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SURPRISE! (again)

So, you guys actually thought I liked Star vs. The Forces Of Evil??? Well guess what, I don't. I never did. I sure had everyone going, didn't I? I'm just really good at making up fake reasoning for opinions I don't even personally hold in order to get reactions. I was able to do this by exaggerating the things I enjoyed about each episode and shifted each of them to be come more positive than I actually thought they were. So for example, I used to call 53 episodes of this show great, but not because I actually thought a lot of them were great, but because those were the ones I found the most tolerable and I exaggerated my opinion on them to make them seem great on the scorecard when in reality I didn't carry any strong feelings towards a lot of these episodes. Thing is though, at the time I never actually thought the show was bad. Okay, I kind of hated Season 4, but other than that my thoughts on this show could be described in one word - apathy. A majority of the episodes in this show failed to get a reaction out of me. At the time I would have given this show a meh, and I was planning to make a scorecard later which has my real thoughts on the show on it. However, this is around the time when my activity on DeviantArt greatly decreased and I never got around to it until now. However, I am glad that I left it for so long because over time I began to grew a hatred towards the show and began to realise how worthless this show actually is.

As a matter of fact, there were clues in my review that this entire thing was a ruse. I'll give a couple of examples: "When I first saw Season 1, I thought it was very mediocre, while Season 2 was an absolute meh-fest that barely had episodes which pulled me one way or another. It wasn't until I saw Season 3 where I began to gain a new appreciation for this show and immediately reconsidered my thoughts on the first two seasons." There we go, I never really liked the first two seasons. It's absolutely preposterous to think that watching one season would completely change my mind on this show. And the thing about Season 3 is that this is the season where I decided to begin the trolling, more specifically Booth Buddies which I exaggerated to make it look much better than it was in order to get a reaction out of everyone. I can give another example of a clue: "In fact I originally wasn't intending to call this show good at all. Quick history lesson here, I was initially a lot harder on this show than I should have been because I had just come off of Gravity Falls and I wasn't used to this show at all. My standards were way too high because I literally came into it expecting it to be mediocre and judged episodes unfairly based on what I was anticipating." There we go. I openly admitted that I didn't intend to call the show good. The Gravity Falls excuse was a cover-up which anyone could have easily refuted. Me raising my standards really high after watching an actual great show is such a dumb excuse that I am surprised no one called me out on. If I don't enjoy watching a show, then I don't enjoy watching a show. If the show looks lame compared to an actual good show, that further proves that this isn't a good show because I know what a good show actually looks like. In fact before I decided to get serious about baiting everyone, my original pie chart didn't even the good episodes take up 50% or greater of the chart - a key prerequisite for a show being classified as good in my opinion. So there we go, if you thought I used the troll excuse to cover up me liking the show in the past, there is some evidence that this was planned from the beginning. This may slightly tarnish my reputation in the DeviantArt cartoon reviewing community, but I honestly think this was worth it. So yes, I think that this is actually a BAD show, and without further ado I will explain why I dislike this show now.

PREMISE: Now before I proceed, I am going to mention that this "If you asked me what this show is about in the start of Season 1, I'd say this show is about a princess named Star Butterfly who fights monsters with her magic wand and her best friend Marco Diaz." Well yeah, this is exactly what this show's premise is at the start of the show. It's honestly a bland and generic take on a typical monster of the week cartoon, with the added aspect of Star coming and learning the customs of Earth which is also a rather cliched trope that they don't take advantage of all that much. I have seen the premise of a ditzy girl doing magic be done before, especially in Little Witch Academia which absolutely trumps this show. You know, simple premises can work if the show actually tries to take advantage of it and executes it in a really fun or exciting manner, of which this show generally fails to do both and you are kind of left with something that is rather empty and worthless, but at least watchable and has somewhat of a charm to it. Sadly, this show loses any good qualities it has when it decided to become entirely serialised and entirely changes it's original premise, and I will elaborate on why this show becomes a failure due to it's serialisation later on. The only other aspect of this show's premise I have left to elaborate on is the idea of Star and Marco being able to travel to all these different creatively designed dimensions, which once again is an idea that the show fails to take advantage of. Perhaps if there was more of a focus on dimension hopping and the show decided to be adventurous instead, then it could have been a pretty interesting show and it is such a shame because I think that this dimension-hopping aspect is pretty much the only interesting aspect of this show which could have set it apart from other typical monster of the week shows. However here is something interesting I said in my old review of the show: "I will fault this show for one thing, which are the dimensional scissors themselves. They are essentially plot devices and the show fails to establish how they work." In actuality this is something the show actually does explain. The scissors only work if the person using them has a destination in mind as shown in Deep Dive and Ludo, Where Art Thou?, so isn't that ironic how the only thing I used to criticise in this section was the one thing I do not criticise here.

Other than that, all I have to say regarding this show's premise is that I liked the original idea of this show better. When the creator of this show originally pitched the show to Disney, Star Butterfly was a student who believed that she had magical powers, albeit it just being in her head. This premise I think had a lot of creative possibility and sounded original and had the potential to delve into this character's psychology. It reminds me of Bridge to Terabithia except if it was a show, and it could have made for a really good show. But of course with the bland execution Star vs. the Forces of Evil had, I question how good this show would have been with this premise but I am confident it would have been better than what we have now.

CHARACTERS: Now this is where the fun begins. This show's characters are absolutely bland. Let's start with this show's protagonist, Star Butterfly herself and by default the most noteworthy character of the main cast because she has an actual personality, albeit it being rather cliche. She is the typical silly and optimistic girl, whose optimism can border recklessness, impulsivity and cloud her judgement. Yeah, I've seen this before. The only standout aspect of her personality is that she is a "rebel princess" who wants to do things her own way instead of copying what others do, so in that way this character is respectable and her klutzy behaviour still has a charm to it regardless and definitely has it's moments. The most noteworthy aspect of this character however is t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶n̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ her character design. It's a cute character design, and she has one of the few character designs in this show which I really like (especially since I'm not a fan of this show's character designs.) I think the hearts on her cheeks which changes based on her emotion and the headband with the devil horns also make this character stand out in terms of design. However damn does this character stop being enjoyable on any level starting from Season 3. It's like any charm this character once had was zapped away entirely. In fact during this season she feels more like a grump and her hyperactive and optimistic traits are thrown out of the window. I mean, I am fine with the writers giving this character more depth, but not if they entirely get rid of what made this character enjoyable for others in the first place. Even looking through the episode list, I can't name a single episode where Star retains her original personality except for Booth Buddies out of all episodes. BOOTH BUDDIES! See, at least in Seasons 1 and 2, Star at least felt good to be around, despite her being sort of cliche. But hey, I know exactly why Star's personality just dramatically changed to be more pessimistic in Season 3 but I will get into that later. At least this season gives Star the bare minimum of character development when she learns how to stop being impulsive in The Bogbeast of Boggabah. Oh but get this, they actually regress this sole development that this show gave her in The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse when Star makes an extremely impulsive decision to destroy magic just because she hates it. She blames everything bad that has happened on magic despite the fact that it's the fault of people misusing magic and a culmination of other bad factors too. This is an extremely insulting moment in the show because not only does it completely destroy a character who at this point is a shell of her former self, but this show had the guts to glorify Star's biggest impulsive decision of the century and pin the entire blame on the very thing that mad up this show in the first place. HOW THE HELL DO YOU SCREW UP EVERYTHING THAT BAD!!! I am not sorry for this rage because I haven't seen such broken writing in any story-driven show I have ever seen, and it leads into what I think is the worst cartoon episode ever made.

But hey, let's move away from Star and discuss the deuteragonist of the show, Marco Diaz. Actually how about we don't because what even is there to say about Marco. The guy lacks a personality, except for liking nachos. He is like Mexican Lincoln Loud. "He is overly cautious and insecure, yet he is more casual and organised." Yeah, this was just a bunch of bullshit I just made up on the spot when writing the review. When was Marco ever overly cautious past the first episode? Yeah, gotta love how the pilot introduces Marco as the safe character then completely ditches that immediately after. Oh yeah, "casual" doesn't count as a personality trait either. The only "advantage" of Marco is that he has a nice contrast with Star, but that's just because Star is (or well WAS) interesting. Marco is just plain boring. It's like saying Lincoln Loud has a good contrast with the wackiness of his sisters. It doesn't freaking matter, he is a boring character with no notable personality either way. The show also has a really boring secondary cast. In fact they're so boring that I haven't even started talking about them yet and I'm getting bored. But let's get through this and begin with Star's friends starting with Tom, who is a fire demon and a cool character in concept with his extremely dangerous short temper. He actually receives some solid character development in Season 2 where he forms a neat bond with Marco, but by Season 3 they regress him into an idiot who just cannot spend a second without thinking of Star. Janna is another character who started off reasonably enjoyable in episodes like Girls' Day Out and Mathmagic, but then becomes shoved into the main supporting cast in Season 3 for absolutely no reason at all. Like, is she supposed to be some sort of comic relief? Because if so, she definitely isn't a funny one (w̶̶̶h̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶̶̶m̶̶̶a̶̶̶k̶̶̶e̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶n̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶g̶̶̶i̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶i̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶f̶̶̶e̶̶̶m̶̶̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶e). However, the most egregious of Star's friends is Kelly. Kelly isn't even a character. In fact, she didn't even get a proper introduction, I'm pretty sure she was originally meant to be some sort of joke character in Goblin Dogs but they decided to put her in the main cast anyways. I'd be fine with this if they gave her a personality, but she doesn't have a personality, and like I said she isn't even a character. She is pretty much an object - a break-up who is also used as a shipping device for like one and a half episodes. She is an absolutely useless character and I have no idea what the producers of this show were even thinking when they decided to add her in the main supporting cast of the show. The only one of Star's friends I happen to not mind is Ponyhead since she is the most well-rounded of Star's friends since she strikes this balance of being fun-loving and laid-back, while also being egotistical and risky, and she is one of the only characters who never degraded by the third or fourth season. And plus she personally doesn't annoy me. Not saying she is necessarily a good character as I still don't care for her in the grand scheme of things, but she is personally okay.

