Listener Feedback for Rocknaldo (Steven Universe) – Overly Animated Podcast #330
By: Justin Cummings
Justin Cummings and Michelle Anderer take your questions and comments on the latest Steven Universe episode, “Rocknaldo”.
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Justin Cummings
I'm currently studying Communication at Lynchburg College with an emphasis in Electronic Media and a double minor in business and gender studies. I've been a huge fan of animation since I was little and thus have very eclectic tastes. Outside of animation I love Survivor, comic books, and a whole treasure trove of other things.
You all make great points, I think another difference between Ronaldo and Peridot, with the exception of perhaps this episode, Peridot leans the lesson, learns form mistakes, except for maybe this episode, Ronaldo never learns a dam thing.
The way I define Steven and Connie relationship, is something in between platonic friends and dating, I think of them as engage to be dating. When they are ready to date, they will date, but now they just want to be kids.
You bring up a point with the bomb leaking messing with people’s perceptions of pacing. Out of the last eight episodes, five have been a big, continuous plot thing, TNCG was a breather after that, SITR was one of the biggest episodes for Steven’s character acr ever, and Rocknaldo was a breather episode. That’s two breathers out of eight.
But because the bomb leaked all at once, people sort of perceive it as one thing instead of FIVE episodes, so they think there’s only been one big plot thing in the past half a year or so (a big chunk of which has been a HIATUS). When the plotty, continuous stuff is aired on a very tight schedule, but the breather/slice-of-life stuff is aired much more scarcely, people perceive there to be a lot more of the breather stuff than they would if there was a stable airing schedule.
Disagree on the specifics of SITR (don’t think it was a special episode) but yeah it’s really hard to evaluate whether the show is actually off in its structure when CN always airs plot episodes very fast and non-plot ones very slow. I do think regardless of that we’re currently at a point and have been for a while (given that the zoo arc was self-contained) that there’s nothing motivating the show to move forward (no immediate hanging plot threads or vital character arcs). I think that’s a mistake and related to this pacing issue for sure.