Christopher Willis's score is very evocative of the shorts from the Golden Age of Animation, particularly "Springtime", which gave him the opportunity to craft an entirely original piece that evoked the classical greats used in Fantasia.
The occasional songs the characters sing are just as great, especially "The Adorable Couple", "Top of the World" from "New Shoes", the Emmy-nominated "Jing-a-Ling-a-Ling" from the Christmas special, and "Carried Away". Every single score is available on Willis's SoundCloud.
While this incarnation of Mickey Mouse has won over plenty of fans, there are also some who find the more mean-spirited humor of certain episodes like Donald ditching Goofy and Mickey to be pampered by a millionaire that mistook him for a horse in "Bronco Busted" to be hard to stomach.
Mickey being the show's Cosmic Plaything (as episodes like "Panda-monium", "Sleepwalkin'", "Tapped Out", "Mickey Monkey", "Al Rojo Vivo", "Bottle Shocked", "A Flower for Minnie", "Coned!" and "Movie Time" can attest to). Most find it funny, but there are a few objecting to the portrayal of such an Everyman as Mickey being so unlucky (especially since Donald, who is Born Unlucky, appears luckier by comparison).
The redesigns are extremely divisive amongst fans, especially Mickey and Goofy's. Some fans don't mind them and adores how creative and expressive they are and finds them to be a great modernization of their classic designs, while others found them to be too ugly (Goofy's especially has been criticized for being extremely grotesque).
Fans either love the Denser and Wackier humor and Deranged Animation for how hilarious, creative and expressive it is or despise it for how grotesque and obnoxious it is at points and for clashing too hard with the typical image of the characters.
Character Rerailment: Like Epic Mickey prior. Mickey in the shorts is made to be closer to the more mischievous and adventurous portrayal he had in the 20s-40s shorts as opposed to the more vanilla portrayal that had defined him from the 50s and onwards.
Common Knowledge: The shorts have garnered an infamous reputation from detractors for being a Ren & Stimpy clone with Deranged Animation, gross-out humor, and the works. While the shorts do occasionally partake in gross-out humor and are undeniably Denser and Wackier than the Classic Disney Shorts, there is very little gross-out humor outside of brief gags, and the humor and animation, while much more exaggerated, are roughly on par with the aforementioned classic shorts for the most part (if anything, they are tamer in places).
The most extreme example is "Panda-monium": he wanted to take a photo of a cute panda cub, but the little panda annoyed him to no end, he underwent physical abuse (including both eyes getting black), the mother panda took him as her baby because his eyes were black and to top it off, while Mickey gets punished for just wanting to take a photo of the panda, the panda gets away with what he did and even takes a photo of Mickey.
Fandom Rivalry: There is a rivalry between fans of the Paul Rudish shorts and fans of Mickey Mouse Works, since they are both modern takes on the Classic Disney Shorts, but with vastly different approaches to their humor and style. Some adore the out-there wackiness of the Paul Rudish shorts and find the Mickey Mouse Works shorts play things too safe, while others prefer the more traditional but still modern style and humor of the Mickey Mouse Works shorts and decry the more grotesque humor of the Paul Rudish shorts.
Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans have excommunicated "Bronco Busted" because of Donald abandoning his friends out of greed. Fortunately, Negative Continuity is in play here, and Donald is back to being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in the next episode (And even ignoring Negative Continuity, it would be in-character for Donald to spontaneously lose his fortune by the next episode).
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The episode "No", for many fans, since it was the final time Alan Young voiced Scrooge before his death on May 20, 2016. Young had been voicing him since 1974, and was a fan-favorite.
Likewise Russi Taylor's singing in "Carried Away" has become this in light of her passing.
He Really Can Act: While Clancy Brown's acting has hardly been up for debate, his voice work for The Big Bad Wolf in "The Big Good Wolf" is nothing short of amazing. At times, he manages a PITCH PERFECT impression of his original VA Billy Bletcher, right down to his Evil Laugh! It's almost like Billy never left us!
Ho Yay: In "Third Wheel", Goofy initially interprets Mickey saying "Romance is on the menu" as being between the two of them. (Then he literally eats Mickey and Minnie.)
In "Wish Upon A Coin", Bashful appears to enjoy it and (true to his name) blushes when Mickey licks him.
