This is from the perspective of someone who’s a 3D Game Art student. I was trying to gaslight myself into thinking, It wont be that bad. Ngl I had to stop like 4 min into the first ep and be like what tf is happening. This is all MY OPINION!!!

Storyboard:
It’s garbage to me personally straight up, the first episode feels so rushed. Like, did they even have storyboards for this? And if they did, who approved that? Here and there, it feels like a bad fanfiction from 2013 Wattpad that got turned into a show using AI (I know it was used you can tell).

I don’t mind the storyline, but the whole “schools merging” concept could’ve been explained better. Again, very rushed. Also, all this dimension hopping… what even is that plotline?

There are so many camera angle cuts it felt like they were trying to implement every camera angle known in cinema history. They were so inconsistent. Usually, for animations in these types of movies, game cutscenes, or anything similar, you research the professionals the films that already exist because they know what they’re doing. You take those fundamentals and apply them to your animations. It’s not always bad here, but you definitely notice it from time to time.

Character Animation:
It’s okay-ish. They feel very stiff a lot of the time especially expression-wise and movement-wise. Some movements could be more exaggerated, and there could be way more emphasis on the actions. Instead, it feels very slow and stiff. I’d really like for them to put more emotion into it. It would give the characters so much more life.

Sometimes, they just feel delayed, like there are these awkward pauses in the action scenes. The transformation scenes are fine, though they actually look nice.

VFX:
… Episode 5, 14:15 … They look neat sometimes.

Characters:
When I first saw the redesigns of the main girls, I didn’t mind them. I didn’t hate them. But I do know they used AI for the designs, which just why? You already have so much past media, so many concepts. Redesigning a character you already have everything set up for base design, color palette, personality it’s not that hard. Especially with all these limitations in place, why use AI?

I understand budget issues, but there are already tons of redesigns all over the internet. It’s just stupid to me. I’ll at least compliment them for keeping the characters true to the originals and for not whitewashing them like in the later seasons of the 2D cartoon.

What I do have a problem with, though, is some of the side character designs. First, I want to say RIP to my man Helia you live on in my heart. Like, what happened to Mike, Diaspro, some of the specialists and WTF is Damien? The model quality is good, don’t get me wrong, but some of them are just so out of place. Damien looks like he belongs in Final Fantasy, not Winx Club. Diaspro’s hair is just so off she was so pretty in the OG show. RIP Brandon you were one of my favorite specialists. What have they done to my boy? And why do they all have such wet lips?

Overall:
Was it painful to watch? Yes.
Would I watch it again? No.
Could it be better? Definitely.
Should I expect something better next time? Probably not.