Thursday, 15 September 2016

Steven Universe Review: “Onion Gang”

They flashed Suitcase Sam
(This review contains spoilers!)

          So it looks like we’re entering another Steven Universe hiatus as the Summer of Steven finally comes to a close with Onion Gang. Was it a fitting conclusion for this massive event?

          Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean it was necessarily a good episode.

          At times, Steven Universe honestly feels like two different shows. On one hand, you have the massive plot episodes and excellent character episodes, such as Bismuth, the four-part Season 3 ending arc, Mr. Greg, Mindful Education, and Last One Out of Beach City. On the other hand, you have stuff like The New Lars, Future Boy Zoltron, and yes, Onion Gang.

          The premise is that Onion takes Steven into the forest, and Steven meets a group of Onion’s friends, who are all as weird as he is, with equally as weird names. Together, they get up to all sorts of hijinks that’s in no way fun to watch.

          Huge props to Steven’s voice actor, Zach Calliston, though. He’s as good as ever here, even when he’s the only speaking role in the whole episode.

          What really went wrong here, however, is the focus of the episode itself. While one Onion is good for a few visual gags, four of them equal just pure annoyance. So much time is wasted just having them doing stupid stuff with no rhyme or reason, giving us, the viewers, no reason to care or feel for them.

          Fortunately, this episode does one thing better than Zoltron: it gives us a satisfying ending. I was fully expecting the end to be Steven to show up and forgive them for their weirdness and everything to go back to normal, but instead it’s revealed that the summer is ending, and Onion’s friends are leaving Beach City. Steven is left to comfort Onion, and it’s a really sweet scene.

          I really wish the episode had more of this, though. How about have the first half be Onion’s friends, and then Steven leaves at the middle point in the episode. Then it’s revealed that Onion’s friends left, and Steven has to try and make it up to Onion in the latter half of the episode. That would be so much more interesting than faking one of the kids dying and going around literally flashing people.

          I guess this is a fitting episode to end the Summer of Steven on, as it dealt with the end of summer vacation. But still, there were a lot of missed opportunities here, and even more bad choices made. Season 4 is already off to an extremely rough and rocky start, and episodes like this are doing it no favours.

          I can at least say it’s better than Future Boy Zoltron, though. So there’s that.

FINAL SCORE
3/10

Bad

No comments:

Post a Comment