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krissiefox · 15 days

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Wander Over Yonder (Series Review) (Contains Spoilers!)

Yup, I'm finally reviewing another cartoon! But I just don't have the energy to undertake a project like when I reviewed every single freaking Aosth episode one at a time, so this time around I'm going to look at the series as whole.

Warning: I will discuss spoilers throughout this review, so if you are interested, please go watch the cartoon first! Thanks to disney being stupid, it's still only available on disney plus - so you'll either have to pay for that or find another means to watch it. Yo ho ho!

Wander over Yonder is a delightful, colorful and energetic Disney cartoon than originally began airing back in 2013. Its stories mainly revolve around its two main characters, Wander and Sylvia. Wander is a an altruistic space hippie who resembles a muppet-like creature, and his best friend Sylvia is a very butch-coded and punchy Zbornak, a species that is somewhere between a dragon and horse.

Wander and Sylvia's lives seem to have consisted of traveling the universe in a magic space-safe bubble, having fun and helping folks. Things get a little more dangerous though, when one day they cross paths with one of the show's main villains - Lord Hater. Hater is a hilariously pitiful caricature of toxic masculinity - constantly needing reassurance that he's "the coolest guy ever" and seeking validation by destroying and bullying everyone and everything around him. Despite his very impolite behavior, the ever-affectionate and loving Wander is determined to see the good in Hater and help him find a healthier way of managing his feelings than "punching lame nerds in the face". Lord Hater's minions, the Watch Dogs, are also frequent targets of Hater's bullying but mostly maintain loyalty nonetheless. Chief among the Watch Dogs is Commander Peppers, who is far more professional about being a villain than Hater himself could ever hope to be.

After the introductory setup, we'll see that many episodes consist of Hater trying to do something nasty, and Wander managing to mess it up just by being kind and nice. Many times, the Watchdogs will neglect their job duties and get distracted by Wander, as he treats them much better than Hater does.

This sounds like it might be a repetitive theme, but the show does a great job of always throwing out variety in its stories. You'll see the "standard" Wander vs Hater stories but you'll see stories of Wander and Sylvia doing things on their own, and Hater and the watchdogs doing things on their own, and over time a whole slew of secondary villains and friends show up in the story as well! Given the setting of the show is an entire galaxy, this also gave the creators plenty of room to constantly change up the scenery with different worlds, different creatures, and even the occasional trip into alternate realities! Most episodes are comedy based, but every now and then the show comes out swinging with a very sweet or moving story as well, and these are done just as well as all the zany comedy.

In season 2, the show introduces a new villain - Lord Dominator - bringing with her some big "shit just got real" energy. Unlike Lord Hater, she is much, MUCH more powerful and competent as a villain. She becomes such a threat that even Lord Hater is occasionally willing to work with Wander in helping fight her, as her relentless destruction of every planet around is only making him feel even more like a failure of a villain. At the end of the season, she is finally defeated in the sense that her ship is destroyed along with all of her robots, but she has no remorse for her actions and vows revenge on everyone who stood up to her. Sadly, the show only got 2 seasons, as disney never gave the creators the green-light for anymore.

So that's my brief summary of the overall story-line, but how does the show look and sound? Well, just check out these screenshots for the visuals, they're fantastic! The art team put a whole lot of love into this show and it shows. With an entire galaxy for it's characters to run around, the background artists will treat you to countless beautiful, bright colorful worlds and environments. The characters are very well animated and extremely expressive, and the voice acting is great as well. There are many visual nods to old Hanna Barbera cartoon days and also seems to be love for the funky architecture, color schemes and aesthetics from classic scifi art, as well. The team behind the show has some familiar names attached to it such as main creator Craig McCracken (Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab), season one co-producer and story editor Lauren Faust (My Little Pony FIM), and the lovable Tom Kenny providing the voice of Commander Peepers (Spongebob, Adventure Time).

In terms of themes and messages, the show gets a lot of things right which is another reason I admire it. Wander's altruistic nature lends itself to many wholesome story-line moments, and the interactions between him and Sylvia can often symbolize many people's internal struggle with "wanting to always be kind and helpful while also not being a doormat for all the bullies out there who don't appreciate kindness".

The show also has a couple episodes that touch on the importance of consent, which I like a lot. In one episode, Lord Hater ends up in the care of Wander and Sylvia after getting heavily drugged up during a painful dentist visit, and he's so blitzed out of his mind that he doesn't remember anything about Wander or being a villain and just enjoys spending time with his "new friends." At the end of the episode, Hater starts to put his mind back together, and flees in disgust at the thought of being friendly with the two. Naturally, Wander feels hurt and dissapointed, but as Sylvia tries to comfort him he also points that it wouldn't be right to have Hater's "friendship" with him not be of his own conscious choice.

Similarly, in another episode, we meet a villain (who is voiced by Weird Al!) who is like a corrupted version of Wander - instead of wanting to help people be happy, he forces them to be "happy". This infuriates and disgusts wander as he believes people must experience joy of only their own free will.

Overall I love the series, but I did some have some criticisms. One of the more minor ones is that it felt like they might have had a limited sound effects budget, as I noticed the show reused the exact same "Wham!" and "crying baby" sound effect so many times that it started to get distracting to me. I know good audio recording equipment is expensive as hell and thus can understand folks using stock sound effects, but I feel the show might have benefited from maybe some extra foley sounds to add more variety.

Another thing I didn't care for sometimes, is that there's handful of episodes that just feel very mean-spirited towards Sylvia, and in some of them Wander himself is the one being hurtful or even downright creepy towards her in some way or another. The moral of these stories is often Wander realizing he was being terrible, but it feels like the subject gets taken too lightly sometimes. Similarly, the show does occasionally have the mean-spirited gag of "bad things keep happening to Sylvia and we're supposed to find it funny", an old cartoon trope that's always disturbed me. Slapstick is one thing, but when it feels the writers are just bullying a character it can get uncomfortable.

There was a subplot throughout much of season 2 that rubbed me the wrong way, too. When Dominator is first introduced, everyone initially assumes her to be a guy under her suit of armor, but when Wander later realizes she's a woman, he immediately jumps to the idea of trying to hook her and Hater up as a couple. Part of his reasoning is that he feels like if Hater and Dominator are busy with making the smoochy-smoochy, they'll both lose interest in destroying planets and bullying their inhabitants. But still, the hetero-normative trope of just assuming that every woman is interested in A - relationships period, and B - a relationship with a man, is the kind of attitude I'd expect from Lord Hater, but not from sweet little Wander. He goes on about this for much of season 2, and Hater is also on board once he sees Dominator without her helmet on, but I am glad that at-least both Sylvia AND Dominator find the notion ridiculous the entire time, and at the end of season two, we don't have the additional sexist trope of her caving to a relationship she was never interested in having, thus "the bad girl getting redeemed via hooking up with a dude" trope.

On the subject of character relationships, I personally think if Dominator isn't just an asexual/aromantic killing machine she would most likely go for Sylvia if anyone, since she's the only one who actually came close to becoming friends with Dominator in one episode. Also, I got the impression that Commander Peppers really had a thing for Hater, as well. If Hater ever grows up, he and Peepers could make a cute couple, I'm sure. :)

Despite some of these things that bothered me, I still think the show is pretty great over all. While it could definitely use some more gay and less heteronormativity , it does still have a lot of wholesomeness and positive messages, lovely art, great humor, lovable characters, and even some very moving episodes. Now I just really wish the greedy putzes at disney would give this show a DVD set already! Hell, they never even made any plush toys. I want a little plushie of Sylvia, dammnit!

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