10 Reasons She-Ra Is Awesome: A List

Rose here, checking in with more He-Man and She-Ra musings.  Last time, I shared a list of reasons why He-Man is awesome, so today I’ll follow up with an equally awesome list for She-Ra.  I’m linking to some of Killersha’s fanart again, because it too is awesome.

Click the image to visit full size on DA.

1. She can pull off an alter ego without pretending to be something she’s not.

One of the things I emphatically hate about alter egos with superpowered characters is the tendency of these characters to pretend to be something they aren’t while claiming to uphold virtues like truthfulness and loyalty. Lies of omission and evasive half-truths annoy me as well, but I have more sympathy for those situations if I accept that the character believes he/she is protecting others.  Princess Adora/She-Ra never dissembles.  She’s competent, authoritative, brave, and outgoing in both of her forms, and Adora is nearly as popular and well-liked as She- Ra.

2. She saves her brother’s ass almost every time she sees him.

She-Ra is notable for its crossover episodes with the characters from He-Man, which ran even though He-Man was out of production when She-Ra aired.  Most of them feature She-Ra hauling her twin brother out of some jam, even when He-Man ostensibly shows up to help HER in the first place.  (There are some exceptions, and He-Man does return the favor a few times.)

3. She has compassion on the guy who lied to her for her entire life.

She-Ra’s back story is that her alter ego, Princess Adora, was kidnapped as an infant and raised as a member of the Evil Horde. Hordak and Shadow Weaver were both mentor figures to her, and he clearly dislikes them after she learns how they have manipulated her. In the episode My Friend, My Enemy, She-Ra breaks a spell that has been cast on Hordak by shedding tears of compassion

4. She climbed the highest mountain on Etheria without her superpowers.

This doesn’t really need much explanation, but the episode is called The Stone in the Sword, and the setup is that stone becomes damaged, and the only way for Adora to become She-Ra again is to go through a series of epic trials to reach the Founders of Etheria.

5. She doesn’t wear a bathing suit or a pink cape. (Unless she’s a toy.)

Okay, her costume is a little bit bathing suit like, but a skirt is a big improvement over bathing attire and leotards.

6. Her sword can turn into pretty much anything she wants.

Including wings in one episode.

7. She could have gone to live in a cushy palace but chose to stay in the woods with a bunch of strangers and fight the Evil Horde.

See the aforementioned back-story. She had a chance to return home and live as a Princess, but she chose to go back to The Great Rebellion, which had been her sworn enemies until a few days before.

8.Granamyr respects her. So does the Unicorn King 

Granamyr, the great dragon I wrote about in 10 reasons He-Man Is Awesome, appears in the She-Ra episode Darksmoke and Fire. It’s a really cool episode for He-Man fans or fans of the Darksmoke dragons. I like it, even though there’s a bit of formula repetition with She-Ra having to earn the dragons’ trust.  The Unicorn Isle episodes seem more like Darksmoke retreads to me, but I do like the character of the Unicorn King, and the focus on the unicorns is a valueable addition the show’s mythos.  She-Ra’s way of earning the King’s respect is her own, despite similarities in theme.

9. She can do “snarky princess” without having a chip on her shoulder.

Everybody knows I love Princess Leia, so I’m partial to snarky princesses in general. I’m always glad to see one who can do it without being a jerk to everyone (especially the men.)

10. Her mother can fly a spaceship. And she pwns Skeletor’s ass. That is all.

Yet. This is a blatant repeat from the He-Man list, but if it applies to him, it applies to his twin sister.

We Have the Power: A Masters of the Universe/Princess of Power Memoir #5

I didn’t get to see The Secret of the Sword in theaters. I was worried I would miss something important to the series, but Filmation repackaged the movie into the first five episodes of She-Ra. That was the first time a cartoon series had done a five-part opening.  The formula got to be pretty common in the 80s and 90s. It still happens on newer shows, though, usually in somewhat of a different fashion. Modern adventure cartoons are much more conscious of story-arcs that run through the entire seasons or even entire series. She-Ra is rarely given credit for that innovation.

Anyway, before I get out my soapbox here, let me share my She-Ra experience. The pilot episode, Into Etheria, impressed me.  Okay, I was like nine, but I was in the show’s target demographic, so it must’ve been doing something right. Surprisingly, the rest of the five-part arc lived up to the pilot.

I loved the early episodes’ opening sequence because it was so different from He-Man, but it was still clearly Filmation. To me, it was different enough to catch my interest and familiar enough to feel like I was coming to a comfortable place. And it was gloriously cheesy in the way of most good 80s cartoons.

I loved that the first episode began on Eternia (for familiarity) and sent Prince Adam (not He-Man, but Adam) on an epic quest.   I have to admit that I really did like the look and feel of Etheria as compared to Eternia.

I was excited to see that the villains were actually in charge of Etheria and that She-Ra and her rebel companions had the deck stacked against them. Maybe it’s the Star Wars fan in me. The rebels get a lot of knocks for their visual designs.  Some of that I agree with, but as characters, they seemed dramatic and compelling in those first episodes, and I especially liked that Adam decided to dispense with his cowardly prince disguise and just be his true self.

