Genndy Tartakovsky’s Unicorn: Warriors Eternal finally wrapped up its first season, completing a ten-episode journey through the heart of steampunk-era London. While fans of Tartakovsky’s previous work will find more of his staples throughout the entire series, we’d be lying if we said everything was all fine and dandy. Underneath its unique visuals and stellar action, there’s plenty of room for improvement across the board.

What we’re trying to say is that there’s a lot that Unicorn: Warriors Eternal got right as a series. Yet, despite the 20-year development period, we think that there are some small criticisms that can be addressed in a second season. Whether a second season will happen or not remains to be seen, but until then, these are just a handful of things Unicorn: Warriors Eternal got right – and other things it got wrong.

Right: Unique Art Direction
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The first thing you’ll notice in Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, other than its focus on storytelling, is its beautifully inspired art style. Paying homage to the era of rubber-hose animation, specifically the works of Max Fleischer and Osamu Tezuka, the series bears several signatures of both artists’ work while forging its own unique style.

There’s nothing quite like Unicorn: Warriors Eternal in terms of presentation. Detailed close-ups, fluid movements, and wild and vivid expressions make for a feast for the eyes that accentuates the surrounding action and heightens the emotional moments strewn throughout. While it may seem a little strange at first, if you’re not accustomed to its intricate detail, one can argue that this series is easily one of Tartakovsky’s best-looking projects.

Wrong: Disjointed Pacing
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Billing itself as a serialized series, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal tells an interconnected story that spans the course of ten episodes, taking our band of magical warriors across time and space to fight evil. Tartakovsky would even emphasize the narrative in an interview with Paste Magazine.

Emphasizing how Unicorn: Warriors Eternal’s mythology and story required extensive scripting before the storyboarding process, it was a notable shift from his previous projects, which typically involved storyboarding first and foremost. But, despite a strong opening, the cracks in the story only split open further and further as the adventure continues.

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While it may be easier to forgive the uneven pacing in weekly installments, you’re more likely to catch dropped ideas, misplaced focus, and an overall sense of bloat strewn throughout the series’ six-hour runtime in a few binging sessions. Still, Unicorn’s other positive qualities more than makeup for this, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at some of the directions the story twists and turns in.

Right: More Brilliant Action
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Of course, you can also expect ample action from Unicorn: Warriors Eternal as well. Starting from the very first episode, the combination of the show’s vivid art style and intense sequences bring out some of the best-animated action scenes of the past few years. Will you get the same level of prehistoric violence found in Tartakovsky’s previous project, Primal? Well, no. But, in its place, you get plenty of fun and interesting scenarios for our heroes to face off against.

Re-animated statues, robotic minions, monstrous giant animals, werewolves, and more all lie in wait for our heroes to fight against. Given that each of our heroes aren’t perfect, with one in particular focusing on a season-long identity crisis, there’s an ample amount of stakes in each encounter that’ll leave you on the edge of your seat if it doesn’t leave your mouth agape at the very least.

Wrong: Another Underwhelming Ending
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If you’ve seen Samurai Jack and Primal, you might’ve been a little underwhelmed by their respective endings. While the discourse surrounding their objective quality can lead to some pretty heated debates, we can at least say this about Unicorn’s ending: it’ll be more of the same.

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We won’t spoil anything specific for you, given that the series has only just recently concluded its first season. But, coinciding with how the rest of the series occasionally fumbled its pacing, the ending plays the series out on a whimper instead of a bang. It’s not as potentially egregious as what came before, but it’s still something to take note of. Thankfully, instead of quickly rushing through and wrapping things up, what we have in its place is something deliberately more open and intriguing.

Right: An Open Ending
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The ending of Unicorn: Warriors Eternal is a double-edged sword. While some may dislike how things turned out, you’d be hard-pressed to deny that, going forward, the series can take just about any direction imaginable. Tartakovsky stated in an interview with Comicbook that he originally pitched the series to be a four-season journey and that he created Unicorn: Warriors Eternal as a grandiose adventure that could, simultaneously, work as a single-season venture. Should the series somehow fail to get renewed, the end result is still something that feels self-contained.

Despite the occasional faults found in Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, the end product is something that’s absolutely worth watching in the current dearth of animated action shows. Even disregarding the involvement of Genndy Tartakovsky, what you’ll find is something so visually stimulating and so ambitious that the effort put into making it come to life is worth seeing by itself.

Even the credits for each episode demonstrate this, with pieces of conceptual art and character stills filling the blank void behind the text. It’s a series that revels in its inspirations while forging its own path, one that can be appreciated by all ages for what it brings to the table.

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal can be watched in its entirety on Max or through weekly rebroadcasts on the Adult Swim television block.