My Love-Hate Relationship With Steven Universe

"We, are the crystal gems..."

This was an easy automatic indicator for me to change the channel for well over a year.

When I found out Rebecca Sugar was leaving Adventure Time to work on her own show in 2013, I had a brief blip of excitement. Then we started learning more about the show, and my excitement turned into an "oh...that's it?".

Steven Universe was never particularly awful in the first few episodes I saw. It just wasn't super entertaining. It felt like it was trying to be Adventure Time's early episodes, but was missing their clever writing and plots. I think I gave up in utter confusion after "Cat Fingers". Why couldn't we get Lakewood Turbo Plaza instead?

That was until one day...one day three weeks ago, in fact. I was stuck with quite limited viewing options due to a number of circumstances and ended up watching the show again. Particularly, a season two marathon, including episodes such as "We Need to Talk", "Cry for Help" and "Keystone Motel".

I absolutely loved it.

Toonami: Give Ecchi a Chance

Since its premiere, I have been enjoying the revived Toonami a lot. While we're had our ups and downs, the block as a whole has been a great experience and is one of the most-connected-to-its-audience television blocks in our modern day, which is an excellent thing. I hope it stays around for a long while.

However, that's not to say Toonami is 100% flawless.

They seem to have this odd phobia, this utter horror of airing shows of a certain genre. And unlike a certain other genre, this one they could honestly manage to get away with.

This genre is ecchi.

Don't get me wrong here, do I think Toonami should show the likes of Kiss x Sis and To Love-Ru? By no means. Toonami at its heart is an action block and always will be.

I just think that this action block should experiment out of their comfort zone and air shows which combine the action element with more racy content. Oh, wait...they're already doing that.

Black Lagoon had bare breasts. Kill la Kill drowns in fanservice. Tenchi Muyo! GXP wasn't afraid to occasionally show skin. Hellsing Ultimate had those weird panty shots in the last OVA and...oh yeah, corpse sex.

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The difference is these shows aren't labeled as ecchi. Not that they're any tamer in content than some other shows labeled as 'ecchi'.

So what kind of ecchi shows do I think Toonami should show? Here are some suggestions.

Note: The rest of this post contains some images that aren't explicit, distasteful, or showing bare nudity in any way, but that might be eyebrow-raising in a public setting. Look over your shoulder before continuing on.

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