When I heard Winx Club was getting a reboot, the childhood nostalgia of watching it as a kid hit hard. Then I saw the trailer for the new series... and something just felt off.
I was hit with a wave of childhood nostalgia when I heard Winx Club was getting a reboot. I was genuinely excited to see what they would make of it!
But after watching the trailer… something feels off. The animation and the styling are not quite what I expected...
Ok, let’s not sugarcoat it.
The new Winx Club reboot looks weird. Not just different. Weird.
It’s hard to pin down just one reason, but if you’ve watched anything from the new reboot trailers or clips, chances are something felt off immediately. And in this article I'll be going into why.
The 3D Problem
While 3D can work well when done right, this reboot shows some of the downsides of the medium.
The models look stiff at times and it ends up looking kind of cheap and the animation awkward, despite some of the higher quality textures.
But there's another major issue: the reboot doesn’t look like its own franchise. It has a style similar to half a dozen other 3D shows with shiny textures and cartoony, semi-realistic character models.
To be honest, the animation style is pretty similar to Miraculous Ladybug, and not in a flattering way. That show has also gotten criticism over time for stiff 3D models and design choices, and this reboot is repeating those same mistakes.
(Also, WHAT are those specialist designs? Timmy looks like a kid. Brandon looks like one of those "Chad" meme characters. I don't like Sky's design much but it's probably the best-looking of the bunch.)
Some characters have these hyper-realistic, almost glassy eyes that don’t match the rest of the cartoony model. It gets into uncanny valley territory, and makes the characters look kind of... AI-generated?
And it turns out, that last gamble on AI might be true. Fans found job listings from the animation studio, Rainbow CGI, looking for AI prompt engineers. So if the models feel a little too clean or lifeless… maybe that’s why.
To be completely fair here: It’s not that the reboot is badly made start to finish. I can see good ideas and attempts and designs in them. A lot of the awkwardness just comes from the limitations of 3D as a medium.
In 2D, you can cheat poses and add stylization to make things work. In 3D, you’re dealing with physical models, and bending them into dynamic or expressive poses often results in this kind of weirdness.
So, with the right style, 3D can work – but here, it just doesn’t play to the show’s strengths.
Style Without Substance
The reboot also struggles with fashion and design, which is disappointing considering how iconic the original Winx Club outfits were.
The old show actually brought in real fashion designers to help with the girls’ looks. The reboot? Maybe. But there's something missing.
The motives in the clothing can be overly literal (ice powers = icy motives, flower powers = you guessed it, petals everywhere).
The fashion just doesn’t translate well to this animation style (partly, another problem of the medium), and instead of looking high-fashion, the fairy forms are kind of overwhelming.
There’s nothing wrong with detail – but when every character is crammed with it, the design has trouble standing out.
And if a character doesn’t have a clear, recognizable design, it just won’t stick in anyone’s mind.
It’s frustrating, because you can tell when a design in the trailer gets it right and when it fails.
The Trix, Musa, Headmistress Griffin – these characters actually look better and more memorable than the rest, even if you can’t immediately say why.
Reboot Culture Strikes Again
At this point, reboot culture is kind of exhausting.
Most of the attempts don’t land. They either miss the point of the original (*see: Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga), or feel like watered-down corporate versions of something that used to be genuinely creative.
So to sum up my problem with the new Winx: It's not just animation – it’s the effect of reboot culture in general.
So many reboots feel more like a mere product to be sold than a passion project. They check boxes and try to appeal to everyone but end up connecting with no one.
They’re often designed by people trying to guess what the audience wants, instead of just making something genuinely fun or different.
And when that happens, the result feels lifeless – even if it’s shiny and polished on the surface.
To be fair in my critique, I want to shed light on one more thing: Reboot culture and continuations are a complicated process for every creative person involved in them.
Every creative choice is being compared to what came before – to the "template" of the original. That alone restricts the creative process, because you're not just making something new, you're fighting audience expectations. It puts creators in a box, and almost guarantees that whatever you make will be polarizing, no matter what.
So I acknowledge that creating a reboot to a series as beloved as Winx feels like a massive task.
There Is Potential
The reboot ideas aren't all terrible. Musa works well. Riven's one frame looks good so far. And there’s nothing wrong with introducing Winx Club to a new audience – nostalgia can be a great jumping-off point.
Plus, 3D animation can work for the context. For example, the old Monster High movies weren’t perfect, but they had style and charm, and most of the fandom actually liked them, even with the occasional weird model or clunky movement.
So it’s not about perfection. It’s about originality.
Reboots don’t need to be flawless. They just need something memorable, something that sets them apart.
So to sum up my thoughts: The series had potential, but limitations that come with the animation, among others, make it a personal no for me.
But what do you think about the reboot?
Feel free to disagree with me in the comments!