While it certainly has a gorgeous world to show off, with lots of colorful art direction and varied landscapes to explore, Unicorn Academy can't help but buckle under its own weight. Its first couple of episodes (starting with a feature-length premiere) want to establish fun relationships between its characters; set up an epic, world-ending conflict; reflect on its protagonist's grief; and sell merchandise all at once. But the show is both too aimless with its writing and too sluggish in its pacing to allow these disparate parts to cohere under a unified tone. It constantly feels like it's having trouble deciding what to be—which isn't helped by the fact that the first episode has two, awkwardly-placed musical numbers, and the second episode features no singing whatsoever.

Unicorn Academy doesn't have the greatest or most original animation in the world—sticking closely to a house style used by many American children's animation studios—but frequently the show is able to sell the feeling of a vast world just through how much color it has. This sort of maximalist approach to art direction means it might be harder to grasp onto specific characters and images, but you can't accuse the series for lacking in imagination. Already the thought of a customizable unicorn feels tailor-made for toy-obsessed kids, who just might be able to tell a cleaner story than what they get here.