By Colton Silva
In December 2020, Disney held its annual “Investors Day” event, which allows Disney to showcase their upcoming projects for film and television. The event showcased a wide variety of films and shows from every studio Disney acquires, such as Marvel, Lucasfilm (Star Wars), 20th Century Studios, and so on. But, once it got to the Pixar section of the event, everything seemed normal with announcing brand new films and short films.
That was until the end of their section of the event, when they announced their first ever long form original series, entitled Win or Lose. 5 years later, Pixar released Win or Lose for the world to see only on Disney+. It instantly gained worldwide love and praise for its unique way of storytelling, different styles of animation, and for keeping the Pixar mentality of always trying new things and keeping their studio based on original works.
Win or Lose follows the story of a middle school softball league leading up to the championship game. However, what makes the show so unique and different is each episode follows a different character’s perspectives and lives and how they are all preparing for the game. It isn’t just the players, but also a coach, an umpire, a mom of a player, and so on. Each episode has a unique way of storytelling that makes you feel for each of the characters in a really impactful way. A certain episode shows how different people see life in different ways, just like everyone in the world does. One way they expertly present this concept is by making each character have different forms of anxiety or stress through either different forms of animation, or a literal growing stress ball constantly growing all over you, having a different version of yourself inside of you that is represented as the younger self of that character, and so on.
Another really fascinating addition Pixar implements to keep the show different is that at the end of every episode, it ends with the character ending up at the night of the championship game. Each episode then ends with something big happening to that character that ends on a cliffhanger, leaving each episode to then slightly expand on what happens at the big game.
What also is really great about the show is that when a scene comes on between two or multiple characters that were seen in a previous episode, Pixar doesn’t have the audience just rewatch the same scene and dialogue from the angle of a different character through camera shots. That would end up with people getting bored by watching the same thing over again. No, they change up the dialogue and tone of the scene. It shows how a different person takes a situation with a whole different context from their life, and it’s so masterfully done.
I could go on forever about how great this show really is with its unique storytelling and incredible original concept, especially because I’m a person who is constantly trying to view life in many different ways and hear how different people handle situations and what stress is like for other people. I think Pixar hit it out of the park with this impressive, beautiful, amazing show.
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