W.i.t.c.h Or..., W.I.T.C.H or Winx club Rating Options

[P-girl]

Cedric: Who're you calling ugly?! I'm NOT Ug.....*Transforms* Oh, right.

.....

Sorry, that was random.

[dittadulla]

I love winx club but I hate w.i.t.c.h. in TV but I love the comics of them. and by the way, I think that w.i.t.c.h. in tv have messed up ALL characters. sample: my fav's are hay lin and will. Will was so strong and a good leader in the comics, but in tv she looks so... helpless. Hay lin were very serius and a careful person in the comics but tv... she was not used to be that sensetive and happy all the time. And all the girls could not fly( just hay lin) and they could transform without the heart.

[Abby]

wow, I didn't know that about W.I.T.C.H. I wish that I could have some magazines or something, but when I was first watching it Disney had stuff in stores and I wasn't much into it by then, but the time I realized I liked it a lot, they had taken all the stuff out of the stores.

[dittadulla]

wow, I didn't know that about W.I.T.C.H. I wish that I could have some magazines or something, but when I was first watching it Disney had stuff in stores and I wasn't much into it by then, but the time I realized I liked it a lot, they had taken all the stuff out of the stores.

you don't have the comics? well then you don't know what you are missing. the comics have been on Iceland since 2003. they started on Italy in 2001.

[MorriganAensland]

WITCH has some clever ideas, and I respect the idea it has a rather impressive cast size, but that's about it. Otherwise, from what I've seen in the show, it frequently pulls anti-climactic fights with easy solutions, and the comic series seems to just pull villains out of nowhere after the second story arc.

Honestly, I'm no fan of either show. They came out at about the same time, they're both Italian monstrosities that I feel are over-hyped and jumped on the Magic Girl bandwagon while never taking the time out of their busy schedules to differentiate themselves from other dime-a-dozen series. And maybe I'm being a bit exclusionary, but that's okay, because I grew out of the whole "Abilities should follow elemental motifs" around last year during Spring break.

Reason why?

EDITOR'S WARNING: YOU ARE NEARING A RANT! BEYOND THIS POINT, WE CANNOT ENSURE SAFETY OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH!

The reason is the second longest-running Shonen manga EVER, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Sure, they had to fight enemies that did possess abilities involving elemental powers, but they often had a lot more fun with other types of powers... like turning things into zippers, having your hand able to send things to parallel dimenions, restore something to its original composition, de-age your opponent into a fetal state, or simply make you impossible to beat at poker.

Since the introductions of Stands in JJBA way back in its third year, we've had five story arcs. And in each one, the characters' Stand powers have been interesting and -above all else- original.

Jotaro Kujo: Protagonist of Part 3, known as "Stardust Crusaders". Has the Stand "Star Platinum", an entity with unbelievably sharp eyesight, strength and speed great enough to pulverize diamonds the size of a small home with its bare hands, and discovers at the end of the arc the power to freeze time for 1-2 seconds. Much later in the series, upgrades into "Star Platinum the World", which can freeze time for 5 seconds. Only major flaw is that it cannot move more than 2 meters away from Jotaro

Josuke Higashikata: Protagonist of Part 4, known as "Diamond is Unbreakable". Has the Stand "Crazy Diamond", which is similar to Star Platinum in terms of strength and speed, but weaker and slower. Has a slightly greater range of 3 meters, however. Crazy Diamond's greatest strength, however, is it can undo change to an object and return it to its original state. This ability is mainly used to undo injuries, although Josuke cannot use it on himself and it cannot bring someone back from the dead.

Giorno Giovanna: Protagonist of Part 5, known as "Golden Wind." Has the Stand "Golden Experience", which is a far cry from Crazy Diamond and Star Platinum. Golden Experience is weak, slow, and is unable to kill anyone on its own, but is instead a Stand that brings life to all it touches. It can therefor create small animals out of pieces of clothing or any other inanimate object. Giorno cannot control them, but if someone attacks one of these animals, the exact same damage is returned to them. He can also use this power to speed up someone's thought processes to they are out of sync with their body and leave them open to attack from others. At the end of Part 5, it is upgraded to "Golden Experience Requiem", a Stand with a mind of its own that also possesses the ability to negate any kind of momentum, including willpower and even dying. As a result, GER can kill someone, but negate the moment of their actual death, so they are forever trapped in a constant state of agony. Has a slightly better range than Star Platinum.

Joylne Kujo: Protagonist of Part 6, known as "Stone Ocean", and Jotaro's daughter. Has the Stand "Stone Free", which is a Stand made of strings. Its range is much better than Star Platinum, and it can mimic Star Platinum's rapid-fire punch attack, although Stone Free isn't as strong. Its main power is being able to unravel itself or its user to get through tight areas, sew wounds closed, and carry sounds along its string.

Gyro Zeppeli: Protagonist of Part 7, known as "Steel Ball Run." Doesn't have a Stand currently, having given it up to someone else. However, he uses a pair of small steel balls, which he can spin at various rates to repel attacks, break bones, and produce ripples in the air that are even stronger.

