Friendship in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

Spoilers: All of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

[sparxstreak]

2:54 I LOVE the fact that Catra’s #1 priority is still to those she loves & cares about. She does care about the world being saved but for the sake of her friends rather than just ethics or survival.
Adora’s priorities also start to shift once Catra makes this change & actually starts becoming loyal in a more personal way & not according to who’s ’good’ or ‘bad’ & actually starts putting the best friend she wasn’t there for first & I wholeheartedly believe this is thanx to Catra❣️

[freedom]

I wish we would get a movie showing more of the series after season 5

[sparxstreak]

1:25 What I thought was really heartwarming about Adora’s forgiveness of Catra was how much it reminded me of the way Iroh forgave Zuko in ATLA. She never hesitated to give it to Catra (even though the latter didn’t believe she deserved it at the time) while still holding Catra accountable.

But (to me at least) it was never about being able to forgive Catra - bcuz when she finally said sorry to Adora, that was her hope rekindled that she had a chance to get her dearest friend back. And once she does, it isn’t just Catra who works on being a better friend but Adora too (since she’d always wanted to make up for hurting Catra in the 1st place - she just wasn’t sure how to do that at first) but she starts listening to Catra & generally becomes more aware of her feelings & how her actions affect her when taking it too far (though I wish this had gotten more screentime in terms of dialogue)

So many protagonists are usually done with personal growth by the final season but this is arguably the season with the MOST growth for Adora - almost as much as Catra actually.

[Michael-ifmy]

Man I still can't watch Scorpia leaving without tearing up just a bit. Damn good show

[jivepeach]

12:52
Entrapta hugging Hordack:

Mermista:
....
so are we all just like...okay with this?

Sis asking the real question we were all thinking💀😂

[adrianwagner]

Great analysis!
I think if this show had an epilogue, some of the few problems could have been fixed. Catra would have had more time to apologize to Scorpia and we would have seen Hordak cleaning up the mess he made as a way to atone for his crimes (which was explained by the creators).

[sparxstreak]

10:04 (pushes up nerd glasses) it was never actually confirmed Angella died - just trapped in dimensional limbo. There was even a possible storyline discussed with the SPOP team about her being rescued in S5 but there wasn’t enough time given the 13 ep limit.

However there’s nothing stopping Angella returning in a possible future movie, epilogue season or even a comic should ND ever create more SPOP content.

[sparxstreak]

12:26 Agreed, I couldn’t help but believe that there was a pinprick of genuine care Double Trouble had for Catra & wanted her to get out of the toxic spiral she was in.

[nenakarra]

This is SO well made, it absolutely deserves more views.

[SapphireDragonStudio]

Fantastic assessment!!! For the most part I love how SPOP handled the story, characters, friendships. My only real critique are similar to some of yours - not quite enough time for redemptions of Hordak or Catra. I wish the last season could have been split into two to give it more time, or there could be an epilogue movie, short series, season or something, to tie up those loose ends. Still overall a great story and one of my favorite shows!! Thank you for the analysis!!

[hilarymajor]

Bit off topic, but one thing I love is that there are several healthy, stable same sex relationships, so it more obvious in contrast that the issues with Adora and Catra are plot and personality driven, not something inherently based on them both being female

[knuckles]

I really enjoy your analysis videos, but it feels really quiet without like background music or something.

[sparxstreak]

I actually thought Perfuma’s character seemed unusually stubborn (in a self entitled way) & honestly, kinda done dirty in “Return to the Fright Zone” which is a pity cuz I found her rather funny in previous eps.

She didn’t have to sacrifice her morals of believing in her friends but her problem was underestimating Horde Prime’s power over chipped victims & put ALL her friends in danger as a DIRECT result of those ideals, which ended in Catra getting zapped after she tried to follow Perfuma’s advice due to her guilting her for her past actions against Scorpia.

I get that these 2 would have opposing ideas on how to save Scorpia with Perfuma being ultra positive & Catra taking a more pragmatic & realistic approach due to actually having been chipped herself. I just wish they came to a compromise where Perfuma used her bond with Scorpia to keep her focused on her (therefore increasing her chances on actually regaining control temporarily) while Catra disarmed her & broke the chip. That way Perfuma wouldn’t have had to sacrifice her ideals & Catra could’ve still done her part in being there for Scorpia.

And let’s be honest, Adora & Perfuma got out by Sheer. Dumb. LUCK. Had Scorpia regained control even HALF a second later - they would’ve been screwed. In fact it was only thanx to Catra calling Glimmer that any of them escaped at all.

