Wikky's take: She-Ra Sucks...

...and not for the reasons that the show's PR folks want you to notice.

It's interesting to me that since the debut of the rebooted Netflix series that the attention is being directed at 3 or 4 neo-bronies who don't think that the animation is "adult" or "sexy" enough.

Fuck that noise. It's a distraction being offered up to lump anyone who would criticize the show with the Trump voting, Jodie Whitaker Doctor-hating, sweaty uncels living in their mother's basement.

They exist. They're stupid. They're not the point.

I'm an older guy who thinks the reboot sucks.

I binged the series both out of a sense of nostalgia and to discern whether it was appropriate for my kids. I could give a rats ass about whether She-Ra has boobs and frankly I think it's better that she doesn't. The animation is mostly fine (the stupid shading under the eyes notwithstanding).

The problem with She-Ra isn't the animation - it's that it's not She-Ra.

It's Totally Spies.

A plastic, toy selling, and loosely based commercial vehicle that reduces the characters to vapid and bumbling shells of their original incarnations. This is what happens when Caillou grows up and stumbles into real world problems.

The original series wasn't without its problems as we find often in the He-Man She-Ra universe but at least the characters were imbued with some sense of depth and greatness. They struggled with problems of life and yet retained the gravitas of the situations they found themselves in.

In this incarnation you have a bunch of kids dropped into a civil war that threatens devastation to the environment and enslavement of people to a monolithic worldview and rather than creating an opportunity for younger viewers and parents to find a point of connect for difficult subjects - the severity of the world is dropped for Bow fawning over a shanty-singing flake of a pirate.

"My moustache is naturally shiny."

What. The. Fuck.

Everything is lost in the candy coating.

Adora's quest for self understanding.
Catra's sense of betrayal.
Glimmer's coming of age.

None of the stories have any substance or depth because mature and well-defined characters are replaced with 80s stereotypical valley girls.

The dialogue is atrocious. The mythos of the show barely acknowledged. Character development would be great were there characters to develop.

Even the mystery of She-Ra is removed. Everyone knows that Adora and She-Ra are one in the same. Except Shadowweaver and Hordak apparently - because...I don't know. I've given the fuck up at this point.

There is no feminism in She-Ra. There is no example for our daughters or contra-narrative for our sons that shows the depth, intelligence and strength of women in the face of a grave and difficult world.

There is only the empty ego of thoughtless mall-rats stumbling away from greatness and into the warm embrace of the nearest Wal-Mart toy aisle.

She-Ra sucks not because it isn't "Adult" enough.

She-Ra sucks because it isn't even "Kid" enough.

- W.