I started watching the 2002 He-Man series recently. I never watched it back when it was still a thing in the early 2000s because 1) I don’t know it existed, and 2) I wasn’t really into the Masters of the Universe fandom at that time anyway so I had no reason to seek it out. So, these takes are coming at you from someone with no prior knowledge of the show and no emotional investment in the world or characters save for what I have already learned off the Grayskull wiki before watching (and what I have learned through ‘pop-culture osmosis’ here on Tumblr).
There is one episode in particular that kinda bothers me.
The episode begins with Sorceress have a prophetic dream about Skeletor gaining new and formidable power from the ancient and mysterious island of Anwat Gar. Which was once home to the (now almost extinct*) Gar race.
This is pretty average for Masters of the Universe cartoons as almost all MotU cartoons are made to sell toys. Unsurprisingly, the climactic fight of the episode features both He-Man and Skeletor getting gimmicky new armor which I’m sure Mattel happily turned a profit on.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Hearing Sorceress’ prophecy, He-Man and Man-at-Arms rush off to Anwat Gar to stop Skeletor from gaining this fearsome power.
While there, they are confronted by multiple traps which they must, thwart, escape, or overcome in order to get to their goal. Most of their strategies for getting out of these traps seem to be breaking or outright destroying them.
Finally, they get to the center of the island in which there is a large temple modeled after Japanese architecture (which provides a flimsy excuse for Mattel modeling their gimmicky new toys after samurai armor). There, they meet the guardian of the power, our newest action figure available at a store near you!
Tell your parents to buy him now, kids!
Anyway, Sy-Klone explains that the power He-Man and Man-at-Arms are seeking is sacred to his people and that he cannot let outsiders desecrate the temple and loot it. He-Man tries to reason with Sy-Klone and explain that they don’t want to steal it, they just want to take it back to Eternos with them to keep it away from Skeletor. (Ya know, cause that’s not “stealing” at all.)
There’s the obligatory fight to show off Sy-Klone’s action figure features. This show was made to sell toys, they have to.
At some point while Sy-Klone and He-Man are fighting, Skeletor has already managed to get inside the temple and steal the power for himself. There’s the traditional gloating in front of his enemies before Skeletor uses it to do a magical girl transformation that gives him to fetishized sci-fi samurai armor pictured above.
Skeletor cackles evilly and then exits stage left, vowing to use his now power armor to destroy Castle Grayskull and claim it’s power for his own, blah, blah, blah. Standard villain shpiel.
He-Man then goes and grabs the second set of overtly culture-coded armor for himself and goes to fight Skeletor.
There’s not much else to be said about that. It’s pretty standard fair for a shallow children’s cartoon who’s purpose is not to tell a story but just to sell merchandise. You really can’t expect much.
He-Man returns to the temple with both sets of armor.
Now, one would think this is the part where the “hero” returns these very significant cultural artifacts to their rightful place in the temple under the custodianship of the guardian who is a member of the culture these artifacts are from. This is a kid’s show and -presumably- is also meant to tell some sort of moral to each episode beyond just “buy our toys”.
Instead of giving them back, He-Man fucking obliterates them.
Right in front of the guardian who’s life’s mission was to protect them.
Sy-Klone tries to stop him, but is thrown back by the force of He-Man’s power and can do nothing but look on in horror as these sacred artifacts of his dying culture are reduced to nothing but dust.
And I’m not exaggerating.
Watching that, I 100% expected Sy-Klone to become an enemy. Really, and truly. I would have become He-Man’s enemy if I watched him destroy something significant and sacred to my culture. And I’m pretty casual about my cultural identity. But Sy-Klone devoted his entire life to preserving and protecting these items. So, as pissed as I would be, he’s gotta be that times 1000, right?
After the artifacts are destroyed, Sy-Klone doesn’t even bat an eyelash.
He’s just like, “My life’s purpose is gone? Oh, well. Guess I’ll just go die now.”
(This being a Japanese-coded society, I can only assume he was going to commit the Gar equivalent of seppuku.)
But He-Man stops him and is all like, “Listen, I know I just destroyed one of the last remnants of your dying culture and made you watch while I did it, but how about you come join my crew.”
And that’s what Sy-Klone does.
And, like the original He-Man show from the 80s, and the New Adventures of He-Man show from the later-80s, this one had a “moral” at the end of the episode.
The “moral” of the episode was this:
“Doing your duty is important, but there's more to it than just following orders. The most important duty of all, is to do what’s right. Until next time!”
But like... what the fuck was “right” in that episode? How the hell are we, the viewer supposed to know what “the right thing” was.
We just watched our hero...
demolish ancient buildings and statues from an already vanishing culture
and outright destroy artifacts of particular cultural significance while a native of that culture looked on and begged him not to
Like, what the fuck, He-Man!?
I thought He-Man was supposed to be the good guy. But, I really don’t think there were any “good guys” in this episode and I cannot fathom what the writers were thinking when they drafted this episode or what the producers were thinking when they pushed it through production.
This episode really, really bothered me and I had to vent about it.
* Gar being nearly extinct is not mentioned outright in the show, but it is implied since the island is a ruin, and on the Grayskull wiki and the Classics line of the toys outright call the Gar a “rare race”.
