Steven Universe is one of the most recognizable shows on Cartoon Network, and its popularity has amassed a massive fanbase that critiques everything that is not up to the level of Steven Universe. Due to this massive critique, a lot of people hate the show for how it represents the modern era of cartoons. Steven Universe makes people think that every cartoon should have a sad story about family, be massively depressing and include a bunch of annoying, overplayed and oversung songs.

I have many critiques about how bad Steven Universe is, and one of my major ones is that the plot makes no sense. The show is about a 12 or13-year-old boy who has a gem in his belly button and works with a magical crystal hero team that fights other crystal monster people. It takes about one to two seasons to actually get into the major story plot. In my opinion, a show shouldn’t have lots of filler that doesn’t progress the plot if it takes longer than a season to actually get to a major storyline.

Additionally, I don’t understand why they reveal that Steven is just a reincarnation of his dead mom, who was Steven. This makes no sense since the show said that once a Crystal Gem, a magical space person that has a gem on its body, dies it can’t be brought back to life. The show took its own rules and threw it out the window.

Steven Universe also has a tendency to add a bunch of useless characters that don’t add to the plot. In the beginning of season one, the show introduced a guy who sells fries and gave him a backstory; he’s like a conspiracy theorist who actually almost kills someone but then doesn’t. Then, the show never talks about him again because he’s not important to the story at all.

The show explained that the Crystal Gems have the ability to take out whatever they want from their gems on their bodies. The problem is the show never uses this mechanic in situations where it seems helpful. Whole movies length episodes could have been avoided if they used this one simple mechanic which everyone supposedly knows, but they don’t because of lazy writing.

My final complaint is that the show is just depressing. I assume that the main interest of the show is how much conflict every character has. Having conflict in characters isn’t that bad because it contributes to a good story. But when there’s too much conflict, the show starts to feel very depressing because every episode is filled with sadness from someone dying or not loving themself. The whole point of the story is Steven finding out about his dead mother, whom  he misses a lot, which leads to a very depressing story. This makes it not very watchable in my opinion.