Hi there, cartoon fans!
It’s been a hard year—for you, for us, for everyone. With that in mind, we’ve decided to change things up a bit this week. In lieu of our regularly scheduled mix of animation news, interviews, GIFs, and Essential Lists, we’ll be turning our toon-loving gaze to a show so positive, even think-pieces about it will make you smile: Steven Universe!
For those not familiar, Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe, created by Rebecca Sugar—the first woman to independently create a series for the network!— is about a young boy, named Steven Universe, who is half alien and half human. He and his Crystal Gem comrades Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl go on adventures, save the day, play music, and generally just have an awesome time. It’s filled with sci-fi action, beautiful animation influenced by Nintendo games and anime alike, and—through its characters—a wide range of relationships unlike any other show on the air. In any given 11-minute episode, you’re practically guaranteed to watch either a gorgeously animated fight scene, one character’s emotional breakdown, another character rising above their own emotional trauma or anger to help someone in need, or a rousing anthem about the power of love and self-actualization and friendship. At its best, Steven Universe can roll all of that into a single episode. (It’s at its best a lot.)
That’s what our “Across the Universe” package this week is all about: isolating and appreciating the individual pieces that make this show what it is. (We did this before with Nicktoons Month, for those keeping score.) Every day this week, we’ll roll out new stories examining how the show deals with specific emotional issues and why its characters matter in the grand scheme of things. If it’s an “Across the Universe” story, it’ll be clearly marked with this little graphic right here:
Stay tuned, get excited, and feel free to scream “WOOHOO!” as one starry-eyed little boy might do. Welcome to Steven’s Universe.
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to ❤ this article and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