And then we have the show's other secondary characters which are also unbelievably boring, starting with Eclipsa who for some reason hogs a lot of spotlight starting at the second half of the show's run. I mean, I thought this show was called Star vs. The Forces of Evil, not The Adventures of an Incompetent Ruler. I thought this show was supposed to be a lighthearted one about Star fighting the forces of Evil (which to be honest the show never did that much of in the first place) instead of dabbling about with a random nobody only properly introduced in the latter half of the show's run. It's not like the show gives us much of a reason to be invested in this character in the first place, especially when she is shoved in without any logical explanation (seriously, how does the ice crack at the end of Toffee, is there even any explanation for it?), and in Season 4 she is pretty much an incompetent idiot who I don't have much reason to root for and she has shown to be negligable too like in genius episodes such as Surviving The Spiderbites. I mean this show really loves to hammer in how Eclipsa doesn't care about her subjects at all so why should I care? Queen Moon is a character I didn't really care about for most of the show's run, but she was okay and had a mildly interesting backstory. But then we have yet another case of Season 4 completely regressing a character when it is revealed that she was planning to overthrow Eclipsa as the ruler of Mewni this entire time. Yes, it was foreshadowed but that doesn't make the twist any better. Imagine building up a character to be heroic in the eyes of the audience, only to completely throw that out of the window and making her be cause for the destruction of magic altogether and the killing of all magic beings in a desperate attempt to be "subversive". Because damn bro, being subversive automatically makes your story good, doesn't it? Spoiler alert: no it doesn't because if you want to be subversive, you should be building on the show's story, not insulting the audience by regressing a character which I bet a lot of fans grew a lot of respect for over the course of the show's run. Something like Gravity Falls knew what a good subversive twist is like with the twist of the person who wrote the journals being Stan's brother which actually builds on to the show amazingly. But hey, at least Moon was forgiven for simply saying sorry despite everything she caused, right? Hahahahaha, shut up. Screw this character. Other than that, who else do we even have? River? The cliche idiot husband who isn't funny in the least? What about Glossaryck, a genius character who acts like an absolute nuisance that isn't of any help whatsoever until he decides to turn on Star in Raid The Cave. There is an explanation in there about him only belonging to the book which now belongs to Ludo, but then he also decides to question the concept of friendship between him and Star and at that point I am just absolutely done with him altogether. The only secondary character I actually like is Buff Frog, who is a really compassionate character that I love being around, and I am invested in his his adventures after leaving the monster army and adopting some children. Yet sadly, he is extremely underused in this show which is a shame because he is one of the two redeeming character's in this show's cast.

And lastly, we have the show's villains. For a show called Star vs. The Forces of Evil there aren't even that many so-called forces of evil. The first season was mostly focused on Star having various engagements with Ludo's army with Toffee appearing towards the back end of it. The other two main villains are Meteora and Mina, but I'm going to go by chronological order here. Ludo was honestly a sucky joke villain. I remember watching this show for the first time and complaining about how absolutely cliche this character is in terms of everything. There was absolutely nothing about this character at all that was interesting in the slightest. He is meant to be over-the-top and comedic but he just wasn't funny. However since this show didn't take itself seriously at that point I wasn't bothered that much by it. His character becomes a lot more engaging after he is turned on by Toffee and has to rebuild himself from scratch. From there you see his journey into restoring himself back to power by forming a new army out of rats, and after being involved in the defeat of Toffee he tries to find himself again and we see a different side of him starting from Ludo, Where Art Thou? where he shows love towards his little brother, and then in Princess Quasar Caterpillar And The Magic Bell where he finally lets go of wanting the wand and puts his family above everything else which is the perfect way to conclude his character arc. It was honestly kind of sad about him losing all of his former glory after the first season which is why I was honestly so happy to see him regain it in Princess Quasar Caterpillar And The Magic Bell, except doing it for his family instead of the wand, and that along with a heartwarming story packed with a ton of references from the show's first season makes it my favourite episode of the show. Even though this development has nothing to do with the main story in the end, any character development is welcome especially since the main story of this show is so barebones and unengaging, and Ludo's redemption is one of the best villain redemptions that I have seen to date as he absolutely earned it through a long journey, making him my favourite character of the show by far. The second main villain of the show is Toffee, who is a great idea for a villain in concept and I enjoyed him a lot during the latter half of Season 1. However the main problem with this villain is his lack of overall screentime. It appears he has ulterior motives but I do not understand what they actually are because he gets so little screentime that the show is unable to explain them properly. And because of that, there are literal holes in the show's story which confuse me. Like why did Toffee want Star to destroy her wand in Storm The Castle? Is it part of a quest to destroy magic altogether? If it is, then what is his motivation for doing so? Does this character even have a backstory? Very little of it, that's for sure. The most egregious aspect of this character is how they mention how he was right in his quest all along in The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse in a pathetic attempt to pretend that the show is extremely clever, when in actuality it was something shoved in last second with no elaboration and contributed to screwing up the show's morality by claiming the bad guy was in the right all along, which once again would be understandable if they elaborated on the true motives of this villain and gave him more screentime and an actual backstory, but they don't and you end up with an ultimately lame villain that's a shadow of what he could've been. Next up you have Meteora who I have almost nothing to say about other than she is pretty much the generic giant monster villain. The only interesting thing about her is her backstory in that she is half-monster and that she was supposed to be the next Queen of Mewni after Eclipsa but ended up being the headmistress of St. Olga's instead due to the Magical High Commission swapping her with someone else without anybody else knowing. It's a pretty tragic backstory, and I enjoyed her appearance in Season 1 where she was an overly strict headmistress that tortured her students and stripped them off their individuality, however her villain appearance in the end of Season 3 was honestly just pretty lame and boring. However the show definitely saved it's worst villain for last with Mina, who was this obnoxious one-off character in the Season 2 episode Starstruck, that was shoved in as the main villain in the last few episodes of Season 4. Her voice is extremely grating, and honestly this villain annoys me more than she threatens me and she was just a horrible choice to be the villain of the final boss fight of the show as she was randomly shoved in instead of built up to throughout the show. She doesn't even get comeuppance for being the cause of the destruction of magic in the end which shows how the show really did not know what it was doing in it's last season. The only good thing I can say regarding this show's villains is that it didn't forcefully redeem any of them instantly, hell it didn't even redeem any of them at all except for Ludo who 100% earned his redemption. But other than that, the villains of this show are lame except for Ludo during Season 2, and they are one of the fundamental reasons why I do not care about any of this show's major conflicts.

And to summarise, the show's characters are overall just boring and lame. Not as boring as The Loud House's characters (haha, my token dig at The Loud House in every full-show scorecard), but still really lame regardless. The fact that I don't care for almost all of these characters really reflects on how much I care about this show and it's story overall. But hey, I still have a couple more aspects of this show to cover, so let's get to that, shall we?

SHIPPING: Ah yes, the most infamous aspect of this show. To quote one of the truthful things which I said in my review: "Before watching the show I was anticipating a lot of shipping drama and I knew I'd despise it, especially after how I panned all the romance schlock in Gravity Falls to the point where it brought that show down a notch. To be honest, it made me kind of terrified of watching this show because I was expecting some IQ-raising conflicts. But I decided to be patient with this aspect of the show anyways instead of discarding it immediately so that it would be much easier for me to handle it." In spite of this, the shipping in this show still blows as the writing staff could not competently write this aspect at all which I'll get into why soon. However at least in Seasons 2 and 3, the shipping aspect of the show was more of a side thing and didn't normally interfere with the show's main plot which I think was the right way to go about it. "People like to generalise the shipping in this show as characters debating over who they want to screw, but honestly the only time we saw any proper drama between characters over romance is in Stump Day and even that was for a small scene." Yeah, this point also still holds true because there was a surprising lack of bickering in this show regarding who gets to be with who. I think Season 2 was fine in the way it handled the shipping aspect. We see a nice relationship between Marco and Jackie, and there is a love triangle involved which I personally didn't mind because the show didn't resort to cliche tropes that plague love triangles such as jealousy and bitterness and therefore I don't find it unpleasant. As well as that, the Season did a really good job at making the audience understand how Star is feeling and acting by making her reactions realistic, making her a character the audience can relate to like in Just Friends and in Starcrushed. It's a detail that I actually appreciated, and by the end of Starcrushed I was genuinely interested in how this would play out, especially because Star's crush on Marco was built up to well over the course of the season.

