Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai

As a long time gremlins fan I was thoroughly impressed by how this show managed to capture the spirit of the original movies, while also adding tons of original content that now makes the gremlins universe feel so much more richer.

Each episode is well written and perfectly paced, there's lots of interesting Chinese mythology and creatures thrown in, and plenty of dark and gruesome moments to appease fans of the original movies. The main characters are great, I never feel like any of them are just standing around with nothing to do, each one has a goal that keeps you engaged and the plot moving forward. I especially enjoyed the villain for this show, who feels heavily inspired by classic Disney villains. In this day and age, it's nice to finally have an animated villain that actually enjoys being evil and having fun with it. And of course, the gremlins are lots of fun too.

The animation style isn't for everybody and this is perhaps my only nitpick for the show. I feel like it would have been received better had the creators gone in a different direction with the art. At first glance, it definitely looks like a show for little kids. But if you can get past it and give it a chance I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised. All in all, it's a perfect prequel to the Gremlins movies and I'm excited to see what the writers come up with next.

Known as Secrets of the Mogwai in the first season and The Wild Batch in the second, this show is a good entry in the Gremlins franchise. It feels like a mature series aimed at kids, never talking down to its audience, not shying away from cursing, alcohol or violence and portraying social issues in the Prohibition both in China and later the US.

The animation is gorgeous. A form of painted CGI, some of the backgrounds and animation are true 2D; this is best exemplified by water in the second season.

Where it falters a bit is that Sam's voice actor seems have an issue with intonation. I don't know if it was because he's going through puberty or something, but he sounds a bit off. An overall trivial detail.

A strong recommendation.

Fans of comedy-horror are bound to know Joe Dante's 1984 movie "Gremlins" and its 1990 sequel "Gremlins 2: The New Batch".* Well, we now have an origin story. The protagonist is Sam Wing, the owner of the shop from which the dad bought Gizmo in the first movie. "Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai" depicts him as a boy in 1920s Shanghai, coming into possession of Gizmo and having to protect him from a malevolent sorcerer.

As with the movies, the rules are to keep mogwai away from bright light, don't get them wet, and don't feed them after midnight; sure enough, the rules get broken, and chaos ensues. The miniseries manages to be fun every step of the way. You're sure to love it. Returning cast members from the movies are Zach Galligan (Billy in the movies, Henchman #2 here) and Haviland Morris (Marla in the second movie, Theodora here); Matthew Rhys (Riley) appeared in Steven Spielberg's movie "The Post" as the recently deceased Daniel Ellsberg.

*You may recall that the sequel depicted a mogul who was supposed to be Donald Trump (with a little bit of Ted Turner).

As a huge Gremlin fan ever since I was a kid ( I had the novel and the story records), this series strikes a wonderful balance between expanding on the lore while paying fan service. The callbacks to the first two films are copious. I really enjoyed all the references and the actor doing Gizmo hits it on the head! I was a little worried this would have been dumbed down but I found myself invested about 2 minutes in. The animation is beautiful. I just wished they dropped all 10 at once.

Hopefully this will get the VIPs motivated to continue to expand the universe with another live action film (no CGI) or a live action series (again, no CGI please).

More garbage that has absolutely no ideas whilst simultaneously destroying anything which gave the originals any character or individuality, insulting the wretched viewer with some extremely generic animation, generic characters, generic narratives and some god awful voice acting. There's enough mediocrity and garbage in the world already we don't need more. Avoid please.