In "New Shoes," after the trio switch bodies with each other, Goofy raves about how handsome Donald is.
In "Goofy's First Love", Mickey's makeover ends up making Goofy look like Minnie. While Donald says that Goofy looks ridiculous, Mickey says that he would date him (probably because he looks like Minnie).
In "Wish Upon a Coin", there's a scene where Minnie trips on a dwarf, so Mickey runs back to her while a highly dramatic sting plays and asks her "Wha happun?", which became a popular reaction video.
Some videos on YouTube took the ending to "Goofy's Grandma" and replaced the spider which Goofy's afraid of with something else that's related to spiders, equally scary or irrelevant to Mickey's claim.
On TikTok, the scene in "Locked in Love" where Mickey says "Saranghe" over and over again went viral. Several artists redrew the scene in their own style.
Just because this is a Denser and Wackier take on Mickey doesn't mean he can't still be cute. Along with his cute design, he's still an idealistic, kindhearted guy like always, but it's a bit easier to sympathize with him considering how much comic abuse he goes through in this series. Also, his romance with Minnie is always heartwarming to see.
Minnie is equally cute. She's sweet, innocent, and friendly as always, and her love for Mickey is incredibly wholesome.
Mickey's sentient scooter, which appears in episodes such as "Road Hogs," "Amore Motore," and "Croissant de Triomphe." It has a simple and adorable design, and it speaks in "beeps." Minnie's female scooter in "Amore Motore" is also adorable due to its Tertiary Sexual Characteristics and higher-pitched "beeps." It's not often that Sentient Vehicles are so huggable.
Many fans also don't seem to realize that the design of Goofy in this show is supposed to be based on his original "Dippy Dawg" design from 1932.
The Deranged Animation and Denser and Wackier humor has come off as being quite offputting to some fans, however many of the Classic Disney Shorts of the 1920s to 40s were also quite wacky and deranged at points, maybe not quite to the same extent as here, but they certainly were in comparison to most Mickey Mouse works from the 50s and onwards.
Some fans have had this reaction to the ending of "Third Wheel", not just because of the fact that it bears a resemblance to vore, but because of the implication that Mickey and Minnie are violently going at it in Goofy's stomach. And he appears to enjoy it.
Goofy's redesign turns him from being slightly slouchy and shabby to outright disgusting, with feet that smell like fish and a habit of picking at himself (including his navel) in public.
Zombie Goofy in "Ghoul Friend". He's dripping with slime, is surrounded by flies, and has the skin around his pelvis falling off.
"Canned" and "Eau De Minnie" have their fair share of gross-out moments. Mickey wanting to gag at a trash-covered Minnie in “Eau De Minnie" is certainly understandable.
The close-ups on Mickey's rash in "Couple Sweaters".
The bear eating Donald's cyst in "Flipperboobootosis".
Daisy snapping her gum in "Two Can't Play."
The (possible) implication that Pete died during the last leg of the race in "Three-Legged Race" and Mickey was dragging his corpse along for an unspecified amount of time. Also, old Mickey and Minnie look pretty grotesque.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A new Mickey Mouse cartoon series sounds like the perfect place to bring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit into Mickey's gang, especially considering the fact that Disney traded away a person to get the rights to Oswald from Universal. Sadly, Disney doesn't follow up on the opportunity. And then he actually does show up in "Canned" in the capacity of a background joke. According to character designer Tara Billinger, this is due to Executive Meddling, as Disney has forbidden Oswald from appearing in the shorts. This is most likely due to Oswald being Exiled from Continuity, as Disney tends to treat Oswald as his own independent entity and not as part of the Mickey Mouse and Friends brand.
Mickey's nephews Morty and Ferdie show up in "The Scariest Story Ever", with their last major animated appearance being in 1983's Mickey's Christmas Carol.
After a rather lengthy absence, Fifi the Peke, one of two love interests for Pluto (Dinah the Dachshund being the other) made her triumphant return in "You, Me and Fifi".
The Black CauldronShout-Out in "For Whom the Booth Tolls" took fans by surprise, given how much Disney's attempted to bury the film.
Win Back the Crowd: This cartoon series has fully revived interest in Mickey Mouse as more than just a mascot and is the first all-audiences project on this level since his last Walt-era shorts, The Prince and the Pauper in 1990, Runaway Brain in 1995 and the Epic Mickey games.
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