The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Anyone else watch this? It's a lot of fun. They take the basic story from the first five episodes of the original show but really flesh the characters (and their motivations) out, and remove He-Man from the mix.

It's designed and primarily written by Noelle Stevenson who was previously most famous for the comic series Lumberjanes and it has a really good design sensibility, being both modern-feeling but having a lot of nods to its 80s low-budget origins. There's also a bunch of fun little nods to the old series, which I only recognized a handful of because I never watched much of it but what I did pick up on was great.

Very cool. Where is it available?

Looks like Netflix. Just saw the poster, not a fan of the art style personally.

Loved the original more than He-Man, although both were staples of my childhood.

Watched the first couple of episodes this morning. I don't remember how the original started, but I like the way this starts and will likely watch the rest.

(The actor that voices Bow is the eldest son on Black-ish. It is kind of the same character.)

In the original series, the Sorceress wakes up from a bad dream where she remembers a baby being kidnapped and taken to Etheria, and then summons He-Man and gives him a second sword of Grayskull and sends him off to Etheria. There he foments a revolt and meets Bow, and then they come across Force Captain Adora, who he talks to very sternly and tells her that she's evil. She's all "no I'm not you are" and then he's all "no you are" and then she's all "oh okay" and then takes the sword and turns to She-Ra and then she's all "oh neat" and then as Adora she's all "oh hey guys I used to be evil but now I'm good" and then the resistance is all "oh yay! welcome to our group" the end.

(Okay there's a bit more to it than that but still, the tl;dr is that He-Man shows up, tells Adora to stop being evil, and then she tee-hees her way into not being evil anymore.)

The new series is way less hamfisted, and does a great job of conveying the world as this abandoned place where people are just kinda continuing on with their lives and taking the setting for granted, a story trope I always appreciate. And the characters -- both Horde and Rebellion -- have actual backstories and depth, and there's actual complexity in the way they interact, and we actually get to understand why people would join the Horde.

The new art style definitely takes getting used to but I like it a lot better than the original one, especially since the various characters are shown with a variety of body types other than "baseball bat with melons strapped to it" and "muscular hunk."