Over the Garden Wall

From the first second the dark and enchanting atmosphere pulls you right in. Greg's fearlessness and Wirt's worries, their love for each other creates a wonderful dynamic. Maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I'd advise you to give it a try. Ten 10-12 minutes episodes, it takes about 2 hours to finish the whole series. Watching it like a film is reccomended.

A weird trip through the woods that feels like an old folk tale come to life. I've always loved this miniseries and revisited it again during the quarantine, Just, the sight of this show makes me smile! This mini-series follows half-brothers Wirt and Greg as they try to find their way back home from the woods. This series is whimsical, musical, and story driven. This is my favourite art design of any cartoon ever. It got my attention when Elijah Wood was announced as a voice actor, I'm a huge fan of his films and love his choices, his contribution to the horror genre as an actor and also as a producer too in his SpectreVision. So, I remember the time I watched it and did not want the miniseries to end. It's amazing because of the animation, the storyline, the characters, emotional experience, it is just so damn beautiful in my opinion. Oh, have I mentioned the music? The soundtrack and the songs are just beautiful and amazing, every single one of them. The songs composed for the series also play a part in this paradigm shift. Since the first melancholic/americana opening theme to the songs that follow, it is impossible to resist the songs on the soundtrack. The dialog is witty and matured, a joy to listen to and all the characters are engaging to watch. The Beast, Wirt, Greg, the Frog, Beatrice, you will fall madly in love with your fellow travellers as you watch this now beloved series. Even the fantastic art of the world sucks you in and I dare you to resist singing along with the Greg.

So, without spoiling it too much, the story is based on Dante's Inferno and is cute as hell while remaining grimly dark. It is about two hours total. Highly recommended this series which is an incredible achievement in animation and it's a must for the genre fans including Studio Ghibli audience. A weird trip through the woods that feels like an old folk tale come to life. The characters, world, and story will easily steal your heart as you journey with Wirt and Greg into, "The Unknown."

This show is amazing. Everything about it is fantastic. The characters, story, script, villain, and atmosphere are all excellently executed. I love this show.

I recommend Over the Garden Wall to kids, teens, and adults, (maybe a little scary for tiny tots) looking for a super fun, aesthetically-pleasing fairy-tale-Halloween mystery. The unique characters are likable and break a lot of cookie-cutter-character clichés. The atmosphere is dark and eerie while humorous and exciting. Each episode contains its own cool twist, and the series overall contains several bigger twists. I don't wanna drop any spoilers but there's lots of super awesome twists. You will love it! It's wonderful! I want to watch it again right now. I also recommend watching all ten episodes in one sitting like a movie.

In May 2014, Stuart Snyder, the man responsible for single-handedly destroying Toonami, bringing in live-action schlock to CARTOON Network, establishing the "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"* policy for cartoons, declaring that boys only like comedy (as a member of that demographic, I can assure you that such a statement is completely asinine), and ultimately killing every good show the network made resigned as the President of the Network. And oh what glorious day it was.

If Cartoon Network made this series as an apology for the sins of Snyder, then it succeeded. This series is dark, atmospheric, weird and pretty scary at times. It's not bright, it's not dumbed-down, it doesn't hold back on the creep factor, especially for Tim Curry's character, Auntie Whispers, and it takes its audience seriously. And even though the cast has a lot of celebrity actors (aside from Tim Curry, they also got Christopher Lloyd and cast Elijah Wood as one of the two main leads), they got them because they knew these guys were perfect for the roles. The story is revealed a snippet at a time and from what little I've gathered from the two episodes it strikes me as being just as dark as the setting and atmosphere.

Oh, and just to put icing on the cake, they stuck the old Cartoon Network Studios animated logo on to the end of it like they used to for shows like Samurai Jack and Power Puff Girls, followed by the classic Cartoon Network logo with the Cartoon Cartoons theme dubbed over it.

They're back, and this is only the beginning of what I hope is another era akin to that of the late-90s/early-2000s.

*IMDb does not allow me to spell the word "GIRLS" with a backwards "R". Please pretend that it did.