not really sure how to describe that ending but nonsensically and excessively sad kinda fits so I'll use that lol
like it pulls new ways to depress the audience out of its ass and justifies it in really flimsy ways.
why did only nemu remember ui? how did mifuyu save the other magical girls? how did momoko do the exact same thing? (they don't even have the same powers so it's like ????) why make a new character for the anime, use her for only a handful of episodes and kill them off in the least satisfying and depressing way possible? also why make a big deal out of this character when she shows up just as much as any of the side story characters?
and seeing homura going back in time right at the end was the cherry on top of the grimdark sundae that was that ending.
i get "being meguca is suffering" but like these characters HAD a happy ending. anyone that follows the game saw it. admittedly it achieves that happy ending by doing similar things to the anime, but most of it made some sense.
if they really wanted their sad ending maybe they could have only killed off mifuyu, alina, nemu, touka, kuroe and a few of the side story characters. maybe leave what happens to homura and the rest of the holy quintet vague. sure it'd be sad, but it'd at least be somewhat happy.
idk maybe i'm wrong but it feels like the ending to rebellion without any of the justification and rational explanations which is impressive considering how out of nowhere homura's transformation was by the end of rebellion.
hope the new pmmm movie isn't as nonsensical as this anime ended up being.
Looking to watch Steven Universe, but not drag yourself through all the episodes? Never fear! I’ve made a list of what I believe to be the most essential episodes of Steven Universe with unnecessary ones labelled as such (and my reasons why). Now here’s some things to keep in mind before looking at the list:
When I say “essential” I mean ones that introduce important elements to the story. New important characters, new powers, episodes that develop the character and plot-relevant episodes fit this category.
Episodes that develop certain characters will be labeled as “unnecessary” if they don’t contribute enough to the plot or their growth.
There may be some personal bias since I found one or two filler episodes to be enjoyable despite their uselessness to the overall plot but I’ll label them as well so you know.
Avoid reading ahead. The labels for unnecessary ones may contain SPOILERS so if you care about that kind of stuff: you’ve been warned.
On to the list!
Season 1
1. Gem Glow
2. Laser Light Cannon
3. Cheeseburger Backpack: Steven’s first mission
a. Together Breakfast: shows off gem rooms and a monster but that’s really it.
b. Frybo: introduces PeeDee but he doesn’t ever really do anything so...?
4. Cat Fingers
5. Bubble Buddies
6. Serious Steven
a. Tiger Millionaire: while there is some character development, there isn’t really enough to make it worth watching since most of the episode is focused on wrestling.
7. Steven’s Lion
8. Arcade Mania
9. Giant Woman
10. So Many Birthdays: a peek at how dark this show can get
11. Lars and the Cool Kids
a. Onion Trade: mainly about Onion; if you like his character, feel free to watch but if not I’d avoid it since it ultimately doesn’t mean much.
12. Steven the Sword Fighter
13. Lion 2: The Movie
a. Beach Party: Gems piss off the family that runs the town’s pizza shop and try to make it up to them by inviting them to hang out. Shenanigan ensue, but has no lasting impact on the story.
14. Rose’s Room
15. Coach Steven
a. Joking Victim: develops Sadie and Lars’ relationship; skip if you don’t really care about either
16. Steven and the Stevens
17. Monster Buddies
18. An Indirect Kiss
19. Mirror Gem & Ocean Gem
a. House Guest: shows why Steven has trouble with his powers, but nothing too important happens other than that; watch if you wanna see more Pearl & Greg interactions
20. Space Race: shows Pearl’s fondness of space; develops her character and background but not necessary; skip if you want
a. Secret Team: if you don’t like episodes about characters making temporary truces I’d avoid this one; not enough character development to make it worthwhile.
b. Island Adventure: another Sadie and Lars episode; Lars opens about his feelings but not much else happens.
21. Keep Beach City Weird: relevant for SU: Future reasons, but if you don’t like Ronaldo skip
22. Fusion Cuisine
a. Garnet’s Universe: contributes nothing, but is a kinda cute episode.
b. Watermelon Steven: introduces a character(s) that is only used a total of three (maybe four?) times; also introduces a power that is rarely ever used when it matters.
