Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 1 Review

I’ll admit to being a creature of habit. In this case what I mean is, I usually gravitate towards cartoons from my youth. This is nothing against modern-day cartoons, in fact I believe we are experiencing a resurgence in the quality of cartoons. This is just me pointing out that it takes a truly great new cartoon for me to immediately gravitate towards it. As note: “immediately gravitate towards” for me, means within the first 1-2 episodes, there are plenty of great shows that I fell in love with by the midpoint of their first season, it’s just very rare for me to do so within first couple episodes. Star vs. the Forces of Evil was one of those rare shows that I immediately fell in love with. I decided I needed a good ‘break’ series after watching all the movies for my Top 10 Best Non-Disney Animated Films list. By ‘break series’, I mean one where I didn’t have to binge watch to enjoy it. Obviously, I found this as an opportune time to re-watch Season 1 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, as even though there is a season long arc, you can watch any episode by itself and be just as satisfied as someone binging the entire season. Not going to lie though, I had a more selfish reason for doing this review as well, the thought of Shemi cosplaying as Star popped in my head and I wanted to do it. Without further ado, I bring you my review of Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 1. Oh, and spoilers ahead.

Characters

Star Butterfly: Star is your titular character for Star vs. the Forces of Evil. She is the princess of Mewni, who on her 14th birthday, to start the series, receives Mewni’s royal magic wand. She then proceeds to destroy most of Mewni in a matter of minutes and gets sent to Earth to develop her magic in a ‘safe’ environment. Star is energetic and fun albeit somewhat reckless. She is often placing herself and others in very bad situations, however she always comes out on top in the end. Star is rarely seen without a smile on her face and in most cases it’s more in annoyance than anger when she doesn’t have one. She’s very kind to everyone she meets except for her enemies which she is always ready to fight. A lot of the humor of the show stems from her naïvety to Earth customs and her overuse/lack of understanding of her magic.

Marco Diaz: Marco is your male protagonist. He is a mostly average 14-year-old boy. He is tasked with helping Star during her time on Earth because he is considered the ‘safe’ kid at school. Which in truth, he is overly cautious, obsessive compulsive, but there is an additional depth to his character. He has proven himself worthy of praise when it comes to his karate fighting the monsters. Although, he often complains when Star gets him into bad situations he secretly loves the sense of danger and fulfillment that he gets out of it. Star and Marco are very good counterbalances to one another. She is constantly bringing him out of his shell and he is making sure she doesn’t get in too much trouble. I have more on their relationship to come later.

Ludo: Ludo is Star’s “arch-nemesis.” He is a very short greenish bird with a skull on his head. Ludo, although technically your main villain for most of season 1, is a lovably idiotic character. Honestly, he’s so idiotic that he doesn’t come off that villainous. His entire mission in life is to steal Star’s wand to get a ‘big-boy body’ and take over the universe. He is completely egotistical but is also completely incompetent. Ludo is a coward, who can do nothing by himself. As a note: his personality has shifted some in Season 2, but he’s still Ludo. Ludo and his minion’s hijinks are hilarious. Everything from Ludo telling Deer Beard that he was being a baby after saying he was bleeding internally to the fanboy reaction to Lobster Claws after he touched the wand it’s just too funny.

Toffee: Toffee is your actual villain in Season 1. He is cold, calculating, and much more intelligent than Ludo and the rest of his minions. Toffee was able to completely manipulate Ludo and his minions to do his bidding with minimal effort. All he had to do really was feed on Ludo’s general self-centeredness and ego. His mission in life is to destroy Star’s wand. Amazingly enough, he never even gives a reason why he wants to destroy Star’s wand (I will give my personal thoughts on this later). Finally, when he’s about to blow up, he smiles. He has the hugest creepiest grin on his face during his impending doom moment. Did he already know that was going to happen? Based upon everything up to that point, the answer is, most likely yes, and yet he was smiling. It’s like that’s what he wanted. That is completely insane.

Additional Comment: Every character on this show is brilliant, unique, and well-written. I could talk about the characterizations of even minor characters for days from this show. Janna and Buff Frog, for example, both have more personality than most lead characters do. The villain of the day characters, like Miss Heinous or Monster Arm (with a little tweaking obviously) would make great overall series villains. Honestly, the one character I wish had more development is Marco’s crush, Jackie Lynn Thomas. I don’t dislike her as a character, in fact I think she’s cool and has a lot of potential. She is just vastly underdeveloped. Literally, there are unnamed background characters that have had more development than her. If given a real opportunity, she has the potential to be one of the best characters on the show, but until they develop her further she is little more than your obligatory, ‘cute girl the main character has a crush on’.

