I woke up Saturday morning with a cool gray rain falling outside and thought “Yeah I’m staying in bed.” I was channel surfing and came across a Cartoon Network mini-marathon of their show Steven Universe, and I couldn’t turn away.
The episode I started with was hella intense for a kids show. The good guys were fighting some universal baddie, Steven wanted to help but they didn’t want him to get hurt (read: killed), his dad was saying he already lost Steven’s mother and didn’t want to lose him too.
Then in the next episode they are still fighting the baddie and see tortured and saddened characters in the baddie’s jail, Steven finally frees one of them, finds the other who eventually snuggle/kind of kiss (also I swear they were both female) they merge into one of the characters (this is a thing apparently) who then starts to sing while she’s facing the baddie. Baddie ends up merging with another one of the tortured soul prisoners who eventually rebels and drags the newly created person into the ocean to save the world.
I continue to watch the marathon with awe. This show will have a couple of silly kid show plots, then suddenly throw in a curveball of Steven trying to shut himself off with his best (girl)friend because he’s scared he will hurt her.
Then more fun kid plots…until they get to the episode where he finds old home movies of his dead mother saying how much she loves her son.
Has anyone with kids (or just a CN lover) have any experience with this show? Like I said in the title…I am just fascinated by this show
I love that it features three female superheroes, and female baddies, and it’s a young boy trying to fit in to this female superhero world. And he is compassionate and has emotions and can be dumb and get scared and is stubborn. And I like his girlfriend too, who is just as cool. And his dad is a doofus but he totally cares about Steven, and seems very realistic not just cartoony doofus.
I find myself sitting around with nothing in my mind and immediately start singing the theme songs.
I am still working through the first 50 episodes and will be sad once I can’t binge anymore.
I’m a big Adventure Time fan and this show is related to that one (people from AT created SU). I also love Clarence, if you see that one. It’s also got that goofy-kid-woah-serious-topic thing going on.
Stephen Universe is a lot of fun.
I really love Clarence (he’s kind of like kid-Homer Simpson which can sound really terrible, but actually works). The Wrath Bader Ginsbot episode is my favorite.
I’ve been watching Steven Universe since the beginning, and it’s really a great show. I was hoping someone would start a thread.
It’s one of those shows with a deep backstory that is constantly hinted at, but only slowly revealed, and the show is getting darker as the secrets come to light, but the main character retains his innocent optimism- and this is what will save everyone in the end, I believe.
I love it too! The first time I watched it with the kids, I wasn’t so sure, but I got pulled back into it with the catchy songs and the deep themes. The strong female role models and underlying value on empathy were really what sold me. My son likes it as much as my daughter does, and they are both Adventure Time fans (even though that gets a little deep for them too).
Even more specifically, Steven Universe was created / is run by Rebecca Sugar, a writer / storyboard artist on Adventure Time who wrote several of the songs and stories that really pushed the emotional boundaries of that show in the early seasons.
I haven’t really had time to check out SU, but it sounds like it’s in good hands.
It is really good. I just started watching it a few days ago. Already hooked. Remarkably soothing and catchy theme. Interesting characters. Surprisingly deep stories. I love it.
It is really a wonderful show. I too am a childless adult that recently found it and got immediately hooked. I spent pretty much the whole of last week binge watching the whole first season.
YES! I was going to make a thread on this show, my new favorite show.
I think what I love most is that the show starts so slow, but you notice little background details and start going huh Garnet has two gems on her body…while everyone else has one wonder what that means? Then something is revealed and you go wait is Garnet a fusion? Then…YES!
The backstory is getting increasingly dark and weird, and I love how we’re discovering it along with Steven as he ages.
What I am wondering about now is what exactly Rose’s long term game was with Steven, and I definitely think she had one! I’m assuming here that Steven is intended as a proof of concept for the homeworld, a way forward for their stagnant immortal society.
Everyone who likes Steven Universe please go watch *Clarence *(on Google Play or Amazon) and then start a thread so me and Push You Down can talk about it with you
The same friend who got me into Gravity Falls told me about this show. I knew I was hooked when I spent a day with the “Giant Woman” song in my head and didn’t really mind. I like that the emphasis is the team relationships - like the Steven’s test episode were the lesson isn’t just that the Gems need to give him a real test, but the more important realization that they sometimes need reassurance as well. The Junji Ito reference bit (“This is my hole, it’s me-sized!”) surprised me and creeped me out a bit. I wonder if people who don’t know the other story found it as unsettling.
So, since the last discussion there have been two episodes aired, Say Uncle and Story for Steven. Both solid, but not adding too much to the deeper story. Story for Steven was interesting, in that it looks like we met Sourcream’s parents, and got a better idea of the timeline. Greg and Rose had a lengthy relationship before Steven’s conception, given his youth in the flashback and age in the videotape from Lion 3. It also shows that the gems, until Greg, did not mix with humans.
It’s quite depressing if you think about it. The war is over, and 4 (or 5) last survivors (or last sane survivors) of the winning army, spend 5,000 years cleaning up the residue of their war. It seems that they really view themselves as the guardians of the planet, and of people only incidentally.
You know when you put a few things together, the corrupted gem monsters they fight and bubble? That has to be Rose’s army, remember Greg said she could only save her few closest friends in the end?
I’ guessing homeworld dropped a gem pathogen, or insanity bomb or something.
Was Lapis Lazuli going to homeworld the reason Peridot started trying to fix the warps?
Or a weapon the crystal gems used themselves. Remember that Jasper said she admired Rose’s tactics. That’s not a compliment.
It’s very dark, but I can see the use of a last resort doomsday weapon to save the planet at the cost of both armies. The real question is what was happening back on homeworld, and what is Gem society like. I suspect there is a warlike caste-based system with social position based on power. The war may have been a part of a larger civil war that the good guys lost, which is why it took so long for the Gems to return, and why Lapis was so scared of what homeworld was like.
All this is speculation, of course, but we’ll get real answers eventually.
Has anyone watched Uncle Grandpa before? I know that this was a funny little one-shot, but is that how the show is? It seemed really funny in a breaking-the-fourth-wall-and-still-using-literal-humor kind of way
The gem shards that have shown up in a few episodes have some really dark implications too. Gems can only be permanently hurt by damage to their gemstone, but even shattering it doesn’t actually kill them. Apparently the fragments still have some limited form of sentience and power, and need to be contained (or even use to power machines) to keep them from running wild. It really puts a their apparent immortality in a more disturbing light.
Maybe, although Peridot did send the Red Eye to Earth way back at the start of the season, so there was some interest in returning to Earth even beforehand. Lapis did tell them exactly who was responsible and where to find their base however.
