GLENDALE, Calif. — In many ways, “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” a new Netflix series from DreamWorks Animation, will be familiar to fans of the campy original. Adora is here, discovering the magic sword that transforms her into She-Ra when she invokes “the honor of Grayskull,” and so is Catra, her feline friend and on-again, off-again foe. There are rainbow-colored flying unicorns and villains with giant red claws for hands, not to mention cool spaceships and battles royale.

But the reboot, from Noelle Stevenson, who has received critical acclaim for her imaginative girl-centric graphic novels, has more than cheap-looking frivolity on its mind. In place of the often-static animation of the original, the rebooted She-Ra lives in a vibrant world with stylistic homages to the French artist Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), the Japanese movie director Hayao Miyazaki and mainstream anime. And the series tackles some pretty heavy topics, like colonialism, genocide and isolationism, while aiming to maintain the buoyancy of its inspiration.

“I love the original,” Stevenson, 26, said. “But we wanted to take what was fun about it and deepen it, and flesh it out.”