Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld is a 2024 animated fantasy action comedy series created by Echo Wu. Ali Wong executive produces and stars along with Lori Tan Chinn, Bowen Yang, Lucy Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, Sheng Wang, A.J. Beckles, and Woosung Kim.
Her entire life, teenaged Jentry (Wong) has been working to suppress her supernatural abilities and live out a normal life. However, when she discovers a demon king is tracking her down to steal her powers, she must accept and harness them to protect all she loves. The series premiered on Netflix December 5, 2024.
Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld contains examples of the following:
- Aborted Arc: Michael's parents are shown to be aware of his ability to see the future, with him intent on talking to them about it later. While he does use his foresight again in the last episode, he does not confront them about it for the rest of the season.
- Actor IS the Title Character: Per the trailer, “Ali Wong IS Jentry Chau.”
- Aliens in Cardiff: The series is set in a surburban town in Texas, but it's a hotbed of supernatural threats that are primarily Chinese in origin. It's justified since it's revealed that Chinese immigrants to America established an underground Daoist market there, and Jentry accidentally opens a portal to Diyu from which Chinese monsters can escape in the first half the story and is a Weirdness Magnet for such threats in general. And Xiao Lian accidentally opens portals to Japanese, Greek, and Celtic underworlds in Episode 9, who proceed to attack the town.
- Animesque: The show pays tribute to its anime influences, particularly through its expressive character portrayals.
- Asian Fox Spirit: One of the yaoguai that comes out of the portal to Diyu that Jentry accidentally opens is a huli jing—depicted as a gigantic fox-demon with white fur, five telescopic prehensile tails, four eyes, and red markings on its forehead.
- Badass Adorable: Jentry has various cute and dorky moments, but she's also capable of kicking butt when pushed hard enough.
- Bakeneko and Nekomata: A pair of bakeneko Yōkai show up in Episode 7 having been impersonating the ghosts of Jentry's parents at Gugu's behest.
- Betty and Veronica: Michael and Kit, respectively, to Jentry. Michael is her childhood friend, a normal and sweet football player who has a long time crush on her and that she had reciprocated; Kit is a mysterious and charming new transfer student who turns out to be a demon that was hired to kill Jentry but falls for her. The opening of "Some Gui My Prince Will Come" illustrates this nicely by contrasting their morning routine, showing Michael's house is bathed in warm colors while Kit's house is full of green, blue, and purple.
- Big Bad: The main antagonist is the Mogui that bonded to Mr. Cheng, who wants to steal Jentry's powers for itself so that it can become a demon-god.
- The Big Damn Kiss:
- Jentry and Kit kiss in episode 5, complete with Love Bubbles.
- Likewise, Jentry and Michael share one in episode 13.
- Black Eyes of Crazy:
- Due to the mask he wears, the Taoist sage turned maoguai Mr. Cheng—the Big Bad of the series—appears to have a single eye with a glowing pink iris and black sclera—though his eye is able to move between the sockets of his mask. When he uses the Yellow Emperor's robes, a third eye with a pink iris and black sclera opens on his forehead.
- When Mr. Cheng uses the Yellow Emperor's robes to resurrect his daughter, she has black sclerae to signify that she's not supposed to be returned from the afterlife. While she's not evil, merely lashing out in fear and anger, she is dangerous due to not being able to control the robes' power—attempting to return to the Great Beyond by tearing open portals to various afterlives and underworlds, which unleashes a horde of monsters and demons.
- Blessed with Suck: Jentry has powers, namely Playing with Fire from her hands, but even besides Mr. Cheng going after her to try and obtain them for himself, she accidentally burned down half a town as a child several years before the show and consequently repressed them for years.
- Bookends: The first episode has Flora getting killed by Mr. Cheng. The last episode has her ghost fade away after Jentry kills the Mogui.
