Don't sleep-o on Kipo
Five years later, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is just as good as it ever was.
by Rollin Bishop
In the wake of KPop Demon Hunters massive success on Netflix, I've been thinking a lot about Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. Overall budgets notwithstanding — KPop Demon Hunters being a movie and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts being a show — the two share some core DNA, and I hope more people follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to Kipo after the movie's fame.
I could speculate about why Kipo didn't take off until I'm blue in the face, but given that I'm not exactly privy to Netflix or DreamWorks' internal machinations, I'll largely stick to the facts here. The show, animated by Studio Mir of Legend of Korra and Voltron: Legendary Defender fame, follows young Kipo as she attempts to find her father in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by mutated creatures, talking and otherwise.
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, here's a kick in the teeth: the first season (out of three total) of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts released in January 2020… right at the start of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the release of the first season, the second season released in June 2020, while the third and final season released in October 2020. Netflix burned through all three seasons of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts in less than a year.
Again, some facts: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts was created by Rad Sechrist. Sechrist is Maggie Kang's husband. Kang directed (with Chris Appelhans) KPop Demon Hunters. The main character of KPop Demon Hunters, Rumi, is based on a design created for an earlier Sechrist project called Plastic Walrus. Sechrist also worked on KPop Demon Hunters — notably, designing the blue demon tiger Derpy. According to Sechrist, the design of Derpy is based on Korean folk art as well as their family cat. The family cat's name? Yumyan, after Yumyan Hammerpaw, a character from Kipo.
That's not even touching on the stellar voice cast in Kipo like Karen Fukuhara, Sterling K. Brown, Dan Stevens, and more. The aforementioned Yumyan is even voiced by Steve Blum; that's right, it's Spike Spiegel. Or the incredible music! Daniel Rojas (who also did work on KPop Demon Hunters) composed the soundtrack, and it rules. As just a taste, here's GZA and John Hodgman (yes, you read that correctly) rapping about the creation of the universe as it's understood by mutated wolves:
Unlike some other Netflix animated efforts that have come, gone, and ended up nowhere to be found either physically or digitally, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts does have the benefit of remaining (currently) available to stream via Netflix. There's even a DVD collection with all 30 episodes. If any of the above made you go, "huh, neat," it's easy enough to track down and watch for yourself.
"I love the idea of doing like a Wolf movie," Sechrist told me back in 2020 when I asked what he'd like to do should the stars align again after the conclusion of Kipo Season 3. "I love the idea of doing like a [story where] Benson and Troy go search for an Oz the Originator LP they never found… there's so many things you could do. It'd be fun to explore. Or even just a straight Kipo and the gang film, or there's…. it's kind of endless this stuff me and Bill [Wolkoff, executive producer,] thought about. Like you could do how Yumyan Hammerpaw became the Axe Lord of the Timbercats."
Five years later, I still believe in Kipo. Maybe you should too. It doesn't seem like Netflix did at the time, but knowing what it (hopefully) does now in a post-KPop Demon Hunters world, perhaps it could capitalize on this connection between its most popular film and a show it chewed through in 10 months. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
/out of frame
🍀 Rollin: I've been absolutely burning through the Black Clover manga. I wrapped up the entire Dragon Ball series last month and needed something shonen-y to chew on, and, well, there it was.
✈️ Kambole: Not just out of frame, I'm out of the country! I'm afraid I have not watched any new animation and news for me has been scarce since last Friday, but I have seen several herds of elephant and buffalo. VFX counts as animation though, so I'll say that the Void effect for my in-flight movie Thunderbolts was – like the rest of the film – pleasingly stripped back compared to the noise of most MCU nonsense
👹 Toussaint: I want to shine a spotlight on one of my favorite music videos: German animator Max Friedrich's 2012 video for Lorn's single "Weigh Me Down." Friedrich's 8-bit visuals and apocalyptic imagery are a perfect match for the song's dark, ambient industrial sound. I always imagine climbing the staircase in Ganon's Castle in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time whenever I listen to this track, and the horn section always brings to my mind the image of the robot trumpeter in 2003's The Second Renaissance heralding humanity's end. Cheery stuff.