Although to be honest I should have taken the warning seriously because the shipping subplot starts to become a bunch of nonsense, starting with Star getting back together with Tom and Marco breaking up with Jackie, then revealing that Marco now has a crush on Star instead in Lava Lake Beach. In short they basically flipped the switch for Star having an unavailable crush to Marco having an unavailable crush and I do not understand why this happens at all. Actually I kind of understand seeing as how Star needs to permanently move back to Mewni for whatever reason so it would be difficult to include Jackie, but then at that point it just shows how there was a lack of any planning involved in how to intermingle this shipping subplot with the main "plot" of the show, as if they had no idea where they were going with the shipping subplot for most of it except for the fact that Star and Marco need to be together by the end. It's frustrating too because Lava Lake Beach had a good message too about how people choose to make themselves miserable by hanging around their unavailable crushes despite the fact that things are hopeless, which is true. And like, I should be feeling heartbreak from when Marco is running around on the beach only to see a bunch of couples kissing each other including Star and Tom, but I don't feel it because I am instead annoyed by this show's bad handling of this subplot and how it flips the switch for no good reason. And then you have Booth Buddies which is okay for the most part and a promising scene where Star and Marco try to discuss how their friendship has changed ever since the shipping aspect came into play, but there isn't even much depth to this conversation. They pretty much give the bare minimum before going in the forced kiss direction. The forced kiss isn't cute, it's just confusing because they act so surprised that they kissed each other yet the episode doesn't even explain why they didn't. The only thing that saved this though is the twist when the goblin reveals he trapped them in the booth to make them kiss which made me laugh, but other than that this is nonsense and I can see why people both lover, but more importantly ferociously despise this episode. The fact that this is Daron Nefcy's favourite episode of the show really shows where the crew's priority was when producing this show.

But you know, by that point they really should have gotten to the point and made Starco a thing. Not because I am a shipper, but because the show has shipped them from as far back as Blood Moon Ball, so it's obvious that at some point the show wants them to be together. And so I generally think it would have been a good idea to pair them up sooner so that they could actually do something with this relationship and create a new and fresh dynamic. There is potential to be had here, and there is really no use for delaying it any longer when the audience knows what the end result will be. But take a freaking guess at what Season 4 decides to do. Yup, delay it. Delay it until one of the last episodes of the show. Instead of getting to the freaking point, it shoots itself in the foot by making some egregious and unnecessary decisions like The Curse Of The Blood Moon which was an absolutely useless episode that only existed to create drama for Starco shippers and baiting them into thinking it won't happen when it obviously will. Oh, and what about the absolute most useless ship in the show that was so useless that it lasted 1 episode. The ending of Kelly's World made me so mad because the show decided to shove in a ship for absolutely no reason at all which had no effect on anything. Seriously, Marco and Kelly literally broke up off-screen with no explanation in A Boy And His DC-700XE. What makes me especially mad is that fact that Kelly barely even counts as a character because she is literally just a useless break-up object that is now being used as a shipping fuel for like 3.14 nanoseconds. It was an absolutely unnecessary move and instead was an absolute waste of my time. But honestly, the most egregious thing about how this season handles it's shipping relates to what I just said. This entire series had been building up to this one ship which they decided to shove in the last few episodes of the show. God Bless Star vs. The Forces Of Evil for building up to this one ship only to do absolutely nothing with it. I'm sure it satisfied everyone who was invested in this show, just kidding no it didn't. And the other thing is that while in Seasons 2-3 the shipping was more of a side thing, by the end of Season 4 it totally consumed the show to the point where it might have just completely destroyed the finale. The funny thing is, no one, not even shippers can get any satisfaction from the finale because there is nothing to be gained for anyone. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a valuable lesson in not dragging things out for so long when they don't need to be dragged out.

In short, the shipping in this show is about as awful as people say it is. And this is coming from someone who tried to give this subplot a fair chance. It's a waste of your time and attention.

STORYTELLING: Once again, for this section of the review, I'm going to give my brief thoughts on each of the four seasons because the writing in each of the four seasons are very distinct to each other. I saved this for last because I am going to use points previously discussed in this review to summarise my thoughts on each season.

Season 1 - Season 1 of Star vs. The Forces of Evil is the best season of the show. I actually think it's pretty middling. With that being said it started off really poorly in like the first 14 episodes. It exists to set up the two main characters, but like I said earlier in my review, "the show starts off as a bland and generic take on a typical monster of the week cartoon, with the added aspect of Star coming and learning the customs of Earth which is also a rather cliched trope that they don't take advantage of all that much." The stories in these episodes are bland and poorly paced, and once again I am going to mention how Ludo was an extremely boring joke villain with him being shoved into the last few minutes of episodes like in Match Maker so that they can do nothing with him. The only advantage of the first half of the season is it's animation. It's bouncy and expressive and gives this show more charm. The season actually does get pretty good in it's last 10 episodes when Toffee is brought into the mix, and for me he is the highlight of the season. It's around the time when the season tried to build more of a story and because of that we got more engaging stories in the process. Unfortunately the finale is a disappointment as it was a bland showdown against Toffee that ends up leaving questions which are never really answered. In the end this season as a whole is meh. I could tell that there was at least an attempt to make the show fun, and I can praise it for being the most energetic season of the show by far, but it isn't something I'd call good due to the first 14 episodes of the season being really weak.

Season 2 - If there was one word to describe my feelings towards a majority of this season, it's "apathy". I am apathetic towards this season. There are very few episodes of the season which I feel very strongly towards one way or another because a lot of the episodes lean towards the middle. Why? Because like half of the episodes in this season are forgettable. They are so forgettable that I can barely rememeber what happened in a lot of these episodes. Like, can someone even tell me what happens in an episode like Starsitting or Gift of the Card? Or Red Belt? Season 2 does offer interesting ideas, but the bland and boring executions of these ideas leave me just forgetting everything soon after. I feel like I should be enjoying this Season more than Season 1 because Season 1 seemed to be going in an upward direction, and Season 2 continued this slice-of-life format while also having more of a focus on the story which was looking pretty good up to this point. But unlike Season 1, Season does not have as much of a sense of energy to it, and is instead more boring. In fact there is this really bad stretch in particular from Raid The Cave to Heinous where episodes of the season are at their most boring and substanceless and it brought this season down from like a 5/10 to a 4.5/10. I can see the season having some energy to it in like the first half of the season with episodes like Star On Wheels and Girls' Day Out but as it goes on it just becomes worse and more bland. To be honest the fact that I could barely remember anything from half the episodes in this season was one of the main things that pushed me to star disliking this show as a whole, because it reflects on how forgettable, bland and boring this show as a whole is, and how overall worthless and time-wasting it is especially in Seasons 3 and 4. Needless to say, this season is lame, but there are few things to appreciate here such as Ludo's story arc which started off awesomely in Ludo In The Wild and really brought up episodes later down the line such as Bon Bon The Birthday Clown and Starcrushed. There is also Buff Frog's new role in the show, with a couple of pleasant episodes dedicated to him, and lastly there is also Tom's character redemption which was also another pleasant addition to the season. And like I said before, the shipping subplot in this season wasn't executed half-bad either. And in between these, we still got a couple of enjoyable episodes which felt like they were taken from season 1 like Star on Wheels, Girls' Day Out and Mathmagic. It's just that a majority of the episodes in this season are just not worth watching. Overall this season gets a nice 4.5 out of 10 because it is better than Season 1's first half, but is definitely not as good as Season 1's second half.

Season 3 - Season 3 did unironically used to be my favourite season back then, and I have absolutely no idea why. However calling it great was definitely part of the troll which I discussed earlier, as I would get extra reaction by calling a season of the show great. In reality though, this season sucks and I definitely see why fans of the show were not very pleased with this season. I feel like the crew looked at the success of Steven Universe and decided to copy it by becoming completely serialised with pretty much every episode having to do something with the main plot of the show. I was okay with this in The Battle Of Mewni story arc because it was told in an interesting way where it explores different character perspectives in a chaotic scenario, although it was ruined by the really bland writing of the show. However the story the rest of the season tells is so damn boring. Like who the hell is this Eclipsa person and why the hell did the show shift the spotlight to a characters that was barely even built up to and that I couldn't give a damn about. As for the season's story itself? I couldn't give a damn about it either. Why are there so many boring and useless episodes which serve nothing of purpose? Give me one good reason why I should watch something like Trial By Squire or Sweet Dreams or Death Peck or Night Life or Starfari or Marco Jr. This is when the show decides to take itself really seriously and it zaps anything fun about the show away altogether. I'll give credit to Season 2, despite losing the energy that Season 1 had, it was still a pretty light-hearted season altogether meaning some of the show's original charm is still there, so I can see where enjoyment can be found in it. Meanwhile Season 3 neither has any energy and isn't light-hearted. It's a completely different show altogether now which presents an important question. What entertainment value is there to be found in this season anymore? The cheap, pathetic and extremely dull attempt to be serialised by taking forever to get to the point about anything? The stupid shipping episodes? The fact that the main character has lost everything about her that made her a charming protagonist? Duh, what am I saying. There is absolutely no charm to be found in this season. In fact I have a good word to describe this season - gritty. It's gritty due to it's unpleasant and more negative tone, and there is absolutely no semblance of fun to be had here. The only redeemable portion of this season is the stretch from The Bogbeast of Boggabah to Ludo, Where Art Thou?. The Bogbeast Of Bogabbah was a pretty funny episode which had Star's most noticable character development this season which was sadly thrown out of the window in Season 4. Total Eclipsa The Moon and Butterfly Trap had the only interesting part of this season's story which is the twist that the Butterfly Family are not actually royalty which was a genuinely interesting twist. And Ludo, Where Art Thou is a Ludo episode that one of the most heartwarming and funniest episodes the show has to offer. Otherwise this season is overall just bad. While it's not particularly offensive for me to call it awful, it's still a really boring and gritty cartoon season that marks where the show officially jumped the shark.

