I do remember watching He-Man a lot as a kid, but it never stayed in my memory the way other shows did. Maybe it was the timing of it. I remember it was on ITV on weekday mornings, during the school holidays I think. I never recorded any episodes on tape as a kid, unlike Thundercats, Defenders Of The Earth, Visionaries, Ghostbusters, TMNT, DuckTales and so on.
I remember even at the time having a problem with the animation style - but then every Filmation show had that same problem. Lazy animation. The reuse of stock footage does grate, especially with the sword sequence - every time he uses it, it shows him standing outside Castle Grayskull, regardless of where his current location is in the episode! There may have been a couple of exceptions during the series, but . . . it’s probably one of the key reasons the show never became a favourite.
Actually, watching these episodes now, I only just learned that Castle Grayskull is where the Sorceress lives, not where Adam and his family live! That basic detail slipped right by me, no doubt because of that bit of stock footage . . .
A few thoughts on the title sequence:
Firstly, yes it’s all the explanation we get in terms of the characters’ origins. This is another reason the show never cemented its place in my memory. Thundercats, DotE, Visionaries all had proper establishing stories and that really helped to understand the whole premise of the series.
Second, yes, the music is pretty iconic, that trumpet motif is great. And just like Thundercats, TMNT and Ghostbusters, reused as the “saving the day” theme in the episodes. The incidental music was pretty good overall too.
Third, that line in Adam’s narrative - “fantastic secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword . . .” - I will assume you know what my punchline is here.
OK, onto the episodes themselves:
The Cosmic Comet - an OK episode, I liked it. It has a curious story, but the moral worked well enough. The characters using some sort of celestial object to amplify their powers is a recurring motif in cartoons I find.
Teela’s Quest - I’ve seen this one before as an adult, about a decade ago. Familiarity helped me here. It worked as an early episode in that we get to learn about Teela and Man-At-Arms’ past, not to mention the Queen’s! It did seem like they were trying to shoehorn together two story elements that didn’t quite fit, namely the action sequences and the revelations.
The Dragon’s Gift - another one I saw in 2009. It’s basically the same “you can’t exchange one life for another” moral that appears in so many different cartoons (let’s face it, they were all trying to teach us the same moral lessons so they did copy each other’s ideas a bit!). King Arthur And The Knights Of Justice did it with “To Save A Squire”, one of the show’s better episodes (from a very mixed bag). Visionaries did a more interesting take on it with “Horn Of Unicorn, Claw Of Dragon” where it is one unicorn and one dragon to save all the magic users on Prysmos, so the yardstick of “the greatest good of the greatest number” comes into play there. For this reason, I was initially a little harsh on the MOTU take on it here, but it’s OK enough. The voice of the dragon sounds like, I can’t place it. I think it’s meant to sound like one of the great British actors from decades gone by like John Gielgud or someone, not quite sure.
Eye Of The Beholder - yes, very much chimes in with Thundercats for all the reasons quoted above. A good episode and a valuable lesson in not forming initial judgements based on someone’s appearance. Probably the best of this bunch.
This discussion has moved to the heman.org Masters of the Universe forum.
On todays show we have He-man who is going to tell his love Teela about his secret double life as Prince Adam. Teela wants to confront her mother who abandoned her and a DNA test to prove if Duncan/Man-At-Arms is her father or if she is a clone created by Skeletor, He-Man’s arch enemy…or as He-man will soon discover, his uncle! Keldor will confront his family, Father Miro, half brother Randor and nephew Adam!