23. Lion 3: Straight to Video
24. Alone Together
25. Warp Tour
a. The Test: some good character discussions, but not important overall.
26. Future Vision
27. On the Run
a. Horror Club: if you don’t care for Ronaldo, Sadie or Lars: skip. Even if you care about Lars, skip this one since you kinda get the gist of his character at this point.
b. Winter Forecast: a few nice moments, but ultimately a big “what-if” episode
28. Maximum Capacity
29. Marble Madness
30. Rose’s Scabbard
a. Open Book: a Steven and Connie episode; fun if you like them, but skippable
b. Shirt Club: focuses on one of the Cool Kids but ultimately means nothing
c. Say Uncle: Uncle Grandpa Crossover; some funny moments from the Gems but if you don’t like UG avoid this one.
31. Story for Steven
32. The Message
a. Political Power: addresses certain concerns the Gems have, but nothing important crosses over into the next episode; most about Mayor Dewey anyway
33. The Return
34. Jailbreak
-------------------
Season 2
1. Full Disclosure
a. Joy Ride: Steven messes around with the Cool Kids; there’s a bit here briefly referenced in SU: Future I think, but other than nothing really happens; skip it if you want
b. Love Letters: properly introduces Jamie and shows his character, but he never does anything for the plot. All you need to know if him and Steven are friends.
c. Reformed: introduces Amethyst's new form and shows more of her insecurities but that’s all this episode is really good for.
2. Sworn to the Sword
a. Rising Tides, Crashing Skies: a Ronaldo episode; need I say more?
3. Keeping It Together
4. We Need To Talk
5. Chille Tid
6. Cry for Help
7. Keystone Motel
a. Onion Friend: another Onion episode; addresses how Amethyst feels regarding the current situation, but other than that nothing worthwhile.
b. Historical Friction: Jamie puts on a play and some gem stuff is involved; no action, but tells us about the Gems’ history
8. Friend Ship
a. Nightmare Hospital: mostly about Connie and her mom; some cool scary bits, but skippable.
b. Sadie’s Song: entirely about Sadie and how her mom makes her feel; skip if you don’t care much for Sadie.
9. Catch and Release
10. When It Rains
11. Back to the Barn
a. Too Far: develops Peridot and Amethyst’s relationship, and develops Peridot’s character, but not enough to make this episode necessary
12. The Answer
a. Steven’s Birthday: fun episode, but ultimately contributes nothing
13. It Could’ve Been Great
14. Message Received
a. Log Date 7 15 2: shows how Peridot got to where she is (as a character) and fills in some holes between Catch and Release and Message Received; fun and worth watching but skippable regardless
-------------------
Season 3
1. Super Watermelon Island
2. Gem Drill
3. Same Old World
4. Barn Mates
5. Hit the Diamond
a. Steven Floats: introduces new power but not much else
b. Drop Beat Dad: Explains where Greg gets his money, and I guess if you’re a Sour Cream fan watch this one? Skip if you’re not.
6. Mr. Greg
7. Too Short To Ride
a. The New Lars: focuses on Lars mostly, but Sadie also shows up at one point; skip if you don’t care about them.
b. Beach City Drift: watch if you like Stevonnie; skip if you don’t really care.
c. Restaurant Wars: pointless fight between the pizza shop family and the fry stand family. I guess if you like food watch this one, but you can skip this one.
d. Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service: focuses on certain member’s of the pizza family. Skippable, but watch if you like pizza I guess.
8. Monster Reunion
9. Alone at Sea
a. Greg the Babysitter: a “stories of the past” episode where Rose shows up; nothing important really happens though
b. Gem Hunt: a certain character makes a return, but not until the end of the episode; skippable
10. Crack the Whip
a. Steven vs. Amethyst: develops their relationship but skippable overall
11. Bismuth
12. Beta
13. Earthlings
14. Back to the Moon
15. Bubbled
-------------------
Season 4
a. Kindergarten Kid: Looney Tunes-esque episode; fun but skippable
b. Know Your Fusion: certain fusions return but still skippable
c. Buddy’s Book: shows off more of the Gems’ history and has Rose in it; still skippable despite all this since none of it is super important.
