Below are some details and explanations of what these categories are and how their data is presented. Click on the underlined categories above to be directed to pertinent notes.

Also discussed this page -


A Note on Sequence

Like some other television shows, the episodes of MOTU and POP were produced in an order that differed from when they were actually aired. I have chosen to number the episodes in the order they are placed on my DVD sets. This is, in a general way, consistent with the order they were produced, with a few odd exceptions, including the He-Man pilot (Diamond Ray of Disappearance), which for some reason was the fourth approved script. The "Episode Code" is taken from Wikipedia articles listing the episodes and can be considered to follow the production order.



A Note on Heroic and Evil Warriors, Rebels and Horde, and "Other" Characters

The characters listed in these categories are generally listed in their order of appearance in the episode. On some very rare occasions, I listed a character that was only mentioned in an episode; but the usual requirement is they be visible on the screen at some point. They do not need to speak.

Heroic and Evil Warriors, and Rebels and Evil Horde, are categories generally reserved for major repeating characters, especially but not limited to those sold as toys by Mattel at the time. Exceptions include Lizard Man, Fang Man, and Strongarm, who clearly belong among their confederates in the Heroic/Evil categories but did not have concurrent toys (and in some cases were only seen in one episode).

A Note on Character and Other Names

There are other sites like this online (though I like to think mine has a unique spin and dives deeper into lore, logic, and - hopefully - humor), and they have been very helpful resources, but I don't know how trustworthy they are when it comes to spelling the names of characters, creatures, and places from the show. In most cases I let the subtitle track on my DVD give me spellings which I hope are in some way "official," though I have learned the subtitle track is not always accurate. I am open to any suggestions for corrections, or a friendly recommendation for an official source.



A Note on Animation Loops

To save time and money (and the animators' wrists), many basic action sequences were reused again and again, and can easily be recognized. I'm sure that the good folks at Filmation had a lovely system for identifying these amongst each other; I've attempted to create my own naming system for those I've spotted, listed below. Though I've tried to be thorough, I didn't want to include a million of these, and there are no doubt other more basic sequences that could be added, such as running or walking cycles of various characters. There are many still drawings of characters that were used again and again for close dialogue shots, which I've omitted for brevity's sake.

The most obvious loops are the transformation sequences, which I have treated separately. Several of these in addition to the transformation sequence are in the show's opening; the opener instances go without saying and are not noted.

[Character] laughs, head back
[Character] runs at the viewer, bug-height
[Character] juggles his/her sword
[Character] punches the viewer
She-Ra spin kicks the viewer
[Character] smiles close-up, looking at the viewer
Sorceress spreads/unspreads her wings
[Character] picks up and throws a rock
[Character], hands on hips, laughs with his/her head thrown back
[Character] from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready
A look through widespread legs
[Character] runs away from the viewer
He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat
She-Ra mounts Swift Wind and flies off
[Character] swings sword overhand
Skeletor shakes his fists, front on from below
Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view
Skeletor leans in close to the viewer
He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat
[Character] rolls along the ground
He-Man spins [something] in a circle

Other repeated animations which I haven't bothered to track or log:

Battle Cat leaps off with He-Man on his back
[Character] gets up from reclining position
[Character] turns, crouching, and heads off in a new direction
[Character] climbs up a wall
Skeletor points his staff at the viewer
He-Man, front on from below, gestures forwards with his arm/sword



A Note on He-Man/She-Ra Tranformations

The number of transformations per episode only counts those within the body of the episode; in other words, the transformation always included in the episode opener goes without saying. I have noted where there are variations or additions in the transformation sequence within the episode.

The most common number of transformations is probably one (be it a "full" - in other words, the same sequence shown in the episode opening - or "partial"), but they can range between zero and three. I don't believe there are any episodes of either He-Man or She-Ra with four transformations.



A Note on Connected Episodes

When I created this category I wasn't sure what it would consist of, as there are a lot of ways to interconnect the episodes (based on character appearances, weapons used, vehicles driven, monsters recurring, and so on). As my input process progressed and matured, I decided this category should mainly deal with recurring plot elements/tropes; but I also used it to track the appearance of recurring secondary characters. Below are some examples of the MOTU linking themes from the database. POP has its own separate list of themes, only a few of which are similar to these - see the advanced search screen for details.

