I was curious about the way they want to mix animation and live-action in 1 show, but result was underwhelming.
First thing first - I do not see any benefits from live-action in the show. The way it's done is that one world is an anime, and the other one is live-action. Makes sense, but you can replace live-action with CGI and it would be practically the same thing.
I am comparing the show to what "Rabbit Roger" and "Space Jam" did, for example, where "animated world" was breaking the rules of the "real world". In Wonderhatch, though, there is a clear wall between the two. Yes, 2nd episode suggests that it's not as strict a divide, as it was shown in 1st episode, but it still does not feel that important.
But this probably just my taste (I would have preferred animation with different style to live-action). Objectively, live-action is fine, definitely not as bad as some Japanese TV shows I tried to watch in the past. Somehow felt closer to K-Dramas even. What prompted me to drop this is that it's just not that interesting.
The animated world seems to have something to do not so much with dragons, but rather hearing, including "hearing of souls". So far this "feature" has not been explained at all. It's just "you can hear things, but then you can't hear some other things, usually special humanoids". Sounds seem important to fights, too, but that's also really unclear. Also the way they switch between Japanese and the other language in animation world is weird and not explained in any way.
Overall the world-building is... Not there, really. It's fine with the show starting in the middle of action, but when you do not properly explain the basics of what's going on during your first episode - that's bad. Yes, some bits of information are added in 2nd episode, and probably more stuff will be explained in 3rd episode, now that more people got into the real world, but... That's too late, especially considering that episodes are ~40 minutes. Even more "especially", considering that we start with animated world (there is a short live-action sequence in the beginning, but that's mostly unimportant).
In the end, this show feels undercooked to me. They should have spent more time on polishing the original concept and the order of switches between worlds, too. Probably do shorter episodes with 5 minutes of 1 world and 15 minutes of the other world, gradually building them both. Or maybe even do something like "Dreamfall: The Longer Journey", which was also about 2 worlds "colliding", and was a way better story in my mind.
First thing first - I do not see any benefits from live-action in the show. The way it's done is that one world is an anime, and the other one is live-action. Makes sense, but you can replace live-action with CGI and it would be practically the same thing.
I am comparing the show to what "Rabbit Roger" and "Space Jam" did, for example, where "animated world" was breaking the rules of the "real world". In Wonderhatch, though, there is a clear wall between the two. Yes, 2nd episode suggests that it's not as strict a divide, as it was shown in 1st episode, but it still does not feel that important.
But this probably just my taste (I would have preferred animation with different style to live-action). Objectively, live-action is fine, definitely not as bad as some Japanese TV shows I tried to watch in the past. Somehow felt closer to K-Dramas even. What prompted me to drop this is that it's just not that interesting.
The animated world seems to have something to do not so much with dragons, but rather hearing, including "hearing of souls". So far this "feature" has not been explained at all. It's just "you can hear things, but then you can't hear some other things, usually special humanoids". Sounds seem important to fights, too, but that's also really unclear. Also the way they switch between Japanese and the other language in animation world is weird and not explained in any way.
Overall the world-building is... Not there, really. It's fine with the show starting in the middle of action, but when you do not properly explain the basics of what's going on during your first episode - that's bad. Yes, some bits of information are added in 2nd episode, and probably more stuff will be explained in 3rd episode, now that more people got into the real world, but... That's too late, especially considering that episodes are ~40 minutes. Even more "especially", considering that we start with animated world (there is a short live-action sequence in the beginning, but that's mostly unimportant).
In the end, this show feels undercooked to me. They should have spent more time on polishing the original concept and the order of switches between worlds, too. Probably do shorter episodes with 5 minutes of 1 world and 15 minutes of the other world, gradually building them both. Or maybe even do something like "Dreamfall: The Longer Journey", which was also about 2 worlds "colliding", and was a way better story in my mind.