Season 4 - Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting my first AWFUL cartoon season - Season 4 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Eventually all four The Loud House seasons will join it, but for now let's discuss this abomination of a season. If you thought Season 3 was gritty, this season is gritty to the next level, because this season's tone is downright depressing. I refuse to believe how a show which originally has a much more light-hearted and optimistic tone turned out to be depressing. Whenever I watch any episode of this season, the mood is always really negative and the episodes just feel very hollow and empty. I feel like a lot of the depressing tone has to do with the fact that the colouring in this season is also darker like for example the characters are now living in Eclipsa's old castle which has stone walls and poor lighting. It feels like we are now living in some sort of dystopia. The lack of substance in any episode this season does not help to alleviate the depressing tone, combined with the fact that the characters are always acting so negatively. An excellent example of this would be the opening of The Curse of the Blood Moon, which has an excruciatingly slow-paced opening where Star and Marco are taking ages to eat their cereal in this said castle and they just interact really awkwardly. Episodes like Swim Suit, Out of Business and Ghost Of Butterfly Castle are painful reminders of how gritty and depressing this season is. Also not helping is how little of of a story the season even has. I can at least see that Season 3 was at least attempted to build something up in it's story, but Season 4 really doesn't. For most of the season, the main focus is on mending relationships between Mewman and Monsters, and getting people to accept Eclipsa as the new leader of Mewni which is conflict which I have no reason to care about due to the points I made against Eclipsa earlier in the review. There isn't even much focus on the monsters thing in this season anyways, so in the end you're left with absolutely nothing of any interest or intrigue going on. The season pretty much meanders about and unlike Season 3, barely any of the episodes in this season do anything to further this show's "story" in any way. Instead we get a whole bunch of pointless rubbish such as Out of Business, Queen Napped and Junkin' Janna. And we all know that the shipping subplot in this season was rubbish and had the most obnoxious execution possible, yet quite a few episodes were wasted on it as opposed to like 5 episodes in Season 3. Somehow the show managed to get more boring and uninteresting than Season 3 and I did not even know that was possible. And added to that it just became extremely obnoxious to watch. This season is awful because it's all of the worst aspects of this show dialed up to an 11 and combined into one horrid season.

But man, you have not seen the worst of this season yet until you get to the final story arc of it. Somehow, this managed to be even worse and more insulting than the final arc of Steven Universe Season 5. I mean, I already discussed how they shoved Starco in the last few episodes of the show, but that isn't the only thing they shoved in the end because they decided to shove everything important about the season's overall "plot" towards the end as well. Now, you may have noticed how I quoted the word "plot" multiple times in this review, and that's because this show's plot is so barebones in terms of anything that I find it difficult to call it a plot. Instead of a plot, I just call it a meandering mess because that's pretty much what this show is. It just aimlessly wanders from destination to destination and it feels like they are trying to go somewhere with certain plot points only for it to be a dead end. Everything just sort of comes and goes. It's the exact same problem Steven Universe has where it's a serialised show but with no overarching narrative and it's instead just a compilation of smaller story arcs mishmashed into one "story". Each of the four main villains have their own arc and then they just come and go, which a bunch of other random arcs thrown in as well like the shipping plot, the Mewmans and Monsters systematic racism and Star trying to get people to accept Eclipsa as their queen. The show fails to developed in a focused direction in any way, and hell it doesn't even have the decency to develop it's main character properly and instead just regresses her from the next queen to a random nobody who will never be a leader of anything and has lost any character development she was given. AT the very least Steven Universe didn't screw up this horribly. But back to the final arc, it is absolutely rushed. Nothing that happens in the final stretch of episodes feels like it was developed properly at all, it's like this entire show is just skimming over everything in an effort to complete it as fast as possible, and I have absolutely no idea why. I mean you had the entire freaking season to do something but you instead decide to waste the entire rest of the season on absolute nothingness. And let's not mention all the IQ-raising decisions they made here like the Queen Moon twist which I ranted on earlier, or the ending of The Tavern At The End Of The Multiverse where Star says she hates magic and classifies it all as bad. I just love how she is against the idea that all monsters are bad, yet she classifies everyone who uses magic as idiots just because like one person decided to abuse it. Yes, she called them idiots. Fucking idiots. Yes, she used that fucking word to describe everyone who uses magic because oh no one mentally insane person decided to misuse it and whoops now the world is in danger. No no no. Let's not blame bad people like that, no how about we blame it on magic itself. It was magic's fault, not the people who abused it. Oh and how about we also call all monsters bad just because a few of them misbehaved too. Oh but wait we can't do that because why should be deprive the show from this glorious hypocrisy? Obviously my favourite character trait of Star Butterfly is how hypocritical she is, right? No seriously, I absolutely despise this character after that episode. That scene was a MASSIVE "FUCK YOU" to anyone who was even slightly invested in this character.

Oh but don't worry, at least we have Cleaved, right? I actually cried after watching this finale. I didn't cry because it was emotional or anything, I cried because of how absolutely horrendous it was. I was absolutely broken watching it because I could not believe what I was seeing. I love how in a show called Star vs. The Force Of Evil, the finale has anything but fighting. But that's the least of this finale's problems, because this finale doesn't even count as an actual conclusion because it barely gives closure to anything. None of the characters get any closure at all. Instead they just destroy everything that made the show in the first place. When I first saw this show, I never thought I would see the day day where the characters would actively try to destroy magic and close off all the dimensions because those were what the show was about, so the fact that the finale completely destroys them is an extremely depressing way to end the show. Actually how does this finale make any sense? If all magic is destroyed and all dimensions are close off, time and spacetime shouldn't even be working anymore as the time universe is completely closed off from Earth. Oh, and let's not forget how Star literally causes the death of all magical creatures and it is treated like a joke and in a Family Guy style cutaway gag which is absolutely disgusting. But at this point the show only cares about the fact that Star and Marco are together now and they use this fact to excuse everything bad happening. I mean for one, this happened in a nonsensical deus-ex-machina which makes absolutely no sense in the slightest, but also you can see how in this new combined dimension it is absolute chaos and everyone around Star and Marco are just screaming in terror. However the show doesn't even care about this. For all I know, everyone could be suffering and the show would treat this as a happy ending as long as Star and Marco are together. Things like this and the last episode lead me to believe that by this season, this has become a dangerous show and one that needs to be avoided at all costs before it sends the wrong messages to the children watching this. By the way, I don't even see how shippers can be satisfied because they show literally ends with Star and Marco saying "hey" to each other after they see each other again, and this show just ends. Like, can someone remind me how this is even a conclusion? Because as far as I'm concerned it opens up a billion questions and doesn't answer any of them. No wonder everyone was underwhelmed by this miserable finale because it was inconclusive and depressing. And to be honest I have to agree because this is easily the worst finale to anything I've ever seen. Horrible twists, nonsensical plot points, boring action character regression, and the worst cartoon finale I have seen? This final batch of episodes has everything that makes up an absolute failure of a story arc. Overall a 1/10 season with 0.5 of it coming from the fact that this season isn't entirely made up of awful episodes, and the other 0.5 coming from Princess Quasar Caterpillar and the Magic Bell, which is somehow the best episode of the show despite being from this appalling season.

CONCLUSION: Please, if you have not seen this show, I am begging you. Do not watch this show! Watch any other serialised show this decade. Watch Gravity Falls. Watch Adventure Time. Watch Steven Universe if you really want to because even that show has some dignity to it. But please, just avoid this one because it is absolutely worthless and not worth watching. And if you really want to see it then just stick to the first two seasons because everything after that is a detriment to your sanity. Because aside from a few small things, what good qualities does this show even have? Why watch this show when so many other shows have better, funnier and more exciting things to offer. Since this is an overall boring and worthless show with terrible storytelling and bland characters, I am going to give this show a BAD (3/10). The only thing that prevents this show from being any lower is that the first and second season aren't bad and the first season can be enjoyable to an extent, but otherwise this show fails on a basic level at being entertaining because it isn't even funny or interesting but it instead bores me to death except for the final season which not only bores me the most, but it frustrates me too. Let's hope we don't receive another show that is garbage at serialisation like this one instead. SandalsFish, gone absolutely crazy writing this review, signing out.

