When the topic starts about tv shows and which ones I watched when I was younger, I can name a decent list of ones I remember watching. There are many that are very near and dear to my heart and were a big part of my childhood tv show experience. One show that was very big for me and I was always excited to watch was Steven Universe on Cartoon Network.

Steven Universe was written and directed by Rebecca Sugar, a creator, composer, executive producer, storyboard artist, and a writer. She has her own award-winning short film, Singles, a graphic novel called Pug Davis, and she had previously worked on Cartoon Network’s widely popular and successful Adventure Time. According to Entertainment, her work on Adventure Time caught the eyes of executives so when she, at 23 years old, walked into Cartoon Network’s offices and pitched a seven minute film called Steven Universe, she was able to get a meeting. The show was a personal one, having been inspired by her relationship with her brother whose name was also Steven. Then in 2012, she became the first nonbinary cartoon-creator in Cartoon Network’s twenty-year history when Steven Universe was greenlit and announced to be a new show.

There are some freshmen that I spoke to who don’t know the show, and it got me right in the heart. They are still a part of the same generation as me, but the shows that I grew up watching and the ones they did are very different. However it is still surprising to me that they had never heard of Steven Universe before because it was such a big show for so long. It’s sad to me that they never watched it because there were such good themes and messages throughout the show that was not just in the writing, but their stylistic choices as well.

Steven Universe tackles heavy themes such as healthy vs toxic relationships, queer themes and relationships, self acceptance, grief, and even more. Later in the show, they even tackle the effects of trauma and PTSD. All in all, the show is packed with these all too real experiences and in my opinion, they go about exploring them in a way that is not in your face, mostly because it’s a show geared towards kids, but also they do so in a way to show improvement of the characters and healing. Garnet, for example, is one of the characters the show focuses on, and she is a character that explores healthy relationships and queer themes. 

A majority of the characters in the show are called “gems”. They are aliens who, in the past, had originally come to colonize Earth before they were thwarted by Rose Quartz, a gem who had fallen in love with the planet and their inhabitants. A quick thing to add, all the gems are depicted and for the most part described as women or non-binary. From what I remember they all go by she/her pronouns, and many appear androgynous in their character designs.

 As explained in the show, the bodies of gems are essentially holograms with mass, being projected by a gemstone that is somewhere on their body. Something that gems can do is called a ‘fusion’, where they come together and fuse their bodies to make another character. I see these fusions as representations of relationships, as the form can only be held properly if both gems are willing and able to maintain it together. Garnet is one of these fusions, the two gems making her up being Sapphire and Ruby. It was a big twist in the show, but now is common knowledge among fans and even those not too familiar with it.

We see snippets of their relationship throughout the show, and we even see moments where they fight like an old married couple. It is in these fights  where we see the exploration of their relationship. We see they both contribute to making the other feel worse by accident, Ruby just wanting to express rage and not find a solution, and Sapphire being dismissive and only focusing on the future and moving on rather than the present. We see them cycle through before they make up and apologize for how they have been acting before they fuse back into Garnet. This episode specifically sticks out to me because I feel that they did an amazing job personifying the characters. They both have their own faults, and they were explored in this moment and in the end they were able to realize it and work towards being better and changing how they face situations in the future. It shows a more realistic relationship to me, one where people can be different and deal with things in a different manner, and yet still keep a healthy and communicative relationship. Later in the show we get to watch Ruby and Sapphire get married, Ruby wearing a white dress and Sapphire wearing a suit.

Something else that  really caught my attention was the range in the body types we see throughout the show. There are a  wide variety of different heights and sizes with the different characters and I think it’s amazing. It’s not that often that we can see so much variety in shows, as many tend to default to the same slim body type. I love how Steven Universe just highlights  diversity, but doesn’t use it as a blatant “lesson” or focus on it more than it needs. It is purely just for the unique design, and I love that about the show. It’s not just the sizes and shapes of the characters either; a lot of the human characters are ethnically diverse as well. For example, Connie, who is one of Steven’s friends, is Indian-American and Lars, who is another friend of Steven, is Filipino. There’s a wide diversity of the human characters and, again, they all look so individual. There is so much in Steven Universe that makes it an amazing show. I will admit a lot of the earlier seasons are silly and goofy, but it picks it up as the show goes on. These themes become increasingly more frequent as Steven continues to go on adventures and grow himself. I would highly recommend Steven Universe to anyone who hasn’t seen it, and if the characters and world doesn’t seem interesting the story definitely is.