There's so very, very much that I barely know where to start.
The easiest thing to point to, if you're not a fan of the show and haven't been following its narrative, is that huge portions of the animation in season 8 are just still images and slideshows.
There's a climatic battle between a protagonist and the man who killed her entire species, a full 8 seasons in the making, and it's a single still image with no dialogue for about 30 seconds, a still image reaction shot wherein nobody else is having any kind of actual reaction they're just staring blankly, and then a return to the initial still image (still no dialogue) for another 15 or so seconds.
There are multiple places where footage was very obviously recycled from previous seasons without even being editted, including some spots where character A will say, "character B, we need you here now! get here as fast as you can" while character B is IN THE SHOT NEXT TO THEM because of the recycled footage.
A rough timeline has emerged over the last week indicating that most of the changes made to season 8 were finalized in October, only TEN WEEKS before airing. Ten weeks is enough time to make a change to, like, a single scene maybe. They dropped at least 2 episodes that we know of.
One voice actor's major character DIED and he didn't find out until after airing when people told him ON TWITTER, because so much of his recorded dialogue was cut.
And that's just the beginning of the technical aspects of the problems.
Narratively, the edits changed what were obviously supposed to be comedically over the top acts of sexism to be used as subversions later on (because the target audience of the show is 7+ and subtlety is not good for them yet), were instead played completely straight. Making the moral of the story, "this beautiful black princess must give herself romantically to a man whom she has turned down dozens of times over 8 seasons, because her father said so, and then she must die for him."
And that's just one of the characters they brutally fucked over.
This show is rated Y7. That means it's for children ages 7 and up. It appears in the netflix kids filter as being safe for young children to watch unsupervised.
Season 8 shows the ROTTED, MELTING CORPSE of a fan favourite who is the child of two abusive drug addicts, and the narrative specifically goes out of its way to NOT redeem him but instead say that he deserved to be killed screaming and that his corpse should have been left to rot while his abusive mother puppets his dead body.
The abusive mother gets forgiveness, though.
Like, there's so much to unpack, I barely know where to start.
The racism!! Setting aside what happened with the black princess, who is an alien and therefore something about aliens not experiencing racism could be applied.
The Everyman character is a young Cuban man whose entire life has been dedicated to two things: exploring the universe, and being kind to his friends. is crippling anxiety often manifested as trying (badly) to be a "Ladies Man," but otherwise he was a good dude.
They made him immortal at the end of the season, and then had him LEFT. ON. A. FARM. Because, you know, those latinos, they love farming I guess???!!!!!?!?!?!?!??!?!
Or, hey, lets talk about the queer character everyone is so up in arms about! Leaked footage from before the edits were ordered has been found, showing that the queer character was originally intended to get married to the other major character that has been his relationship and growth partner throughout the series. In fact, their relationship is literally the impetus for the series starting at all!
however, marketing decided that this was not appropriate, and quite literally traced over the other character's frames (BADLY! Even my dumb ass could do a better trace job! I literally have, for fuckign homestuck edits!!!!) to replace him with an unnamed NPC character who is--and this is true--literally selected from the background of the original footage and is still visible in the background because they didn't even erase him out of the background of his own wedding.
Or, let's talk about a different queer character who died in season 7. She was confirmed dead. In fact, her death is a plot point in season 8 itself, with her wife trying to murder a main character in revenge. The dead woman is drawn into scenes to "prove" she's still alive, has literally no lines except a piece of recycled dialogue from a different character with a DIFFERENT ACCENT and a different actress, and is never interacted with by ANY other characters. She's just pasted into place. Because, I guess they decided her being dead was a bad look for the show, except they STILL LEFT IN THE SCENES WHERE HER WIFE IS OUT FOR MURDER-REVENGE
There are entire scenes that the audio-descriptive track just doesn't even acknowledge because they were added in later, which is a huge fuck you to blind people, and, like. Ugh! Ugh!!!
as;ldajs;ldfj
This doesn't even cover most of the shitshow fuckery of voltron season 8, just you know. Gives a general gist of it.
Anyway, back on topic. I do think the She-ra crew were wildly inappropriate on twitter, and yes, there were definitely points where they tried to make their own show look better than voltron in comparison.
however, a lot of the criticism they were lodging at VLD made no sense, given what the show had done and was stated to be doing in the future, at the time the tweets were made.
With the context of season 8, however, all of their criticisms suddenly make perfect sense.
And given that the crews of both shows have worked together in the past, and were currently working under the same studio?
Well, if my senpai's show was being mangled beyond recognition, and I was working on a show in the exact same, super-specific genre intended to be a spiritual successor?
I'd get pretty fucking pissy about it too.