FINAL RATING: BAD SHOW

Description
SURPRISE! (again)

So, you guys actually thought I liked Star vs. The Forces Of Evil??? Well guess what, I don't. I never did. I sure had everyone going, didn't I? I'm just really good at making up fake reasoning for opinions I don't even personally hold in order to get reactions. I was able to do this by exaggerating the things I enjoyed about each episode and shifted each of them to be come more positive than I actually thought they were. So for example, I used to call 53 episodes of this show great, but not because I actually thought a lot of them were great, but because those were the ones I found the most tolerable and I exaggerated my opinion on them to make them seem great on the scorecard when in reality I didn't carry any strong feelings towards a lot of these episodes. Thing is though, at the time I never actually thought the show was bad. Okay, I kind of hated Season 4, but other than that my thoughts on this show could be described in one word - apathy. A majority of the episodes in this show failed to get a reaction out of me. At the time I would have given this show a meh, and I was planning to make a scorecard later which has my real thoughts on the show on it. However, this is around the time when my activity on DeviantArt greatly decreased and I never got around to it until now. However, I am glad that I left it for so long because over time I began to grew a hatred towards the show and began to realise how worthless this show actually is.

As a matter of fact, there were clues in my review that this entire thing was a ruse. I'll give a couple of examples: "When I first saw Season 1, I thought it was very mediocre, while Season 2 was an absolute meh-fest that barely had episodes which pulled me one way or another. It wasn't until I saw Season 3 where I began to gain a new appreciation for this show and immediately reconsidered my thoughts on the first two seasons." There we go, I never really liked the first two seasons. It's absolutely preposterous to think that watching one season would completely change my mind on this show. And the thing about Season 3 is that this is the season where I decided to begin the trolling, more specifically Booth Buddies which I exaggerated to make it look much better than it was in order to get a reaction out of everyone. I can give another example of a clue: "In fact I originally wasn't intending to call this show good at all. Quick history lesson here, I was initially a lot harder on this show than I should have been because I had just come off of Gravity Falls and I wasn't used to this show at all. My standards were way too high because I literally came into it expecting it to be mediocre and judged episodes unfairly based on what I was anticipating." There we go. I openly admitted that I didn't intend to call the show good. The Gravity Falls excuse was a cover-up which anyone could have easily refuted. Me raising my standards really high after watching an actual great show is such a dumb excuse that I am surprised no one called me out on. If I don't enjoy watching a show, then I don't enjoy watching a show. If the show looks lame compared to an actual good show, that further proves that this isn't a good show because I know what a good show actually looks like. In fact before I decided to get serious about baiting everyone, my original pie chart didn't even the good episodes take up 50% or greater of the chart - a key prerequisite for a show being classified as good in my opinion. So there we go, if you thought I used the troll excuse to cover up me liking the show in the past, there is some evidence that this was planned from the beginning. This may slightly tarnish my reputation in the DeviantArt cartoon reviewing community, but I honestly think this was worth it. So yes, I think that this is actually a BAD show, and without further ado I will explain why I dislike this show now.

PREMISE: Now before I proceed, I am going to mention that this "If you asked me what this show is about in the start of Season 1, I'd say this show is about a princess named Star Butterfly who fights monsters with her magic wand and her best friend Marco Diaz." Well yeah, this is exactly what this show's premise is at the start of the show. It's honestly a bland and generic take on a typical monster of the week cartoon, with the added aspect of Star coming and learning the customs of Earth which is also a rather cliched trope that they don't take advantage of all that much. I have seen the premise of a ditzy girl doing magic be done before, especially in Little Witch Academia which absolutely trumps this show. You know, simple premises can work if the show actually tries to take advantage of it and executes it in a really fun or exciting manner, of which this show generally fails to do both and you are kind of left with something that is rather empty and worthless, but at least watchable and has somewhat of a charm to it. Sadly, this show loses any good qualities it has when it decided to become entirely serialised and entirely changes it's original premise, and I will elaborate on why this show becomes a failure due to it's serialisation later on. The only other aspect of this show's premise I have left to elaborate on is the idea of Star and Marco being able to travel to all these different creatively designed dimensions, which once again is an idea that the show fails to take advantage of. Perhaps if there was more of a focus on dimension hopping and the show decided to be adventurous instead, then it could have been a pretty interesting show and it is such a shame because I think that this dimension-hopping aspect is pretty much the only interesting aspect of this show which could have set it apart from other typical monster of the week shows. However here is something interesting I said in my old review of the show: "I will fault this show for one thing, which are the dimensional scissors themselves. They are essentially plot devices and the show fails to establish how they work." In actuality this is something the show actually does explain. The scissors only work if the person using them has a destination in mind as shown in Deep Dive and Ludo, Where Art Thou?, so isn't that ironic how the only thing I used to criticise in this section was the one thing I do not criticise here.

Other than that, all I have to say regarding this show's premise is that I liked the original idea of this show better. When the creator of this show originally pitched the show to Disney, Star Butterfly was a student who believed that she had magical powers, albeit it just being in her head. This premise I think had a lot of creative possibility and sounded original and had the potential to delve into this character's psychology. It reminds me of Bridge to Terabithia except if it was a show, and it could have made for a really good show. But of course with the bland execution Star vs. the Forces of Evil had, I question how good this show would have been with this premise but I am confident it would have been better than what we have now.

CHARACTERS: Now this is where the fun begins. This show's characters are absolutely bland. Let's start with this show's protagonist, Star Butterfly herself and by default the most noteworthy character of the main cast because she has an actual personality, albeit it being rather cliche. She is the typical silly and optimistic girl, whose optimism can border recklessness, impulsivity and cloud her judgement. Yeah, I've seen this before. The only standout aspect of her personality is that she is a "rebel princess" who wants to do things her own way instead of copying what others do, so in that way this character is respectable and her klutzy behaviour still has a charm to it regardless and definitely has it's moments. The most noteworthy aspect of this character however is t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶n̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ her character design. It's a cute character design, and she has one of the few character designs in this show which I really like (especially since I'm not a fan of this show's character designs.) I think the hearts on her cheeks which changes based on her emotion and the headband with the devil horns also make this character stand out in terms of design. However damn does this character stop being enjoyable on any level starting from Season 3. It's like any charm this character once had was zapped away entirely. In fact during this season she feels more like a grump and her hyperactive and optimistic traits are thrown out of the window. I mean, I am fine with the writers giving this character more depth, but not if they entirely get rid of what made this character enjoyable for others in the first place. Even looking through the episode list, I can't name a single episode where Star retains her original personality except for Booth Buddies out of all episodes. BOOTH BUDDIES! See, at least in Seasons 1 and 2, Star at least felt good to be around, despite her being sort of cliche. But hey, I know exactly why Star's personality just dramatically changed to be more pessimistic in Season 3 but I will get into that later. At least this season gives Star the bare minimum of character development when she learns how to stop being impulsive in The Bogbeast of Boggabah. Oh but get this, they actually regress this sole development that this show gave her in The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse when Star makes an extremely impulsive decision to destroy magic just because she hates it. She blames everything bad that has happened on magic despite the fact that it's the fault of people misusing magic and a culmination of other bad factors too. This is an extremely insulting moment in the show because not only does it completely destroy a character who at this point is a shell of her former self, but this show had the guts to glorify Star's biggest impulsive decision of the century and pin the entire blame on the very thing that mad up this show in the first place. HOW THE HELL DO YOU SCREW UP EVERYTHING THAT BAD!!! I am not sorry for this rage because I haven't seen such broken writing in any story-driven show I have ever seen, and it leads into what I think is the worst cartoon episode ever made.

But hey, let's move away from Star and discuss the deuteragonist of the show, Marco Diaz. Actually how about we don't because what even is there to say about Marco. The guy lacks a personality, except for liking nachos. He is like Mexican Lincoln Loud. "He is overly cautious and insecure, yet he is more casual and organised." Yeah, this was just a bunch of bullshit I just made up on the spot when writing the review. When was Marco ever overly cautious past the first episode? Yeah, gotta love how the pilot introduces Marco as the safe character then completely ditches that immediately after. Oh yeah, "casual" doesn't count as a personality trait either. The only "advantage" of Marco is that he has a nice contrast with Star, but that's just because Star is (or well WAS) interesting. Marco is just plain boring. It's like saying Lincoln Loud has a good contrast with the wackiness of his sisters. It doesn't freaking matter, he is a boring character with no notable personality either way. The show also has a really boring secondary cast. In fact they're so boring that I haven't even started talking about them yet and I'm getting bored. But let's get through this and begin with Star's friends starting with Tom, who is a fire demon and a cool character in concept with his extremely dangerous short temper. He actually receives some solid character development in Season 2 where he forms a neat bond with Marco, but by Season 3 they regress him into an idiot who just cannot spend a second without thinking of Star. Janna is another character who started off reasonably enjoyable in episodes like Girls' Day Out and Mathmagic, but then becomes shoved into the main supporting cast in Season 3 for absolutely no reason at all. Like, is she supposed to be some sort of comic relief? Because if so, she definitely isn't a funny one (w̶̶̶h̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶̶̶m̶̶̶a̶̶̶k̶̶̶e̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶n̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶g̶̶̶i̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶i̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶f̶̶̶e̶̶̶m̶̶̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶e). However, the most egregious of Star's friends is Kelly. Kelly isn't even a character. In fact, she didn't even get a proper introduction, I'm pretty sure she was originally meant to be some sort of joke character in Goblin Dogs but they decided to put her in the main cast anyways. I'd be fine with this if they gave her a personality, but she doesn't have a personality, and like I said she isn't even a character. She is pretty much an object - a break-up who is also used as a shipping device for like one and a half episodes. She is an absolutely useless character and I have no idea what the producers of this show were even thinking when they decided to add her in the main supporting cast of the show. The only one of Star's friends I happen to not mind is Ponyhead since she is the most well-rounded of Star's friends since she strikes this balance of being fun-loving and laid-back, while also being egotistical and risky, and she is one of the only characters who never degraded by the third or fourth season. And plus she personally doesn't annoy me. Not saying she is necessarily a good character as I still don't care for her in the grand scheme of things, but she is personally okay.