- Central Theme:
- Trust, and who is or isn't worthy of it. Jentry constantly has to reevaluate who she can trust after learning new information about them (most notably Flora with her many lies, but also Kit after learning that he's really a demon and Ed after finding out that he's been filming her activities for internet clout). The Mogui is a cruel sadist who makes "deals" with people that only ever serve his own interests, which he will strongarm people into making if he needs to. This makes him the ultimate example of someone who definitely shouldn't be trusted.
- The necessity of accepting death, even if it's painful: Mr. Cheng attempting to revive his daughter led him to become a host for the Mogui, and even when he succeeds, she goes on a rampage because she didn't want to be brought back. Gugu tried to revive her sister, Iris, only for it to end in disaster. And part of what the Mogui uses to pressure Moonie into a deal is the promise of bringing Peng back. Finally, Jentry has to accept that nothing can be done to stop Gugu from fading away.
- Clothes Make the Superman: The Yellow Emperor's Robes give whoever wears them incredible powers, including manipulating fire and opening portals to the underworld. Due to a past event, these powers got extracted from the robes and put directly into Jentry's soul, making this trope not apply to her. Once the power goes back to the robes, other people are able to use them just by wearing it. When Jentry takes them back and goes into Super Mode, an ethereal version of the robes made of flames appears around her.
- Crossover Cosmology: While the series heavily deals with Chinese mythological creatures, other mythological realms and afterlives exist. A pair of bakeneko from Japanese folklore show up in "Into the Zhong". In "A Night with the Stars", Xiao Lan tries to use the Yellow Emperor's robes to open a portal to the Great Beyond and accidentally opens portals to different underworlds and unleashes monsters from different cultures' mythologies. The first portal she opens leads to Hades and unleashes a Gorgon, chimeras, manticores, and cyclopses from GrecoRoman Classical Mythology. The second portal leads to Yomi from Japanese Mythology and unleashes a gashadokuro. Later in the episode a swarm of manananggal from Philippine Mythology, a makara from Hindu Mythology, an ushi-oni from Japanese mythology, and a nuklavee from Orcadian folklore can be seen rampaging through the city.
- Dancing Theme: Jentry dances at points in the opening sequence.
- Dangerous 16th Birthday: Jentry's 16th birthday is when Cheng becomes able to go after her.
- Darker and Edgier: In comparison to other family friendly Netflix cartoons, this series definitely earns the PG rating due to heavy horror influence and intense violence.
- Death of the Hypotenuse: Kit sacrifices himself fighting Cheng.
- Evolving Credits: A subtle change was made to the intro after episode 10, where the title card is now green and purple instead of red and orange.
- Exact Words: Flora housed the powers of the Yellow Emperor's robes within Jentry due to Mr. Cheng not being able to bring himself to kill a child due to the death of his own daughter. Mr. Cheng begrudgingly refuses to do it as she expected, but he then decides to kill Peng instead as he's Jentry's parent.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Michael is a football player, but he really wants to be a musician. His parents disapprove of this and push him to be a football player instead.
- Played with when Michael later tells his parents he wants to quit football. He had a vision that something terrible happened at the game. His parents believe him and are hiding something about his powers.
- Foreshadowing: Flora calls Mr. Cheng out about his plans to try to bring back his daughter, saying that reviving people never works out. She has actually tried before with her sister.
- The Four Perils: The Four Perils are the gatekeepers of the Underworld, briefly appearing in episode 11. The Hundun is later summoned to attack Jentry's classmates.
- Grand Theft Me: Due to the presence of ghosts in the series, this winds up happening on occasion, and is even revealed to be an offense serious enough to land any ghost caught doing it in their equivalent of prison.
- Green Around the Gills: Jentry's cheeks turn green as she sees Kit dissecting a frog in episode 5.
- Hell: One of the main concepts of the story refers to Diyu, the Chinese myth equivalent to Christian hell and purgatory. Many of the problems of the first part of the series involved the portal Jentry accidentally opened up letting demons into the city.
- I Have Your Wife: Played with. The Mogui does whatever it can to manipulate people. It does this to Moonie by holding Peng's ghost hostage and torturing him.
