Don’t sleep on Invincible Fight Girl and Jentry Chau

Like every year, the last stretch of 2024 featured some last minute highs. At the beginning of this year, the TV audience was confused about the tastes Arcane, X-Men ’97, and Dan Da Dan, and have spent the weeks since their respective conclusions anticipating what will come next. But in the here and now, we have a couple of cartoons that are worth putting some time into as the year winds down.

The first is Invincible fighting girl, announced in 2022 and that the freshly wrapped first season started in October on Max/Adult Swim. The story sees a boy named Andy embark on a quest to become a legendary wrestler, which involves moving to a big city full of wrestlers and rubbing shoulders with a number of ex-professionals, could have been, and aspiring talent while working. become the best no one has ever been. If this sounds familiar, it’s clearly intentional, as the show has shonen anime – and My Hero Academia in particular – completely embedded in their DNA. Be a diehard My hero fan or just know from reputation, you’ll be able to see shades of Deku’s history in this show, whether it’s through his music or watching Andy leave his island home of accountants to become a student of his wrestling idol childhood, now retired, Quesa Poblana.

But just as it was fun to see the world of superheroes through Deku’s eyes, the same is true of Andy and his world. Invincible fighting girl loves fighting to such an extent that it cannot help but be contagious and charming as Andy and his friends-Craig, an opportunistic robber, and the a lot buff eight-year-old aspiring reporter Mikey-shows how the world has been shaped by the struggle as the dominant culture, and provides some interesting nuances in what it looks like for all walks of life. Creator Juston Gordon-Montgomery’s affection for the sport comes through at every moment, whether it’s the variety of (very good) stage names each character has, or how outdoor matches begin with satellites launching wrestling rings from the space Wrestling and boxing have provided the biggest, most theatrical stages for sports stories to play out, and Invincible fighting girl he found a sweet spot by mixing the theatricality of fighting with the typical melodramatics found in shonen stories and their famous tournament arcs.

There’s a similarly successful fusion of teenage melodrama and the supernatural in Echo Wu’s Netflix series, Jentry Chau versus the Underworld. As with Invincible Fighting Girl, It’s like you’ve heard this before: the titular Jentry is just 16 years old at the beginning of the show and finds herself reawakening the powers of fire she previously suppressed, and is forced into heroism when her great aunt Gugu takes Jentry to her. childhood home to protect her from a murderous demon. The shadow of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has appeared big on supernatural TV for years, and Jentry hits many familiar beats. Love triangles, seniors who are not what they seem, you have seen many times before.

What it ultimately does Jentry the work is in how confident you are; his opening is a flashy K-pop track that makes it clear that it wants the audience to have a good time as Jentry and his friends go through one harrowing situation after another. These situations often escalate to the point of supernatural chaos, and this by Jentry more upfront with its horror from the start rather than building to it over time is a pleasant surprise. At times, his playful (but still slightly messy) scares feel reminiscent Adventure time or even Billy and Mandy, especially when fights break out or supernatural elements are used to inform the very good cast of characters, such as Gugu and Jentry’s two love interests, their childhood friend Michael and the handsome boy Kit.

Coming so late in the year, Jentry and Invincible fighting girl can’t help but be seen as scrappy upstarts. They are both cut from the same cloth, but the material is used differently: Invincible it’s literally an underdog story that puts Andy through the wringer, mostly physically. It truly lives up to the show’s title, as it endures several beatings from far more experienced opponents, only to bounce back and plate right back up in what makes for some of the year’s most beautiful and crisp animated action. . For the most part, things are lighthearted enough to play for the all-ages crowd, though it does occasionally flirt with heavier themes towards its second half. Those moments reverberate through their fighters as they energize themselves to get back into the fight and give it their all, just like the tales of the shonen past. Any full exploration of the darker side of the wrestling world seems to be saved for future seasons.

Conversely, Jentry it feels more inclined towards a slightly older crowd. He’s no stranger to some very impressive fights and consistent humor, but his strongest moments come when the characters are forced to face dark truths or unpack their baggage, often with a crowd watching intently. So much of the show is informed by Wu growing up as a second generation Chinese American teenager Texasmade apparent in an episode about Jentry’s class becoming possessed by racist ghosts from the Alamoor a brief exploration of Michael’s performance living as a second generation Nigerian American. The show is not only about the immigrant experience, but this and its southern setting give it a considerably different energy than if it were on the coast, and the town eventually feels like the real place that must be for Jentry to want to have a normal life here and not have discovered his powers.

Whether you’re in the mood to see a pyrokinetic teenager grapple with Chinese mythology and his family upbringing, or a girl fight a gang of wrestlers with perms, Jentry Chau and Invincible fighting girl each one is worth seeing. Both shows clearly had a lot of thought put into them by their respective creators, and you can tell that Gordon-Montgomery and Wu gave it everything they had and then some. (Jentry mostly it brings the well-intentioned energy of something that works perfectly well as a movie, but gets more room to breathe and just be like a 13-episode series). it feels like it got more attention months ago. But here’s hoping things work out in Andy and Jentry’s favor, and we have more adventures with them both very soon.

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