season at least).
I have to disagree with hunk being one dimensional. I don’t really think of him eating when I think of hunk. The show doesn’t either. He’s also into technology just like pidge and gets along with her best for that reason. He’s not as confident as his teammates and is the most easily scared of the group. He’s also a talented chef, which might be just a twist on the whole “he’s fat and he eats a lot” cliche but is definitely more development than you say he has.
The original Beast King GoLion might have been a C-list anime but it was very important for creating anime fandom outside of Japan. A lot of the anime that ended up on Western TV from the 1960s to the 1980s were different enough from what Western animation offered because of the general aversion to putting continuity, realistic violence, and deepish plots/character development in kid’s entertainment across the Western world.
America isn’t even the worst offender in this. The British government wouldn’t let the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be Ninjas for whatever reason made sense to them. They had to become Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Even when having to be edited to meet Western standards on what can and can’t be in kids entertainment, things sept through. This laid the eventual foundation for Western anime fandom.
A German TV station bought Captain Future in the early 80s, assuming it was a ‘kids show’ because it was animated. That led to the episodes being cut severely and a protest by parents because it was too violent for their children.
Yet, the series has cult status here in Germany.
Then, of course, there was the gender-switch for Zeusite in the first season of “Sailor Moon” and the ‘cousins’ Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune in latter seasons…
Captain Future was probably intended to be a kid’s show or at least a teen show in Japan. Japanese parents just have a higher threshold on when something becomes not for trial compared to parents in other countries. The freak out point is a lot tougher to reach for whatever reason. Inuyasha was aimed at the upper elementary/middle school set in Japan but had to air late night on American television, etc.
A teen show, from what I can tell, but in Germany, it was meant for elementary-school children, so they cut it severely.
In Germany, the first airing of Inuyasha was by a music channel (not MTV) which also was the first to air Hellsing (the TV series, not Ultimate).
The Dragon Prince keeps finding ways to annoy me and make me side with the “villains.” One example off the top of my head is the episode Fire and Fury:
In Fire and Fury, the dragon is actually TRYING to provoke a fight with a human village have not done anything to that dragon. So the dragon clearly started it. She is frightening and threatening innocent humans who were just living their lives minding their own business. I don’t blame Soren at all for trying to drive it away. And then the dragon ATTACKS the town?, setting fire to everything and killing who knows how many women, men, and children. Now given this background, I would think the main characters would be like “okay, this time the humans are justified. Let’s take down this dragon.” But no! Instead, the episode tries to cram a “both sides are wrong” message, even though the dragon clearly started it and the humans are just protecting themselves. And the heroes go out of their way to SAVE this dragon who has killed countless women, men, and children. Yes, the humans are wrong in many episodes, but if you’re minding your own concerns and someone comes to pick a fight with you, you shouldn’t be shamed into thinking defending yourself is evil.
The problem is that Pyrra wasn’t doing much other than flying, and the humans were attacking it first. Soren provoked the fight, when he used the ballista first, not the other way around. Not to mention that we are here in this mess due to many choices both Humans and Xadians did here. This is just an extention of a long history that should be solved diplomatically rather than simply attacking because you feel threatened.
Now that we are now in 4 seasons of Dragon Prince, would the rating still be valid or is the show not working out it’s flaws.
Also you mentioned that Viren is ineffectual and to a lesser extend Claudia and Soren, but what about Aaravos? is he a good villain, I mean he is a master manipulator and more powerful than any villain in the show so far. He also hardly cracks any jokes and is very serious, so he should be a good villain or are there issues to his role in the story.
Well, this post is specifically analyzing the first season of each show, so whatever happens in the later seasons doesn’t affect it.
This is also why Aaravos isn’t mentioned in this critique; while he is a major villain, he doesn’t technically appear until the second season, so he’s not relevant to the post. (He does, however, cameo in the first episode as the narrator, as well as in the opening sequence for each episode; that doesn’t become apparent until he appears in the second season, though.)
Also I haven’t seen past season 2 so I couldn’t comment on Aaravos as anything other than a vague threat which would have worked better if they’d committed to whether Viren should be a sympathetic antagonist or not.
Yeah but ultimately Dragon Prince tells an overarching story and I think it’s fair to see if the view of the show changed after so long in comparison, people usually come back to earlier seasons after they saw the next one. Of course it would not invalidate the criticism for the first seasons but this post was about which show is endearing and these shows continued, I just wanted an update for the current view.
Oren has already given me the answer and I am fine with it.