As I mentioned two posts ago, I knew next to nothing about the show Star vs. The Forces of Evil before watching this episode. Just that there’s a girl with devil horns who is apparently fighting the forces of evil. She also has a friend who wears a hoodie.

I’m not sure if I want to do a regular review or just go over the show and make jokes chronologically like a liveblog, so I’m doing a mix of both until I find a balance that I like.



As a first note, I’m not a big fan of the opening song. The middle part is pretty good, but I’m not into the lyrics. The animation’s enjoyable, though.

Star’s voice actress sounds more adult than I expected. Of course, that’s nothing new in modern cartoons (Dipper Pines sounds like he’s in his early twenties, for example), and she’s doing well. It’s just interesting how I had a very specific voice in my head, even though I’d never seen the show.



Star is a disaster with legs.

If the entire show is basically “Star Get Into Shenanigans and Makes Funny Faces” that’d be pretty good. She’s a fun character, even though her characterization is quite simple right now.



Though I’m sort of disappointed the devil horns turned out to just be part of her outfit. I was hoping she was a demon or something. But I’m not sure Disney would want the PR they’d get if one of their main TV characters was literally a demon from hell, so it’s probably for the best.



It’s strange how many shows have the “Square Guy, Wild Random Girl” dynamic. Dipper and Mabel are the most recent one I can think of, but this sort of thing goes back to I Love Lucy. I’d even put literature like Fahrenheit 451 into the category, since the main protagonist is motivated to rebel by conversations with a strange teenage girl.

The only show that I can think of that sort of turns this on its head is Steven Universe, since Connie is most definitely a square and Steven is basically Sailor Moon + Gohan.

I guess what I’m saying is, I first expected Marco to be a primo Square™

So I was genuinely surprised when Marco revealed he was a competent fighter. That’s really cool! It felt like he was going to be helpless on this magical adventure, but he’s shown he has at least one solution to the threats they could face, one that doesn’t require Star’s help.

Thinking about this a bit, it really is interesting. Marco could easily have been an unwitting and unwilling participant, just along for the ride because he liked Star (maybe not even that). But he’s already excited! He’s looking forward to the risk and danger! And I am, too.

I’ll put the next segment in another post, since this one is so long.