2. Mindful Education
a. Future Boy Zoltron: skippable since it focuses on Mr. Smiley and a former colleague; watch if you want to see some fun interactions.
b. Last One Out of Beach City: fun episode and shows some of Pearl’s development, but still skippable.
c. Onion Gang: it’s an Onion episode so: skippable.
d. Gem Harvest: Thanksgiving episode; reveals Steven’s real last name but nothing else important.
3. Three Gems and a Baby
4. Steven’s Dream
5. Adventures in Light Distortion
6. Gem Heist
7. The Zoo
8. That Will Be All
a. The New Crystal Gems: shows us what Connie, Lapis and Peridot did while Steven was in space. Nothing really happens so just skip this one.
9. Storm in the Room
a. Rocknaldo: features Ronaldo once again and is arguably one of the worst episodes. Thankfully, it’s skippable.
b. Tiger Philanthropist: callback to an older episode; doesn’t contribute anything to the current plot
10. Room for Ruby
a. Lion 4: Alternate Ending: goes no where and contributes nothing; reveals possible name for Steven if he was a girl though so...cool I guess? Skip it.
11. Doug Out
a. The Good Lars: develops Lars’ character a little, but not much else
12. Are You My Dad
13. I Am My Mom
-------------------
Season 5
a. Stuck Together: Steven and Lars’ relationship develops further along with Lars’ character; some dramatic moments make it an overall a good episode, but you can skip it if you want.
1. The Trial
2. Off Colors
3. Lars’ Head
a. Dewey Wins: Steven realizes why Connie’s upset with him; saved you from watching Mayor Dewey for almost eleven minutes.
b. Gemcation: another good episode, but skippable regardless.
4. Raising the Barn
a. Back to the Kindergarten: shows how Peridot feels after a certain event, but nothing else really happens.
b. Sadie Killer: Sadie starts a band and that’s it. Skip if you don’t care much for Sadie.
c. Kevin Party: watch for character drama and one resolution, but skip if you can’t stand Kevin.
5. Lars of the Stars
6. Jungle Moon
7. Your Mother and Mine
a. The Big Show: a Sadie’s band episode; skippable
b. Pool Hopping: shows off Garnet’s fears and insecurities but is still skippable
c. Letters to Lars: basically amounts to Dewey finding his place in town after losing his job; nothing else so just skip this one.
8. Can’t Go Back
9. A Single Pale Rose
10. Now We’re Only Falling Apart
a. What’s Your Problem: develops Steven and Amethyst’s relationship further; skip if you want, but it’s a good episode to watch.
11. The Question
12. Made of Honor
13. Reunited
14. Legs From Here To Homeworld
15. Together Alone
a. Escapism: shows how Steven contacts the B-team but overall just feels kind of out of place? Skip if you want.
16. Change Your Mind (four parts; almost an hour long btw)
-------------------
Watch Steven Universe: The Movie if you plan on watching Steven Universe: Future
-------------------
Steven Universe: Future
1. Little Homeschool
a. Guidance: skippable since nothing in this episode is mentioned ever again. Smoky Quartz is in it though so watch if you like her.
2. Rose Buds
3. Volleyball
a. Bluebird: introduces Greg’s new look and a new fusion that’s never brought up again.
b. A Very Special Episode: fun episode but contributes nothing to the overall story.
4. Snow Day
a. Why So Blue: shows other Lapis Lazulis and shows us how far Lapis has really come; watch if you’re a Lapis fan, but skip if you want.
b. Little Graduation: skip if you never really cared too much about any of the human characters since this is mostly about them.
c. Prickly Pair: downer of an episode; no one ever mentions anything that’s said in this episode, but check it out if you wanna see Steven more of Steven’s plant powers!
6. In Dreams
7. Bismuth Casual
8. Together Forever
9. Growing Pains
a. Mr. Universe: Greg’s history is revealed but doesn’t contribute much so skip if you don’t really care about that too much.
10. Fragments
11. Homeworld Bound
12. Everything’s Fine
13. I Am My Monster
14. The Future
And that’s it! I guess let me know if this list was helpful or not, but other than that: I hope you enjoy Steven Universe!
In the first few hundred thousand years of our Universe, strange soundwaves ripped through a cloud of superheated particles. It may offer ne
In the first few hundred thousand years after our Universe was born, a primordial hum ripped through a plasma of superheated particles. Scientists are listening in with the hope of gaining new insights about the mysterious force known as dark energy.