See? This is how you make someone's powers interesting. You say "Screw having this person have powers of light/fire/water/wind/earth/darkness/etc," and instead think about some other fun and exciting ability...

Like steamrollers.

[P-girl]

I don't mind 'generic' powers, like the elements, but I'd like if they gave it a little twist. For one fanfic I had the idea to seperate lightning from electricity (Don't know if it's done yet, so don't sue me.) comparable forces, yet very different. Elecricity is easy to handle, can be used to 'kickstart' electronic devices, but in means of battle, offers little offensive powers.
Lightning is a pure form of energy, drawn from the sky, and extremely powerful, but also hard to handle, aim and takes a lot out of both the user's mind, as well as his body.

[MorriganAensland]

I don't mind 'generic' powers, like the elements, but I'd like if they gave it a little twist. For one fanfic I had the idea to seperate lightning from electricity (Don't know if it's done yet, so don't sue me.) comparable forces, yet very different. Elecricity is easy to handle, can be used to 'kickstart' electronic devices, but in means of battle, offers little offensive powers.
Lightning is a pure form of energy, drawn from the sky, and extremely powerful, but also hard to handle, aim and takes a lot out of both the user's mind, as well as his body.

And excellent concept, and you could even give the lightning a 'divine' aspect, since it's considered "heavenly". And if you really want to get into interesting twists, you can throw in neural impulses, since they're a type of electricity too.

JJBA's done a good job making the "elemental" powers unique as well. One of the best examples, off the top of my mind, was with the Stands Geb and Aqua Necklace. Geb could control water from extremely long distances, and even manipulate it in ways to form blades. It could also manipulate a hypothetically unlimited amount of water at a time.

Aqua Necklace, on the other hand, had to make due with a much smaller amount of water, although it could assume the form of any kind of liquid, including gasoline, alcohol, etc. It can also shift between various states of matter, like ice, water, steam, vapor, mist, etc.

[Unica-Musa]

I say winx because w.i.t.c.h. are boring....
In some forums people are saying that winx are copy of w.i.t.c.h.... grrr

[P-girl]

I don't like that argument, mainly because in that case, you could blame everybody for copying everything. There are a lot of Magical Girl anime/cartoons out there, it's a genre.

[MorriganAensland]

Every time a series is made, it inspires thoes that come afterwards. Tetsujin 28 (aka Gigantor) and Astro Boy inspired Mazinger Z. Mazinger Z inspired people to work on the Super Robot genre of anime. Brave Raideen was one of them, and inspired Rah Xephon. And yet uneducated people *to this day* swear that Rah Xephon was trying to copy Evangelion when it was *going for an entirely different kind of story*.

The important thing is to build on what came before it. Ronin Warriors, in some ways, was very similar to Saint Seiya. However, it still brought new things to the table and is highly respected in the anime community, especially in America where it had a bare-bones editing. Pretty much the biggest change they did besides the names, which wasn't that bad, was coming up with the idea of the "Armor of Inferno" holding the spirit of the most powerful demon in existence, Hariel. And that was just to justify why the other guys in the group couldn't fight when Ryo put it on, since they had to use the virtuous nature of their own armors to suppress Hariel.

WITCH does a decent job, at first, of building on previous Magic Girl conventions. And I believe it came first, since it started in 2001. The problem was that it just dug itself into a hole concerning pulling enemies out of nowhere (plus they cause serious plotholes... *cough*FIFTH ARC!!!*uncough*) and they suffer from Jason X Syndrome, which is that once you get involved with space/other planets/realities/etc., the only way to keep a series fresh it to drag Freddy Krugar into it. Winx suffered from the same problem, it just caught up to them much, much faster.

[WinxFairyAlianne]

I prefer winx club! I liked witch but then it got boring! Also I lost the track of the storyline!

[Zhanneel]

I can't compare these two at all. One has a more lighthearted, younger theme (Winx) and the other is more mature and geared toward audiences who follow complex storylines and characters. I watch both equally (or did before Disney started to tick me off). I favor W.I.T.C.H. only slightly because the jokes and the storyline are more mature, and I find myself laughing every other minute. But Winx Club is wonderful as well, mainly because I always wished I had a troupe of friends in middle school or high school who I could confide in like they do with each other. Winx Club offers a wonderful role model to younger girls, without the Bratz snob appeal.

[MorriganAensland]

But Winx also seems to lack much originality in terms of the story's progression. Each season, some new person that has never been mentioned before suddenly shows up and proves to be a greater threat than before. At least Sailor Moon had some justification in regards to the fact one batch of villains was from the future and they did not hop between planets like a proverbial game of checkers.

WITCH seems to go in a similar manner. I can understand the first two arcs, they make sense and cover up all the bases. Pulling out five more arcs worth of villains from the woodworks, however, when interdimensional travel was already a staple of the story from day one, makes you really wonder about what's going on.

As I've said before, the whole "Elemental" idea is also so overdone it's just not funny. It's literally the only thing keeping me from getting into Avatar, and I know I'm being very exclusionary, but I'm just tired of it. There's loads of abilities and techniques that don't fit into elemental frames that are in there, and if we dwell on the ol' Captain Planet powers of Earth, Fire, Vind, Water, and Spirit/Metal/Life/etc., we prevent ourselves from exploring entirely new and diverse powers. It's all well and good to have a motif, it's just elements are overdone. There also needs to be distancing from the "generic" magic, where it's all people pointing at each other and shooting energy blasts.

