Series Thoughts: Tales of Arcadia: Wizards (Full series)

• Released: 7 August 2020
• Creator: Guillermo el Toro
• Total amount of seasons: 1
• Seasons watched: 1
• Rating: 4/5

Synopsis

Douxie and the Trollhunters crew travels back in time and have to find a way to restore the present.

My Thoughts

Okay, so this is somewhat experimental. I normally don't do reviews on series, but I honestly feel like expanding my Thoughts series to not just cover movies. So, Series Thought sit is. These will (obviously) be less frequent as watching a show generally takes a longer time, but I'll do these from time to time. 

In this third chapter of the Tales of Arcadia series, we are introduced to Douxie, wizard-apprentice to Merlin as he, Claire, Steve and Jim end up in Camelot in the far past. Here, they end up screwing with the timeline all the while being chased by a villainous organization called the Arcane Order. 

Out of the three Arcadia series, I like this one the second most. My favorite is and probably always will be Trollhunters. That's a great show that had me hooked from the start and just has some of my favorite characters from the series. Also, unlike 3Below and Wizards, it had three seasons, meaning ample time to establish everything and also have its breather moments once every while. 

Because that's honestly the most major problem I have with Wizards: the pacing. With a ten-episodes single seasons, there is just not enough time to tell the grand story it's trying to tell and have everything sink in. Things go so fast that we don't get any breather room to think about what just happened. We just hit plot point after plot point and on and on we go. 

The story is definitely a good one, and I was actually very invested in these characters and their travels. I loved to see Douxie's and Callista's character development, but it just never quite hit the spot because everything kept going so incredibly fast. Heck, some characters that are supposed to be quite major (such as Zoe and Nari) hardly even appear in it or get a moment to shine. 

One the one hand, I can't really fault the series for this, but on the other, I can. I love the concept of the plot, but for the amount of runtime they got for this series, it's just too big and too much. They probably would've been better off telling a slightly smaller-scale story. But, that said, I do admire this series for the big story it's trying to cover.

There's also some obvious issues and retcons that come with time traveling, as there is bound to be with any time traveling story, but honestly I don't care about that. You don't even get the time to pick out the plotholes because the story moves so fast. 

Another minor flaw I have is that Jim has no reaction to seeing Vendel and Draal (who, remember, are friends of his that get axed off in Trollhunters) alive again when in the past. Like, I'd have appreciated even the briefest amount of excitement  or happiness when he realized he saw his friends alive again. But he just treats them like he treats any of the other trolls in Dwoza.

Also, while I don't think it's been outright confirmed yet, one of the villains is very androgynous in appearance and voice, and they might thus be the first non-binary character in the Tales of Arcadia series. This is great...except that it's a villain. This should not be our first and only rep, if any, in this show.

However, most of my thoughts on this series are very positive. I just can't give it a perfect score due to the flaws I do have. The characters, like mentioned before, are amazing. My favorites are (obviously) Jim, Douxie and Archie. Some side characters are also great, and I even found myself liking Merlin in this, something I thought impossible back when Trollhunters came out just because of how much of an ass he is in said series. Morgana also gets some interesting development, and I 

The animation is amazing, especially for a CGI cartoon. Most of those really do show that they don't have a very big budget due to cutting corners with textures for example, but Wizards is honestly almost movie-worthy. Particularly the effects are just amazing, and with a series that's full of magic effects, it really, really works. 

The character designs still aren't all perfect, but God, I honestly stopped caring about some of the goofier ones after a while. The story and characters themselves are just that good. 

So, yeah, just a personal favorite of mine. I definitely recommend the Tales of Arcadia series to most people. It has its flaws, but the rest is honestly so great I simply don't care.