User blog comment:Corbierr/The big reason why I prefer season 1/@comment-4741712-20140808042818

I actually agree with you that Season 1 is the best, but for a different reason. This reason will, I'm sure, cause another uproar among fans. My reason? Season 1 was the least dark season. Before you say anything, consider this: The show is about the mystery, but I honestly felt there wasn't really a mystery in the following two seasons. In season one, where the plot was designed to be more mysterious than dark, we have a student disappear under mysterious circumstances, and a new girl coming in to "take her place". We have this new girl run into an elderly women who warns her about the danger, but her investigations cause a stir between her and the best friend of the student who disappeared. There was a lot of mysterious things to uncover, and it was less about the danger and more about uncovering the truth. You may bring up immortality, the cup of Ankh, Alfie almost dying, etc., but that was NOT the main focus of the storyline. In Season 2, we have a plot that tried to be equally both mysterious and dark. This made the "mystery" aspect suffer. Sure, we need to find the mask, but let's face it: it never was about finding clues and figuring things out to find the mask. It's just having to do the tasks in tunnels. It felt more like a series of scripted game show challenges than uncovering and solving a mystery. In Season 3, where there was more focus on a dark storyline than a mystery, the mystery is just trying to figure out what the adults are trying to do and what "evil" will be awoken. Sure, there's Nina's "disappearence" thanks to Nathallia's departure from the show, but that was wrapped up with no mystery there in the third episode! By the time the ceremony was unveiled and the need for the true Harriet Denby to do the ceremony to stop the great evil is revealed, it becomes nothing more than a fantasy show. Sure, from that point on to Frobisher finally waking up evil, it felt a little familar to Season 2, but after that, it became nothing more than the need to defeat the ensuing evil to save the world. There's no mystery there; if uncovering facts about Ammut is a mystery, it's a week mystery at best.

Furthermore, what starts the plot off is different depending on how the season starts. Season 1 begins with Joy disappearing and Nina running into Sarah, and eventually it turns out the resulting plots are interconnected. Season 2 starts off when Nina, after restoring the cup last season, needs to protect it per Sarah's request, but in doing so, Nina inadvertantly unleashes an evil spirit who wants her to find the Mask of Anubis. In Season 3, Amber just happens to stumble across a bracelet while Eddie as the Osirian joins forces with KT to stop her "great evil", which later turns out to be interconnected. The bracelet sounds mysterious, sure, but that only is important for the first half of the season while the evil is seen throughout it.

And finally, the need for the plot to become darker also demonstrates your points about character development. Season 1 is pretty much true to the original (Het Huis Anubis), despite combining Rufus Malpeid and Zeno Terpstla into one evil character Rufus Zeno, which I'd argue made the plot better and more intriguing. Season 2 added characters and changed the storyline, making it not only eliminate a major overarching storyline throughout the entire Het Huis Anubis series, but also made the character developments suffer as a result. All for what: to make the plot more dark? Since when is that a requirement? I still don't know why Nickelodeon cleared the beyond deadly demise for Rufus Zeno for a show on their network rated TV-G. That's PG material at best. Finally, we have Season 3, which made the season so dark, that it made the character developments reverse. Victor became needlessly strict, Jerome thought that cheating on Mara was okay, and if that wasn't bad enough, let's just throw Willow into the mix and claim she was there for the past 3 years when we haven't seen her before. It's not like someone will notice! Really? Writers, since when did you need House of Anubis to become the next Harry Potter? You were approached to create an international version of a successful Dutch series on Nickelodeon which, in and of itself, didn't go nearly as dark as you made it in season 3. And this is even without even going into the Touchstone of Ra!!

So, in conclusion of this very long comment, I do like all the seasons of House of Anubis. However, Season 1 will probably remain my favorite simply because it got more things right than wrong! When things become more wrong, it is usually somehow attributed to the plot needlessly becoming darker when it doesn't have to. Season 1 may be nostalgic, too, but I also like the plot because it doesn't need to be dark for it to work, and the character developments and everything else shine because of that!!