What makes me the most disappointed in WITCH is that Will's whole "Folding" ability could've been made into a very effective fighting style, but Elisabetta Gnone resorted to electricity as her main fighting motif. It's hard to really put it into words, but it's just if someone can make bends in reality, and therefor "ripples" when the fabric snaps back to normal, it's a literal goldmine of abilities.

[Zhanneel]

I agree that Will's lightening abilities seem fairly cheap. "Folding" could have had more of a broad sense of the word, but at least Will finally got an offensive attack. For most of Season 1 she just flies around hitting the villains with 2X4's or some other random makeshift weapon. They could have been more creative with her powers though. Folding could mean she could warp reality, but I suppose that would make her too powerful and they have to give the characters some weaknesses.

And Winx...well, if I have any criticisms for it I find I have to stop myself because my answer is usually "it's a kid's show for younger girls." That tends to solve any problem I find with the show, but doesn't stop me from emailing the staff asking for a change here or there. I think they did jump on the elemental bandwagon, especially since the show comes out of Italy, a far cry from china where the basis for this premise first started.

As for Avatar, well, I hope you try it some day. Maybe just watch the first or second episode. All of my college friends watch it, and we are completely addicted. My friends who have graduated continue to watch it ^^. The show aims at children and adults alike, if you are into "magic." However, the elements they use in this show have a basis, as the series is mainly of Asian decent and most of the nations have a link to one Asian nation or another. At least the writer's have a reason to implement elemental powers as Asia is the root of elemental folklore. And there's not lack of creativity in the story. Everything adds up, nothing is amiss, and the characters have a wide range of development and personality. The elemental powers are not quite magic either. More like they are an extension of the people in this world. The people tend to treat their powers like everyday life. There are no mages, magicians, or scorcerers. It's all based on physical uses of the elements. There is healing, but only the water-benders are able to do that, and this makes sense when one thinks about all the healing properties of water. The story is well thought out and flows perfectly. It's a rather complex and very creative show. Actually, if you are tired of "magical" shows this would be a great change for you. I'm not sure what people have told you about the show, but I honestly think you'll either grow to like it, or just full out love it. =)

This post has been edited by Zhanneel: Apr 16 2008, 1:15 PM

[MorriganAensland]

Concerning Avatar, I know about most of that, and I do like the creative uses they have for it in the story. I'll look into it eventually, just not yet. Besides, One Piece and JJBA already take up too much of my free time as it is. Plus I'm still trying to find all the episodes of Kotetsushin Jeeg... possibly the ONLY Super Robot anime where the JSDF forces actually are competent and capable of fighting giant monsters on their own with a modest level of success.

And actually, there are two "elemental concepts" out there. There's the Greek version where things are made up of Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water, and the Chinese version where things are made up of Earth, Fire, Wood, Water, and Metal/Spirit.

[Zhanneel]

And actually, there are two "elemental concepts" out there. There's the Greek version where things are made up of Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water, and the Chinese version where things are made up of Earth, Fire, Wood, Water, and Metal/Spirit.

That is true, though I guess I mainly think of the Chinese elements when concerning elemental folklore (and in the show, they have combined earth with wood and metal, but it's getting more interesting as they continue to uncover that all the elements are connected...and you can see where it goes from there). Even Buddhism has borrowed the concept of elements. I used the Chinese comparison for this particular instance as the writers of the show accurately depicted Asian nations using an Asian folklore. I give them a lot of credit for correctly placing the context of the elements into a series where it actually makes sense. And I forgot to mention one more detail about the show that makes it so worthy of praise. They use choreographers to co-ordinate the martial arts in the show--no cheap moves that could never exist, it's all real. They also tend to co-ordinate the entire show with accurate characteristics of Asian culture, such as using calligraphy artists (if I may call them that) to draw the Chinese characters accurately. In short they pay a lot of attention to detail ^^. Sorry for blathering again =P.

Well, whenever you do find time maybe watch a few episodes on youtube. I understand that other worthy shows take precedence, but when you finally watch it I hope you find it worthwhile too =).

This post has been edited by Zhanneel: Apr 16 2008, 3:19 PM

[MorriganAensland]

I'm not picking up any new shows until I get through Part 5 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I want to see Giorno's Golden Experience Reqiuem in action, and I have to get through about 17 more volumes to reach that point.

And I'll probably watch Toppa Tengen Gurren Lagann before getting into Avatar, just because Gurren Lagann's the ultimate in "Anti Evangelion" Super Robot anime... ironic since it was made by the same company, Studio Gaianax.

[WinxFairyAlianne]

I think they should have give will another power or something in w.i.t.c.h because all she does is like fight with her hands and feet, instead of her actual powers!

[Zhanneel]

Throughout the second season she hones the new power of electricity. Eh...it's alright, but it wasn't what I expected she'd have.

[mightymarty2]

what did you think she would have?