- Released: 23 December 2016
- Creator: Guillermo el Toro
- Total amount of seasons: 3
- Seasons watched: 3
- Rating: 5/5
Synopsis
A boy named Jim is chosen to be the protector of both humankind and trollkind and must stand against powerful foes.
My Thoughts
Let's get a little sentimental here: I remember when it was 2016. We'd only just gotten Netflix after begging Dad for one, and so far I'd only really watched movies on it. Well, movies and a few episodes of that Dragons: Race to the Edge show. Also, I was like...in the middle of my depression. Nothing really brought me joy and I'd dropped out of college so I didn't really spend my days doing anything. Then I saw this poster for Trollhunters. The character designs admittedly looked a bit goofy, but I did like the description.
Trolls? Magic? Fantasy? Secret hidden world? Yep, all tropes that speak to me. So I turned on the first few episodes and from that point on I was hooked in the entire Tales of Arcadia line of series. I will say that, after having seen all three series, Trollhunters is still definitely the best out of the three of them. Don't get me wrong, both 3Below and Wizards are also very good and I'd absolutely recommend them, but Trollhunters just feels the most "complete", if that makes sense.
That said, Trollhunters definitely also had an advantage over the other shows: time. Both 3Below and Wizards struggle with pacing issues due to the short(er) running time they're given, running for only 1-2 seasons of 10-13 episodes only. This is especially apparent in Wizards (which I will get to later, don't worry), which was only given one season of 10 episodes and tries to tell a whole epic story with a lot of stuff and character arcs going on.
Trollhunters has the absolute best pacing out of all of them. Season 1 deals with more mundane conflicts (especially in the earlier episodes), but this actually allows us to gradually get used to the magic and quirks that comes with trollkind. Then in seasons 2 and especially 3 things become more serialized with each episode contributing consistently to the journey. We face the bigger foes here, too. So I definitely think Trollhunters has been given the blessing of a longer running time. It also definitely needed it, because there's no way they would've been able to tell this grand and epic a story with only two seasons of 13 episodes like 3Below.
There's also just a whole lot to praise about this show, hence the high rating. Starting off with the characters: I think that this show has some of the best characters you can find. Not all of them are equally amazing and developed, but there's so many both on the side of good, evil and morally gray that just are so good. Jim is a perfect protagonist, being likable, flawed, strong-willed and, in the first season, a perfect stand-in for the audience as he gets introduced to the world of trolls. Toby, his best friend, is a great fun supportive character. There's Jim's mentor and later father figure, Blinky, who is just so damn likable with his expensive vocabulary and mannerisms. There's Aarghaumont "Aaarrrgggh", a brute troll that once fought on the side of evil.
And a ton of great side characters that also get developed, such as Steve and Eli. There's also great characters that go from villainous to morally gray/good such as Draal, Nomura and Strickler. Out of the entire cast, my favorites will have to be Angor Rot, Draal and Vendel.
Finally... there's Claire, Jim's love interest. Out of the entire major and main cast, she's honestly the only character I can't get into. She's just a little too bland and uninteresting for me. I do care for her, but only because the other characters care for her, not by any traits of her own. I don't know, maybe it's her voice acting or character that seems to have less flaws than the others. She just comes across as too bland of an "action girl" type of character, without really anything that makes her interesting other than I guess her magic and her bond to the characters around her.
The villains are also mixed. Our main villains are definitely some big baddies. Bular, Gunmar and Morgana all do their jobs as ultimate Big Bad very well. However, they kind of lack interestingness. They later rectify this for Morgana in Wizards, but in Trollhunters she's just kind of an evil witch, that's it. Not much more to her than that. But the villains I like the most, are the ones with nuance. Nomura and Strickler I've mentioned before, though they got redeemed, they were amazing as villains. The same goes for Dictatious to a lesser extent. Angor Rot doesn't change his mind until the last second before his death, but he's honestly my favorite villain of the show. Despite him being an obvious bad guy, his backstory was quite depressing and you actually understand why he does what he does. Losing his soul and being forced to kill constantly for the past centuries must've done a huge number on his mental state.
The show also honestly looks better than most CGI shows I've seen these days. It looks better than Race to the Edge, that's for sure. It obviously doesn't have an endless budget, there's still some obvious corner-cutting here and there with things such as recycled character assets, but generally this show is just a real treat to look at, specifically the environments. Heartstone Trollmarket looks especially pleasing to the eyes, with its warm and vibrant colors. Makes it all the more heartwrenching when the place is utterly destroyed in the final episode.
If there is one thing I could critisize about the show, I guess it'd be the character designs. Some of them look completely fine (Jim and Toby, the GummGumms), but some of the trolls do look kind of goofy. I get that they had to get creative, but they sometimes don't look like characters you'd take seriously. For example, I wouldn't be able to tell Blinky was the wise mentorlike figure by his character design alone. Aarrrrgh's design is a little more telling. There's just a few designs like this in the show. Claire looks fine in principle, but the random hair clips in her hair just kind of look weird. I'm not bothered by this, but the character designs aren't the very best in this show. But, again, the rest more than makes up for it. It'll always be easier to forgive good writing with weaker visuals than beautiful visuals with bad writing.
But that's honestly where my criticism for the show pretty much ends. With a ton of lore and consistency to keep up, there are a few continuity slipups here and there, but it's very minor and nowhere near as big as in other shows I've seen.
So, yeah. Amazing show, absolutely recommend. I would go more into spoilers, but even though my Movie/Series Thoughts are meant to be spoiler-filled, I just want people to go in (mostly) blindly. This series is an absolute emotional rollercoaster that doesn't pull any punches and isn't afraid to kill characters off. The final few episodes of each season always get me really thrilled especially, even after re-watch after re-watch. Just check this one out!
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