What if Ezekiel Vincent Productions was founded in 1937?/Sanrio Animation was founded in 1939?/Star vs. the Forces of Evil

Star vs. the Forces of Evil is an American animated magical girl television series created by Daron Nefcy and Skylar Hawkins and developed by Jordana Arkin and Dave Wasson, which aired on Ezekiel Channel. It is the first Ezekiel Channel series created by a woman.

The series follows the adventures of Star Butterfly, the young turbulent heir to the royal throne in the dimension of Mewni, who is sent to Earth to mellow her reckless behavior. There she befriends and becomes roommates with human Marco Diaz and begins a semi-normal life in Echo Creek, attending school and meeting new friends. Throughout the first season, the two travel to exotic dimensions using dimensional scissors while preventing the Mewman monster Ludo from stealing Star's magic wand. As the series progresses, Star and Marco meet new friends, take on new enemies, and travel to even more weird and wild dimensions.

The show first premiered on Ezekiel Channel on March 22, 2002, as a 90-minute television film. On April 12, it began its normal run of twenty-to-thirty-minute episodes on Fridays, at 7 p.m. Originally, it ended on November 24, 2007, totaling five seasons, but resumed production in 2009. The series finished its run on July 20, 2018, with a total of ten seasons and 172 episodes.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil became one of Ezekiel Channel's most successful original series and received critical acclaim and industry accolades, including five Annie Awards and seven Emmy Awards, winning a total of twelve awards out of thirty-five nominations. It has since been named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the best Ezekiel Channel shows and by IGN in their list of best animated series at number 85. As of May 27, 2020, all seasons of the show are available on EzekielTorres Now.

Premise
Star Butterfly is a magical princess from the dimension of Mewni and the heiress to the royal throne of the Butterfly Kingdom. As per tradition, she is given the family heirloom wand on her 14th birthday. After she accidentally sets fire to the family castle, her parents, King River and Queen Moon Butterfly, decide that a safer option is to send her to Earth as a foreign exchange student, so she can continue her magic training there. She befriends student Marco Diaz and lives with his family in suburban Los Angeles while attending Echo Creek Academy. Going in a series of misadventures using "dimensional scissors" that can open portals, Star and Marco must deal with everyday school life while protecting Star's wand from falling into the hands of Ludo, a half-bird half-man creature from Mewni who commands a group of monsters.

As the series progresses, new, more threatening antagonists appear in the show, including the mysterious monster Toffee and former Queen Eclipsa's half-Mewman, half-monster daughter Meteora Butterfly. The plot shifts from the defence of the wand from Ludo to a bigger and more complex narrative focusing on the various conflicts revolving around prejudice against monsters, the rulership of Mewni, Mewni's origins, and the very nature of magic itself. Several mysteries about the past of the Butterly royal family are also unveiled, mostly revolving around Eclipsa Butterfly, the "Queen of Darkness" and the most infamous member in the Butterflys' family history. Several secondary protagonists also appear more prominently or join the series in subsequent seasons, including Star's Mewman best friend Pony Head (who is a floating unicorn head), Star's half-demon ex-boyfriend Tom, the mischievous Janna, and Magic High Commission member Hekapoo; Queen Moon also takes on a bigger role.

Development
Nefcy said she originally created Star as a girl who wanted to be a magical girl like Sailor Moon, and Marco as a boy who was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z and karate; they would be enemies instead of friends. In this earlier version, Star did not have any actual magical powers; she instead would approach and solve problems primarily through the force of her determination alone. Nefcy began pitching the show to Cartoon Network during the time when she was in her third year of college, when the network was actively soliciting the creation of pilots for The Cartoonstitute. However, due to the network's stance on not greenlighting girl shows, her vision for the show at Cartoon Network never got made. Nefcy originally placed Star in the fourth grade, reflecting on a time in her own childhood when she held a self-described obsession with the animated series Sailor Moon. However, Nefcy later adjusted the character's age to fourteen during the time she made her series proposition to Ezekiel Channel rather than Cartoon Network originally. An executive at that time made the suggestion for Star to have actual magical powers. Nefcy worked this concept into the show's current iteration, along with the idea of different dimensions as show locations, the framing device of Star being a foreign exchange student, and the plot aspects relating to Star being a princess and the subsequent consequences of her royal birthright. Nefcy said that the overall concept has evolved over about six years.

