Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld remixes Buffy for a brand new technology

Although it has been many years since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ultimate episode aired, the present’s lasting cultural impression can nonetheless be felt by means of the tales being advised by individuals who have been impacted by it. Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld feels just like the sort of present which may not exist if it weren’t for the way in which a whole technology of children grew up watching a teenage woman struggle monsters from week to week. The brand new Titmouse-produced animated present’s world of magic, and its give attention to a younger warrior who simply needs to be an everyday excessive schooler, makes it inconceivable to not see it as a tribute to Sunnydale’s most interesting.

However as typically because it riffs a few of Buffy’s signature beats — teen angst, supernatural love triangles, a city filled with normies who kinda know one thing bizarre is happening round them — Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld makes use of them to inform a way more dynamic story about who will get to be an “all-American woman.”

Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld tells the story of how its titular Chinese language American teen is yanked out of her boarding faculty in South Korea and dragged to a small Texas city to satisfy a future she doesn’t need any a part of. Issues are good for Jentry in Seoul, the place her pals have principally turn into her household and people who she will belief with a few of her darkish secrets and techniques. They find out about Jentry’s uncontrollable means to begin fires and that it’s a part of why her feisty aged aunt Gugu (Lori Tan Chinn) despatched her to review overseas. However as harmful as Jentry is likely to be, her pals don’t care as a result of they, like Gugu, love her. And with Jentry’s powers having seemingly gone dormant since she left the US, she assumes her days of literal bridge-burning are all prior to now.

All Jentry needs for her sixteenth birthday is for issues to remain as they’re and to maintain constructing a brand new life that feels prefer it’s actually hers. However when she’s attacked by Ed (Bowen Yang), a Twilight-obsessed shapeshifting vampire tasked with delivering her to his grasp Mogui (Kenton Chen), Jentry is aware of that her want for a blissfully mundane childhood isn’t coming true anytime quickly.

Whereas youthful viewers may not initially choose up on simply how a lot Jentry Chau borrows from Buffy, the ’90s monster-of-the-week present’s affect on showrunner Echo Wu shines by means of in Jentry’s journey again to Texas to enroll in a college run by a paranoid administrator. Jentry’s being new-ish on the town is all it takes for vice principal Wheeler (Sean Allan Krill) to be suspicious of her sudden arrival, and she or he tries to maintain quiet about her extracurricular monster looking. However as a result of Jentry’s reignited powers lure so many mythological ghouls out of the woodwork, there’s sufficient day-to-day chaos that it’s sort of simple for her to fake she’s simply one other scholar who can’t consider how her highschool appears to be located on high of a hellmouth.

The present’s monsters — a cavalcade of demons and spirits plucked from Chinese language mythology — are an enormous a part of what makes Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld really feel like such an impressed spin on the monster-of-the-week style. Nearly each supernatural creature Jentry faces speaks to the sequence’ give attention to exploring her cultural heritage, fairly than utilizing its aesthetics as superficial set dressing. Jentry’s powers make her formidable, but it surely’s due to Gugu’s years of educating her about Chinese language folklore that she’s in a position to outsmart the ghosts she encounters when she journeys into the underworld.

One of many sequence’ funnier episodes follows Jentry and her classmates on a discipline journey to the Alamo, the place a tour information summons a bunch of useless American troopers to scold the children about how “impolite” it’s for them to need to know extra about the monument’s precise historical past. It’s one of many cases the place Jentry Chau extra explicitly reminds you that, along with centering Jentry’s Chinese language heritage, it’s telling a narrative about an American woman who has been inspired to consider her nation’s previous and the way that shapes some folks’s perceptions of her.

Jentry has way more fascinating issues to cope with than racism, like her sophisticated love triangle state of affairs along with her childhood buddy Michael (A.J. Beckles) and Package (Woosung Kim), one other mysterious switch scholar. However it’s clear the present needs you to understand that there’s extra to telling relatable but culturally particular tales than merely placing a number of characters of shade onscreen.

Although the Buffy vibes solely develop stronger with every episode — Jentry finally ends up with a Scooby Gang of her personal who all have their very own supernatural stuff occurring — the present remixes them simply sufficient to make this primary season really feel like a refreshing addition to the Chosen Woman™ canon. You’ll be able to see that Wu and the remainder of Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s inventive crew have poured their hearts into this primary chapter, and it could be nice to see what else they may need to conjure up.

Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s first season is now streaming on Netflix.