Reviews Recap / Over The Garden Wall

Why Over the Garden Wall did a dark tone right.

Over the Garden Wall caught me off guard completely. After just a few glances, the style of the art direction reminded me of old classical tales such as The Wind in the Willows and Watership Down. The ten episodes follow the two main protagonists trying to get home, and as the episodes go by, you are always flung into an array of different locations within the setting and handed a nice selection of characters.

I personal feel the comparison to old classical Literature is true in the cartoons tone, as even with characters acting innocent enough and charming enough to keep the mood cute, upbeat and enjoyable, they were not afraid to keep the tone " for children " (which I am happy to see that within the Western Animations, creators have been taking more risks).

To be blunt, Over the Garden Wall has tones and themes that well warrant it's PG rating. Patrick-Mc Hale works (Misadventures of Flap Jack to be exact) often gets criticized for using dark tones just to gross people out or unnerve people without contextual reason as more on the lines of "wtf moments". Over the Garden Wall I feel uses the dark tone fantastically. The Unknown is such a vague place, regardless of our characters blissful demeanor or just is unaware of the true terror that is being alone and lost in a forest with something awaiting for you, just waiting for you to fall in futile.

However, this isnt to say thats all the show is, The reason why its tone is so grand is because it intermixes with the whole adventure. The duo encounter many characters from the likes of spooky town folk to a ferry-full-of-frog-people. it thrives on imagination and becomes timeless because of how well they are written, lacking in screentime or not. The tone it always changing, allowing for said dark tones to deliver some painful mood whiplash

Sometimes horror can take a subtle role in a story, The Beast is only mentioned by name and is rarely seen until later on into the show, this allows for the uncanny feeling of the protagonists never being truly safe. What may seem like joyful childish adventures with a young kid and a bratty teenager learning how to take on responsibility for some may be seen as a nice story full of imaginative set pieces, perky nostalgic humor for some, others may be too distracted by the true nature of this show in all its Adult Fear inducing ways.