I’m even prepared to say that Perfuma’s rigid inflexible ideals was WHY they ultimately couldn’t save Scorpia in the Fright Zone. Netossa was able to get Spinnerella back bcuz she knew holding back wasn’t going to save her wife.
Which is why it aggravated me so much to see Perfuma act like her plan of non confrontation was successful bcuz it wasn’t! She was Damn well lucky that it happened to work enough for merely escaping. Thank god Catra had the sense NOT to act like it was foolproof even at the end of the ep.

Well, at least Perfuma took SOMETHING away from it afterwards, given the way she struck down Mermista & destroyed her chip later on.

[tipsy]

Lovely video!!!!

Absolutely right that Adora doesn't value personal relationships over everything else (her valuing other people's happiness over her own is very costly to Adora's emotional wellbeing), but Catra DID, mostly her relationship with Adora. Then it became valuing VICTORY over adora over everything else.

And I agree entirely that Bow and Glimmer had the best apology. You have these two characters who were the bedrock for the Best Friend Squad, basically taking Adora into their fold that has always existed, but then you see over time that Glimmer kind of takes Bow for granted, and he's much better at standing up for himself than a lot of the other characters are (i.e Adora). And Glimmer is much better at apologising and words than, say, Catra. So you have positive rolemodels for how to deal with a broken friendship!!!!

With Scorpia and Entrapta it's interesting that you have two people who are so nice but who have absolutely no interest in the Greater Good, or at least, they don't consider the Greater Good to be the same thing that the other characters do. With Scorpia, she hasn't really thought about life outside the Horde and believes that she will never be accepted. With Entrapta, she KNOWS that she had conflict with the other characters and firmly believes they've hard rejected her. So they try to adhere to their values of friendship, but only within the Horde. Scorpia is also motivated by loyalty, and Entrapta by technology.

It would've been interesting if instead of brushing off their friendship fears as misunderstandings, they were actually addressed. Why did Scorpia say she had been rejected by the Princesses? And we saw firsthand that Entrapta was misunderstood by them. I'm not the only one who has issues with the "leash" gag for example. I think more could've been done in this area rather than gaslight the characters/audience by pretending it was a non-issue.
At the same time, I think that (intentionally) showing the good princesses being discriminatory would have gone against the heart of the show. Like, can you even go back from that? God knows how much the unintentional ableism cost discussion of Perfuma and Mermista.

I think if they'd lingered a bit more on the Scorpia apology, it would've been perfect. It needed to be more like the Entrapta one wherein it's clear that Scorpia hears Catra apologise and makes a decision, rather than instantly forgiving her. I am not worried about her not facing enough penalty, it's more that this would be more respectful to Scorpia's character. It makes sense that they all forgive Catra, it just would be nice for it to be clear that this wasnt an automatic forgiveness, but instead a choice.

Im not really interested in Hordak getting further punishment/redemption. I think, the point where it left off with him, he was finally free. It's not like they showed him being besties with everyone; hell, for all we know, they'll hate the guy and not want to associate with him. We know that he and Entrapta and all the clones are going to have a difficult start, but they'll get through it. Also he's basically a new guy, having suffered plenty, just like Catra. I know that doesn't make up for everything he did, but nothing ever will, and he was obviously not in the right state of mind while leading the Horde and it's not like Etheria even has a jail, so just let him face the social consequences and be done with it. He can probably help rebuild what he destroyed.

[clashcraft_chic]

did you really have to make me sob today?

[פוליטיקטינסקיקליינר]

I wish the glimmer catra part is season 5 would've been longer, making a more depthul redemption for catra, and that the star sisters wouldn't exist and waste our time.
Actually, I would want to not even see the rest of the cast until the ship goes back, and then see the harm, without knowing about it before, and the harm being more severe.

[buck-the-vocab-mascot]

Friendship in sher
Three of six pictures being romantic

[gianpaolovillani]

I want them to do Season 6 or the She-Ra and the Princesses Warrior (Netflix) movie.

[vrepitsa]

Honestly i love these friendships in the show more than ships. The ships (especially Catradora!!) never really clicked to me, but the friendships are just soo cute! Especially Adora and Bow, they’re soo close & look out for each other and i find it soo cute!

[OopisDoopis]

(SPOILERS FOR YUGIOH MEMORY WORLD ARC)





I feel like yugioh does really really bad at messages about friendship. At some point they say "you lost because you have no friends" or something along those lines to the main villain, but they literally, , , killed all of his friends (to make the millennium items), and he is currently working with the tortured spirits of his dead village to get revenge for them... ????