Featured TV on DVD Review: Steven Universe: Season One
January 29, 2018
Steven Universe: Season One - Buy from Amazon: DVD
Steven Universe came out in 2013 and season five is currently airing. However, the first season is making its DVD debut this week. I don’t know if this late entry to the DVD market will hurt sales, but it will likely need something special in way of extras to entice fans who have been able to watch these episodes in reruns for more than four years at this point.
This TV show focuses on a young boy called Steven Universe. His father, Greg, is a former rock star who gave up his career to be with Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz, who sadly passed away before the show began. So far this is a rather normal setup to a story. However, Rose Quartz wasn’t human. She was a member of Crystal Gems, a group of aliens who use their crystal powers to defend Earth from monsters. Steven now lives at the Crystal Temple with Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst, who were friends of his mother and are the guardians of Earth.
Since Steven is so young, he hasn’t learned how to control his powers yet, so he’s not a full member of the team and can’t go on missions. This is the most important arc of the TV show, but not the only one. Amethyst is the youngest of the three full gems and she has trouble being taken seriously, because she acts immature a lot of the time. As for Garnet and Pearl, well their main arcs in the show are too far into spoiler territory to even talk about. In most episodes, there’s a problem of the week and the four Crystal Gems go on an adventure to fix it. If this were the gist of the show, it would still be worth checking out for its target audience. The characters would be enough to carry a otherwise typical show. However...
Steven Universe does a lot to help it stand out and much of it has to do with gender and diversity representation. Steven is the star of the show and the audience POV character, but the other three leads, the heroes, are all women. Not only that, but rather than have the women as “strong female characters” by emulating stereotypical male traits, stereotypical female traits like empathy are celebrated. This includes Steven himself. He’s not your typical male hero and he is also allowed to have more stereotypical female traits.
The other issue is representation, but talking about this gets into spoiler territory. I’ll try to keep the wall of white text short. In the show, we learn in flashbacks that Pearl and Rose Quartz were in a relationship before Rose met Steven’s father. And this isn’t just a throwaway plot point either, as we learn that Pearl never got over Rose. Furthermore, this isn’t subtext either. It’s not just something that’s hinted at. In fact, one episode got censored in the U.K. because of the romantic scene between the two characters. Then there’s Garnet, but that’s too deep into spoiler territory to even mention.
On a side note, there are some parts of this show that would be serious body horror, if the show didn’t have such a light-hearted feel.
All of the extras are found on the third disc, starting with Behind the Music, a 10-minute featurette about the music in the show, and there’s a lot of it. Listening Party is an 18-minute featurette on the soundtrack. In includes interviews with the creator, Rebecca Sugar, as well as full songs. Speaking of songs, there are five songs performed by Rebecca Sugar and others. There are five episodes shown in animatics form. Finally, there are two song demos.
That’s about 100 minutes of extras, a lot of which is focused on the music. Fans of the show should love this.
Steven Universe is a great show and I loved Season One. I only have one complaint and that’s the fact that it is only coming out on DVD and not Blu-ray.
The Show
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Zach Callison