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Now We’re
Only Falling Apart
It goes without saying that the recent reveal that Rose
Quartz was actually Pink Diamond putting on a façade is a major shakeup to
showcase the boldness of the main plot.
However, with it come a few unfortunate implications. She was in charge of Earth’s colonization yet
stopped it by starting a war that took the lives of many Gems when she could
have just ended it herself. Is Pearl’s
love for her even reasonable now that it’s known that she was a servant for
her? More importantly, were all those
statements of how beautiful life on Earth is true?
With all these uncertainties, it’s great that this cartoon,
coming immediately after “A Single Pale Rose” deals with all of these
concerns. It also starts a trend of
showing how each Crystal Gem deals with the reveal that their original leader
was not who she said he was. As a
culmination of her flawed retelling of Rose’s backstory and having problems
with her future vision, Garnet becomes so hurt by this reveal that she
unfuses. In a major twist, it’s Sapphire
who’s hurt about it while Ruby’s desperate to reason with her. A big reason for this is because Sapphire
never looked into Rose and just listened to her so she's led to believe that
everything, including her and Ruby’s relationship was a lie. She even harshly tells Ruby that she can
never know anything ahead of time just before she runs off. Steven and Pearl eventually track her down to
settle all the concerns, for since Pearl’s seal is broken with Steven figuring
out the truth, she’s free to explain everything about Pink.
Settling one concern to her relationship with
Rose, she starts by saying she was given to Pink Diamond instead of made for
her like all Pearls are. A flashback
shows that she was even able to think for herself, with her addresses to Pink
seeming like she was trying to follow a standard instead of them coming
naturally. We also see more of the true
Pink where rather than being an all-out dictator, she was quite innocent and
fun-loving, finding running a colony to be very boring. With the announcement of even the slightest
activity on Earth, that was enough to excite her. Pearl even becomes pro-active by coming up
with a plan for Pink to go down and explore it while shapeshifted into a Quartz
soldier so Yellow and Blue wouldn’t notice.
So far, it appears that Pink’s actions were all in the name of fun which
isn’t much better than what’s known, but her reported feelings on Earth soon
became genuine. It was also Pearl who
convinced Pink to explore more of the planet beyond the Kindergartens, and
Pink’s reactions to the plants and organic beings is full of true
appreciation. It also shows that for all
of her desires for excitement, Pink was able to find out things other Diamonds
don’t know or care about. They’re not
making life, they’re taking it.
It’s
also here where the Gem War has a legit cause when Pink actually tried to talk
the other Diamonds into letting her stop the colony, but they wouldn’t let
her. This was the main reason she
changed her form into Rose full time, and while the Gem War was still not the best decision, its occurrence does make sense. Things don’t even stop there when it turns
out that seeing Ruby and Sapphire fuse for the first time further influenced
her. In addition to convincing Pearl to
show affection to Pink, who had long since stopped being a dictator by now, without being told to
do so, Pink’s goal was set up. She would fight for Earth and the liberties of all
Gems to do things like fuse with different Gems. Directly tying itself to events of
“The Answer” by meeting up with Garnet after coming to this conclusion helps too.
The expansion on Pink Diamond’s story turns out to be quite
inspirational with lesser Gems being revealed to move the actions of a
Diamond. It makes it easy to handle the
reveal if any legit concerns turn people off from it. The only thing holding it back is that there
are several instances that bring to mind many grand-scale cartoons like the
previous one and “The Answer.” With them
in mind, it’s hard to shake off how this doesn’t measure up to them with
standard staging and not as much artistic or emotional integrity. Plus, you just can’t help but wish it would
reveal more, such as who Pearl belonged to before she was given to Pink. Other than that, this is a very worthy
follow-up to the biggest reveal of the series to date.
A
Season 4 Ranking
1. I Am My Mom
2. Storm in the Room
3. Mindful Education
4. That Will Be All
5. Steven’s Dream
6. Last One Out of Beach City
7. Are You My Dad?
8. The Zoo
9. The Good Lars
10. Gem Heist
11. Gem Harvest
12. Three Gems and a Baby
13. Adventures in Light Distortion
14. Buddy’s Book
15. Know Your Fusion
16. The New Crystal Gems
17. Lion 4: Alternate Ending
18. Doug Out
19. Kindergarten Kid
20. Room for Ruby
21. Future Boy Zoltron
22. Tiger Philanthropist
23. Rocknaldo
24. Onion Gang
Season 5 Ranking
1. A Single Pale Rose
2. The Trial
3. Jungle Moon
4. Off Colors
5. Stuck Together
6. Pool Hopping
7. Can’t Go Back
8. Now We’re Only Falling Apart
9. Lars’ Head
10. Letters to Lars
11. Lars of the Stars
12. Your Mother and Mine
13. Raising the Barn
14. Sadie Killer
15. Back to the Kindergarten
16. The Big Show
17. Gemcation
18. Kevin Party
19. Dewey Wins
The next Steven Universe review follows how Amethyst deals with the Pink Diamond reveal while all Steven wants to do is find Ruby.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "An Ed Too Many" and "Ed-N-Seek" from Ed Edd n Eddy.
If you would like to check out other Steven Universe reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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