Before stars or planets, before black holes and white dwarfs, before even atoms or rays of light, the Universe reverberated with something surprising – sound. This primordial hum moved at more than half the speed of light through a superheated plasma of baryons, photons, and dark matter.
It arose from a tug of war between ancient and powerful fundamental forces generating soundwaves in this electrically charged soup of particles. Then, just a few hundred thousand years into its existence, the plasma disappeared like a morning fog. The Universe fell suddenly, and profoundly silent.
Yet, it is still possible to pick up echos of these first soundwaves that spread out across our early Universe – if you know where to look. The ripples they created in the plasma have left a permanent imprint on the distribution of matter around the Universe. And they are also providing astronomers with clues about one of the deepest mysteries of our Universe today, the mysterious force known as dark energy.
The primordial soundwaves – also known as baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) – formed as the particles in the early Universe began to be pulled together by gravity.
"The gravitational pull of dark matter in the early Universe created 'potential wells,' pulling plasma inward," says Larissa Santos, a professor at the Center for Gravitation and Cosmology at the University of Yangzhou, China. The plasma, however, was so hot that it also created an opposing outward force. "Photons created radiation pressure that fought gravity, and pushed everything back out again. This fight created acoustic oscillations – sound waves."
BAOs burst outward from uncountable potential wells, forming expanding, concentric spheres of sound energy. They crisscrossed each other, sculpting the plasma into dazzlingly complex three-dimensional interference patterns.
Had a human somehow existed in the epoch of "baryon acoustic oscillations" (BAOs), they would have heard nothing. The sounds were around 47 octaves lower than the bottom note on a piano with enormous wavelengths of about 450,000 light years.
This incredibly deep, inaudible rumble travelled through a medium that even our most powerful telescopes is unable to penetrate. The deeper we look into the Universe, the further back into its history we see due to the time it takes for light to reach us. We can only see so far, however, as the electrical charges from unattached protons and electrons in these early stages of the Universe continuously scattered and diffused light, creating an impenetrably random glow. But BAOs created patterns in this medium which rippled outwards, and we can see evidence of these in the Universe today.
The Planck Space Telescope was able to pick up echos of BAOs from the early Universe and scientists have been able to translate them into audible frequencies, in the example below. The hum is composed of a low tone with higher overtones. The whoosing sound that can be heard is an artefact of the processing used to make the sound file.
Sounds of the early Universe
Then, at about the age of 379,000 years old, the Universe cooled enough for protons and electrons to pair up and form the first neutral hydrogen atoms. The plasma disappeared, leaving the Universe suddenly and dramatically transparent to light. At the same moment, the battle between radiation and gravitation ended, BAOs ceased, and the Universe went silent.
The blast of light energy that now spread through the Universe was so powerful that it still jangles radio telescopes and tantalises physicists more than 13 billion years later as a signal known as cosmic microwave background radiation. The "CMB" is the oldest and most detailed visual record of the early Universe. Here too scientists can see a "fossil record" of the Universe's first sounds.
"We see them imprinted on the cosmic microwave background, and also in the large-scale structure of the Universe," says Santos, who is part of a new international radio telescopy project analysing modern echoes of that long-silenced song. "Their signature is found in a small excess in the number of pairs of galaxies separated by a fixed scale of 150 Megaparsecs — around 500 million light years."
You might also like:
The mystery of our expanding Universe
Why time doesn't flow backwards
How supermassive black holes got so big
BAO signatures not only hint at what the early Universe sounded like, but also serve as a ruler for measuring the effects of yet another invisible phenomenon: dark energy.
Dark energy causes the Universe to expand. Its effects are everywhere, yet its nature is unknown. Studying the scale of BAO signatures at different distances from Earth tells a story about how dark energy's effects have changed over the history of the Universe.
"We call it a standard ruler," says Santos. "We have this fixed scale. We can know by how it appears to vary how the Universe was evolving through time."
The ripples created in the primordial plasma led to matter clumping together in ways that can still be seen in the way galaxies and stars are clustered (Credit: Nasa Goddard)
Hydrogen atoms release radiation with a 21-centimetre wavelength – invisible to human eyes, but detectable via radio telescope. This radiation from more distant clouds of hydrogen gets stretched by dark energy, increasing its observed wavelength here on Earth. The further it has travelled, the more stretched out it is.