Appearance of Zagraz and mystical comets
Appearance of He-Man robot duplicates
Use of a transformative device
Use of the Time Corridor (or other time travel methods)
Beast Man in disguise
Evil-Lyn power punches the glass ceiling
Mer-Man's in charge!
Skeletor (or another villain) plots to capture Prince Adam
Teela does something dangerous by herself
Main character flashbacks
Evil power couple awakens
Skeletor manages to get into Grayskull
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 2
Skeletor summons a monster
Orko-specific lore
Wayward child learns a valuable lesson
Dealing with Adam's secret and his connection to the power of Grayskull
Amnesiac He-Man
Historians, archaeologists, and digging up old cities
Games and gladiators
Everybody deserves a second chance
Appearance of cousins of Adam
Starchild episodes
Granamyr episodes
Appearance of the Widgets
Negator episodes
Count Marzo episodes
Mallek episodes
Kothos episodes

Landmark Episodes

I decided it made sense to collect a "must-see" list of episodes for those looking to hit the highlights of the series. These episodes include important moments in the development of main/recurring characters; firsts or one-time appearances; important moments in Eternian or Etherian history; and what I consider to be the best stories. It's no surprise to me that I was unable to limit this list as well as I should have. If you go to the Search page and look up only He-Man's Landmark Episodes, you will find that the number currently totals to 32 - almost exactly 25% of the full number of MOTU episodes. As I write this, She-Ra is on track to yield an even higher percentage. Obviously watching just these episodes would be a bit of an investment of time. Even now I find myself itching to add more episodes to the list. The most logical place to track this label seemed to be the Connected Episodes category, so for now that is where it is located.

Interesting bit of trivia: if you compare my MOTU Landmark Episodes to those without Skeletor, you will find almost zero accordance between them. It appears that I prefer Skeletor episodes!



A Note on Firsts/Lore vs. Commentary

The "Firsts/Lore" section is meant to contain what it says in the name: firsts or unusual appearances of story elements or characters, and lore about Eternia/Etheria and the people living in it. It also is a repository for beyond-the-screen information such as voice actor and writing credits. "Commentary," by contrast, is meant to include my own subjective extrapolations on events in the episode, my opinions and ruminations, and continuity errors or animation errors I spotted.

However, I will admit that my opinions and subjectivity tend to leak into almost every category in the database, and in particular these two categories tend to bleed into one another. There are entries in each which feature elements that might logically belong better in the other. I tried to keep a semblance of organization but I apologize if things get blurry from time to time.



Other Potential Categories which can be found recurring in the series and the database, but have not been explicitly set off

This is a sort of summary of recurring events or tropes in the series, "sub-categories," if you will, which I've identified fairly consistently in my analyses. If you'd really like to find instances of these, I mention them in the Firsts/lore and/or Commentary sections. Searching in those sections using the bolded parts of the descriptions below should bring up many of the occurrences.

MOTU Sub-Categories
A few other general observations on repeated themes in the show: He-Man likes to throw bad guys in mud; people often stress to He-Man that the things he's fighting aren't alive, thus giving him carte blanche to crush them to a pulp; Eternian insults tend towards the general form of "[noun] face"; many of the Heroic Warriors wink at the screen at some point during the series run; there are many cases of villains taking heroic hostages, but few instances of the villains actually taking any advantage of their prisoners through threatening their lives or safety; Skeletor may spy on the heroes a whole lot, but he somehow never manages to be doing it when Adam transforms into He-Man; the term "Eternians" should logically refer to any inhabitant of the planet Eternia, but more often seems to refer only to citizens of the capital city of Eternos; the extent of King Randor's kingdom is treated inconsistently, sometimes implied to cover the entire planet but sometimes suggested as only a chunk, with other regions of the planet ruled by other kings.

POP Sub-Categories (this list subject to change as I continue my exploration of the series)
A few other general observations: The treatment of Horde soldiers, who are ostensibly "robots," is inconsistent and often has the troopers betraying very human characteristics. Many expressions, organisms, objects, and names eerily exist on both Eternia and Etheria, even though they are in different dimensions. Though the Great Rebellion's job is supposed to be freeing Etheria from the evil forces of Hordak, we often find the rebels lazing around and reacting to the Horde's attacks rather than actively fighting for their freedom. Glimmer, billed as the leader of the rebels in her first appearance, is very quickly sidelined and demoted in favor of putting the barely present Adora in charge - I call foul! Spirit/Swift Wind is a very good horsey but often finds himself ditched in various locations while the bipedal humanoids go do their thing. The Horde has a lot of tanks. A lot of tanks.



