OKAY I WATCHED THE NEXT 6 REBOOT EPISODES
to quote @mira-meraki "I can't tell if the episodes are getting better or I'm getting desensitized."
First interesting thing to note: while the first 13 episodes took place over several months, these six happen in like a week, tops. Episodes 14, 15, and 16 happen in ONE day (they try and gaslight you into thinking it’s several days, it’s not). I was going to summarize it all but I realized it would take too long and I’d need to do a PowerPoint or something (and thats rist’s shtick and I don’t want to steal it). At the end of the day all you need to know is that it’s mimicking Bloom losing her Dragon Fire in Winx Club season 1, but instead of taking weeks and leading Bloom to discover the truth about her origins, she learns nothing and it takes a single afternoon. Also shoutout to the AI/art team at Rainbow who FORGOT TO PUT THE NAME OF BLOOM’S HIGH SCHOOL TEAM ON THE BANNER ASSET, LEAVING IT AS ‘TEAM NAME’ CHAMPIONS (It’s the Warriors, it was in another shot):
The next three episodes are 1: a filler episode about Teena that’s accidentally the best of the series, one that’s a combo of The WItchs’ Seize (S1) and Attack of the Zombie Witches (S3), and *shudder* the one where Diaspro turns into a witch. Like I said, I could summarize them but there isn’t really a point here. Somehow so much happens, but at the same time nothing happens at all? And it’s not like you end on a cliffhanger. Diaspro turns into a witch, cackles, and flies off into the un-rendered background of the Alfea campus, and Bloom goes ‘huh that’s probably bad. Anyway!’
I think the most frustrating part of this batch is that there are some really good new concepts, but everything is so fast-paced there isn’t time to develop them. Examples include: Icy steals Bloom’s Dragon Fire but is unable to control it due to her own ice-based magic; due to childhood trauma Tecna created a barrier around her emotions, explaining her current personality, and she has to decide whether or not to reverse it; and Bloom constantly struggles against the darkness and Vexius’/Dark Bloom’s influence, making it seem like a long-term problem. For people who pick concepts and develop them further and better in their own Winx AU’s, there are some real treasures to find here. Oh and that 3-episode mini arc has some heavy Blicy, including Icy having an existential crisis about Bloom that’s lowkey hilarious. It’s not my ship, personally, but someone deserves to get some happiness out of these episodes.
Other goods things….oh! There’s a scene with a flashback to the Company of Light that has a really nice art style, probably because it’s in 2D and looks like a human made it. Stella has some lines that seem like classic Stella, which I appreciated. And I do actually like most of what they’ve done with Tecna’s character. I appreciated her backstory, and liked when she ‘freed her emotions,’ she was still fundamentally the same person. I know that may be a hot take, but I gotta have one.
Aaaaand, that’s it! The rest is still ridiculous.
I made a post earlier about the worst episode, and thinking more on it I was right. Winx Club: The Magic Is Back, Season 1 Episode 14 ‘The Truth About Bloom’ is the ✨worst episode✨ of Winx Club (it take the title from Season 7 Episode 18 ‘Banana Day’). It’s so dumb, it ruins Musa’s character in a matter of minutes, and there are *4* montage/music videos in its 20 minute runtime. Speaking of ruining characters, Damien is a full-time bad guy now because of (genuinely) the DUMBEST Vexius plan that somehow worked. He has a weird Green Goblin transformation now and it’s ugly. They reuse the ‘turning Riven evil’ storyline but don’t even involve the Trix, so there isn’t even any Driven to make it fun. Bloom continues to be so stupid about her past. I could go on.
You’ve heard it from other people over and over but the animation is SO bad. No one’s facial expressions are good, the backgrounds are shit, there are at most 5 background characters in a scene, and these people cannot get the lighting consistent across scenes. That picture above in the Gardenia gym? That’s supposed to take place at 4:40 in the afternoon. Why is it dark out? It’s so jarring and I hate it. All of the battle scenes are terrible, with the exception of a short one between Riven and Damien, once again showcasing that Straffi doesn’t really care about the girls and should have just made a genderbent Winx Club.
So, these episodes are kind of better, or maybe they just suck in different ways, or maybe I’m just used to unseen horrors I’m no longer phased. I do think that, for whatever it’s worth, if Rainbow stopped trying to reuse plot points from the original series, they could make something…maybe not good, but passable! Their fear of straying too far from what made them successful is proving to be their downfall. That and terrible pacing (though that could also be more of a changing media landscape thing). I can’t really recommend you watch these 6 episodes (except maybe The Firewall, Tecna’s episode) because it’s 2 hours of your life you won’t get back, but I watched them with friends and ice cream, so it was a net positive.
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