Unnecessarily thorough deep dive into Winx Club (S1-4)

🦋My magnum opus.🦋
A Winx Club deep dive
#winxclub

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Intro - (0:00)
Art direction - (2:15)
Writing - (25:30)
Design - (49:50)
Worldbuilding - (1:24:06)
The Movie - (1:38:09)
Season 4 - (1:51:05)
Outro - (02:08:38)

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Credits:

[retiredwinxfairy]

What I like about the Winx Club is that it's one of very few cartoons about girls being cool and feminine at the same time. I have noticed a trend in films, when female heroes, in order to be cool, are portrayed as masculine, they wear masculine clothes, swear, don't pay attention to fashion, smoke etc. It's almost like femininity is demonized and you have to behave like a man to be a strong personality. In this cartoon, the gals are powerful characters, they like fighting AND they're kind, caring and fashionable. For me, as a young girl, it was so inspirational. I was like "Wow, you can be both?"

[elenpena]

Honestly you can tell that the characters weren't really sexualized not just by the fact that the "camera" doesn't do any upskirt shots or focuses on their bodies like that, but also cause the outfits while super cute and stylish we're definitely not truly appealing to the male gaze. They were glittery and brightly colores, and while short they always seem more like something that would appeal to a little girl than to a grown man

[onyrizc]

the amount of missed opportunities fate had to become this global fantasy phenomenon netflix series will always haunt me. they had EVERYTHING yet they've done NOTHING for us winx fans.

[annanananana]

i felt like the body standard thing never really affected me as a kid because winx was never about that. their beauty was never the main storyline or message, even in their relationships with the specialists. instead it was about friendship and bravery and selfdevelopment and maybe cool outfits too :)

[stuffwithsoph]

Bloom had a personality in Season 1 then they just kinda gave up, I really wished they explored more into her interest in drawing and reading, she was much more curious and flawed...then she became "perfect"

[rime.petrose]

About the outfit designs: I absolutely loved when you said that the reality of Winx is a "girls' world", where none of those cute outfits were meant to be seen as sexual, thus meaning true freedom of expression!
Freedom from danger and judgment.
I never thought about that, that was a beautiful observation!


I still think their outfit in later seasons are kinda trash, but whatever.

[symwinter]

Brandon is a top-tier man and I'm always glad to see him get the recognition he deserves.

[stuffwithsoph]

I love Winx for the diversity and positive portrayal of having feminine coded aesthetics still be badass. HALF of the Winx are coded as POC and are still girly and badass, I think Tecna is my favourite because other franchises would have her be "a tomboy" or something but naw, she's a "girly girl" and owns it and still is badass

[pxriwinkle]

The creator of winx, who was Italian, actually hired fashion designers to design their outfits hence why especially seeing it now that I'm older I'm realizing just how amazing ALL of their outfits were from a point of fashion. If anyone has ever seen a designer's sketch of clothes it is evident that the humans that designers draw to draw their clothes on are quite similar to the (unrealistic) body proportions of winx so I believe that's where they took the inspiration

[winxfan]

As a child, I never felt they were sexualised. My mind was very innocent to realise any of that. I loved the show which talked about fairies and witches with the whole aesthetic thingy ranging from soft pastel to dark gothic ones. The earlier seasons also had amazing storylines and an aura of mystery in them. The transformations were so cool! I was absolutely in love with their fairy dust bottles in their enchantix forms.
All around, it's a great show and I still love it as an adult!

[Lilas.Duveteux]

Yeah, Valtor is especially messed up. Also, I am somewhat shoked that what he did to Stella managed to get to a kid's show. He disfigured her and took the steps so that her own father would be brainwashed into not recognizing her and thinking she's a monster.

[josef]

48:44 Something really interesting that I don't see brought up very often is that Valtor blinding Aisha is particularly fucked up when you remember that it was established in season 2 that Aisha is afraid of the dark...

[lyraenza]

34:42 I remember this one ! Stella asked Flora to cast a spell on her to hide her monster appearance to Brandon. And instead Flora explained the situation to Brandon, he was so supportive !

[itsmeliska]

Omg, I'm so glad you mentioned how important the choreography is in fight scenes. This is one of the reasons why I CAN NOT force myself to watch the latest Winx seasons. Almost all fight scenes are like:
1. Barely any movement and spells traveling with a speed of a snail.
2. "Oh no! Our magic doesn't work!"

This is so annoying. They are supposed to be the most powerful fairies at this point and their magic keeps not working xD

[monicakamenova]

The world building in The Winx is just elite. The fact that they created a specific world that each fairy comes from and made it all come together so naturally as one big universe is just.. To this day, I personally have still never seen anything else quite like it.

[AllieOk]

A note for international fans is that the Winx Club is also unique in being an Italian production. Italy doesn't have big-budget animation studios, and even the shows who got some traction were only popular either locally or at the max in Europe. A success like this, reaching overseas, was incredible with the little budget they had back then compared to North American productions, and it's also the reason they eventually had to sell rights to Nickelodeon (main reason for the changes from s5 onward)

[animated_finn]

Honestly one of my favourite scenes was when the girls were in the omega dimension and Stella was the only one keeping them all alive, she was worn out and tired but still kept going for her friends. It created a sort of hopelessness but also showcased that Stella DOES care about her friends and will do ANYTHING to keep them safe

[mypov]

Since it's clear you don't like Riven, here's my hot take on him. He was a good character in season 1 and 2. There's nothing wrong with him being this douchebag character at the beginning of the show, it gives him space to grow, and it's clear that by the end of season 1 he had learned his lesson and was changing. In season two, his character's obstacle was being open, especially with Musa, and them learning to trust each other, which again by the end of the season, had been accomplished. My problems with Riven start in season 3, which it's rare that I'll say I have any problems with season 3, but this is one of the few. My problem with Riven season 3 and onward is that all of his development is backtracked, and he goes back to being a douche, like the previous two seasons didn't happen

[faerie]

I never compared myself to cartoon bodies when I was a child, but from a character design perspective I think diverse body types would've given them more interesting and personal designs :3

[calicomarker]

I remember a time when everybody praised Musa & Riven for being the “Real” relationship in the group when, , , no. Riven & Musa were toxic as hell for each other and would routinely start fights with each other out of nowhere. It’s disappointing that the show never moved on from this with them and just kept them the same over the years. Musa should have gotten the Aisha treatment at this point and get a new boyf(or girlf 👀)