The second Season of Mighty No.9 vs Mega Man returns on March 3. Some toys have spoiled characters like Man-E-Faces, who looks kinda like Man-E-Faces, with a cloth loincloth and a botched action feature. (Seems like his faces change vertically instead of horizontally.)
Stratos looks like The Falcon. Or Teela's dad. He no longer is a flying Monkey.
2 well now 1 MOTU cartoon, 3 toylines, a "live action movie coming soon" and I feel nothing other than disappointment and anger. I SHOULD BE HAPPY that we're getting a shit ton of MOTU stuff. My issue is that what we're getting is not up to snuff.
We know my mixed feelings towards Origins:
I cannot say that the line is good, because it's a step down from Classics, but I can't say it's a complete trainwreck, because on paper it's a great idea. Execution MIGHT be a bit lacking, but it hits certain notes on Nostalgia. Nearly bought a Castle Grayskull yesterday... but the $113 price tag helped me snap back to reality.
The MOTU Minis ARE a thing, even if I don't care much about them. I mention it for the sake of transparency but I'm not even counting it as an actual toy line.
The "MOTUC KILLER" LINE has been a HUUUUUUUUGE Disappointment, I am of course referring to Masterverse. I've already thought about the issues of disappointing sculpt and awkward paint (or lack of) as issues that make Masterverse an inferior product next to MOTUC. Since the person in charge of Masterverse is the same incompetent buffoon who botched the engineering in MOTUC, it's not surprising that he's delivering an inferior product.
Then we have the Playmates toyline... wait, that's a Mattel Toyline!? The Nu-He-Man toyline is not made by Playmates... it just looks that cheap. While yes, the 80s toys were "cheap" they weren't "cheap looking". The Basic WWE figures are "for kids" but they don't "look cheap". Just because the line is super stylized doesn't mean that an inferior product must be delivered.
On the cartoons, I've already commented on how Revelation went from OK to massive shitshow, but that was a one-off miniseries that won't come back. The other show, despite not being accurate to the Source Material, felt more MOTU than the "show made by old school fans for old school fans". It's kinda hard to get excited about MOTU when it feela thar the people in charge don't have a clue on what makes the property work and are desperately tossing everything to see what sticks.
I'm aware that it SOUNDS like I'm gatekeeping. Which I kinda am, but not completely. I just want the end product to be respectful to what came before. I want the product to walk the path between new and familiar while remaining respectful.
Before anyone mentions the identity crisis MOTU had on its origins as an argument in favor for the current identity crisis, just shut the hell up! The identity crisis of the 80s helped MOTU carve its path in popular culture. It allowed for the establishment of a property for 30+ years. Unlike Hasbro's GI Joe, whose original line was rather "lackluster" in the lore department and the 30 year reboot brought the lore we know today, MOTU had some conflicting continuities, but the 80s ironed out most of the issues. 2002 came and showed, storywise, the potential of MOTU as a revived property. (Until Mattel's incompetence and Cartoon Network's backstabbing) by the time MOTU reached 30, it already had a strong continuity... 7 years later a mediocre writer had a good idea, executed poorly, thus the Neitlichverse was born. It tried to turn all conflicting continuities of the 80s into a brand new continuity that is almost coherent.
But these 2 new versions of MOTU have strayed from the path so much that they don't resemble MOTU. Revelation had a good idea: What would be of Eternia if He-Man and Skeletor were no more. Sadly they wasted it on late 20s Teela throwing a childish tantrum. While Filmation Teela was a bit of a hothead she was supposed to be 17-20-ish. There was a study that said thar male brains mature at 25 while women did so at 21... so, it makes sense for a 19 year old Teela to have a tantrum, not so much in her late 20s. Then the show devolves into a Power of Grayskull hot potato where everyone and their mother becomes He-something or Sorceress with a disappointing ending.
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| Using Fisto for a Fisting joke... how original... |
Then the other show manages to meld the Jungle He-Man with the Adam He-Man a bit better than Neitlich the "pro" writer did, but it takes a shit on everything else... it's *I* have the power, not we... Duncan is Teela's (adoptive) dad not another peer.
I know that I've had mixed reactions with this cartoon. It's not MOTU, but it's a good show... if one ignores how it butchers MOTU. It has far more liberties than say, Filmation for the action sequences and continuity. The 3DCG Animation allows for a slightly faster production than hand drawn animation. (3D has its share of issues, but theoretically it is faster to animate than 2D.) My sole reason for hating the CGI Netflix MOTU is that aside some names, the show isn't very MOTU-Like.
If the show was a bit more traditional MOTU, say: NO Power Sharing, Teela and MAA having a familial bond and the show was Adam trying to fit in the Palace life with Teela and Krasstine helping along the way and Cringer being the comedic relief, I wouldn't have that many issues with it.
The idea of Skeletor being a Grayskull Powered Keldor would've lent itself for a different dynamic to the He-Man vs Skeletor struggle. Sadly, this show won't be the place to explore that. But this is not the place for that.
I cannot be excited for MOTU because the product delivered has missed the mark too much past my tolerance levels. I WISH I could be excited for the MOTU stuff that is coming, but all I've been is disappointed that it's all wrong.
The Netflix movie COULD BE good... but being realistic, I'd expect garbage based on the past two Netflix takes on MOTU being too unMOTU, Netflix not having a Triple A Hollywood studio budget, questionable casting choices, and the usual Mattel dumbassery. (Every day this blog gets further away from those Mattel free samples.) I've said it before, but I'll do it again:
It feels like MOTU is slipping away from me. It's being transformed, no, corrupted into something that it is not MOTU. My first real toyline, my first hero is being taken away from me as a pale imitation takes its place... All I have is his past, memories of his former gloriousness... memories that are getting duller because of how jaded I'm becoming.
Losing family to the Gaze of Haley Joel Osment is one thing... losing friends to life as we drift away is another thing, but when even my favorite fictional characters drift away and become unrecognizable, that's what hurts me the most... real people come and go... Fictional Characters are supposed to be the one thing that shouldn't leave me... but somehow, the powers that be want to take that away from me... I feel like everything is slipping away and it scares me. With me having to take new responsibilities and treading unfamiliar territory all over while going blindly without any safety nets is terrifying. With everything around me changing so fast, I need something stable to seek refuge, something familiar...
See where I'm going? He-Man, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, She-Ra, these are some of my tethers to a sense of normalcy. They have saved me more times than I can count and it hurts me to see them defiled by their own masters.
So that is why I feel that in a way it would be better to let MOTU die than be defiled as it is now... I wish the movie is good enough to bring back my He-Man, but I'm afraid of it running everything...
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