Review of Steven Universe (2013)
Seen in 2026.
Seen on HBO’s streaming service in 2026. This review refers to the first season.
Three magical women “always save the day” by battling dangerous creatures with the aid of a human child. They’re Crystal Gems, and it turns out they have secrets. For example, they’re space aliens, they’ve walked the Earth for thousands of years, the creatures they fight are also Gems, and so on.
The motif of the three Crystal Gems fighting evil is taken partly from Japanese animation. They’re magical girls more than they are US-style superheroes, but 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. Season 2, episode 1—“Full Disclosure”—was shown as season 1, episode 50. Such a rearrangement would not have been possible in a fully 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.
I cannot avoid the impression that if it had all been serialized, like the two-parter in the middle of season 1 and like almost all contemporary anime with a story, Steven Universe would have been better. Certainly there are great ideas in the writing, far above what the show’s age rating normally suggests in a US production. Season 1 has good “reveals” for drama, but also genuine worldbuilding and solid characterizations. The makers could have gone the distance with that, and the solid production design could have supported it. Like Gravity Falls (2012), it’s artsy and comfortable in the Western tradition, updating the vague background textures of 1960s US TV animation for digital tools. They even throw in a couple of musical numbers, and they’re not bad.
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 is perfectly in line with the Japanese influences, both with respect to the various 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.
References here: Hilda (2018).