>>102900370It started off with an interesting premise: young boy with unreliable magic powers living with (magical?) shapeshifting gem people going on magical adventures.
Even from the get-go, there were some pretty obvious mysteries left hanging. What the fuck was up with Steven being half-gem, and why did his mom have to die for him to live? What are the gems? Who sent the Red Eye? Etc.
It was a show that had a lot of hooks for potential. And then it got a massive spike around the Lapis introduction, because it took a fairly standard magical adventure show and tossed a new layer on top. A boomerang that comes back with some payoff in the Jailbreak two-parter.
If it had kept on that trajectory, the show would have a much better reputation. Unfortunately, after that we started getting more weak episodes, weaker arcs, filler that actually felt like filler, and the total disarmament of any kind of tension or conflict in the show. Things like meme peridot and art inconsistency didn't help matters.
These things were flaws enough on their own, but this is about when the scheduling for the show started to get fuuuuuuucked, leaving giant gaps in between episodes that gave people more and more time to scrutinize it and see it for how weak it had become rather than watching it week to week out of inertia.
These days its easy to look back on Steven Universe and see it for only the weak show it has become, but early on it was pretty great and looked like it was going places.
