Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Animation – Episodes 1-3

What is it about? When ordinary high school student Yuuten finds himself in the magical realm of Twisted Wonderland, he must bravely fight the students of Night Raven College to find his way back to Japan.

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I want to start by saying that I decided to cover episodes one through three, leaving out the recently released episode four, since the first three episodes are a complete arc. I feel like this is the best way to get a taste of what the threads of malice are Twisted wonderland. With this, I want to dive right in because I have thoughts on anime should i like it even though i hate disney (i just don’t like musicals ok?) and don’t really like the characters outside Kingdom Heartswhere I like pretty boys a lot more than… bad uncle Simba and Pete the cat.

Therefore…

…These first three episodes begin with Emma Yuuken, a sophomore in high school who is you. no no no well YesYuu, but also “you” because he’s the normal (non-magical) focus with which we enter the world of Twisted Wonderland. And we enter because we are five minutes away from Yuu before the dark carriage with the mirror takes him to another world. But for what purpose? The full extent of this has yet to be revealed.

What really exists is a group of handsome male students, all recruited by the Dark Mirror into a group that looks more like a bishonen cult than an actual school entrance ceremony. Each student ends up there not by luck, but perhaps by irony, possessing enough magical powers to be eligible to haunt the hallowed halls of Night Raven College under the mythic eyes of the seven great Disney villains who came before them. Only in this world, they are not villains: instead, they are evil heroes, and certainly not evil forever in the eyes of students who come from villainous roots.

What follows from his rocky beginning is Yuu’s entry into the world of magic: spells abound, as do ghosts and monsters. In the center is a teenager who just wants to get into a kendo match, which will never happen. Yuu finds himself at Night Raven College with the potential to find a place if he can survive.

Essentially, this show is for girls who like the original game and manga, or someone like me in the past: someone who doesn’t like or like Disney, but is socially infused with enough references and knowledge of where in the greater universe the source of this world’s “story” lives to enjoy applying it to lovable idols. That is, as someone with a strange passion for Kingdom Hearts and love for handsome boys, that’s just normal.

I mean, sure, the show is nice and honest, the dubbing is great: everyone’s having so much fun, and it’s clear that they’re really leaning into the adorable teenage drama of it all for the benefit of the show. It also leans heavily on the delivery potential between pretty boys who love…it’s fun, but it’s Disney. A company patting itself on the back for having a new first gay character because Josh Gad danced with a guy, but then pulls away the whole episode a transgender show won’t let these guys kiss.

I will say that I am interested in the basics of this world. Twisted Wonderland (the place, not the name) features the Big Seven, seven prominent villains who are elevated to royalty in the TW world. It’s a little jarring because we go from the brilliant anime of 2025 to clips of classic Disney villains in action on their own medium, reminding you that this is a joint venture; but still it’s compelling. Here they are also much grander, with Jafar becoming the Wizard of Sand and confronting fraud (Aladdin), and Ursula becoming the Sea Witch who helped the mermaids in their troubles. It is not the fault of the characters around them that their troubles have gone unheard: instead, the characters we know are entirely to blame.

This leaves room to imagine Yuu’s perspective as a teenager living in Japan, where Tokyo Disney is a place he could go on a school field trip. These characters are no longer just villains on the movie screen or dusty DVDs. They are real people, and this leaves him and the viewer at odds in a world where Japan sounds like fiction, and neither character can pronounce Yuutena’s name because of how fictional it sounds. That’s what it does in the end Twisted wonderland interesting to me, even if I’ll probably only follow it in chunks of episodes.

Twisted wonderland it’s the kind of show that made my heart stop, restart, and then explode in my chest at the age of fifteen from the amount of blood rushing to my cheeks because this was the kind of media of self-indulgent beauties I loved to consume. Now it’s a bit like that Ensemble Stars meets Fire emblem: three houses— which is enough to keep my attention, but not necessarily engage in me. I suspect it’s because I have no connection to the game and no interest in Disney media.

In the end, that’s not a bad thing, because while this show is indeed “Just Good,” it’s not about style over substance. There’s clearly a story here that draws people into the franchise, even if it’s not a story for me. I look forward to people getting involved, even if I’m on the fringes, because I’m always happy when people get more of the media they love.

My verdict? If we were to add stars here, it would definitely be a 3: not amazing, not extremely bad, just kind of good, echoing sentiments I used to love but softened as a thirty-three-year-old who prefers dads to bishunnen in his anime.