Fate of The Winx Saga (Yes, Another TV Rant)
A little "Bertie" told me that Netflix has ruined another animated series.
The long-awaited, adult-oriented, live-action reboot of Winx Club, called Fate: The Winx Saga, launched in January to negative reviews from critics and fan backlash. Don’t ask me why the show was a failure; I don't do reviews because I hate them and all tasteless critics. I will say that this show was doomed from the very beginning because it culminates all the bad juju Nickelodeon has been brewing since they acquired the franchise and the studio that produces it.
On top of rivaling W.I.T.C.H for having the sexiest main cast in children's television, Winx Club wasn't a bad watch by "girl show" standards either. It was a serialized fantasy drama about a girl who discovers her magical heritage and learns to use her newfound powers with her own kind; the distaff equivalent to Harry Potter, but a girly show for lovers of teen pop and fashion. It's nowhere near the same level of quality as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or W.I.T.C.H, but it does make Totally Spies look a little shallow.
As revealed in recent interviews with Iginio Straffi, the show's creator and the founder of the studio that produced it, Rainbow SpA, Winx Club was originally intended for a three season run, the very same three seasons that were later adapted into English by 4Kids Entertainment, but you know what happens when money talks... Viacom(CBS) stepped in after the fourth season, acquiring a stake in Rainbow and co-producing the fifth and sixth seasons for Nickelodeon while re-adapting the first four seasons (seasons one and two being produced as specials). In addition, it was by Straffi's own will that the recent eighth season was retooled to target preschool audiences (yes, like Dora the Explorer).
Regardless of the quality of Nickelodeon's "soft reboot" itself, the show's treatment in the United States was considered to be terrible by the fandom. There were multiple hiatuses that have lasted for months, next-to-nil promotion for the show once the hype died down, and new premieres eventually moved to Nick Jr of all networks; hence the show being retooled for an audience that, in-fact, does not know the answer the 9+10. You see, Nick was feeling the early signs of the eventual irrelevance of traditional cable networks in the face of the Netflix's and YouTube's of the internet that were stealing away their young audiences. Desperate for the highest ratings and only the highest ratings, they've been screwing over shows left and right: including Winx Club.
Compare and contrast the 4Kids era. You knew what to expect quality-wise and, being on a nationally televised, over-the-air, Saturday morning program block, you can very easily find the Winx even when they change timeslots. Nickelodeon's run with Winx Club has been so horrible, what I just described in the preceding sentence would probably evoke feelings of nostalgia among any fan. And how ironic is it that 4Kids was among the last of its kind thought to have been killed off by cable networks like Nickelodeon yet now we have Me TV (and, previously, Sinclair) trying to resurrect the Saturday morning cartoon blocks of old in the era of the diginets.
You'd be forgiven for thinking Nickelodeon had given up on the series after the sixth season and tried to turn the Canadian co-produced Mysticons into a replacement, but here we are. It's a shame because, unlike the short-lived Mysticons, Winx Club now looks and feels as shallow as any other exported cartoon. Whatever potential the show had in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Spongebob Squarepants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (another franchise treated well by 4Kids, at least for the first five seasons) has been wasted.
So how bad was Fate: The Winx Saga by comparison?
Having watched the original Italian-language version, the uncut Cinelume dub, the localized 4Kids version, and some of the Nickelodeon specials, I knew there was trouble the moment I read through the character and casting lists. The one thing you never do in an adaptation is change the source material without a good reason, and whitewashing is far from a good excuse. They've also changed the characters' backstories in the name of romance, the thing that turns every fantasy-drama into a bad soap opera, but that's what happens when you bring in people who worked on The Vampire Diaries of all shows.
This show was created for people that grew up on Winx Club who were rightfully alienated by it's current direction. Judging by audience reactions, what they got instead was a drama that throws everything they loved about the original show into the garbage and replaces them with everything that sucks about teen dramas and what makes these shows the absolute worst thing to watch when you're bored, aside from trashy "docu-soaps" (you know the ones). I wouldn't be surprised if someone compared this to The Last Airbender, if only because the source material was so badly butchered here.
Oh, well.
If you're (still) interested, the Cinelume dub covers all four seasons from the original run, and you can find it (and the original Italian version) on the official Winx Club YouTube channel.
