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Watching this series is to experience a TV joy in western animation I have not experienced since He-Man's 2002 revival. Like that series, this series is a masterful re-imagining of a Filmation property with vastly improved animation guided with inspired storytelling that takes the best of the original series' concept and updates it to unlock its true dramatic potential.

For instance, Adora/She-Ra is finally given full agency as her own character. Rather than have an outsider come to tell her about her destiny and being controlled by magic to make her snap out of it, Adora is simply sheltered in a life that was all she's ever known and must come to reassess her life and change on her own in the face of the truth. Just that journey in the first story is a keeper that gets the series going. This is exactly the kind of rework I have been looking for that corrects the original's sexism as we see our heroine earn her own spurs even as she pays the price.

However, the primary conflict with the series' most direct villain, Catra, is where the series truly takes flight. Rarely have I savored a villain in TV animation with such finely crafted nuance whose love for her lost friend is in a losing struggle against her jealousy and dark ambitions as Etheria pays the price. Even her leader, Lord Hordak, is revamped majestically as a dark lord with an pragmatically benevolent streak that makes feel him even more menacing like Gargoyles' David Xanatos; a villain not prone to the cliched flaws of cartoon villains and thus is more formidable for that. That is worthy material for a true epic that goes beyond anything Filmation could have done or even conceived of, with apologies to She-Ra co-creator, J. Michael Straczynski, who would create his classic TV saga, Babylon 5, a decade later.

With those characters providing a framework, there is a delightful mix of supporting characters of all varieties like the endearingly insecure Glimmer or the hilariously eccentric Entrapta. Even Swift Wind is changed from an animal cliche to a fun sidekick with his own agenda and sardonic attitude.

In short, this series is a joy on par with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that also took a series trapped in sexist stereotypes and hackwork and re-imagined it with inspired creativity and ideals to create a new classic.

Given the fact that World War I is now 100+ years in the past, it can be hard for modern minds to wrap their heads around that war's grand scale and horror. This YouTube channel neatly resolves that disconnect with a sweeping and intricately detailed account of the conflict that delves into every possible aspect.

With a real-time weekly scheduling of the retrospective over four years, the producers have every incentive for such comprehensiveness and you will learn so much about a tragedy that still reverberates today.