Review of Steven Universe (2013)

Seen in 2026.

Seen on HBO’s streaming service in 2026. This review refers to the first two seasons.

The motif of the three Crystal Gems fighting evil is taken partly from Japanese animation. They’re magical girls just as much as they are US-style superheroes, though the perspective is that of the US. This is why, in episode 31, there’s a joke about people on “anime message boards” fighting over dubs versus subs. The homage to Japan goes deep in some respects, with protagonist Steven Universe sometimes arguing for empathy with potentially hostile creatures, but the show is more of a chimaera than a hybrid. For example, episode 33 features a gentle parody of Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo in a Mario-style platformer, disconnected from the overarching narrative.

That overarching narrative is hamstrung by the show’s production model. In the streaming-media version I saw, the episodes are rearranged from their original broadcast order. For example, “Open Book”, which was originally season 1, episode 46, was listed by HBO as episode 51. The original broadcast’s season 2 opener—“Full Disclosure”—was shown by HBO as season 1, episode 50. Such a rearrangement would not have been possible in a serialized narrative, where the seasons follow their natural rhythm and the Gems pursue their objectives with the urgency they feel. Neither the broadcast order nor the HBO order are “the intended order”, a third order stated by co–executive producer Ian Jones-Quartey in 2015.

In my opinion, Steven Universe would have been even better if it had leaned in to its serialization like contemporary anime with a story. Season 1 has good “reveals” for drama, but also genuine worldbuilding and solid characterizations. The show’s combination of the mecha genre’s gattai motif with the interiority of shōjo is such a great idea. Though it as a mashup of Japanese influences, it does not rely on its audience knowing about the originals, and it combines well with the more overt didacticism of US cartoons, as is most obvious in HBO’s season 2, episode 12 (“Keystone Motel”). The makers could have gone the distance with that combination. The solid production design would have supported it. Like Gravity Falls (2012), the show is artsy and comfortable in the Western tradition, updating the vague background textures of 1960s US TV animation for digital tools. Season 2, episode 13 (“Friend Onion”) is deliciously weird, Addams Family stuff. The makers even throw in a couple of musical numbers throughout, and they’re not bad.

The writing is far above what the show’s age rating normally suggests in a US production. The central theme of the show, as Steven expresses it in episode 43, is that it’s “hard to deal with stuff from the past”. This, too, is perfectly in line with the Japanese influences, both with respect to the various unresolved omoi of the ghostly Corrupted Gems, and with respect to Steven as a Little Boy (2005), the happy-go-lucky product of some bad stuff. It was also hard for a forward-looking TV production like this to deal with the past. Steven Universe stands as a testament to the fact that, as late as 2013, it was still hard to tell a story on US TV, in a production model built for offline syndication and for the expectations of the genre’s most casual fans.

The show contains a parody of itself called Crying Breakfast Friends. In it, everything is anthropomorphic and indeed crying. Only Steven understands that play within the play. In “Keystone Motel”—that most clearly didactic episode—Steven cries over a spilled breakfast. The episode teaches children to get in touch with and control their own emotions. The point of the Crying Breakfast Friends self-parody seems to be that US audiences in 2013 weren’t ready for an emotionally literate children’s show, but I think they were.

References here: Hilda (2018).

animation fiction moving picture series