- I See Dead People: After Chen's first attempt to steal her powers fails, Jentry gains the ability to see ghosts.
- I Wished You Were Dead: A variation of this trope. Gugu gets killed by Mr. Cheng in the first episode and comes back as a ghost. However, when Jentry learns all the lies and secrets from Gugu and that she is partially responsible for Jentry's troubled life, she remarks she wished Gugu died much earlier.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Mogui's preferred method of dispatching people. Gugu, Peng, Kit, Gugu (again), and Jentry (attempted) suffered this fate.
- Keeping Secrets Sucks: Gugu’s decision to keep the truth about Jentry's parents and the origins of her powers hidden ultimately leads to profound heartache for Jentry. This secrecy pushes her grandniece to take drastic actions, resulting in catastrophic consequences.
- Limited Wardrobe: Played with. Most of the prominent characters have one standard outfit and may have alternate outfits where the story calls for it (e.g. Ed's casual clothes for when he poses as Jentry's cousin, Michael's football and work uniforms), but Jentry herself has several varied outfits, which the opening actually highlights. While some are for specific purposes, most are normal clothes and show off her sense of style.
- Love Triangle: A subplot in this show is a love square between Jentry, her Childhood Friend Michael, and a mysterious newcomer named Kit. Michael is dating Stella, but still has feelings for Jentry. Eventually, Michael breaks up with Stella only to walk in on Jentry kissing Kit, much to his dismay. Jentry later breaks up with Kit because she doesn't want anything to do with the supernatural anymore, and because Mr. Cheng sent him to kill her. Jentry then dates Michael only to break up with him as well for his safety before gaining the courage to give it another go.
- Memory Jar: Shèn pearls. Shèn being clam-like entities of which pearls can induce nightmares, as well as extract and give memories. Cheng uses a collar made of these to give Moonie amnesia.
- Moral Myopia: Cheng lost his daughter, but doesn't care who he hurts to revive her.
- Not Quite Dead: Despite being led to believe that both her parents are dead, Jentry discovers after defeating Mr. Cheng that her mother survived, albeit after becoming amnesiac for a bit, and started a new life in Dallas.
- Ominous Obsidian Ooze: The moguai parasitizing Mr. Cheng is made of black ooze, enabling it to shapeshift. When Jentry bonds to it in Episode 11, it turns purple as it absorbs some of the divine qi she obtained from assimilating the Yellow Emperor's robe.
- Our Yaoguai Are Different: While the show is mostly set in Texas, the majority of the supernatural creatures Jentry encounters are yaoguai and gods from Chinese folklore and mythology—including a jiangshi, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, a huli jing, and a Painted Skin. Jentry's powers also derive from The Yellow Emperor, a godlike figure from Chinese mythology.
- Playing with Fire: The main way Jentry’s powers manifest is through pyrokinesis.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When Ed cites Edward Cullen as the source of his name, even briefly shapeshifting his head to drive it in, Jentry clearly has no idea who that is (since she was born in '08, she was born towards the end of Twilight-mania).
- Precision F-Strike: In episode 11, Michael says "badass," which isn't something you usually hear in a kids' show.
- Redemption Equals Death:
- After turning into a Stalker with a Crush and being the one to give Cheng the robes, Kit finds some redemption by sacrificing himself to give Jentry time to get her powers back, resulting in him getting killed by Cheng's blades.
- Upon his defeat, Cheng finally accepts his child's death and promises to go through the Diyu's trials to earn the right to go the Great Beyond and be with her there, dying soon after.
- Sadly Mythtaken: In Episode 10 a manticore is shown emerging from a portal opened to the Greek underworld when they're actually creatures from Persian mythology.
- Seeks Another's Resurrection: Cheng wants to revive his daughter Xiao Lan with Jentry's powers.
- Ship Tease: In Episode 13, Stella is established as being Ambiguously Bi when she accidentally touches hands with Tokki—Jentry's friend from Seoul—when they both reach for a screwdriver that Ed took when they weren't looking, both of them blushing.
