What's so good about Steven Universe? I'm trying to be open minded.
Steven Universe is a really fun show to get into if you’re a fan of a lot of shonen/shoujo kinds of setups. It plays a lot on those themes and displays its love for them, but also builds on them and is really good at portraying how characters deal with complications that arise from these themes (magical destiny, a parent/leader who has died, the typical coming-of-age fare) and all of the characters show complexity in their relationships with one another.The characters are written very respectfully and as flawed, relatable, multi-faceted (you see what I did there?) beings. The big reveals of the show (which you’ve probably been spoiled to--sorry!) are obvious without being too in your face, but are still somehow pulled off in surprising and effective ways. The show is written to appeal to your emotions, and it mostly does that by making the viewer feel invested in the individual characters. If you watch Adventure Time, the creator of Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar, wrote and storyboarded for AT. (Some of the episodes she worked on were, It Came from the Nightosphere, Fiona and Cake, I Remember You, Simon and Marcie, and Hot to the Touch.)While a lot of time is spent devoted to fleshing out the characters and laying the groundwork for the main story, there are a lot of episodes where you get a bit of an emotional breather. One episode is just Steven creating a story about how he thinks Garnet spent her day. It’s very obviously the nonsense fantasy of a 10 year old boy, and it probably counts as just a filler episode, but it’s cute and fun and shows how much Steven idolizes Garnet and wants to be important to her.Writing aside, the art and music of the show are great. I’m someone who pays a lot of attention to sound in animation, and Steven Universe has a really nice way of repeating character themes throughout the series. The music can go from very gentle, pondering, and mysterious to powerful, ominous, and discordant, to something between the two. But you never forget that Steven is a little boy and that the show likes to have fun with itself. A bit of a ways through the first season, they start introducing character songs/music with lyrics, which aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they can be pretty enjoyable and generally don’t detract too much from the story. I mean, it’s key to NOT do that when your episodes are only 11 minutes long.The shows visuals use a lot of very nice, cohesive color palettes. Usually when things are staged very close to Steven’s home and where he’s comfortable, the colors are very bright and use a lot of pinks. Scenes with tension and something ‘alien’ or creepy happening tend to stay in the green/dark blue spectrum. Some episodes have the characters looking very off model, but consistency improves as the series goes on. The character designs are very diverse, not just among the main cast, but among the supporting cast of humans as well.Actually, speaking of diversity, SU gets a lot of hype because it has a lot of diverse representation across the board. There are characters that are (or at least read as) different ethnic backgrounds, the voice acting cast is mostly non-white, there is a menagerie of different body types everywhere you look, and the gems (who are technically rocks but all present themselves as female) have been shown to have romantic feelings and relationships with one another.
It may take a bit of time to pick up some steam, but it’s a really fun and refreshing series. I personally have a lot to relate to with Steven himself, and I think that it’s fantastic and necessary that there is a show out there with a little boy protagonist who is very gentle and loving, and that those things are what make him strong and connect him to others.