One of the few times you see Star truly angry.

Plot

Star vs. the Forces of Evil’s plot is extremely different than most. It has a clear overarching plot line associated with Ludo, Toffee and their minions going up against Star and Marco and trying to take Star’s wand. However, each episode segment is self-contained, meaning you didn’t to have seen all the other episodes to understand them. Much of the plot is actually just your standard high school problems, with the twist that your main character is extra-dimensional being that has a magic wand that can do pretty much anything. I mean there are episodes where they go on a field trip to another dimension or to a dance in the underworld. There’s an episode where Star goes through her version of puberty, which turns her into an uncontrollable boy-loving monster. There’s even one where in order to cheer Star up after she didn’t receive a call from her crush, Marco brings monsters for her to fight. It’s nonsensical, but not completely random. Although, there a couple very random episodes like Star having to kill her boredom by getting a banana ice cream maker or an entire episode dedicated to them shopping for a wand charger in an extra-dimensional department store. But unlike a lot of shows, even the random episodes still feel cohesive to the overall plot line.

The weird thing in Star vs. the Forces of Evil is the lack of actual ‘Forces of Evil.’ If you look at the villains of the day only Ludo, Toffee, Miss Heinous, and Monster Arm are really what you would call evil. Also even among those villains they have varying levels of evilness. Ludo is evil, but it’s hard to take him seriously given he lost to the Tickle Fairy and the fact that Star doesn’t consider him a real threat. Toffee is pure evil. He doesn’t care who he has to hurt or even kill in order to reach his goals. Miss Heinous is the sadistic headmistress of St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses. Miss Heinous takes absolute pleasure in torturing the princesses until they can become proper. At the end of her episode she discovers that the people who started the rebellion at her school are from Earth and decides she is going there to annihilate them. Finally, there is Monster Arm. Monster Arm, in short, admits he wants to slaughter and disembowel all humans. He also completely changed Marco’s personality with relative ease and as he is defeated he screams that he can never be gotten rid of as he is part of Marco now., which haunts Marco. Monster Arm is probably the most evil of the characters as he has no reason at all to hate everyone but he does.

Shipping

I’m going to remove the elephant in the room and admit to shipping the pairing known as Starco. If you don’t know what shipping is, it’s basically where a fan base romantically links two characters to one another. Everyone does it, usually unintentionally and it doesn’t always make sense. However, I do my best to avoid doing it as much as possible. I could lie and say that it’s because I’m a man and we don’t think of romantic things. But the truth is, my record with shipping is royally terrible, so that’s really the reason why. Yes, I know that is a very lame excuse, but it’s the truth. I can only think of two shippings I got right offhand and those were the obvious ones of Danny x Sam from Danny Phantom and Kim x Ron from Kim Possible. Starco as you may have guessed based upon the name is the pairing of Star and Marco. I see this pairing being similar to the previous shippings I got right so I have a little confidence. They are starting out as friends with subtle hints at feelings beyond that.Their personalities although vastly different, mesh perfectly together. It is a relationship being built on trusting one another. They each know that the other one will always be there when they need them. Finally, they both have proven that they will sacrifice everything for each other and that includes their lives and dreams.

There are two episodes within season 1 that, from my perspective, give the strongest hints of this potential pairing. The first came in ‘Blood Moon Ball.’ In ‘Blood Moon Ball,’ Star’s ex-boyfriend, Tom, comes to ask her to his Blood Moon Ball dance. Marco thinks it’s a terrible idea and comes off very jealous of Tom. As an aside, Marco has very smitten face when he sees Star in her ball gown. Marco’s jealousy is most prominent when the final straw for him to go to Star was an eerie voice saying the blood moon was the moon of lovers. Tom is trying to get Star to dance with him under the blood moon light which supposedly binds two souls together forever. Tom trying to set the mood loses track of Star and she dances with Marco under the blood moon light. Star has the most enamored face the entire time they are dancing. After Tom finds out and gets angry, Star and Marco leave. Star reveals that she’s upset at Marco for not trusting her to figure things out herself. They quickly makeup and have a very flirtatious moment where they say the same things at the same time. The entire episode almost feels like Starco fanfiction except without them making out or anything in the end.

The second moment came in the season finale ‘Storm the Castle.’ ‘Storm the Castle’ actually starts with them fighting after a personality clash moment, involving Star trying to get a sandwich at potentially the cost of their lives. She goes to makeup with him and discovers he’s been taken captive. She then goes on a complete rampage to save him, during which she never considers her own safety. After all of that in order to save Marco, Star destroys her magic wand so that he can live. That’s the equivalency of giving up a huge part of her life. She didn’t hesitate at all. She was absolutely willing to give up everything for him. That is way beyond ‘just friends’ level of caring for someone. When all is said and done they finally embrace with the most heartfelt hug in the series thus far.