Still inappropriate, but a lot more understandable.
no subject
The easiest thing to point to, if you're not a fan of the show and haven't been following its narrative, is that huge portions of the animation in season 8 are just still images and slideshows.
There's a climatic battle between a protagonist and the man who killed her entire species, a full 8 seasons in the making, and it's a single still image with no dialogue for about 30 seconds, a still image reaction shot wherein nobody else is having any kind of actual reaction they're just staring blankly, and then a return to the initial still image (still no dialogue) for another 15 or so seconds.
There are multiple places where footage was very obviously recycled from previous seasons without even being editted, including some spots where character A will say, "character B, we need you here now! get here as fast as you can" while character B is IN THE SHOT NEXT TO THEM because of the recycled footage.
A rough timeline has emerged over the last week indicating that most of the changes made to season 8 were finalized in October, only TEN WEEKS before airing. Ten weeks is enough time to make a change to, like, a single scene maybe. They dropped at least 2 episodes that we know of.
One voice actor's major character DIED and he didn't find out until after airing when people told him ON TWITTER, because so much of his recorded dialogue was cut.
And that's just the beginning of the technical aspects of the problems.
Narratively, the edits changed what were obviously supposed to be comedically over the top acts of sexism to be used as subversions later on (because the target audience of the show is 7+ and subtlety is not good for them yet), were instead played completely straight. Making the moral of the story, "this beautiful black princess must give herself romantically to a man whom she has turned down dozens of times over 8 seasons, because her father said so, and then she must die for him."
And that's just one of the characters they brutally fucked over.
This show is rated Y7. That means it's for children ages 7 and up. It appears in the netflix kids filter as being safe for young children to watch unsupervised.
Season 8 shows the ROTTED, MELTING CORPSE of a fan favourite who is the child of two abusive drug addicts, and the narrative specifically goes out of its way to NOT redeem him but instead say that he deserved to be killed screaming and that his corpse should have been left to rot while his abusive mother puppets his dead body.
The abusive mother gets forgiveness, though.
Like, there's so much to unpack, I barely know where to start.
The racism!! Setting aside what happened with the black princess, who is an alien and therefore something about aliens not experiencing racism could be applied.
The Everyman character is a young Cuban man whose entire life has been dedicated to two things: exploring the universe, and being kind to his friends. is crippling anxiety often manifested as trying (badly) to be a "Ladies Man," but otherwise he was a good dude.
They made him immortal at the end of the season, and then had him LEFT. ON. A. FARM. Because, you know, those latinos, they love farming I guess???!!!!!?!?!?!?!??!?!
Or, hey, lets talk about the queer character everyone is so up in arms about! Leaked footage from before the edits were ordered has been found, showing that the queer character was originally intended to get married to the other major character that has been his relationship and growth partner throughout the series. In fact, their relationship is literally the impetus for the series starting at all!
however, marketing decided that this was not appropriate, and quite literally traced over the other character's frames (BADLY! Even my dumb ass could do a better trace job! I literally have, for fuckign homestuck edits!!!!) to replace him with an unnamed NPC character who is--and this is true--literally selected from the background of the original footage and is still visible in the background because they didn't even erase him out of the background of his own wedding.
Or, let's talk about a different queer character who died in season 7. She was confirmed dead. In fact, her death is a plot point in season 8 itself, with her wife trying to murder a main character in revenge. The dead woman is drawn into scenes to "prove" she's still alive, has literally no lines except a piece of recycled dialogue from a different character with a DIFFERENT ACCENT and a different actress, and is never interacted with by ANY other characters. She's just pasted into place. Because, I guess they decided her being dead was a bad look for the show, except they STILL LEFT IN THE SCENES WHERE HER WIFE IS OUT FOR MURDER-REVENGE
There are entire scenes that the audio-descriptive track just doesn't even acknowledge because they were added in later, which is a huge fuck you to blind people, and, like. Ugh! Ugh!!!
as;ldajs;ldfj
This doesn't even cover most of the shitshow fuckery of voltron season 8, just you know. Gives a general gist of it.
Anyway, back on topic. I do think the She-ra crew were wildly inappropriate on twitter, and yes, there were definitely points where they tried to make their own show look better than voltron in comparison.
however, a lot of the criticism they were lodging at VLD made no sense, given what the show had done and was stated to be doing in the future, at the time the tweets were made.
With the context of season 8, however, all of their criticisms suddenly make perfect sense.
And given that the crews of both shows have worked together in the past, and were currently working under the same studio?
Well, if my senpai's show was being mangled beyond recognition, and I was working on a show in the exact same, super-specific genre intended to be a spiritual successor?
I'd get pretty fucking pissy about it too.
Still inappropriate, but a lot more understandable.