- Shout-Out:
- Ed claims his name comes from Edward Cullen when he first reveals it. He later boasts that he's better than the character during his rap number in Episode 4.
- In episode 2, Jentry's notes in class include a doodle of Ed surfing, based off the card art for Surfing Pikachu.
- When she is surprised by the Vice Principal, Jentry's comical reactional seems to be based on the style of Mob Psycho 100.
- Ed's human disguise has him dressing similarly to Lenny Wosniak disguising as a teenager.
- Jentry and Kit jokingly suggest Neji and Sasuke as possible names for the frog they're dissecting in biology class.
- One of the ghosts living in Gugu and Jentry's house is an Australian named Wallabee.
- When talking about the Gui, Ed and Michael mention various examples of Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl in movies, like The Grudge, The Ring, and Scary Movie 3 (which parodies the second one).
- In "Moonie Phases", Michael plays "Move Move Mutiny" with a girl named Allison.
- Gugu gifts Jentry a locket that plays Teresa Teng's song "The Moon Represents My Heart". Later on, playing the song on a guzheng is also revealed to be a musical password for Gugu's armoire.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Vice-Principal Wheeler constantly tries to uncover evidence of the Demon Child and goes to extreme lengths to prove that Jentry is the culprit.
- Snake People: In a flashback it's revealed that Mr. Cheng's final Taoist mentor when he was still human was Bai Suzhen—the main character of the Chinese folktale The Legend of the White Snake—a serpent yaoguai with the upper body and head of a woman, pointed ears, and the lower body of a white-scaled snake.
- Spoiler Opening: The intro contains a lot of details that become significant the further you go into the series.
- Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Mr. Cheng is an undeniably vile and manipulative piece of work who has caused the Chau family no shortage of pain, but he's ultimately a grieving father driven to reunite with his daughter (despite being willing to disregard said daughter's wishes in the matter) and has a rather pitiful end where he promises to purify his soul in Diyu to earn his place in the afterlife with his child. The Mogui empowering him is just a power-hungry sadist that wants to play god and an utterly soulless creature whose death is unmourned by the heroes.
- Third Eye: Those who use the power of the Yellow Emperor's robes have a third eye open on their forehead, signifying that they possess godlike power.
- Tombstone Teeth: Mr. Cheng has a monstrously large mouth with block-shaped teeth below the mask that serves as his face, though he usually hides it within his robes. The mouth actually belongs to the Moguai that possessed him, though after it bonds to Moonie its teeth transfom into fangs.
- The Unmasqued World: The entire town is made privy to the supernatural in general and Jentry's powers over the course of the first season, with the events of "A Night with the Stars" causing demons to run amok in town, as well as Jentry saving them. Subsequently, Jentry will even use her powers in public, portaling herself into Wheeler's office in "Good Intentions" to get to a meeting with him. Most people seem to act pretty normally about it.
- Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: Part of the premise—Jentry being a high-school student with divine powers who has to fight off beings from Chinese mythology who want to use those powers for nefarious ends.
- Was Once a Man:
- Ed the jiangshi was once human, but became an undead monster due to his body not receiving a proper funeral.
- Mr. Cheng was once a Taoist sorcerer who made a pact with a moguai in the hope of resurrecting his deceased daughter, only to be turned into a demon himself.
- Wham Episode:
- Episode 4, "Forget the Alamo", ends with the reveal that Kit is a supernatural creature himself.
- Episodes 7 and 8 reveal the origins of Jentry's powers. Her parents made a deal with Mr. Cheng to steal a mystical golden robe in Gugu's possession, but when Gugu found out, she drained the robe's powers and transferred them to a baby Jentry.
- Episode 10 ends with Jentry defeating Mr. Cheng once and for all, only for the mogui that possessed him to reveal that Jentry's mother is still alive.
- You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: When Gugu tries to kill Ed, he cites this trope, claiming that jiangshi like him are basically the cockroaches of the underworld in how hard they are to kill.