Shadow Weaver and Hordak seemed much more sinister and threatening than Skeletor or Evil-Lynn. The spell of deception that Shadow Weaver had on Princess Adora was serious freaking dark magic, and the level of manipulation Hordak exhibited with her was far beyond anything I had seen Skeletor accomplish.

The other villains, like Grizzlor, Scorpia, and Mantena, were kind of goofy, but then so were a lot of the villains on He-Man.  Catra had as much potential as Evil-Lyn did, and I immediately wanted to know about her shape-shifting mask.

As much as I loved He-Man, I never felt like there was a sense of threat or danger (except on the rare occasion that something happened to the Sorceress or King Randor.) The heroes were firmly in charge of Eternia, and there was never any doubt that Skeletor’s schemes were going to fail.

In She-Ra, it felt different.  I knew that the rebels would “win” each episode, but there was always risk of them being captured or retaliation from the Horde.  How were they ever going to drive the Horde, with its massive army of robots and superior technology in general, off of their planet?!

Was Queen Marlena going to get in her spaceship and come to her kids’ aid? Was King Randor maybe going to send in the Eternian army? Well, obviously, those things would’ve killed the series before it started, but I was imagining a grand finale that ended something like that in a couple of years.

Did it ever happen? Well, a girl can dream. 😉

Well, I’m sad to say that I need to wrap up the memoir today.  As I was writing, I realized I had a lot more to say about She-Ra, gender-based marketing in cartoons, and the state of “shows for girls” today, almost 30 years after She-Ra hit the airwaves, but all of that’s going to have to wait for another blog series.  Maybe here, maybe over on my blog.

We Have the Power: A Masters of the Universe/Princess of Power Memoir #2

Hey everyone!  Rose here, continuing with my retrospective on He-Man and She-Ra.  If you missed the intro, you can check it out here.

I’ll never forget the first time I watched He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I was seven years old. My family had just moved to New Hampshire, and we were living with my aunt.  There were a total of 6 kids in that household all under the age of 10. Three of them were toddlers. I expect that the adults desperately needed something for us to do.

My dad and my uncle went to the video store and came back with a two volume VHS set of Masters of the Universe episodes.

Nope, not one of the ones we had, but the best quality cover I could find online. Courtesy of vhscollector.com

I think there were a total of 15 of these released, and each one have like four or five episodes. Talk about milking your fan base. Way to go Mattel and Filmation. But, back in the 80s, five episodes per tape was pretty standard.

The episodes I remember best were the Diamond Ray of Disappearance, Teela’s Quest, the Comet Keeper, and Colossor Awakes.

Diamond Ray was the pilot episode, but it actually aired third in the broadcast run. It was the first episode on the tape, and I remember it well enough that I can still probably recite most of the dialogue from memory.

And here’s the back for your viewing pleasure.

I don’t remember my sister’s reaction, but my brother and I sat transfixed, at least for the first 10 minutes. After that, my brother was running around waving an imaginary Sword of Power. I was still sitting transfixed. We rented those He-Man tapes so many times that our parents probably would’ve saved money buying them outright.

Teela was hands down my favorite character, but I wanted to be the Sorceress. I’ve always gravitated toward the mentor characters, especially the ones who have an obvious connection to magic and spirituality. (There’s nothing overtly spiritual going on in He-Man, but the magic of Grayskull has a definite mystical undertone.)

My older cousin liked the Sorceress too, and started calling himself the Sorcerer. He even tricked me into thinking he had real magical powers.  That went on for months. Maybe I was a little naïve.

I loved the weird, genre-bending mishmash that made up the planet of Eternia.  It was a world where science, magic, and mysticism all co-existed as naturally as different branches of science do here.  There was rarely tension or conflict between scientists and magicians.  Most often, they worked together to create solutions to episode conflicts. In fine 80s tradition, the world was full of bizarre, brightly colored locations and imaginative monsters.

Filmation gets knocked a lot for its re-use of stock footage. I admit that sometimes it’s annoying.  The animation can be awful.  Filmation was a small studio trying to save production costs. I think panorama shots like these more than make up for it.

What I loved most about the show was its sense of depth and how, even though He-Man was the protagonist, the supporting characters got plenty of time for development and attention to their own history/storylines.  The Royal family of Eternia and its allies had a history and sense of being both “family” and “nobility” that felt genuine.

We can’t have a series of posts about He-Man without acknowledging the cheesy dialogue or over-the-top costumes and villains, I but don’t think those things are any more silly than (for example) a guy who runs around dressed like a bat fighting a killer clown.  And cheesy dialogue? It was the 80s.  The whole decade was synonymous with cheesy dialogue.

I’ll leave you with that thought, and next time, we’ll take a look at the show’s pop culture influence and my first experience as resident geek in a public school.

This week’s featured fanart, by Edgar Sandoval on DeviantART. Click the image to visit the gallery/view full size.