Genndy Tartakovsky is a legend in animation, known for creating or being part of some of the most iconic shows of the 90’s and 2000’s and creating hits as recently as last year. Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, the original Star Wars: Clone Wars, Hotel Transylvania, the short-lived Sym Bionic Titan, Primal, and the list goes on. The man basically has carte blanche to make whatever he wishes, so now he’s finally decided to pull the trigger on a story idea he has apparently been sitting on and developing for over twenty years: Unicorn – Warriors Eternal. Following a centuries long battle by three people and a robot in a top hat as they transcend numerous identities to chase and thwart an enduring evil entity in a tale spanning multiple generations. Sounds like a story with countless possibilities being helmed by an animation veteran that could potentially be a major hit. The first season of this long awaited show finally wrapped last week, so what do people think?Welllllllll it’s honestly kind of a mixed bag for a lot of reasons. Unicorn STARTS with a sense that it is meant to be the story of Emma Fairfax, wealthy heiress whose wedding is interrupted by having her soul inhabited by Melinda, one of the three warriors who have their souls placed in compatible bodies when they need to face The Evil. For some strange reason, Emma finds that her soul and memories are still on the surface when normally Melinda would be taking complete control, and so she finds herself on a strange ride in a dangerous life she never planned for. One would assume, with that premise in mind, that the story would be about her learning to make peace with Melinda in order to work together and hone these new abilities to stop the evil, and perhaps gain some perspective about her old life and decide how much of it is worth keeping as she finds herself. And there are certainly motions and gestures toward that, but a lot of that gets lost in the shuffle because the show likes introducing a fuckton of new ideas and characters, most of which end up mattering very little by the end.Seriously, you could make a whole separate show full of the story concepts that get glossed over or dropped in the first few episodes of this show. The fox lady the group fights early on and her ability to possess inanimate objects? Suddenly thwarted with no further elaboration barely halfway through. Otto the scientist who is heavily implied to be the creator of Copernicus, the sentient robot that houses their souls when they go dormant? He’s killed off screen for reasons unknown. Rakshasa, a talking tiger man who appears suddenly near the end of the season? He’s killed offscreen TWICE, talks only in vague ominous phrasing, and ends up playing no significant role in the final battle. It is honestly quite shocking how much that is set up ends up not mattering at all by the end of the season. There’s certainly things that are established that play a part later, but almost none of that is in relation to the bigger questions of the story, some of which really should have been explained to some degree, such as the Evil the group has been blindly fighting for hundreds if not thousands of years.And that’s without going into all the other stuff I just did not care for across this first and possibly only season, like fellow warrior Edred who just sucks more as a person and character with each proceeding episode, or how Emma’s fiance Winston gets attacked by a random werewolf and is just now a werewolf who can change at will, or unclear and sometimes contradictory nature of the COSMIC REALM that Seng, another warrior, is able to access at will, or the weird as hell cartoony designs that end up causing unintentional creepy or hilarious moments instead of focusing on the drama needed for the scene. For something Tartakovsky has apparently been working on for multiple decades, he and his writers kinda needed at least another pass at the story to see how a lot of these things don’t really add up or flow. And with a finale that ends with everything in chaos and no Season 2 confirmation in sight, it may end up just ending up being known for being an ambitious mess. They say that stories aren’t finished, they escape, and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal seems to have finally escaped into the public view, even if it isn’t at full strength and seems to not be doing as good as it could be and certainly not as well as it was hyped up to be. Perhaps in another century, it can reincarnate into something better.