10 Best New Cartoons Of The Decade

You take one look at Steven Universe and you might immediately think it’s just a goofy, silly cartoon, peppered with bright colours and not a lot going on upstairs. Watch a few episodes though, and you’ll realise you need a textbook to keep up.

The episodes, while short, all layer together in a complex, vibrant mythology about magic, hidden identities, forgotten memories, dreams within dreams and souls within souls.

The bubblegum aesthetic, hyper inclusive tone and almost violently progressive nature of show means there is a certain price for entry, but the fervent fanbase shows there’s definitely people willing to pay it.

The show traverses planets with ease, and manages to juggle expansive exploration with focussed character development seamlessly.150 episodes since it launched in 2013, Steven Universe is still as good as ever.

Creator Rebecca Sugar made their start in another show featured higher here (spoiler: it’s Adventure Time), and used their experience to spin away into something with even fewer limits. In some ways, it sums up the boundless possibilities of animation in the 2010s, although a lot of other shows here do that just as well.