News He-Man anime series from Kevin Smith coming to Netflix

The Mattel toy line simply designated all characters as Masters of The Universe. Every single one of them. He-Man didn't get star billing until the TV series, although he and Skeletor were the core components of the toy line.

 

Adam was a much later addition to the toy line. He was just a clone of the He-Man toy in different colors, with a removable jacket.

 

Just FYI apparently the toys for this thing give spoilers so yeah might want to avoid those.

 

That trailer was awesome. I don't know much about the MotU franchise (it came out a bit before my time), but this looks like a good action cartoon. I liked the new She-Ra a good deal, but this seems even more like a show that I could really get into, I always love to see a new action cartoon nowadays, and this one looks like it could be very good regardless of my lack of familiarity with the franchise.

 

I truly mean no offense by this, but I would NEVER had guessed you were younger than me based on your postings in the past!

On the plus side, it's awesome to see people with little familiarty saying they're interested in giving it a shot!

 

Yep. According to wikipedia, the original He-Man cartoon ran from 1983 to 1985, and I was born in 1990. But, while I've never really gotten into most of the old Filmation stuff, I do enjoy good animated shows, especially action based ones, so the trailer made me very interested. Luckily the original show's concept isn't too difficult to grasp, so I doubt that I'll need to know much more then I already do to enjoy the follow up.

This upcoming show has some very good voice actors, some good animation (at least based on the trailer) and looks to have a tone I'll really enjoy, so I can't wait to see it. I'm usually not big on Netflix originals, but their cartoons (at least the ones for the older teen through adult audience, I don't know about the more younger focused ones like the various Dreamworks movie spinoffs) are generally pretty good (She-Ra) to great (Castlevania). Hopefully the new He-Man lives up to what the trailer showed.

 

I'd like to see kirk's review of the old show after he watches the new one first.

 

It looks good. I am curious and will check it out, I was born in 1978 and was the right age to have been interested but never really was. I remember vague memories of seeing the cartoon when I was a kid. But was just something I saw on TV but never thought about much it, I remember a younger kid across had a lot of the figures and they looked “weird” to me at that age.

My parents were somewhat strict in terms of how many toys they bought us. I had 4 older half brothers from my Dad’s first marriage. So we, myself and younger brother and sister, got all their hand me down Star Wars figures. I wish I had saved all those!

Masters of the Universe is not the only cartoon/toy line I could have been a fan of but never was. Transformers and GI JOE fall in the same category. Though I might have been just a little younger than the main audience. When Real Ghostbusters started we got a few of the toys and remember specific episodes from when I was a kid. But when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit me and my younger brother were were obsessed like all other kids.

I will check this out. Sometimes it’s best to have little familiarity so you have no expectations at all.

 

It’s funny you should mention that book. My local library has a copy. I have checked it out. I looked through it more than read. Which lead to looking up how the mythology was developed. Also Netflix has a documentary series on different toy lines. One episode is on MOTU. I think seeing that lead me to checkout the book.

 

Wait a minute, doesn't everyone know that MOTU was a toy line first? The TV show was something Mattel wanted to promote sales. All the characters were invented, other than their names, by the TV writers long after the toys came out. Some characters, like Orko, were not toys to begin with. This is why the Lundgren movie shares so little with the cartoon.

 

Eh, I've watched a good amount of old, janky cartoons of similar types, one or two even from Filmation, so I think I have a good idea of what to expect. From Filmation specifically I've seen Star Trek the Animated Series and a few episodes of a Superman cartoon they did in the late 60s and a Batman cartoon they did in the 70s (through some cheap DVD releases of those two shows). So, while I might not specifically be familiar with MOTU, I atleast have an idea of the style of animation those shows used, and probably the general writing quality.

Actually, after my last post I remembered something and looked through my stuff, and I have a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Vol. 1 DVD that I got used at a sale put on by the public library, probably 2-3 years ago but never got around to watching. I got it for probably $2 and just got it because it was there. It has the first 20 episodes of the old show, so I'll probably give an episode or two a watch just for fun. I know that Paul Dini wrote some episodes for the show, so it could be interesting to see if he could do anything with the limitations that the show had.

