The warmth of Star vs Forces of Evil

I was following “Star vs Forces of Evil” from the very beginning, intrigued by the western take on Magical Princess concept, an extremely catchy theme and a lot of bizarreness. I thought I liked the show, with it’s colorful, vibrant designs and great comedic timing, but I just watched an episode here and there, and only recently bothered to finally catch up with it. It took some time for the characters to grow on me, but now that they have, it’s one of the most warm, homely shows I’ve had the pleasure to watch in recent years.

The entire premise of the series lies in trope subversions. Star Butterfly is a magical princess from an alternate dimension called Mewni. She likes girly, frilly things, cute animals and silly stuff, but also fighting, playing pranks and causing mayhem. Because of her love of the thrill and recklessness, her parents decide to sent her to an unfamiliar milieu, the Earth realm, hoping a change in environment will help her mature and have a positive effect on her studies of magic. At this point Star is pretty much a spoiled brat, used to doing whatever she wants and things always going her way. It was easy to look at her and think she’s just another one in line of cartoon girl characters who act somewhat selfishly and impulsively. causing messes they never get in trouble for and leave for others to clean. Early episodes of SVOE cleverly played into that - Star creates a kennel of dogs who shoot lasers out of their eyes, erects a tower out of the house of the family hosting her and turns the math teacher into a troll. None of these changes get reverted, they get established as the way things are going to be going forward and that’s just how it is. If there’s ever a math class, the teacher is a troll. Diaz family continues to live in a regular American house with a magical princess’s tower extending out of it. Their son Marco has to take care of a pack of hazardous dogs. In those particular cases, no one seems to mind those extraordinary additions to their lives - Diazes are very tolerable people, and the troll teacher ends up liking her new form. But this establishes the impact of Star’s actions. If she decides to cast a spell and doesn’t later revert it, the audience has every reason to believe that change is permanent.

This is important, because it creates a venue to show how miss Butterfly learns to take personal responsibility for her actions. Take the episode “Star vs. Echo Creek" for instance. Our titular character is recklessly waving her wand as usual, and a poorly aimed spell ends up crashing a police car. And this time, there’s no safety nets - no way to repair it or pretend it didn’t happen. She has destroyed public property, and Marco let’s her know how severe of a crime that is. This terrifies Star, causing her to run and hide from the authorities for the entire episode. Only when she comes out ready to take the punishment, it turns out that yet again she was lucky and got away with a minor punishment - but at that point she’s resolved to being more careful and mindful of her surroundings. If the show previously played off Star’s irresponsible use of magic purely as a gag and kept no continuity, this episode could’ve been a little jarring, in the “How come this has only become a problem now when she’s been doing it all the time?” manner. But because creators were mindful of this from the very beginning, it instead felt like an important chapter on princess’s road to maturity.

Creators also use similar approach to overall show continuity. Ultimately it’s an episodic show and self-contained storytelling takes priority, but they make sure to plant enough plotline timebombs to keep the viewers excited for upcoming episodes and trigger them in such manner that whoever kept track and made the connection is satisfied, but still gets left wanting more. All that effort does wonders in selling the relationships to the audience, convincing us that these characters went through a lot together and have grown closer as a result. Of course this is just one part of the generally brilliant writing, with everyone staying true to their personalities at all times and some of the situations they encounter leading to very unique interactions. It’s amplified by the fact that the show does the “fish-out-of-water” trope both ways - we get Marco, the simple human boy, going on adventures in alternate dimensions, but also Star, a bizarre girl from an alien world, who marvels at our everyday technology and customs. And then there’s times when they hang out with each other’s friends as well, trying to extend their knowledge of the foreign world beyond one person. And then we get to see characters who are able to connect through their emotions, despite the fact they can’t even begin to understand the social structures and various circumstances that led to events which caused that emotion in one another. It’s quite touching.

But the most interesting relationship in the show is definitely between Star and her mother, queen Moon. By all standards, Star is a pretty difficult kid. She’s brash, rebellious and unapologetic. Her heart is in the right place, but sometimes she needs to be reminded that others exist, and have their own needs and feelings. And it’s tough to teach her the value of hard work and responsibility when her magic and social status make it so that she can easily do whatever she wants. Her only obligation is to learn sorcery, under the guidance of a weirdo djinn named Glossaryck. His teaching methods firmly lie in the “let the kid play with fire, burn itself and learn from that mistake” camp, believing that trying to restrict her freedom wouldn’t teach her to take responsibility for her actions. But her mother is finding it hard to let go of control over Star’s life, constantly questioning whether letting her live on her own is a wise choice and even going as far as accusing Glossaryck of doing a bad job. An ancient being who has been the teacher of every Butterfly princess thus far, including Moon herself. This leads to an intense moment when the blue creature tells her straight up that he tailors the curriculum to match his student’s needs, and just because he isn’t teaching Star the same way he taught her mother, that doesn’t mean she’s not going to learn what she needs. Moon was forced to mature quickly in the time of need, but Star is growing up in a time of peace and prosperity. The show makes a big deal out of the idea that her individuality should be nurtured and celebrated, and people should support her to grow in the right direction, rather than neutering her because she could be dangerous.

And Star having a fresh, unbiased point of view soon becomes important, as she begins to realise that a lot is wrong with Mewni. There’s a big racism and classism issue in that realm, and a lot of people following tradition and rules blindly. No one wants to ask any questions or try to make a change. But as the princess returns from excursion, she can look at everything from a new perspective. And it quickly becomes clear that if she doesn’t make an effort to bring advancements to society, no one else will. And that’s the biggest responsibility one can have - when you alone have the power to make things right and can’t rely on anyone to fix things for you if they go bad. With that kind of duty you absolutely have to stay true to yourself, with the conviction coming from within rather from something that was taught to you. Thankfully Star’s conviction is that “strangers are just friends we haven’t met”.