skygiants

I was going to make this a general post about other TV I've been watching besides epically long kdramas, but then I realized I could spend a whole post just talking about Steven Universe, so ... I'm going to do that!

If you're in the Tumblr sphere you have probably been bombarded with Steven Universe already (or at least I was, for like months before I watched it) but if not, perhaps you are not familiar with it? It's an ongoing kid's cartoon which runs for ten-minute episodes, starring these people:

Steven Universe is a sweet kid with poorly-controlled developing magical powers, inherited from his mother, who disappeared to bring him into the world. Now he's being raised by a combo of his hapless single dad and his mother's team of loyal superpowered magical gem warriors who came to Earth with her millenia ago to fight an epic war -- all of whom care for Steven very much, and all of whom are also still in the ongoing process of coping with the fact that Steven also represents the enormous, gaping hole that is the absence of the person they loved most.

It's a light, fun show! There are hijinks!

Here's some of the things I really like about Steven Universe:

1. It's adorable. Let's just start out with that. And -- unlike Adventure Time, which has some showrunners in common, and which I have mixed feelings about -- it's often sarcastic, but never mean-spirited.
2. There's a very strong single vision behind the story, and it shows. The continuity is fantastic -- having watched through the first time by myself,

attractivegeekery and I have been watching through again with our third roommate, and just about every episode I pick up on something that I missed the first time around that's picked up again later.
3. While it's mostly episodic, it does that thing I associate with FMA and other really good shonen/shojo anime -- you think you're watching a show about A Young Boy And His Exciting Magical Adventures, but there are a bunch of other people around who all very clearly are having their own stories and emotional arcs going on that you're catching glimpses of through this kid's eyes, and the more the story goes on, the more you realize that it's much bigger and more complicated than you thought.
4. Not that most of the episodes are mytharc episodes! I mean, the other thing I really like is how much the town that Steven lives in feels like a real small town where everyone knows each other and has backstory with each other, and just about every person in it has their own (very slowly) ongoing character arc -- they're not just background color or victim fodder for Steven's Magical Adventures either.
5. Rebecca Sugar, the show's creater, is really invested in representing a range of diversity and experience and relationships and nontraditional families onscreen, and that also shows.
6. Every time I'm shouting at the screen like 'NO DON'T LET THE SMALL CHILD NEAR THAT EXTREMELY DANGEROUS THING,' Pearl also runs up shouting 'NO DON'T LET THE SMALL CHILD NEAR THAT EXTREMELY DANGEROUS THING.' I feel you, Pearl. (Except when ... you are the dangerous thing ... )
7. There's a whole episode about different ways of engaging with fandom! There's an episode about art appropriation! So many musical episodes? SO MANY.
8. Revolutionary Girl Utena is apparently a formative influence.
9. I don't know, it's just super fun! SHARK-PUNCHING FUN.