And then we have the show's other secondary characters which are also unbelievably boring, starting with Eclipsa who for some reason hogs a lot of spotlight starting at the second half of the show's run. I mean, I thought this show was called Star vs. The Forces of Evil, not The Adventures of an Incompetent Ruler. I thought this show was supposed to be a lighthearted one about Star fighting the forces of Evil (which to be honest the show never did that much of in the first place) instead of dabbling about with a random nobody only properly introduced in the latter half of the show's run. It's not like the show gives us much of a reason to be invested in this character in the first place, especially when she is shoved in without any logical explanation (seriously, how does the ice crack at the end of Toffee, is there even any explanation for it?), and in Season 4 she is pretty much an incompetent idiot who I don't have much reason to root for and she has shown to be negligable too like in genius episodes such as Surviving The Spiderbites. I mean this show really loves to hammer in how Eclipsa doesn't care about her subjects at all so why should I care? Queen Moon is a character I didn't really care about for most of the show's run, but she was okay and had a mildly interesting backstory. But then we have yet another case of Season 4 completely regressing a character when it is revealed that she was planning to overthrow Eclipsa as the ruler of Mewni this entire time. Yes, it was foreshadowed but that doesn't make the twist any better. Imagine building up a character to be heroic in the eyes of the audience, only to completely throw that out of the window and making her be cause for the destruction of magic altogether and the killing of all magic beings in a desperate attempt to be "subversive". Because damn bro, being subversive automatically makes your story good, doesn't it? Spoiler alert: no it doesn't because if you want to be subversive, you should be building on the show's story, not insulting the audience by regressing a character which I bet a lot of fans grew a lot of respect for over the course of the show's run. Something like Gravity Falls knew what a good subversive twist is like with the twist of the person who wrote the journals being Stan's brother which actually builds on to the show amazingly. But hey, at least Moon was forgiven for simply saying sorry despite everything she caused, right? Hahahahaha, shut up. Screw this character. Other than that, who else do we even have? River? The cliche idiot husband who isn't funny in the least? What about Glossaryck, a genius character who acts like an absolute nuisance that isn't of any help whatsoever until he decides to turn on Star in Raid The Cave. There is an explanation in there about him only belonging to the book which now belongs to Ludo, but then he also decides to question the concept of friendship between him and Star and at that point I am just absolutely done with him altogether. The only secondary character I actually like is Buff Frog, who is a really compassionate character that I love being around, and I am invested in his his adventures after leaving the monster army and adopting some children. Yet sadly, he is extremely underused in this show which is a shame because he is one of the two redeeming character's in this show's cast.

And lastly, we have the show's villains. For a show called Star vs. The Forces of Evil there aren't even that many so-called forces of evil. The first season was mostly focused on Star having various engagements with Ludo's army with Toffee appearing towards the back end of it. The other two main villains are Meteora and Mina, but I'm going to go by chronological order here. Ludo was honestly a sucky joke villain. I remember watching this show for the first time and complaining about how absolutely cliche this character is in terms of everything. There was absolutely nothing about this character at all that was interesting in the slightest. He is meant to be over-the-top and comedic but he just wasn't funny. However since this show didn't take itself seriously at that point I wasn't bothered that much by it. His character becomes a lot more engaging after he is turned on by Toffee and has to rebuild himself from scratch. From there you see his journey into restoring himself back to power by forming a new army out of rats, and after being involved in the defeat of Toffee he tries to find himself again and we see a different side of him starting from Ludo, Where Art Thou? where he shows love towards his little brother, and then in Princess Quasar Caterpillar And The Magic Bell where he finally lets go of wanting the wand and puts his family above everything else which is the perfect way to conclude his character arc. It was honestly kind of sad about him losing all of his former glory after the first season which is why I was honestly so happy to see him regain it in Princess Quasar Caterpillar And The Magic Bell, except doing it for his family instead of the wand, and that along with a heartwarming story packed with a ton of references from the show's first season makes it my favourite episode of the show. Even though this development has nothing to do with the main story in the end, any character development is welcome especially since the main story of this show is so barebones and unengaging, and Ludo's redemption is one of the best villain redemptions that I have seen to date as he absolutely earned it through a long journey, making him my favourite character of the show by far. The second main villain of the show is Toffee, who is a great idea for a villain in concept and I enjoyed him a lot during the latter half of Season 1. However the main problem with this villain is his lack of overall screentime. It appears he has ulterior motives but I do not understand what they actually are because he gets so little screentime that the show is unable to explain them properly. And because of that, there are literal holes in the show's story which confuse me. Like why did Toffee want Star to destroy her wand in Storm The Castle? Is it part of a quest to destroy magic altogether? If it is, then what is his motivation for doing so? Does this character even have a backstory? Very little of it, that's for sure. The most egregious aspect of this character is how they mention how he was right in his quest all along in The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse in a pathetic attempt to pretend that the show is extremely clever, when in actuality it was something shoved in last second with no elaboration and contributed to screwing up the show's morality by claiming the bad guy was in the right all along, which once again would be understandable if they elaborated on the true motives of this villain and gave him more screentime and an actual backstory, but they don't and you end up with an ultimately lame villain that's a shadow of what he could've been. Next up you have Meteora who I have almost nothing to say about other than she is pretty much the generic giant monster villain. The only interesting thing about her is her backstory in that she is half-monster and that she was supposed to be the next Queen of Mewni after Eclipsa but ended up being the headmistress of St. Olga's instead due to the Magical High Commission swapping her with someone else without anybody else knowing. It's a pretty tragic backstory, and I enjoyed her appearance in Season 1 where she was an overly strict headmistress that tortured her students and stripped them off their individuality, however her villain appearance in the end of Season 3 was honestly just pretty lame and boring. However the show definitely saved it's worst villain for last with Mina, who was this obnoxious one-off character in the Season 2 episode Starstruck, that was shoved in as the main villain in the last few episodes of Season 4. Her voice is extremely grating, and honestly this villain annoys me more than she threatens me and she was just a horrible choice to be the villain of the final boss fight of the show as she was randomly shoved in instead of built up to throughout the show. She doesn't even get comeuppance for being the cause of the destruction of magic in the end which shows how the show really did not know what it was doing in it's last season. The only good thing I can say regarding this show's villains is that it didn't forcefully redeem any of them instantly, hell it didn't even redeem any of them at all except for Ludo who 100% earned his redemption. But other than that, the villains of this show are lame except for Ludo during Season 2, and they are one of the fundamental reasons why I do not care about any of this show's major conflicts.

And to summarise, the show's characters are overall just boring and lame. Not as boring as The Loud House's characters (haha, my token dig at The Loud House in every full-show scorecard), but still really lame regardless. The fact that I don't care for almost all of these characters really reflects on how much I care about this show and it's story overall. But hey, I still have a couple more aspects of this show to cover, so let's get to that, shall we?

SHIPPING: Ah yes, the most infamous aspect of this show. To quote one of the truthful things which I said in my review: "Before watching the show I was anticipating a lot of shipping drama and I knew I'd despise it, especially after how I panned all the romance schlock in Gravity Falls to the point where it brought that show down a notch. To be honest, it made me kind of terrified of watching this show because I was expecting some IQ-raising conflicts. But I decided to be patient with this aspect of the show anyways instead of discarding it immediately so that it would be much easier for me to handle it." In spite of this, the shipping in this show still blows as the writing staff could not competently write this aspect at all which I'll get into why soon. However at least in Seasons 2 and 3, the shipping aspect of the show was more of a side thing and didn't normally interfere with the show's main plot which I think was the right way to go about it. "People like to generalise the shipping in this show as characters debating over who they want to screw, but honestly the only time we saw any proper drama between characters over romance is in Stump Day and even that was for a small scene." Yeah, this point also still holds true because there was a surprising lack of bickering in this show regarding who gets to be with who. I think Season 2 was fine in the way it handled the shipping aspect. We see a nice relationship between Marco and Jackie, and there is a love triangle involved which I personally didn't mind because the show didn't resort to cliche tropes that plague love triangles such as jealousy and bitterness and therefore I don't find it unpleasant. As well as that, the Season did a really good job at making the audience understand how Star is feeling and acting by making her reactions realistic, making her a character the audience can relate to like in Just Friends and in Starcrushed. It's a detail that I actually appreciated, and by the end of Starcrushed I was genuinely interested in how this would play out, especially because Star's crush on Marco was built up to well over the course of the season.