But, its not like I judge old cartoons that harshly. Even if I end up not liking them I know going in that they're probably going to be very simplistic (writing and animation wise), but they can occasionally be really weird which can be fun.

 

Maybe the reason that Adam was wearing that pink shit all the time, was that he was the least afraid of losing that shirt to a lightning strike during the transformation?

But he wasn't nude when he switched back to Adam?

Never mind.

 

It is however an opposition, a narrative tension between two forces that ideally should tend towards some kind of closure. Obviously these are only premises, but they cannot be carried on indefinitely. After a while there are simply no more new stories to tell within the confines of these premises or the audience gets tired. Both US 70-80s cartoons and Japanese anime are just vehicles to sell toys, but at least the latter give something akin a conclusion to their premises. But in the old times we were sure that G.i. Joe will never beat definitely Cobra commander, Mumra will be forever a Thundercats' nemesis and M.A.S.K. and V.E.N.O.M will fight as long as the ratings allow. Then suddenly they end, leaving a sour taste of historia interrupta. Sometime they try to breathe new life into these old IPs, but they no longer follow the old episodic formula.

 

All story structures are about opposition; that's axiomatic. If there's nothing to challenge or resist a character's pursuit of their goal, there's no plot. But an arc is a specific kind of story structure, one that rises, peaks, and falls. That's why it's called that. The choice of metaphor is not random. A flat, unchanging story structure is not an arc any more than a square is a circle.

Of course they can. There have been episodic series that have sustained the same premise for decades on end. The Minnow crew was still stranded on the island 15 years later for the reunion movie. Columbo was still outsmarting rich and powerful murderers 35 years after he started, yet was still a lieutenant with the same rumpled raincoat and battered car, rather than having been promoted to captain, retired, and gotten rich publishing his memoirs about all the famous and important villains he single-handedly brought to justice. Batman still hasn't put the Joker away for good after 81 years. Any premise can be sustained as long as the series needs it to be.

Both are meaningless things to say about children's programming, where the audience is expected to rotate out and be replaced every few years. The '40s Superman radio show actually remade several of its storylines multiple times, since presumably the current listening audience would be too young to remember the previous iterations. The Japanese Super Sentai franchise has been telling the same basic kinds of stories for the past 46 years, swapping out the characters and costumes and exploring creative variations on the themes but still hewing to the same basic formula. Its American adaptation Power Rangers has been at it for nearly 30 years now and is still running.

And really, there are no "new stories" to tell. All stories are variations on ones that have been told before. What's new is in how they're told. I've seen almost every Super Sentai season at this point, and the best writers still find fresh variations on the formulas and interesting character stories to tell within their strictures.

I don't see a lack of an ending as a bad thing. I like the idea of the characters getting to continue their adventures after we're no longer watching them. I mean, if it's something like Dr. David Banner having to let the world think he is dead until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him, I would've certainly liked to see a finale where he finally found his cure. But if it's something like a starship crew seeking out new life and new civilizations, or a superhero fighting to save his city, I don't see that as a story that needs an ending. I'd rather believe they're still out there making a difference. It's sad if it has to end for good.

 

It seems that some people are already complaining that they made Andra (I have no idea who is she, I'm not so well versed in He-Man lore) a black character, when originally she was white

(The second one from the left)

 

The racist objections to such things are tiresomely predictable. The character wasn't even in the TV series, just a short-lived Marvel Star Comics tie-in, so there's no continuity issue.

 

Well, racial diversity wasn't the strong suit of the old series. We had one black character and one offensive Asian stereotype.

 

Since this is a continuation of the original cartoon and she never had an appearance, she's a clean slate to do anything they want easily (really, they could have changed anybody if they wanted, but at least for "continuity" there's nothing changing at all here). The comics and cartoon barely matched anyways. Let them complain, this cartoon is still gonna be awesome whether they pretend to not watch or not.