I watched the whole thing over the last couple weeks. It's good, especially looking at it as a children's show. Even though I suspect the target audience was weirdos like me who watch children's shows and not children. Regardless, it did an impressive job of adapting a silly character designed to sell toys to children in the 80s to a more serious story without losing all the charm of the dumb 80s children's fantasy setting.
In particular, it's kind of refreshing to see a very unironic "power of friendship" story. Love and friendship are strong and the characters seriously, genuinely embrace that. And even the big bad evil guys make friends and have understandable motivations even when those motivations lead them to unforgivable actions.
For a significant chunk of the first few seasons it made me think of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but in a negative way. Like they were trying to imitate it in a sense, and not quite nailing it. However, I'd bet that (as someone who hasn't watched any of the popular / "good" kid's shows between Avatar and whatever's popular now) I'm probably missing some context, and that what I see as imitating Avatar is probably more accurately following tropes that Avatar helped to cement. But also, maybe Bow is just a sub-par Sokka. Both are possible
Something that pleasantly surprised me, on the other hand, is how well executed the ending was. Avatar was fantastic all the way through, and then really fumbled the end. And it wasn't a terrible ending, but it was confused and muddled and just not executed very well. The second half of She-Ra's final season was flawlessly executed imo. It delivered on everything it had been setting up in such a satisfying and sincere way.
In particular, I was so happy to see the relationship between Catra and Adora actually ... follow through. Throughout the entire show that shit has been building up, and I was really concerned they weren't going to be particularly explicit about it. Of course, there's plenty of gay shit going on in the show throughout, from Bow's dads to Netassa and Spinnerella to subtler stuff like Scorpia maybe crushing on Catra (am I reading too much into that dynamic? possibly) but even these didn't convince me. Because the theme I noticed is that they never wrote romance. All the couples were already couples before the events of episode 1. They don't usually say anything particularly romantic to each other, with the exception of Sea Hawk which is played so silly that for most of the show it's not even clear whether there is any mutual affection at all.
But then they were just like "lol you thought we were chicken? actually the gay kiss is the most powerful magic you've seen in the entire show."
the kind of ending which elevates an otherwise only pretty-good show to ... idk. really good.
its good folks.
Harsh setting critique
As much as parts of it were enjoyable, I just can't get past all the really problematic shit in how its setting was put together. Typical liberal-fantasy monarchist apologia aside, the villains were a red-coded industrial state full of ethnic minorities that we only ever see existing on the margins of society outside it or which we never see elsewhere (like what even is Catra? There are no other cat people and no one ever mentions them), and there's explicit "oh yeah we were actively discriminated against and ostracized" stuff from Scorpia, and to top it off their big sinister plan is to join up with a literal hivemind that's straight up Heinlein-grade Cold War caricatures.
It's like someone mashed up Tolkien and Heinlein's brains in a jar and had it build a world for some milquetoast libs to write a kids show in. It's as bad as when MLP did explicit Manifest Destiny apologia.
Also Adora was objectively a huge piece of shit whose negligent disregard for others was a driving, consistent problem that never really got sufficiently addressed or resolved, and her relationship with Catra was toxic and one-sided: Catra was clearly obsessed with her the entire time in a way that mixed up pain, rage, and longing in someone who's shown to have trouble dealing with emotions in general, while Adora just repeatedly did not care to a very weird extent considering they start off as close friends and were only physically apart for a few days by the time Adora just stopped giving a shit. I think that their relationship ultimately got rushed to the conclusion everyone wanted but the way it was strung along through the seasons wasn't handled well and I didn't feel like they sufficiently resolved that.
Like it felt like the progression went from Catra being obsessed with Adora while Adora just seems to think of her as a casual acquaintance who's just being a dick for some reason, to Adora just being like "oh ok, sure" when Catra finally confessed her feelings to her. I just think it needed a better build up and resolution than that, even just some dialogue here and there to highlight the internal conflicts that are implied to have been happening by the ending but which were otherwise omitted completely.
Yeah that's fair criticism, more and more I wish show runners would take care in actually showing what a evil empire would be like (Steven Universe also has similar issues along with other issues in how it addressed what started out as a evil all consuming resource hungry empire).
I have to agree with the setting shit, it goes hard liberal, and the teams have a problem of one being vaguely evil for vague reasons, with the other being straight up monarchy romanticism.
Adora literally just abandons her lifelong friend to an abusive place and highly abusive person when she could have easily gone back for her, or at least tried harder.
Catra is best girl, and a few more twists could make her easily a protagonists. If the show is redone in a socialist future.
Catra was never stuck there, she could have left just as easily as Adora did. She didn't need saving, she needed to decide to leave.
Catra felt betrayed by the one person who might have cared, doesn't excuse her actions, but gives it context. Adora literally could have framed it as "lets get away from shadow weaver" and it could have gone well.
Sure, but that's a believable flaw that I don't think is really a problem with the writing. All Adora needed to leave was the knowledge that the organization she was with was doing morally wrong stuff. Catra wasn't quite as oblivious and had already figured that out, and she simply didn't care. Catra needed a different motivation to leave, and Adora didn't understand that. It's possible a more socially capable and manipulative Adora could have convinced Catra to come with her, but I don't think it was her responsibility. They both had access to the same information. Catra made and repeatedly reaffirmed her decision to stay on what she saw as the winning side. And the moment Catra took the slightest step away from that mentality Adora was like "alright guys we're going to the most dangerous possible location in the entire universe to go get her."
I always got the impression that Adora cared, and was severely bothered by the circumstances separating her from Catra (though, admittedly, this didn't start to cause her any tangible problems until the final season) but there was basically nothing she could do about it. Adora wasn't willing to go back to the Evil Empire of Evilness led by Mr. Evil and his evil shadow wizard, and Catra was unwilling to give up the position of power she had worked so hard for and wanted Adora to just come back and take over the world together. They were at an impasse, and each saw the other as being unwilling to compromise. And, like, obviously taking over the world with the Evil Empire of Evilness is the wrong side to be on, so Catra was always the one who would have to give.
I don't think you're giving enough credit to ... some of the writing. Admittedly there are parts that come off like this. When they coincidentally meet in the field because they're both after the same thing, Adora can definitely come off as strangely uninvested. But particularly in the final season, it's clearly foreshadowed that Adora's distance from Catra is not only hurting her, but is tangibly weakening her. I particularly loved the parts where Shadow Weaver offers her take on things. She thinks it is Adora's feelings for Catra making her weak, but the only thing making her weak is that she hasn't addressed and embraced those feelings. She's confused and distracted not because she likes Catra and needs to give up, but because she and Catra are maintaining this cold distance despite what they actually want.
I think that's a valid criticism of some parts of the show, but definitely not of the final stages. There's no 'acquaintance' in the way Adora thinks about, talks about, and treats Catra in the final season.