"You choose a frequency for your radio telescope according to the epoch of the Universe that you want to measure," says Santos. Bingo is designed to map hydrogen distribution between one billion and four billion light years away – relatively close on the cosmic scale of space and time.
Bingo's two towering parabolic mirrors reflect this primordial radiation onto an array of 50 flared wave detectors known as "horns". The telescope's main moving part is the planet it rests on. The rotating Earth moves the telescope beneath the stars, scanning a strip of sky 15 degrees by 200 degrees.
Using subtle statistical calculations, Santos will analyse its data to locate millions of galaxies, examine their relative distances from one another, and dig deeper into how dark energy affected BAO patterns during that era.
"Bingo will look to the late Universe when dark energy already dominates the expansion. It's very complementary to other experiments," she says.
Many of those other experiments are already planned or underway.
"Hydrogen intensity mapping can in principle measure anything in the Universe between present day and up to the CMB. That is a huge volume to explore," says Cynthia Chiang, a professor of physics who studies hydrogen density at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "Bingo and other similar experiments look for the gas that lives inside galaxies. It is a tracer for where the matter is."
While instruments attuned to relatively close regions interest Chiang, she also craves answers about the rest of cosmic history.
"I take a very greedy approach to this," she says with a laugh. "I'm putting together an experiment that is tuned to frequencies that correspond to the 'Dark Ages'. That's the period immediately following the formation of the microwave background. We have never accessed any cosmology from this time period because it's very, very hard."
Between 250 and 350 million years elapsed between the "surface of last scattering" when the baryonic plasma gave way to the CMB, and the "cosmic dawn" when the first starlight shone out. BAOs left clouds of hydrogen clumped in wispy striations, liked an ebbing tide leaving ripples behind in the sand.
Before Chiang can access the 21-centimetre radiation from this era, she needs first to design experiments to filter out more recent signals from our own galaxy that could mask older data.
"This first experiment is not yet going to get at cosmology," she says. "The goal is to map the Milky Way emissions at these frequencies at a very high resolution so that we know what the sky looks like as a first pass. Then, hopefully, we can subtract that off and get to the cosmology.
"As the name suggests, in the Dark Ages, the Universe was a very dark and boring place. The signal you get then is almost a uniform 21-centimetre emission from this wall of hydrogen. But there are faint fluctuations in the brightness that correspond to the over-densities and under-densities. You get tiny cold and hot spots."
She says the CMB is like a still photograph capturing (in amazing detail) a pivotal moment in cosmological evolution. Mapping hydrogen density in the Dark Ages, though, would capture the hundreds of millions of years that immediately followed.
"It's a three-dimensional volume you can probe," says Chiang. "If you can measure the same sort of information as the CMB but reflected in hydrogen instead, you get tremendously more information, and you can potentially constrain cosmological parameters even more. If we get there, that would be amazing. But that's a very, very long road."
Did we get the age of the Universe drastically wrong?
Chiang's planned experiments, alongside the Bingo telescope, add to a growing array of innovative observational instruments laying bare the history of BAOs, the large-scale structure of the Universe, and the invisible dark energy that drives galaxies apart.
"When we measure the sky, we measure everything," says Santos. "CMB, neutral hydrogen, galaxy point-sources, all this kind of stuff. We must be able to recognise what's a cosmological signal and what is everything else."
Santos also hopes BAOs will reveal even more about the Universe's past, piercing the 379,000-year-thick wall of plasma and providing data on the previous fraction of a second – the Universe's "inflationary epoch", during which most cosmologists think space was expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light.
Cosmological inflation is a widely trusted theory of how our Universe got from its tiny, hot, dense, original state to the cosmos we see today. The theory has gone through many incarnations, variations, and simulations. It makes many robust predictions that have been tested and verified, yet there is no direct evidence for it.
"Many, many inflationary theories have been already discarded by our observations," says Santos. "With the measurements we want to see, we can determine which theories agree best with that measurement and go from there."
Baryon acoustic oscillations only existed for a few hundred thousand years, but they helped create — and are helping scientists tell — the story of the invisible Universe from its first moment to its last.
