Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

Unlike MANY of the shows that Genndy Tartakovsky had some part in this unicorn: warriors eternal, is taking longer for me to warm up to, i am only on episode 4, but so far i am NOT very impressed, i am willing to give it more time and am hoping it will get better.

The steam punk theme is interesting and i must admit intriguing but the main characters are a bit flat and the advertisements that came out introducing the show gave away the villain.

The art is good a lot like samurai jack and the back ground characters are some times more interesting than the main characters, the back ground characters supply SOME humor and color all the while being placed in danger to supply the suspense, what little there is of it.

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.

The master Tartakovsky brings us his pure passion project - two decades in the making - and it definitely has the unmistakable hallmarks of this sort of thing: richly complex lore and wildly unfocussed tone. The style here is idiosyncratic and fascinating, a Fleischeresque 30s fluidity that is more Boop than Jack, which takes some getting used to but is utterly captivating. As such it ends up this strange mash of melodrama and pure cartoonishness. It's sort of... deeply uncool, but I dig it. Whether we get the full four season vision when even die hard fans aren't that taken with it we'll see but I'd love to see the whole story!

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.

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.