Welcome back to Multiversity Comics’ Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts reviews. This week there’s a rainbow floor, a mutant mom, a collective of tardigrades hungry for brain energy, a mega-buff Kipo, and a bonus thought.
I know. Shocking, right?
“Mulholland”
Written by Taylor Chapulín Orcí
Directed by Chase Conley
1. Mandu’s dream
Let’s face it, of all the dreams in this episode, Mandu’s is the most story inert. That said, I love it. Maybe it’s from watching the custom DreamWorks Animation logo, with Mandu happily awakening to a packet of cheese puffs, over and over again. There’s a certain pleasure in seeing Mandu made happy by such a simple thing. Mandu’s dream is this simple concept cranked up to maximum. I may not like cheese puff–style snacks myself, but I can vicariously enjoy them through Mandu chowing down on the cactus-like cheese puff plants.
2. Benson and Dave’s dream
Rainbow pool party! Again, there’s not a lot going on here. It’s almost pure distraction for Benson and Dave, both characters that actively seek out distraction at the best of times.
But it’s not entirely distraction. Dave is a character that’s often limited by his body’s changes—it stops him doing what he wants to or needs to do. In the dream, he’s free to change whenever he wants, free in a way he can’t be in real life.
Plus I liked the reveal that Dave always knew it was a dream, he was just enjoying the ride.
3. Kipo’s dream
Easily the most grounded of the dreams. Like all the dreams, Kipo’s dream is a manifestation of something she wants, and what she wants is what she once had—a home and a family. Her dream was practically reality, except for the addition of her mother seemingly returning from the dead. In Kipo’s dream though, we see more than just what she wants; we also see wants that manifest as a result of anxieties. So Kipo has her mute arm from the previous episode in her dream, but her anxieties about it are put to rest by her mother sharing this quirk. The dream lets her embrace a part of herself she feared and made it part of her family, strengthening that sense of belonging.
And I think here we get a sense that Kipo understands more about what’s happening to her arm than she’s let on. After all, Mulholland can only draw from what’s already in Kipo’s mind, and Kipo’s understanding of her arm is that she’s apparently half Mute. Which makes sense. Kipo’s not stupid, she knows how to put two and two together, she would figure this out quickly, but I can also see why she wouldn’t consciously acknowledge it, why she’d bury it from herself. It is a truth she doesn’t want to face. Which means that all that stuff that comes bubbling up when Kipo’s mother tells her that she’s part Mute—about getting angrier, eating more, her fur setting off alarms, sensing danger, or people treating her differently—those aren’t new thoughts. Those are anxieties Kipo’s been having since the events of the previous episode.
4. Wolf’s dream
Speaking of truths a character doesn’t want to face, oh boy. . .
So Kipo had her anxieties bubble up in her dream, but Mulholland was able to manage it, to make it a part of the comfort and escapism of Kipo’s dream. Wolf’s dream, however, is precariously balanced on not acknowledging her anxieties. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Wolf has cemented herself as my favorite character, so it’s hardly surprising that Wolf’s dream ended up being my favorite of the episode. It combined the overblown ridiculousness of Mandu’s and Benson and Dave’s dreams, while combining the introspective elements of Kipo’s dream.
It was so much fun to see the ’roided out versions of Kipo and Wolf. The voice acting in this dream was fantastic too—so much excessive grizzliness and energy. And I think there’s something telling about how big Wolf is in her dream versus how small she is in real life.
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But there’s an extra element at play that made Wolf’s dream even more engaging to watch—Kipo doesn’t act like Kipo. There’s two sides of this, where Kipo is the version of Kipo that Wolf wishes she was, one that not only listens to Wolf’s instructions, but agrees with them wholeheartedly. She’s a version of Kipo that doesn’t challenge Wolf. And later this takes on a much more sinister quality, like a weird Body Snatchers moment where Kipo doesn’t care about the map, a thing that is so fundamentally core to who Kipo is and what she cares about.
The most interesting thing about Wolf’s dream is that Mulholland created a fantasy that was what Wolf wanted most, and part of that was being honest to Kipo. The problem with that was that it was fundamentally at odds with everything else Wolf wanted. Her dream world was broken from the start.
5. Tad Mulholland
Oh man, the animators went to town with this character. It was a pleasure just watching Mulholland move, the way he shifted and changed to express his ideas and feelings. Plus there’s something oddly innocent about a character that’s so sinister. To him, Kipo and company are just food. He’s never questioned the ethics of eating them or that what’s he’s doing may not be something they’d want. It’s a bit of duality that accentuated the oddness of the character in a way that allows him to be basically harmless by the end of the episode without destroying the threat that he was earlier in the episode.
6. Honesty and forgiveness
Again, the voice acting in this episode is so good. Sydney Mikayla sounds so wounded in the final scene. I loved the way Kipo was written in this scene too. Yeah, she comforts her friend and even forgives her, but underneath all of that she’s still angry. I like that they showed these two can co-exist, and how forgiveness is a choice—we don’t stop being angry and then forgive, sometimes we choose to forgive because it’s more important than our anger. That doesn’t mean the anger is gone.
What did you think of this episode? Let me know in the comments and check back next Saturday for episode eight.
