Thursday, 12 May 2016

Steven Universe Review: “Super Watermelon Island”

Alexandrite vs. Malachite in the smackdown of the century!
(This review contains spoilers!)

          After a four month break, Steven Universe finally comes back with the first episode of Season 3! Rejoice!

          And what a first episode it was. Super Watermelon Island encompassed everything that makes the show great: epic battles, giant monsters, excellent characters, gorgeous animation, superb voice acting, and really genuine moments that make you smile and go “aww”.

          So, let’s take it from the top. Malachite is back, and so are the Watermelon Stevens. The Stevens have built a society for themselves on Mask Island, complete with farmers and a shaman. Every once in a while, they sacrifice a Steven painted with a star on his chest to Malachite in order to stop her from destroying them all.

          With Steven using his dream powers to watch the carnage from the perspective of a Watermelon Steven, the Crystal Gems leap into action and go to stop Malachite once and for all themselves.

          What follows is one of the best fights we’ve seen in the entire show, save for the classic Stronger Than You scene. The Gems fused into Alexandrite to take on Malachite, using weapons of the other fusions we’ve seen in the show, as well as a few surprises of her own. In contrast, we got to see Malachite using Lapis and Jasper’s abilities, including her very own pair of water wings.

          The one thing I didn’t like about this sequence, however, was how it kept cutting back to the Watermelon Stevens. Since Steven is possessing one of them (kind of creepy when you think about it), he led the charge and enlisted the help of the other melons to help take down Malachite.

          It was cute enough, with a few homages to the Ewok attack from Return of the Jedi. But still, did we really need to take a break from the action to hear Steven give a speech in gibberish, or see the melons suit up and get ready to fight?

          Anyways, the episode ended with Alexandrite using a Crystal Gem inspired arrow to separate the fusion, retrieving Lapis and Jasper once and for all!

          Well, for the most part. Jasper fell into a crack in the earth and no one seems to be upset about that. Jasper isn’t one of my favourite characters, but I can imagine we’ll be seeing her again before too long.

          This was an excellent start to Season 3, and I genuinely hope we’ll be getting more episodes like this to come.

FINAL SCORE
9/10

Amazing

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