When Star versus the Forces of Evil began airing, I assumed it would be of the same quality as the show that came before it. It had the artstyle of Gravity Falls as well as the exact same archetypical characters, so why not being just as good? That didn’t happen; it’s a very bad show. Not visually wise, there is a lot of creativity when it comes to motions, locations, magic spells and the like. The problem lies in the writing, which is the most important thing in any series. There is little effort placed on fleshing out the setting and the characters.
It all starts with almost every conflict lasting ten minutes at the most. There is just no time to build up a problem before it’s time to fix it in a few seconds. Almost nothing the characters are facing feels significant because it doesn’t bother them for more than a few hours. And the reason it doesn’t bother them for more is because they use magic that works in any way the plot wants it to work. There were lots of supernatural things in Gravity Falls as well, but they were mostly dealt with actual strategies and in a semi-pragmatic way. Over here they are fooling around for ten minutes and then they realize something which somehow activates a spell they didn’t know of and everything gets fixed in seconds. Magic is a panacea that takes away any sense of danger or consequence. They can fix everything and maintain the status quo indefinitely because of it.
It’s even worse when you see how most of the support characters don’t care about what is going on. Wizards and monsters wreck havoc across town every day, causing millions of dollars in damage, threaten thousands of lives, and nobody cares. The concept of teaching the spoiled princess what it means to have responsibilities goes to waste when nobody cares about all the crap she constantly does to them.
Also, almost nobody contributes in any significant way. In Gravity Falls, every character was used to flesh out the lore or the setting. In Star the setting is as generic as it gets, and you can remove almost everybody from the human world without noticing a difference. The magic world is far more fleshed out, but only because every character there was conceived with a certain concept in mind. Nothing feels organic.
And then it’s the badly handled villains who make a dull plot even less exciting with their lack of presence.
-Ludo was comic relief, he never posed a threat, and even when they decided to make him a tragic character, it came off as creepy and gross.
-Toffee seemed interesting at first with his serious composure and Machiavellian schemes, but as it turns out he was a nobody with a ridiculously convoluted plan just so he could get back his middle finger. Everyone was talking about him as if he was super powerful and dangerous when he had no powers and got defeated in one shot. Twice.
-As for Meteora, there is no way you can convince me she was a different person all along. They rewrote her by asspulling a backdrop story and then had her getting defeated in a way that could have been easily done 5 episodes earlier.
The main heroes are also disappointing. Star is an obnoxious manic pixie girl who uses magic to solve all her problems, and Marco is a generic beta male who can’t talk to a girl without losing his shit. Yes, they are written like that deliberately, so they can learn from their mistakes and get lots of character development through their adventures. But whatever they experience doesn’t feel impactful. Magic fixes most of their problems, half the times without even knowing how. The people around them don’t care about the destruction and embarrassment they constantly cause. And their enemies are always easily defeated no matter how much they mess it up. What is there left to care about them?
Oh, that’s right, the romantic tension. If you thought the show is an action adventure, you are gravely mistaken. It’s mostly a comedy with a romantic polyhedron set in a generic highschool. They spend more time trying to figure out whom they are in love with than fighting the forces of evil. They constantly try to kiss and then they break up and then they hook up again, and they try to kiss again only to break up once more. Don’t we have modern anime for that shit?
And even if you at least try to enjoy it as a romantic comedy, it fails even there. The jokes are toilet humor, vulgar and slow in delivery. When something silly happens, the characters gasp and stay frozen for a couple of seconds, supposed for giving you the time to laugh before carrying on. But since I was not laughing with these gross juvenile jokes, them staying frozen felt like dead time and was very off-putting.
As for the romance part, there is constant cheating and cuckholding. Netorare works only as a deviant fetish in porn, not as teasing in children’s cartoons. But that’s the thing with these newer progressive cartoons which are trying to be liberal. A huge theme in the show is being independent instead of becoming what your society expects you to be. Nothing wrong in that, but when you have a crappy script it can only come off as liberal propaganda. Star keeps saying she’s an independent woman, when she constantly relies on magic to fix every problem. Plus, she’s only 14, how independent can you be at that age? Every kid in the show acts as if they can do anything they want and the result is there is no substance in relationships. They constantly fall in love and break up, because they don’t want to settle on something and as a result they are always alone and depressed because of it. Isn’t freedom wonderful?
Not to mention how the show indirectly promotes other progressive ideas, such gay relationships without ever being part of the plot, or the focus of any episode. This is not about me being homophobic, it’s about the show being in favor of homosexuals without ever openly saying it, exploring it, or even excusing it in what is supposed to be aimed at kids. “We are progressive because we are normalizing homosexuality to children!” What a wonderful message. Is this also why no heterosexual relationship lasts more than a few episodes?
All this progressiveness eventually becomes pretentious when the conservative characters in the show, who are obviously always the adults and their silly responsibilities, say it’s a bad thing to love a monster, while the liberal kids are fine with it. It’s supposed to be a message against racism, but what exactly counts as racism in a society that treats women and black people as equals, while one of Star’s boyfriends is a half demon, nobody has a problem with? Also, almost every royal and counselor in the magic world is some sort of monster to begin with and there is no racism there. It’s as if racism exists whenever they feel like it. In conclusion Star is lazily written SJW propaganda and as such it’s liberal trash I don’t recommend to anyone.