Yeah, I dunno the story behind the "Honor of Grayskull" thing. As you may know, the MotU cartoon had Prince Adam shouting "By the Power of Grayskull!" and turning into He-Man all superhero-like. So Adora does the same thing, but shouts "For the Honor of Grayskull!" because although She-Ra displays the same amount of physical power, she fights for the Honor of Grayskull rather than using it's power. Which she obviously IS using the power. I guess. I mean, the Princess of Power cartoon actually gave She-Ra way more interesting things to do with her sword, so I guess there's that.
Maybe she doesn't need the Power as much because her sword can turn into anything she wants? From what I gathered from fans on He-Man.org, She-Ra can say "Sword to rope!" or any number of things, and the sword transforms into whatever she said! Like "Sword to toaster!" or "Sword to dutch oven!" for whenever she needs toast or a peach cobbler, respectively. Or she never did those things; I don't know.
Usually I don't care so much what the cartoon did, but She-Ra is a special case, since her minicomics didn't provide an amazing backstory like He-Man's did. I did read up on her minicomics and I have pulled some items from there, but mostly I like what the toon did with Hordak being an invading force on Etheria. In fact, Hordak is pretty successful at invading and has taken a large chunk of the planet, leaving everyone else to form The Rebellion against Hordak's superior forces! That I like!
The best thing is that Adora was previously the Force Captain for Hordak's forces. As explained in my Adora post, she had been stolen at birth and brainwashed (for some reason...) to work for Hordak. So as far as anyone on Etheria knows, Adora is Hordak's hardass Captain. Makes for an interesting dynamic between her and The Rebellion, since they can't know she is She-Ra. That was the reason she turned, anyway. All The Rebellion has to go on is that Adora changed her mind...so I can imagine some folks would be mistrustful of her. Heck, even if they did know that she turned into She-Ra; how could they be sure that Hordak couldn't take control of her again? They don't know, and probably would be uneasy about having a previously tough Force Captain that suddenly has crazy freakin' superpowers.
Which brings me to the mask.
She-Ra comes with a mask accessory that is supposed to mimic her original toy's tiara-thing. Did you click the link? 'Cause WHOA that is a crazy difference! Is that even the same She-Ra? I mean, things have to be simplified for the cartoon, but it's almost like they went with a totally different design. He-Man was sorta turned into a superhero, but She-Ra got a bit of a different design and even a red cape! Now that is a superhero makeover! You'll also notice that the mask thing is just gone; the cartoon changed it to the winged tiara you saw in the first pics. So you can see that the mask is a homage to the tiara-thing the orignal toy had. Technically it could be turned upside down to be a mask on the old toy as well, but for some reason it was never advertized (not like you couldn't tell by looking at it anyway).
So, back to what I was saying for the story: The mask is a cool addition, because Adora and She-Ra don't look much different. Yeah, He-Man and Prince Adam don't look much different either, but as I've said before; I don't like the He-Man transformation as much. Not as much reason for it. Like I explained with Adora: she has a reason! I wouldn't trust a former Force Captain with crazy superpowers, but a new superhero on the job? Sure, why not? So Adora tries to win people over by doing as many deeds as she can, but runs off when possible to turn into She-Ra, who comes in to save the day...with a convenient mask on. Granted, people will catch on eventually, but that's why I like having both heads available: the masked one (for me) is the early She-Ra when she has to protect her identity, and the tiara one is for later on when Adora and She-Ra are one and the same to everyone. When she earns their trust through her deeds.
So I guess the only other stuff to mention is technical stuff. You can see she has a badass axe-comb with her. That, of course, is a way to throw in the old comb that all the Princess of Power figures came with, but make it a weapon. Pretty cool idea, honestly. I mean, it's a neat axe, but if you've ever seen a swordbreaker then you can see how the comb is pretty cool too.
Final item to talk about is that this She-Ra figure was very limited in leg movement because her skirt was solid. No slits on the side meant that she couldn't ride a horse or any animal, and was very limited in action poses. So I cut it! And I failed terribly. You can see that the cut continued to travel up the skirt until it hit the belt and started going sideways. Doesn't matter now, because they fixed it with a different She-Ra release, but we'll get there eventually.
So that's about it! Though I guess I should mention the sword thing...you can see Adora's is silver (like in the cartoon) and She-Ra's is gold (like the toy). Since the sword can transform I see no reason why it can't change color. However, they aren't any different, so I imagine Adora just uses the sword's power to make people not notice that she and She-Ra are sorta carrying the same sword.
Beyond that, I thought this was a really cool figure at the time! I had wished she was a bit more detailed (since the original toy had all sorts of details) but I'll comment on that when we get to the She-Ra variant.
She-Ra? more like Ooh-la-la-la-la.
ReplyDelete