Welcome to Multiversity Comics’ first installment of our review series for Netflix and DreamWorks Animation Television’s Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. If you’re not familiar with our TV reviews, we generally do our “Five Thoughts” format, because a thought is a nice and deliberately vaguely defined concept, so it gives everyone the flexibility to have fun with this. Because that’s what this is really about. Fun. We’re not slapping scores or grades on episodes—I’m writing about Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts because I like Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. But before we get to my five thoughts. . .
Some personal background
I’ve been enjoying a few of DreamWorks’s shows for Netflix. They caught my attention with Volton: Legendary Defender and I’ve really been digging She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (I swear, the show gets better with each new season). Oh, I’m also an animator that collects way too many “Art of ” books. . . or not enough. That depends on your perspective. I have enough that they have their own dedicated bookcase.
Some notes about “Kipo”
So from February 2 to May 15, 2015, there was a webcomic called “Kipo” by a story artist from DreamWorks Animation (the features division) called Radford Sechrist. The story abruptly halted thirty-two pages into the story. As Sechrist explained, “I have some exciting developments going on. You may actually be seeing Kipo as an animated series soon. I’ll make the official announcement later when the press release comes out.”
“Kipo” was officially abandoned August 6, 2015 when Sechrist posted on his blog, “I’ve stopped the comic, but I’m still working on Kipo,” and then went on to post some storyboards for a sequence that didn’t make it into the show—clearly, a lot changed in the development. Unfortunately, around 2018-ish, the “Kipo” comic was taken offline, so the only way to read it now is to dig through web archives.
OK, let’s jump into the five thoughts. . .
“Burrow Girl”
Written by Bill Wolkoff
Directed by Radford Sechrist
1. Now this is how you introduce a world
Kipo is a chatty character, and yet Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is very good at world building through visuals. When we first meet Kipo, she’s in a work jumpsuit. Then look at how excited she is when she finds all those clothes. Look at how much she feels like herself when she finds the right outfit. This doesn’t say much explicit about her life underground, but it implies a lot.
The surface world is dangerous, a world in ruin. . . but it sure doesn’t look like it. The design reflects Kipo’s own feelings of being outside and feeling free, so it looks, well, wonderful. And it’s design that tells story too. We don’t need the characters to talk a lot about what happened in this world, because they say one sentence and we immediately connect it with what we’ve learned from the visuals and we fill in the blanks. Even something as simple as the night sky hints at what’s happened—just look at how many shooting stars there are, debris constantly raining down on the Earth.
What’s great about that is that it’s getting us to actively engage in the story. We are not just passive viewers. . . Well, I mean, you could be, I don’t know, but it’s a show that rewards an engaged viewer. I find this far more watchable than shows that do a mythology dump in the first few minutes. You gotta make me care before you start giving me that stuff, otherwise I’m not going to absorb it.
2. Kipo
We’re nine minutes into “Burrow Girl” before Wolf comes into play. Before that, the story rests solely on Kipo’s shoulders. So what we’re getting is story filtered through a single character, and the show uses that to demonstrate a lot about Kipo. I mean, right from the beginning, it’s clear that she knows the surface world is dangerous, and that’s how she treats it. . . at first. Then she wanders into a music shop and starts playing a guitar, and there’s a moment when she pauses, and a smile spreads over her face. It’s like she’s realises no one is going to tell her to stop playing, and this is the conflicting aspect of the character. She loves her freedom.
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And then the show goes into exploring her reaction to this newfound freedom. In fact, Kipo loves her freedom so much, she’d rather be in danger and free than safe and confined. The caution of the first few minutes of the show goes completely out the window.
I also gotta say, I really enjoyed Karen Fukuhara’s vocal performance in this episode. No surprise there, though—I loved her work on She-Ra’s Glimmer too.
3. But, in case you forgot, the surface world is dangerous
I love how frequently Kipo comes close to dying after she meets Wolf. It really hits home how randomly lucky she’s been up to that point. It also means the show starts emphasizing the elements of the surface world that inform Wolf’s character. Again, environment is used to reinforce who these characters are.
Wolf has to be goal oriented, whereas Kipo simply reacts to what’s in front of her. We see that with the spot remover, where Wolf picks it up, clearly thinking ahead about whose territory they’ll soon be going into.
Also, it was nice of the show to let us know when all this crap is going to go down. Beware of October 2020 everybody.
4. “. . . A TALKING FROG!”
That wears a suit. And yet no one seems at all interested in how a frog has facial hair. More to the point, I kinda like the wordplay in referring to many of the creatures as “mutes” because they don’t speak, while simultaneously using this term as an abbreviation of “mutant.” This isn’t an element of the show that’s over-explained, it’s simply presented to the viewer and trusts us to get a sense of the hierarchy between the talking and the mutes.
Which brings me to Mandu. I love this design, especially the four eyes, which the show often uses to express dual concerns. One pair looks one way while the other pair looks another. It gets us to invest in the interior world of this mute. Just look at scenes were Kipo and Wolf are debating Mandu’s fate and one pair of eyes is looking is looking right at Kipo while the other pair stares down Wolf’s spear. Mandu may be a mute, but those eyes communicate a lot.
5. So, uh, a Kipo art book sure would be nice, huh?
Big surprise, the guy that likes art books wants an art book. DreamWorks and Studio Mir have done an amazing job on this series, and I would love to see it get the kind of presentation Dark Horse did for The Legend of Korra art books. I specifically mention Dark Horse because they’ve already got a great working relationship with DreamWorks on art books, they do some of the best art books out there, and they’re a comics publisher, so they’d be the best company for an art book exploring the transition from “Kipo” the webcomic to Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts animated TV series. It’d be nice to see all the original comic pages, the early storyboards that developed scenes taken straight from the comic, and how they evolved into the version we get in the show.
A radically different version of this sequence in the final show
Maybe it’s a little early to discuss this, after all, we’re only one season into the show, but it’s definitely something I’d like to see in the future. There’s already so much great material though. Just look at some of the stuff art director Angela Sung is posting on Twitter.
What did you think of this episode? Let me know in the comments and check back next Saturday for episode two.
