cimorene

Well. The new She-Ra trailer looks…

The new voice actor for Adora and She-Ra sounds younger. This is good, or even essential, because she always seemed like a totally mature adult - from the perspective of my fanatic six-year-old self’s memories: mom-aged, not babysitter-aged. (And some of my babysitters were grad students, so she gave me an impression of being in her thirties minimum.) On the other hand, Melendy Britt has a beautiful, mellifluous voice that I always loved, and thinking about it now I’m getting all nostalgic… but the new one seems like a more appropriate character choice. ➕!

Adding a whole childhood friends plot to Adora and Catra to create their later rivalry makes perfect sense, and feels like it was missing from the original. On the other hand, some of the clips in the trailer made the dialogue there sound on the bad side of cheesy and melodramatic, even for kids’ writing, so I’ll just cross my fingers for that. ➕/❓

There’s a visibly great variety of phenotype (racial? But they’re aliens on an alien world, & race is a social construct, so maybe not racial) and body type diversity, plus less stereotypical hyperfemininity, in the secondary female characters. HUGE ➕

Angella and Hordak both look significantly cooler, but Shadow Weaver looks and sounds significantly less cool, and she was always my favorite villain. (At least on the show: I don’t know if they even made a Weaver toy? She wouldn’t’ve worked very well given her garb. When playing with the toys, I usually didn’t make Catra or the pink cat steed a villain.) (I’m still mad that the toy cat was pink back then. Even madder than about Swift Wind) ➕➕➖

I love everything about Adora’s new outfit - her hotpants+turtleneck always bothered me, even at age 6 (if your legs are comfortable your arms are hot and if your arms are comfortable your legs are cold!!!) - but I HATE Adora’s AND She-Ra’s boots. It’s not the design - the height and lines and colors: a million times better than the heeled ones, obviously, and that part looks cool - it’s the TOE SHAPE. Why are they like clown shoes, or like… those upturned bubble-toed steel-toed rave boots??? 👌👌70% 😍, 30%👎😐

Glimmer’s and Bow’s lines! The dialogue was not great in the original. In fact, it’s tough to even rewatch as an adult, it’s so painful. Even as an older child rewatching until my VHS wore out, I started to get really sick of how stupid they often got. They were intended as comedic and often wise-cracking sidekicks obviously, but they mostly failed to achieve that effect. A HUGE part of that was the stupid Superman & Wonder Woman-esque ‘secret identity’ plot. At least she didn’t LOOK the same when she switched, but their failure to figure it out made them look terrible after all the near misses and convenient appearances. Dispensing with that entirely is a good move. 😍

I’m not into Frosta’s outfit redesign, although I give them points for including a vague nod to the idea that it’s cold around her. Maybe when we see more I’ll come around. (Frosta was my favorite side character.) ➖❓