Although to be honest I should have taken the warning seriously because the shipping subplot starts to become a bunch of nonsense, starting with Star getting back together with Tom and Marco breaking up with Jackie, then revealing that Marco now has a crush on Star instead in Lava Lake Beach. In short they basically flipped the switch for Star having an unavailable crush to Marco having an unavailable crush and I do not understand why this happens at all. Actually I kind of understand seeing as how Star needs to permanently move back to Mewni for whatever reason so it would be difficult to include Jackie, but then at that point it just shows how there was a lack of any planning involved in how to intermingle this shipping subplot with the main "plot" of the show, as if they had no idea where they were going with the shipping subplot for most of it except for the fact that Star and Marco need to be together by the end. It's frustrating too because Lava Lake Beach had a good message too about how people choose to make themselves miserable by hanging around their unavailable crushes despite the fact that things are hopeless, which is true. And like, I should be feeling heartbreak from when Marco is running around on the beach only to see a bunch of couples kissing each other including Star and Tom, but I don't feel it because I am instead annoyed by this show's bad handling of this subplot and how it flips the switch for no good reason. And then you have Booth Buddies which is okay for the most part and a promising scene where Star and Marco try to discuss how their friendship has changed ever since the shipping aspect came into play, but there isn't even much depth to this conversation. They pretty much give the bare minimum before going in the forced kiss direction. The forced kiss isn't cute, it's just confusing because they act so surprised that they kissed each other yet the episode doesn't even explain why they didn't. The only thing that saved this though is the twist when the goblin reveals he trapped them in the booth to make them kiss which made me laugh, but other than that this is nonsense and I can see why people both lover, but more importantly ferociously despise this episode. The fact that this is Daron Nefcy's favourite episode of the show really shows where the crew's priority was when producing this show.

But you know, by that point they really should have gotten to the point and made Starco a thing. Not because I am a shipper, but because the show has shipped them from as far back as Blood Moon Ball, so it's obvious that at some point the show wants them to be together. And so I generally think it would have been a good idea to pair them up sooner so that they could actually do something with this relationship and create a new and fresh dynamic. There is potential to be had here, and there is really no use for delaying it any longer when the audience knows what the end result will be. But take a freaking guess at what Season 4 decides to do. Yup, delay it. Delay it until one of the last episodes of the show. Instead of getting to the freaking point, it shoots itself in the foot by making some egregious and unnecessary decisions like The Curse Of The Blood Moon which was an absolutely useless episode that only existed to create drama for Starco shippers and baiting them into thinking it won't happen when it obviously will. Oh, and what about the absolute most useless ship in the show that was so useless that it lasted 1 episode. The ending of Kelly's World made me so mad because the show decided to shove in a ship for absolutely no reason at all which had no effect on anything. Seriously, Marco and Kelly literally broke up off-screen with no explanation in A Boy And His DC-700XE. What makes me especially mad is that fact that Kelly barely even counts as a character because she is literally just a useless break-up object that is now being used as a shipping fuel for like 3.14 nanoseconds. It was an absolutely unnecessary move and instead was an absolute waste of my time. But honestly, the most egregious thing about how this season handles it's shipping relates to what I just said. This entire series had been building up to this one ship which they decided to shove in the last few episodes of the show. God Bless Star vs. The Forces Of Evil for building up to this one ship only to do absolutely nothing with it. I'm sure it satisfied everyone who was invested in this show, just kidding no it didn't. And the other thing is that while in Seasons 2-3 the shipping was more of a side thing, by the end of Season 4 it totally consumed the show to the point where it might have just completely destroyed the finale. The funny thing is, no one, not even shippers can get any satisfaction from the finale because there is nothing to be gained for anyone. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a valuable lesson in not dragging things out for so long when they don't need to be dragged out.

In short, the shipping in this show is about as awful as people say it is. And this is coming from someone who tried to give this subplot a fair chance. It's a waste of your time and attention.

STORYTELLING: Once again, for this section of the review, I'm going to give my brief thoughts on each of the four seasons because the writing in each of the four seasons are very distinct to each other. I saved this for last because I am going to use points previously discussed in this review to summarise my thoughts on each season.

Season 1 - Season 1 of Star vs. The Forces of Evil is the best season of the show. I actually think it's pretty middling. With that being said it started off really poorly in like the first 14 episodes. It exists to set up the two main characters, but like I said earlier in my review, "the show starts off as a bland and generic take on a typical monster of the week cartoon, with the added aspect of Star coming and learning the customs of Earth which is also a rather cliched trope that they don't take advantage of all that much." The stories in these episodes are bland and poorly paced, and once again I am going to mention how Ludo was an extremely boring joke villain with him being shoved into the last few minutes of episodes like in Match Maker so that they can do nothing with him. The only advantage of the first half of the season is it's animation. It's bouncy and expressive and gives this show more charm. The season actually does get pretty good in it's last 10 episodes when Toffee is brought into the mix, and for me he is the highlight of the season. It's around the time when the season tried to build more of a story and because of that we got more engaging stories in the process. Unfortunately the finale is a disappointment as it was a bland showdown against Toffee that ends up leaving questions which are never really answered. In the end this season as a whole is meh. I could tell that there was at least an attempt to make the show fun, and I can praise it for being the most energetic season of the show by far, but it isn't something I'd call good due to the first 14 episodes of the season being really weak.

Season 2 - If there was one word to describe my feelings towards a majority of this season, it's "apathy". I am apathetic towards this season. There are very few episodes of the season which I feel very strongly towards one way or another because a lot of the episodes lean towards the middle. Why? Because like half of the episodes in this season are forgettable. They are so forgettable that I can barely rememeber what happened in a lot of these episodes. Like, can someone even tell me what happens in an episode like Starsitting or Gift of the Card? Or Red Belt? Season 2 does offer interesting ideas, but the bland and boring executions of these ideas leave me just forgetting everything soon after. I feel like I should be enjoying this Season more than Season 1 because Season 1 seemed to be going in an upward direction, and Season 2 continued this slice-of-life format while also having more of a focus on the story which was looking pretty good up to this point. But unlike Season 1, Season does not have as much of a sense of energy to it, and is instead more boring. In fact there is this really bad stretch in particular from Raid The Cave to Heinous where episodes of the season are at their most boring and substanceless and it brought this season down from like a 5/10 to a 4.5/10. I can see the season having some energy to it in like the first half of the season with episodes like Star On Wheels and Girls' Day Out but as it goes on it just becomes worse and more bland. To be honest the fact that I could barely remember anything from half the episodes in this season was one of the main things that pushed me to star disliking this show as a whole, because it reflects on how forgettable, bland and boring this show as a whole is, and how overall worthless and time-wasting it is especially in Seasons 3 and 4. Needless to say, this season is lame, but there are few things to appreciate here such as Ludo's story arc which started off awesomely in Ludo In The Wild and really brought up episodes later down the line such as Bon Bon The Birthday Clown and Starcrushed. There is also Buff Frog's new role in the show, with a couple of pleasant episodes dedicated to him, and lastly there is also Tom's character redemption which was also another pleasant addition to the season. And like I said before, the shipping subplot in this season wasn't executed half-bad either. And in between these, we still got a couple of enjoyable episodes which felt like they were taken from season 1 like Star on Wheels, Girls' Day Out and Mathmagic. It's just that a majority of the episodes in this season are just not worth watching. Overall this season gets a nice 4.5 out of 10 because it is better than Season 1's first half, but is definitely not as good as Season 1's second half.

Season 3 - Season 3 did unironically used to be my favourite season back then, and I have absolutely no idea why. However calling it great was definitely part of the troll which I discussed earlier, as I would get extra reaction by calling a season of the show great. In reality though, this season sucks and I definitely see why fans of the show were not very pleased with this season. I feel like the crew looked at the success of Steven Universe and decided to copy it by becoming completely serialised with pretty much every episode having to do something with the main plot of the show. I was okay with this in The Battle Of Mewni story arc because it was told in an interesting way where it explores different character perspectives in a chaotic scenario, although it was ruined by the really bland writing of the show. However the story the rest of the season tells is so damn boring. Like who the hell is this Eclipsa person and why the hell did the show shift the spotlight to a characters that was barely even built up to and that I couldn't give a damn about. As for the season's story itself? I couldn't give a damn about it either. Why are there so many boring and useless episodes which serve nothing of purpose? Give me one good reason why I should watch something like Trial By Squire or Sweet Dreams or Death Peck or Night Life or Starfari or Marco Jr. This is when the show decides to take itself really seriously and it zaps anything fun about the show away altogether. I'll give credit to Season 2, despite losing the energy that Season 1 had, it was still a pretty light-hearted season altogether meaning some of the show's original charm is still there, so I can see where enjoyment can be found in it. Meanwhile Season 3 neither has any energy and isn't light-hearted. It's a completely different show altogether now which presents an important question. What entertainment value is there to be found in this season anymore? The cheap, pathetic and extremely dull attempt to be serialised by taking forever to get to the point about anything? The stupid shipping episodes? The fact that the main character has lost everything about her that made her a charming protagonist? Duh, what am I saying. There is absolutely no charm to be found in this season. In fact I have a good word to describe this season - gritty. It's gritty due to it's unpleasant and more negative tone, and there is absolutely no semblance of fun to be had here. The only redeemable portion of this season is the stretch from The Bogbeast of Boggabah to Ludo, Where Art Thou?. The Bogbeast Of Bogabbah was a pretty funny episode which had Star's most noticable character development this season which was sadly thrown out of the window in Season 4. Total Eclipsa The Moon and Butterfly Trap had the only interesting part of this season's story which is the twist that the Butterfly Family are not actually royalty which was a genuinely interesting twist. And Ludo, Where Art Thou is a Ludo episode that one of the most heartwarming and funniest episodes the show has to offer. Otherwise this season is overall just bad. While it's not particularly offensive for me to call it awful, it's still a really boring and gritty cartoon season that marks where the show officially jumped the shark.

