Glitch Techs Season 2 Review: A Love Letter to Gaming Culture

Glitch Techs season 2 review: a series that actually cares about games

A show about a group of teenagers turned gamer-ghostbusters checks nearly every box that makes an animated hit. Glitch Techs has the art, the characters, the jokes and the in-world logic, and it is easy to compare to Adventure Time and Steven Universe in how confidently it builds a world. The series was created by Eric Robles and Dan Milano, and it follows a crew of young employees at Hinobi Tech who hunt glitches, living pieces of video game code that escape into the real world.

Its problem was never quality. It was visibility. The series has a rough production history: Nickelodeon announced it in May 2016 and ordered twenty episodes, production stalled in January 2019 and crew members were laid off, and the show finally landed on Netflix in early 2020. Season one arrived on February 21, 2020, with nine episodes, and season two followed on August 17, 2020, with ten more. Netflix treated the second batch quietly, with little promotion, so word of mouth had to carry it.

That makes the case for watching simple. The show is unusually earnest about gaming, and anyone who grew up with arcades, consoles and online lobbies will find a lot to recognize. This is, in the strongest sense, an affectionate and well-researched homage. The fondness shows in the smallest background details in the dialogue, the costumes and the references, and that is what separates a homage from a parody.

The look and the language

One of the best things about the series is its gaming lexicon. A lot of the leetspeak and gamer terminology is real, and combined with the animation, it feels like being inside an RPG built for gamers. The textures are smooth, the colors vibrant, and on-screen dialogue bubbles and meta-breaking moments take an approach familiar from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Fight scenes pull from both Western and Eastern animation traditions, with transitions that stay inside a PG-13 comfort zone but still impress.

The soundtrack leans on chiptune, and the sound design is full of nods to retro games. Viewers should expect plenty of bleeps and bloops. Taken together, the art direction and the audio add up to something that nobody has quite done this way before, which is a real achievement for a series aimed at young viewers.

Building up the XP: what season two adds

Season two, which can also be viewed as the second part of one extended first season, gives nearly everyone a bit of backstory. The writing hints at something bigger at Hinobi Tech and ties material from the pilot back into the new episodes, suggesting more connective tissue than the first batch let on. The episodes themselves often feel like standalone adventures without a rising conflict, which can read as a shortage of hook until the viewer starts watching between the lines.

A new character, Riley, is an outcast and a modder, someone who reprograms and tweaks the specifications of Hinobi Tech’s equipment by capturing and rewriting the code of glitches. Riley befriends the socially awkward Miko in a storyline about friendship, plays a large role in the opening and middle stretches of the season, and looks set to return.

Returning characters gain depth too. Mitch gets real development as the top player, including why that rank matters to him and the history behind his elite status, which makes the series’ bully compelling. Hi-5 explores a surprisingly haunted past with his father. Miko opens up about her complicated relationship with games, which she used to escape a lonely childhood, and the show reminds viewers of her immunity to memory wipes and her skill. Phil, the Glitch Tech boss and a kind of dad to the group, even gets a combat suit.

The wider Glitch Tech family

The supporting cast also gets room. Nix, Simi, Zahra, Haneesh and Bergy have expanded roles, individual traits, workplaces and even a budding crush or two, which makes the Glitch Tech family feel like a real community and not a handful of background faces. The last few episodes also hint that Hinobi Tech is more than the Men in Black, Ghostbusters, Pokémon and Ready Player One mashup it appears to be. Such a parody can only go so far without a larger scheme underneath, and the finale of the season suggests the writers had one.

A fan theory and a rewatch tip

There is room for speculation in what the season hints at. The last few episodes suggest that Hinobi Tech’s mission is more than gadget-of-the-week monster hunting, and one natural guess is that the story could go full Digimon, with sprites, pixels and glitches becoming fully feeling and very real beings. The show never confirms it, which is part of its charm.

That ambiguity is also why the season rewards a second viewing. Details that pass as throwaway jokes the first time, such as how a glitch is contained or what Miko’s immunity to memory wipes implies, start to look like clues once the viewer knows where the final episodes point. Fans who like to piece together a mystery will enjoy going back to the pilot to see how much of the later material was already seeded there.

Gaming references worth the wait

The gaming content is the heart of the series. Season two touches MOBAs, MMOs, shooters, RPGs, platformers and arcade beat-’em-ups, and its early episodes alone reference Dance Dance Revolution, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Pong, Pokémon, Dragon Age, Super Mario, Rampage and Final Fantasy. Season one’s Castlevania-themed episode set the template, and the new batch keeps the idea going.

Other highlights include a Terminator parody, cat-themed glitches among a sea of kitten collectibles, a ping pong match, and a giant Godzilla-style kaiju battle. Episode six is the standout: a clip-show episode that is a masterclass in editing, shows the best of the art and gives every main character a spotlight. It also has real heart, including a speech by Hi-5 that captures the themes of the series.

Glitch Techs at a glance

• Creators: Eric Robles and Dan Milano; Milano also voices BITT.
• Voice cast includes Ricardo Hurtado (Hi-5), Monica Ray (Miko), Luke Youngblood (Mitch) and Scott Kreamer (Phil).
• Season one: nine episodes on Netflix, released February 21, 2020.
• Season two: ten episodes on Netflix, released August 17, 2020.
• Produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studio for Netflix.

Verdict: the show gaming culture deserved

The line that sums up the series comes at the end of the pilot, when Mitch says that gaming is what he loves and who he is. If you love games, watch Glitch Techs. Tell a friend. Watch it twice. The series has heart, characters worth following and a refreshing willingness to take video games seriously as a culture.

There is a case to be made that the loose structure is also part of the appeal. Most episodes stand alone, built around a single game genre or a single glitch, and each one gives the viewer a clean, funny story with a satisfying ending. The long arcs run quietly underneath. That makes the show easy to dip into, and it makes the cut-off all the more painful, since the long arcs were the part that was never finished.

Its weakness lies in structure: the writing builds toward something larger without fully reaching it by the end of season two. The seeds are planted, and a second viewing makes them easy to spot, but a payoff needed more episodes. That is a real frustration, because the series stopped after its second season. Ten additional episodes were left unfinished after a production hiatus, so the story that season two sets up was never completed.

It remains a very easy recommendation. Anyone who has ever wanted an animated series that treats a lifelong hobby with this much affection should give the first nineteen episodes a chance.

A practical note for new viewers: watch both batches in order, since the second part continues directly from the first and the character arcs build across them. The pilot’s closing line from Mitch will make more sense by the end of season two, and the clip-show episode in the middle works best once you have met everyone.

Sources

• Glitch Techs, Wikipedia — cast, creators and season 2 release date