Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

The master Tartakovsky brings us his pure passion project - two decades in the making - and it definitely has the unmistakable hallmarks of this sort of thing: richly complex lore and wildly unfocussed tone. The style here is idiosyncratic and fascinating, a Fleischeresque 30s fluidity that is more Boop than Jack, which takes some getting used to but is utterly captivating. As such it ends up this strange mash of melodrama and pure cartoonishness. It's sort of... deeply uncool, but I dig it. Whether we get the full four season vision when even die hard fans aren't that taken with it we'll see but I'd love to see the whole story!

I have so far seen 4 episodes.

The best thing about it right now is the animation and an interesting premise for the story.

The Character design reminds me of old cartoons like Betty Boop and Pinocchio, the backgrounds are really well done and the animation is smooth. The story is about a reincarnating trio of heroes where you follow their latest reincarnation which seems interesting.

And now for the bad parts.

The pacing is really weird. Some parts of the episodes seems drawn out just for everything to happen really fast later. And my biggest disappoinment right now is the lackluster voice acting a lot of the time. The character can show rage with their facial expression and body language but the voice can be a normal speaking voice, it just takes away from the experience too much for me.

I will continue to watch for now but will stop if it gets worse.

Update: I have now watched the whole first season and it get better towards the end.

Unlike MANY of the shows that Genndy Tartakovsky had some part in this unicorn: warriors eternal, is taking longer for me to warm up to, i am only on episode 4, but so far i am NOT very impressed, i am willing to give it more time and am hoping it will get better.

The steam punk theme is interesting and i must admit intriguing but the main characters are a bit flat and the advertisements that came out introducing the show gave away the villain.

The art is good a lot like samurai jack and the back ground characters are some times more interesting than the main characters, the back ground characters supply SOME humor and color all the while being placed in danger to supply the suspense, what little there is of it.

Overall, visuals and audio wise. Stunning and magnificent. Genndy never misses when it comes to his style of animation and the people he chooses to produce the music and audio.

Story wise however, I can follow the plot easily, but it feels like there's just way too many skips inbetween that it's hard to realize why this thing is important, or this thing is not. The main antagonist only appears for about a few episodes, and then vanishes as something else entirely, and it's not even known if that even is the same main antagonist because it isn't said or implied. But I'm just assuming it is because why wouldn't it be, ya know? Overall, the story is alright, but just pacing wise and context wise, it's mish mashed about 50% of the time.

Characters are fun, they look interesting and appealing. Though, unfortunately, like I said with the pacing and context, it just is difficult to make a connection to who/what they are. The main characters mainly, we're just forced into them after them only having like a minute of backstory. I wish they established more of a ground with them rather than just shoving them right in our faces like, "These are the main heroes." And some characters are completely pointless. There were a couple of situations where we're introduced to one person, only for them to never be shown again.

In the end, the show has potential, but the fact that this show was 20 years in the making makes it feel like they were stuck in a specific mindset like it was 20 years ago. In all honesty, the show leaves little to be desired since it leaves on such a weird cliffhanger that makes the finale seem like it wasn't even a finale. Though, I will give it props of making it seem appealing and interesting despite all of these negatives, though when you compare it to other works by Genndy, the show fails hard.

6.5/10.

I'll preface this by saying that I've currently watched the series up to episode 8 (the last 2 have yet to be aired).

I love Genndys work. His last work, Primal, is one of my favorite works of animation. It has incredible style, animation, story and pacing. While U:WE has a cool overall plot, every other thing Primal got right is missing from this show.

1- Style: This show has a rubberhose-ish 30s style, but without any of the fluidity that came with the animations of the period. And I don't know how to put this, but it does not feel like the style is very well integrated with what it is trying to show. To put it simply - it looks ugly, with the exception of the backgrounds, which are good.

2- Animation: I am a fan of the art of animation, and I am an animator myself, so I think I may notice some things relating to animation too much. And I'll say that the action scenes are good (like 7/10). But for the majority of the time, the animation is simply awful. It feels clunky and cheap, like the studio was trying to limit the number of drawn frames to cut costs, and thought that motion graphics would make this imperceptible. It didnt. And I have nothing against motion graphics, I myself use them a lot. This was just badly done. And even the scenes with loads of frames end up not looking good, because their style of exaggerated motion end up just looking goofy and just... BAD, for a lack of other words. I think this show looked very good in the storyboard, but in order to look as good in motion, they should have used a more competent animation studio.

3- Editing: This one is short and simple: a lot of the scenes feel like they stay on screen for like 1-2 seconds too long. It ruins the pacing and the storytelling, and makes the characters feel like paper dolls or something, because they end up reacting to things in a very artificial manner. It feels like this show was written as well paced 18 minute-long episodes, and someone at the last minute said that the show has to be 20 minutes, so they slightly stretched every scene.

4- Insufferable Characters: I like Seng, and Copernicus is ok (he can't speak, and with the kind of dialogue writing in this show, that may be a plus). However, Melinda and her 2 lovers are just incredibly annoying. The behave like they are 12, when they are all adults and 2 of them are immortal beings hundreds of years old. I know they reincarnated into hosts that were too young, but even so. When you end up rooting for the evil people to be done with the main characters, you know you didnt do a good job.

I actually liked the worldbuilding (despite buing kinda tired of the steampunk thing) and I think that the characters have a lot of potential, but I feel like these 4 points cancel any of the good things with ease.