Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

The series feels like an animated movie padded out with extra episodes rushing to resolve some of the previous setups. All the while creating literal run in circles episodes in the end.

Things go downhill after KO of the main antagonist with everyone else unable to even stay alive to pick up the slack. Hero challenges become vague, contradictive, rushed, or outright dropped.

The setup is good, the art is great, starter characters are interesting, but after 20 years on the cutting room floor a lot of the best parts of the story was lost.

The writers need to go through the feedback and fan criticism before committing to season 2. Everyone likes the series premise, but not the second half execution coming up so short.

I have so far seen 4 episodes.

The best thing about it right now is the animation and an interesting premise for the story.

The Character design reminds me of old cartoons like Betty Boop and Pinocchio, the backgrounds are really well done and the animation is smooth. The story is about a reincarnating trio of heroes where you follow their latest reincarnation which seems interesting.

And now for the bad parts.

The pacing is really weird. Some parts of the episodes seems drawn out just for everything to happen really fast later. And my biggest disappoinment right now is the lackluster voice acting a lot of the time. The character can show rage with their facial expression and body language but the voice can be a normal speaking voice, it just takes away from the experience too much for me.

I will continue to watch for now but will stop if it gets worse.

Update: I have now watched the whole first season and it get better towards the end.

The voice acting is pretty bad all around. Several characters feel like they don't belong in the world due to their design. The story is just barely compelling. I feel like they weren't able to decide if this was going to be made for children or adults/young adults and the vibe jarringly vacillates. I'm aware that shows can pull off doing both, but this ain't it.

Apparently I need more words for this to post: Melinda's voice actor is especially bad. Honestly brings down every scene with how unengaged and boring she sounds. How is this person getting paid to do this? Makes me want to give it a shot.

I'll preface this by saying that I've currently watched the series up to episode 8 (the last 2 have yet to be aired).

I love Genndys work. His last work, Primal, is one of my favorite works of animation. It has incredible style, animation, story and pacing. While U:WE has a cool overall plot, every other thing Primal got right is missing from this show.

1- Style: This show has a rubberhose-ish 30s style, but without any of the fluidity that came with the animations of the period. And I don't know how to put this, but it does not feel like the style is very well integrated with what it is trying to show. To put it simply - it looks ugly, with the exception of the backgrounds, which are good.

2- Animation: I am a fan of the art of animation, and I am an animator myself, so I think I may notice some things relating to animation too much. And I'll say that the action scenes are good (like 7/10). But for the majority of the time, the animation is simply awful. It feels clunky and cheap, like the studio was trying to limit the number of drawn frames to cut costs, and thought that motion graphics would make this imperceptible. It didnt. And I have nothing against motion graphics, I myself use them a lot. This was just badly done. And even the scenes with loads of frames end up not looking good, because their style of exaggerated motion end up just looking goofy and just... BAD, for a lack of other words. I think this show looked very good in the storyboard, but in order to look as good in motion, they should have used a more competent animation studio.

3- Editing: This one is short and simple: a lot of the scenes feel like they stay on screen for like 1-2 seconds too long. It ruins the pacing and the storytelling, and makes the characters feel like paper dolls or something, because they end up reacting to things in a very artificial manner. It feels like this show was written as well paced 18 minute-long episodes, and someone at the last minute said that the show has to be 20 minutes, so they slightly stretched every scene.

4- Insufferable Characters: I like Seng, and Copernicus is ok (he can't speak, and with the kind of dialogue writing in this show, that may be a plus). However, Melinda and her 2 lovers are just incredibly annoying. The behave like they are 12, when they are all adults and 2 of them are immortal beings hundreds of years old. I know they reincarnated into hosts that were too young, but even so. When you end up rooting for the evil people to be done with the main characters, you know you didnt do a good job.

I actually liked the worldbuilding (despite buing kinda tired of the steampunk thing) and I think that the characters have a lot of potential, but I feel like these 4 points cancel any of the good things with ease.

This is the type of show were you always want to gave a look at the background, it is so beautiful and full of details. Probably for those that just want a full of action toon this is not for you, this one for those that enjoy Easter eggs here and there. You can see that definitely they want to merge old style and modern animation and i love it!! The outcome is artistically really nice. The character development is kind of slow and not much have happened there until the 3rd episode where i'm now. FInally there are really funny 1 second moments i hope they keep these. The adult and child them is every where so it is a series for all.