Notes on MOTU Season 1

Season 1 began airing in September of 1983, at which point the first two waves of Mattel toys had already been produced, including 14 humanoid characters, 4 creatures, and 4 vehicles. They were all fair game for including in the series. There are also cases of the show including a toy character while the toy was still in development and not yet released in stores (Jitsu in MU009 and Clawful in MU053).

Even so, the creativity and general demands of the daily show meant that some characters were created for which no toys existed. Orko and Prince Adam, for instance, were around from the very first episode, but did not have figures produced until Wave 3 in 1984. In the case of some monster-of-the-week characters, such as Batros, Strongarm, Lizard Man, and Fang Man, even though they seem ripe for mass production from plastic molds, corresponding toys were never produced (or not until much later, to satisfy the desires of middle-aged fanboys).

Basically - and I don't know how true this is of similar IPs, but - I think what the episodes show is a surprising lack of communication between the toy company and the animation studio. A lot of the Filmation characters could have been adapted into very marketable toys, and a lot of the Mattel toys could have been more accurately presented on screen (see for instance the very inaccurate animated Attak Trak which I detail in my rundown of MU001, or the disconnect between cartoon Clawful and action figure Clawful, or the fact that the show never took advantage of the toys' bifurcated power sword concept). Even the toys that were made to capitalize off of the animated creations don't match up - see for instance the Snake Mountain playset. Admittedly it would be a challenge to match the scale of the cartoon fortress, but why is there a giant purple plastic face that looks nothing like a snake?

I approached my development of this database with a preconceived notion, developed from earlier viewings of the episodes and my own memories from childhood (and perhaps skewed by He-Man's precis of the show given in every opening sequence), that Season 1 was a very Skeletor-heavy set of episodes, and that it was only in Season 2 that desperate writers began straying farther from the basic "Skeletor try bad thing, He-Man stop" dynamic. My more careful viewing in order to write this material revealed this was not the case at all. In the entirety of Season 1, 31 of the 65 episodes (about 48%) do not feature Skeletor at all. Even the episodes that feature Skeletor sometimes have him taking a backseat to the action of the plot, perhaps appearing in a couple of scenes to give his blessing on some evil deed and then never showing up again. (In fact, having now fully analyzed Season 2, I find he appears in MORE episodes there than he did in the first season!)

One last curious note: He-Man of course hails from the days of analog television, when a hair might get trapped in the film as it was being exposed; but it's odd that in many and many of the cels of animation in the first half of Season 1, we can clearly see the same curl of a hair in the bottom left corner of the screen. Oh, the stories that hair could tell...



Notes on MOTU Season 2

Season 2 features many additional toys and vehicles developed by Mattel while the first season aired. We get to see new heroes and villains riding new, sometimes absurd-looking conveyances.

This season also introduces one of the very few variations in the opening/closing sequences. It's a weird one: occasionally the background image of Castle Grayskull used in the ending credits is painted slightly differently, with the lowered Jawbridge shown in the flat colors of animated foreground characters and objects, rather than the more detailed and three-dimensional colors of background paintings.

In Season 2 the writers also had the luxury of returning to many secondary characters and storylines already introduced in the first season, their recurrences now in no danger of appearing out of order with their S1 counterparts. We meet again people/entities such as Zagraz, the Starchild, Kothos, the Widgets, Negator, and Granamyr.

I noted some shifting trends with the main characters in Season 2. One involves Orko, who in Season 1 was a bumbling magician who often erred, but largely as a form of comic relief. In this season he is utilized much more as an object lesson and substitute wayward child, who needs to learn lessons and behaves immaturely - a characteristic confusingly at odds with other ostensibly mature qualities he's displayed (for instance, the fact that he has a full-time job at the palace, and a betrothed). The other involves Battle Cat, whom the writers seem to have decided was largely uninteresting and too challenging to incorporate into plots. Instead, they focus much more on Cringer, whose Scooby-Doo-ish fear provided more amusement and possibility. Looking at the numbers, we will find Battle Cat appearing in 37 episodes of S2 (only 57% - a paltry figure considering he's meant to be He-Man's righthand pet and mount), while Cringer appears in 50. In Season 1 the numbers were 49 and 52, respectively.

The liner notes written in my DVD set by one James Eatock (who is credited as the author of a complete guide to the He-Man and She-Ra animated adventures) claim a clear shift in Season 2 plots away from the magic and fantasy emphasized in Season 1, and towards science and technology. I can't say that this struck me particularly; as far as I saw, magic continues to be a part of the show until its end. But I'm willing to believe this could be true, so have mentioned it here.