Season 4 - Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting my first AWFUL cartoon season - Season 4 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Eventually all four The Loud House seasons will join it, but for now let's discuss this abomination of a season. If you thought Season 3 was gritty, this season is gritty to the next level, because this season's tone is downright depressing. I refuse to believe how a show which originally has a much more light-hearted and optimistic tone turned out to be depressing. Whenever I watch any episode of this season, the mood is always really negative and the episodes just feel very hollow and empty. I feel like a lot of the depressing tone has to do with the fact that the colouring in this season is also darker like for example the characters are now living in Eclipsa's old castle which has stone walls and poor lighting. It feels like we are now living in some sort of dystopia. The lack of substance in any episode this season does not help to alleviate the depressing tone, combined with the fact that the characters are always acting so negatively. An excellent example of this would be the opening of The Curse of the Blood Moon, which has an excruciatingly slow-paced opening where Star and Marco are taking ages to eat their cereal in this said castle and they just interact really awkwardly. Episodes like Swim Suit, Out of Business and Ghost Of Butterfly Castle are painful reminders of how gritty and depressing this season is. Also not helping is how little of of a story the season even has. I can at least see that Season 3 was at least attempted to build something up in it's story, but Season 4 really doesn't. For most of the season, the main focus is on mending relationships between Mewman and Monsters, and getting people to accept Eclipsa as the new leader of Mewni which is conflict which I have no reason to care about due to the points I made against Eclipsa earlier in the review. There isn't even much focus on the monsters thing in this season anyways, so in the end you're left with absolutely nothing of any interest or intrigue going on. The season pretty much meanders about and unlike Season 3, barely any of the episodes in this season do anything to further this show's "story" in any way. Instead we get a whole bunch of pointless rubbish such as Out of Business, Queen Napped and Junkin' Janna. And we all know that the shipping subplot in this season was rubbish and had the most obnoxious execution possible, yet quite a few episodes were wasted on it as opposed to like 5 episodes in Season 3. Somehow the show managed to get more boring and uninteresting than Season 3 and I did not even know that was possible. And added to that it just became extremely obnoxious to watch. This season is awful because it's all of the worst aspects of this show dialed up to an 11 and combined into one horrid season.

But man, you have not seen the worst of this season yet until you get to the final story arc of it. Somehow, this managed to be even worse and more insulting than the final arc of Steven Universe Season 5. I mean, I already discussed how they shoved Starco in the last few episodes of the show, but that isn't the only thing they shoved in the end because they decided to shove everything important about the season's overall "plot" towards the end as well. Now, you may have noticed how I quoted the word "plot" multiple times in this review, and that's because this show's plot is so barebones in terms of anything that I find it difficult to call it a plot. Instead of a plot, I just call it a meandering mess because that's pretty much what this show is. It just aimlessly wanders from destination to destination and it feels like they are trying to go somewhere with certain plot points only for it to be a dead end. Everything just sort of comes and goes. It's the exact same problem Steven Universe has where it's a serialised show but with no overarching narrative and it's instead just a compilation of smaller story arcs mishmashed into one "story". Each of the four main villains have their own arc and then they just come and go, which a bunch of other random arcs thrown in as well like the shipping plot, the Mewmans and Monsters systematic racism and Star trying to get people to accept Eclipsa as their queen. The show fails to developed in a focused direction in any way, and hell it doesn't even have the decency to develop it's main character properly and instead just regresses her from the next queen to a random nobody who will never be a leader of anything and has lost any character development she was given. AT the very least Steven Universe didn't screw up this horribly. But back to the final arc, it is absolutely rushed. Nothing that happens in the final stretch of episodes feels like it was developed properly at all, it's like this entire show is just skimming over everything in an effort to complete it as fast as possible, and I have absolutely no idea why. I mean you had the entire freaking season to do something but you instead decide to waste the entire rest of the season on absolute nothingness. And let's not mention all the IQ-raising decisions they made here like the Queen Moon twist which I ranted on earlier, or the ending of The Tavern At The End Of The Multiverse where Star says she hates magic and classifies it all as bad. I just love how she is against the idea that all monsters are bad, yet she classifies everyone who uses magic as idiots just because like one person decided to abuse it. Yes, she called them idiots. Fucking idiots. Yes, she used that fucking word to describe everyone who uses magic because oh no one mentally insane person decided to misuse it and whoops now the world is in danger. No no no. Let's not blame bad people like that, no how about we blame it on magic itself. It was magic's fault, not the people who abused it. Oh and how about we also call all monsters bad just because a few of them misbehaved too. Oh but wait we can't do that because why should be deprive the show from this glorious hypocrisy? Obviously my favourite character trait of Star Butterfly is how hypocritical she is, right? No seriously, I absolutely despise this character after that episode. That scene was a MASSIVE "FUCK YOU" to anyone who was even slightly invested in this character.

Oh but don't worry, at least we have Cleaved, right? I actually cried after watching this finale. I didn't cry because it was emotional or anything, I cried because of how absolutely horrendous it was. I was absolutely broken watching it because I could not believe what I was seeing. I love how in a show called Star vs. The Force Of Evil, the finale has anything but fighting. But that's the least of this finale's problems, because this finale doesn't even count as an actual conclusion because it barely gives closure to anything. None of the characters get any closure at all. Instead they just destroy everything that made the show in the first place. When I first saw this show, I never thought I would see the day day where the characters would actively try to destroy magic and close off all the dimensions because those were what the show was about, so the fact that the finale completely destroys them is an extremely depressing way to end the show. Actually how does this finale make any sense? If all magic is destroyed and all dimensions are close off, time and spacetime shouldn't even be working anymore as the time universe is completely closed off from Earth. Oh, and let's not forget how Star literally causes the death of all magical creatures and it is treated like a joke and in a Family Guy style cutaway gag which is absolutely disgusting. But at this point the show only cares about the fact that Star and Marco are together now and they use this fact to excuse everything bad happening. I mean for one, this happened in a nonsensical deus-ex-machina which makes absolutely no sense in the slightest, but also you can see how in this new combined dimension it is absolute chaos and everyone around Star and Marco are just screaming in terror. However the show doesn't even care about this. For all I know, everyone could be suffering and the show would treat this as a happy ending as long as Star and Marco are together. Things like this and the last episode lead me to believe that by this season, this has become a dangerous show and one that needs to be avoided at all costs before it sends the wrong messages to the children watching this. By the way, I don't even see how shippers can be satisfied because they show literally ends with Star and Marco saying "hey" to each other after they see each other again, and this show just ends. Like, can someone remind me how this is even a conclusion? Because as far as I'm concerned it opens up a billion questions and doesn't answer any of them. No wonder everyone was underwhelmed by this miserable finale because it was inconclusive and depressing. And to be honest I have to agree because this is easily the worst finale to anything I've ever seen. Horrible twists, nonsensical plot points, boring action character regression, and the worst cartoon finale I have seen? This final batch of episodes has everything that makes up an absolute failure of a story arc. Overall a 1/10 season with 0.5 of it coming from the fact that this season isn't entirely made up of awful episodes, and the other 0.5 coming from Princess Quasar Caterpillar and the Magic Bell, which is somehow the best episode of the show despite being from this appalling season.

CONCLUSION: Please, if you have not seen this show, I am begging you. Do not watch this show! Watch any other serialised show this decade. Watch Gravity Falls. Watch Adventure Time. Watch Steven Universe if you really want to because even that show has some dignity to it. But please, just avoid this one because it is absolutely worthless and not worth watching. And if you really want to see it then just stick to the first two seasons because everything after that is a detriment to your sanity. Because aside from a few small things, what good qualities does this show even have? Why watch this show when so many other shows have better, funnier and more exciting things to offer. Since this is an overall boring and worthless show with terrible storytelling and bland characters, I am going to give this show a BAD (3/10). The only thing that prevents this show from being any lower is that the first and second season aren't bad and the first season can be enjoyable to an extent, but otherwise this show fails on a basic level at being entertaining because it isn't even funny or interesting but it instead bores me to death except for the final season which not only bores me the most, but it frustrates me too. Let's hope we don't receive another show that is garbage at serialisation like this one instead. SandalsFish, gone absolutely crazy writing this review, signing out.

FINAL RATING: BAD SHOW