Pixar's 'Win or Lose': A Winning Blend of Emotions
The show’s main premise is that each episode is from a different character’s point of view and ‘Win or Lose’ gives us a week in the life of the girl’s middle school softball team before their championship game. This unique way of telling the story provides an insight into tackling various facets of the problem and feeling the impact for each of the characters, which creates rather intricate narratives narrated with the help of Pixar’s CGI animation potential. This way, it tells a cheerful but meaningful storyline that fosters both children and adults’ interest, in which each character focuses on the great goal and the search for one’s identity on and off the soccer field. It is worth emphasizing, each character is developed, and they all have their unique plots that make the viewer empathize with them easily. This season’s story is performed by Rosa Salazar as one of the key characters which gives the show its charismatic authority.
Lively and extraordinary directorship by Carrie Hobson, Michael Yates and Lou Hamou-Lhadj helps to distinguish the director vision on ‘ Win or Lose’. Rarely do the directors become excessive when telling the audience of the tension experienced in sports and the subtext inherent in relationships while also adding depth to each episode while maintaining the viewer interest. The music complements every scene by supporting, and at some points, creating its mood, but never dominating the plot. This is stimulating where required, and even philosophical in the slow times of the piece ‘Win or Lose’. In the case of ‘Win or Lose’, the angles and perspectives used for the animated frames are appropriate to capture the emotional aspects on which the series mostly depends. The work on the details is exquisite, and each scene comes to life individually, and the series is interesting throughout, about a middle school life.
The main use of the special effects in the series is 3D animation, which contributes to the dynamic of the series’ narration and gives energetically animated scenes. The portrayal of games and social relationships is realistic and stylized at the same time, thanks to the implementation of Pixar animation.
The cutting in the series is another strong point as it achieves smooth transitions between different perspectives of the story. The shift from one character to another is well done making it possible to follow a flowing story that at the same time reveals a good dose of the macabre that leaves the audience entertained. The transitions between comedic and dramatic moments are rather smooth and this is the reason why the series does not lose the audience’s attention between episodes and series. While each episode gets as far as having an action-packed opening followed by gaining the audience’s emotions, it is all done in a condensed manner.
Dialogues in ‘Win or Lose’ are sharp and powerful enough to come up with a meaningful plot which truly affects the audience. This scripting is innnovate and clearly appeals to both youth and the mature audiences and has the right balance of comedy and emotion, and relativityrealism.
Even though ‘Win or Lose’ is a highly stylized and very entertaining show there might be moments when it’ll turn from one character to the next and their distinctive mode of behaving will seem rather arbitrary. However, this is a mere nitpicking while the movie ‘Win or Lose’ is an excellent example of storytelling by Pixar using various perspectives. It brilliantly depicts the swirl of feelings of an ethnically diverse group of workers who deal with fun and challenges of middle-school-age students and sport. The series is a wonderful example of how the writer can retell a familiar tale with a little shift of focus and perspective and deserves its place among great animated television series.