In addition to Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, Nefcy has said that she had heavy influence in her youth from the animated Japanese shows Magic Knight Rayearth, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Unico, the last of which featured a blue unicorn. She also cited shows unrelated to Japanese animation such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was influenced by independent comic series such as Scott Pilgrim and The Dungeon. With regards to the development of more strong female characters, Nefcy said that she "looked at TV over the years and I have had to go to Japan when I was younger to find the cartoons that had the characters that I wanted to see. It was always a question of 'Well, why isn't that on TV in the U.S.?'"

One of the concepts she likes about the show is that it does not make high school the most important experience for teenagers. She also likes that Star does her own thing instead of being concerned about fitting in. Nefcy did not want the gimmick about keeping the magic powers a secret from others as typical of magical girl shows, so she had the students already know about it and Marco's parents as well. She also portrays Star as not really a superhero as she does not specifically go after super-villains except when they attack her, and that she does not really save people. Nefcy said that the episodes balance comedy and drama: "we really want our characters to feel like teenagers and have them going through the normal emotions that teenagers go through, but in this magical setting."

Storyboarding and design are done in Los Angeles. In describing the process, Nefcy said that the show is storyboard-driven, with each episode mapped out by the storyboard artists. The storyboarders also do the writing, taking a two-page outline and turning it into a full script. A storyboard for 11 minutes would require about 2000 drawings to be done in a six-week period. After pre-production in the US, the first season animation was done at Mercury Filmworks in Ottawa, Canada. Mercury had also done Wander Over Yonder and the TBA series. For the first five seasons, the animation was done in the Philippines. The rest of the series (seasons 5-10) was animated by Sugarcube and Rough Draft Studios, both located in South Korea.

The theme song was done by Brad Breeck, who also later do the Gravity Falls ' opening theme; Nefcy said: "when we were listening to it we didn't know, because we just listened blind". Brian Kim was chosen among a group of about ten people as the show's composer. Kim describes the music for each dimension as having a different sound and relating it to indie rock in Los Angeles.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil premiered on March 22, 2002, at 7:30 pm E/P as a 90-minute special titled "TBA". The series' run began on April 12 on its normal timeslot of Fridays at 7 pm. Upon its premiere, Star vs. the Forces of Evil was immediately popular and quickly became the second-highest-rated children's program among kids ages 2-11 on both network and cable television, behind Ezekiel Channel's own Camp Lazlo. The series managed to briefly steal Camp Lazlo 's spot as the number one highest rated children's television program in mid-2004. Star vs. the Forces of Evil also attracted a wide audience, appealing to kids as well as to teenagers and adults, with 14.2 million kids 2-11 tuning in each week, 10.8 million adult viewers per week and was the number one series on television among tween audiences (9-14).

Two specials were produced: "Battle for Mewni", which premiered on July 16, 2004 at 8 pm, and "TBA", which premiered on July 29, 2005 at 7 pm. On January 23, 2007, Nefcy and Hawkins announced on their forum that Ezekiel Channel had ceased production of the show. The season five finale, "TBA" was originally intended to be the series finale, airing on November 24 of that year.

On February 1, 2008, Nefcy and Hawkins announced on their forum that Ezekiel Channel granted Star vs. the Forces of Evil twenty more episode slots, making sure the show resumed production. After a one-year hiatus, Ezekiel Channel announced that they would begin the sixth season, which would consist of twelve episodes. The series returned with the episode "TBA", which aired on February 16, 2009.

The tenth season of Star vs. the Forces of Evil began in 2017, and aired from January 13, 2017, to July 20, 2018, on Ezekiel Channel. The visuals for the theme song were changed for season ten; however, it still contained the same audio of the original theme song. The final episode, titled "Cleaved", aired on July 20, 2018, at 8:00 pm, preceded by a six-hour marathon of other episodes from the series.

Nefcy expressed a certain sadness at the series' end, but stated that she was "crazy proud of the work" that she and the production team had done "on Star vs. the Forces of Evil and the fact that it worked just the way [they] wanted it to". During its original run, Star vs. the Forces of Evil was one of Ezekiel Channel's highest rated shows. The show proved to be popular among both younger and older audiences.