Reviews

First off, the animation and most of the artwork is great. He-man himself, when featured, is done well (although I don't feel quite the same about prince Adam). The many Easter eggs were a lot of fun to spot.

That said, I have to now admit that as a huge fan of the original and 200X (Mike Young) series, I found it a little hard to watch this new series.

The general story would have been okay, but there was way too much time spent in overly-and-unrealistically-emotional conversations and not enough time spent developing story and characters independent from Teela. A lot of the conversation is inconsistent, illogical, or irrational. For example, Teela is apparently ridiculously livid about not knowing the secret of Adam being He-man, but then when Duncan mentions there is another secret she should probably know, Evil-Lyn cuts him off and Teela immediately states she doesn't want to know yet.

The tone is always and only heavy and depressing, which is certainly a departure from the original series. In earlier series the story and tone was more mysterious, fun, and fascinating. The focus in the older cartoons was often on the villains - explaining their motivations and what they were doing before they encounter the Masters. Most of the villains had streaks of logic to them or at least intentions that could be explained (think Evil Seed and Plundor for example). Yeah, I get that in this new series Evil-Lyn and Beastman ally with Teela's group, and that is fine but it could of been explained a little better or independent from the Teela narrative. Basically we always and only find things out when Teela does, and that does not give the viewer time to appreciate or understand characters that come into the story. Merman's debut for example, was a joke. Tri-klops and Trapjaw are only shown when Teela breaks into Snake Mountain. (And by the way, the whole technology as a religion does not work - especially when they say a prayer(?!?), but having a (non-religious) cult that overly-embraces technology can certainly work.) The technology cult would have been a fantastic thing to develop before and independent from Teela's break-in. Then the audience could understand it better and it could have then been woven into the story with Teela's break-in, instead of thrown on the viewer. There is almost no foreshadowing in this series and it is a shame. For a final example of poor villain development, we have Scare Glow. He is not really explained at all and we only get from the new series that he loves knowing the fear of others.. um, okay, but how did he get to be who he is and how did he end up in Subternia?

So now let's talk about Teela directly; Teela was always a reliable, friendly, social and socially-ambitious, supportive character although she could often be a smart aleck and a bit self-righteous, but in this new series she is a brooding, bitter, apathetic-toward-others, tough-girl, who seems nearly eager to abandon everyone (except apparently Andra). Fans of the original Teela are of course going to be a little bit upset. And, it is understandably hard for viewers (old fans or not) to connect and relate to the new Teela. Her new appearance I suppose supports the character change, but it was quite dramatic and again understandably upsetting to fans of the original character.

Finally, I know many cartoons work in a sort of narrative fashion now, but the charm of the episodic nature of past He-man cartoons was that good stories/episodes could stick out and bad stories/episodes could be forgotten. With this series the story is continuous and never deviates from Teela.