Note, the Starco moments I talked specifically about, are not the only ones present throughout the series. In fact, almost every episode has some hints but in my eyes these were the most prominent. I’ll admit to another fact, the first few episodes of season 2 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil are very Starco heavy. That might have affected my bias slightly but, it doesn’t change anything.

Additional Commentary

Star vs. the Forces of Evil is a deceptively mature show. I know what you are thinking, how can a brightly-colored energetic show that I has a princess fighting monsters all the time be that mature. The truth is that the world of Star vs. the Forces of Evil is not just rainbows and puppies, there are a lot of serious flaws with it.

Firstly, Mewni, for anyone that is not Star’s family, is a horrible place to live. Star’s family lives in an overly extravagant castle so high up that it extends well over the clouds. The other Mewmans, however, live in a completely impoverished slum underneath the castle, feeding on rats and selling sketchy goods. The  worst part is, the Mewmans have better lives than the monsters that also inhabit Mewni. The monsters originally lived where Butterfly Castle is. A long time ago, however, one of Star’s ancestors used her magic to make an army of super strong Mewmans. These Mewmans then slaughtered the monsters and drove them into the swamps surrounding the castle. Mewman children, to this day, are being brainwashed into believing all monsters are inherently evil. This is obviously not true. The truth is, most of the monsters just want to live their lives.

Next, there is a lot context about what is a “proper” princess. Obviously most of this comes from St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses, henceforth known as St. O’s. St. O’s basically teaches the young princesses not to think, feel, or do much of anything other than look pretty. This is basically a shot at the old depiction of princesses in movies and television. The adage that, “women should be seen and not heard,” was the basis for the design of princesses for years. Obviously, no one follows this ideology anymore, however, we as a society still accentuate the stereotype of what is the “perfect proper princess” in the propaganda we give to our children. It’s not intentional, it’s just what we are used to. Parents of today were fed the same propaganda 20 years and so were their parents and so were their parents’ parents prior to that. It’s a perpetual cycle that’s almost impossible to break, thankfully we have put a stronger emphasis on developing and accentuating stronger less stereotypical characters over the course of the last 10 years or so. I doubt, Star vs. the Forces of Evil was trying to go that deep as part of their social commentary, but it was definitely noteworthy.

Finally, there is the mystery that is Star’s mom. Queen Butterfly has almost no time on-screen. Whenever she is on-screen she rarely smiles and doesn’t talk much. She flat-out states that she is, “always mad,” which with the context of the moment, you think she is talking about her and Star’s relationship, but what if she is speaking literally. Something had to cause Toffee’s hatred of Star’s wand. Clearly, it is not Star that caused this. We have no idea how old Toffee is, but, if we go purely on appearances he appears to be in his 30’s or 40’s, so more than likely the only other candidate you have is the previous owner of the wand, Queen Butterfly. Arguably Toffee’s most famous quote is, “Yes, well, you’re not the first monster to fall victim to their magic,” you take this as Toffee lost to Queen Butterfly previously and that’s why he hates the magic. However, if take the part of the line, ‘monster to fall victim to their magic,’ literally, that changes the context a bit. You could take this on one of two levels, he could just be talking about the monster race in general from the past with the great monster massacre or the more likely scenario is that someone close to him was killed by Queen Butterfly’s magic. I, personally, believe that Toffee keeps his middle finger cut-off as a constant reminder of this event. This adds a completely different dimension to his character that makes him slightly more sympathetic. He’s still completely insane, but not without reason. This also adds a different dimension to Queen Butterfly’s character. You assume from the beginning that since she is Star’s mom she is a “good guy” character. If you throw in this additional context, however, it gets a little blurry what side of the spectrum she is on. If she say, mercilessly slaughters innocent monsters, then this puts her more into the realm of evil characters. Obviously, this is all conjecture at this point, since we basically know nothing of her character or her past. With that said, you can’t completely ignore the potential is there either.

           Conclusion

In conclusion, Star vs. the Forces of Evil is one of my personal favorite current cartoons. With its amazing cast of characters and fun episodes, I can’t recommend this show enough. The journey of Star and Marco is just too entertaining to pass up. Literally, it’s on my can’t-miss TV list. If you’ve never seen it please do yourself a favor and give it an attempt, it is fantastic. If you do watch or have seen it, I’d be happy to hear your comments and thoughts on it. Hope you enjoyed my review of Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 1.