YMMV / Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

• Adaptation Displacement: The original webcomic, which only lasted four months and thirty-two pages before a Dreamworks Animation executive discovered it and urged the creator to start developing it as a television series. It doesn't help that the website for the comic is no longer active.
• Adorkable: Kipo falls into this because of she's a socially awkward and all-around nice person who's prone to acting cute and geeky.
  • Benson is very endearingly awkward around Troy. He stumbles his words a lot, but he means well.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Did Emilia tell Song about how she killed her own brother simply to prove how far she was willing to go to accomplish her goals? Or was it because she genuinely wanted to get the secret off her chest after keeping it inside for so many years?
  • In "It’s a Trap", Dr. Emilia ignores Zane’s pleas for help even though he is trapped inside a cage. Was Dr. Emilia being genuinely dismissive of him to show how she doesn’t care about other people as much as she puts on, or did she actually plan on freeing Zane, but only after fighting off all the enemies in Timbercat territory?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Chèvre Sisters use cheese with magical properties to see the future. Divination through cheese-making is tyromancy, a technique practiced in the Middle Ages.
• Awesome Art: While the webcomic was already beautifully drawn in its own right, the art and animation teams behind the series takes Sechrist's artstyle even further to make the environments even more stunning.
• Base-Breaking Character: Dave. You either find him funny, or you find him obnoxious.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Kipo's hallucination in "Beyond the Valley of Dogs".
  • "Everything Is Crabs" has an opening narration from Kipo when no other episode does.
• Broken Base:
  • Season Three. Some people find the final season of Kipo just as great as the first two seasons by having higher stakes, great comedy, hard-hitting emotional moments, and a nearly perfect resolution to the series that stays true to its themes. Others criticize it for having less polished animation, underdeveloped plot lines, and a rushed pace.
  • The fact that the cause of the Great Mutant Outbreak is never revealed. Quite a few people wish there would have been more of a clear explanation as to why the world ended up the way it did, while others feel diving deeper into the history of the world would distract from the current narrative of the series.
  • Margot’s return in Season 3. Fans are split on whether or not she was utilized well. Some people are glad that Wolf did not forgive Margot because even if she regrets leaving Wolf to fend for herself, Wolf was not obligated to forgive someone who emotionally scarred her. People on this side of the argument say that it serves as a lesson that you don’t have to forgive everyone who has done bad things to you. Others felt that Margot’s return was not used to its full potential and doesn’t leave much of an impact in the grand scheme of things for Season 3. These people point out how Margot only properly shows up in two episodes, gets suddenly cured into a regular animal, and is not acknowledged again afterwards. They argue Margot was wasted and still had some room for development to redeem herself, which could assist in Wolf’s character arc too. A third group even argues that Margot should not be at fault in a scenario like this because she was a little girl doing what her parents told her to do, which means all the blame should not be placed on Margot.
  • There have been mixed reactions to Scarlemagne’s death in the final episode. While some people thought it was satisfying and fitting for Scarlemagne to die saving Kipo and accepting his old name, there are fans who thought that his death was a largely unnecessary example of dying just to show he redeemed himself, despite already doing enough to show he was a changed person. There are even a few people who thought the way he died was anticlimactic due to simply crashing into the ground when the flamingo mute he was riding on loses its balance. He also barely has any injuries to show he is badly hurt.
• Cargo Ship: Wolf and "Stalky", her deathstalker weapon.
• Catharsis Factor: After Dr. Emilia killed her brother for going against her beliefs, worked Hugo to exhaustion for his pheromones, enslaved Song as a Mega Mute using said pheromones, ordered Song to kill her own daughter, attempted to kill Kipo, attempted to kill her friends, cured various mutes into mindless animals, tried to leave Zane to die for talking against her, and tried to kill Kipo after she had saved her from losing her mind inside a Mega Mute, many fans expressed joy seeing Dr. Emilia end up in the clutches of Fun Gus never to be seen again. Most fans are just happy to see a villain get their comeuppance without redeeming themself even when given multiple chances to surrender.
• Common Knowledge: Many people thought that the vaccine Song and Lio were going to make for the cured mutes was an unresolved plot line because all the mutes are still shown as normal animals in the Distant Finale. However, it is important to remember that Kipo’s parents thought of making a vaccine, which would not undo the effects of the cure, but would instead be used on mutes to prevent them from being turned into normal animals in case they were hit by a cure dart.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Emilia is the finest and most steadfast proponent of Fantastic Racism in a series that otherwise emphasizes the importance of reaching out to people. Years ago, Emilia murdered her own brother Liam for reaching out to the surface-dwelling Mutes and used his death as an act of propaganda to further her eventual designs of Mute eradication. Emilia helped shape the misanthropic views of Scarlemagne with her cruel experiments on him when he was still Hugo, and used her former colleague Song as a brainwashed weapon for years on end after Song became a Mega Mute, kicking off the series by coldly ordering Song to murder her own child Kipo and devastate her people's burrow in the process. In the third season, Dr. Emilia invents a cure that forces a permanent Death of Personality on the uplifted Mutes, using it to devastating effect on several of Kipo's allies as well as the remaining members of Wolf's old Mute family. Emilia consistently rejects and suppresses every single attempt to better herself to the end of the series, attempting to kill human and Mute alike when the two sides reconcile and trying to kill Kipo after the latter saves Emilia from a Fate Worse than Death.
• Crossover Ship: Benson being shipped with Adam from The Hollow because both of them were open on being gay.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • Hugo's sad backstory and everything he had to go through before snapping and becoming Scarlemagne is really rough, especially when he ends up feeling left all alone and abandoned by the only people he'd ever considered family.
  • While Emilia is an inexcusably vile Mute-hating terrorist, her backstory of being a promising and well-meaning burrow student raised by a bigoted, paranoid father who was never proud of his children comes off as slightly pitiful. It's implied that she killed her brother in the first place because she was that afraid of disappointing him again. It isn't enough to excuse her actions today however, as Kipo soon learns.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Mod Frog Jamack is popular for his character development and eventual Heel–Face Turn throughout season 1. Quite a few fans were hoping for him to be an official member of Kipo's pack.
  • Kwat, Harris, and Mrs. Sartori are other Mod Frogs who also get a lot of attention in fan-art despite being minor antagonists. There are lot of fans who were sad to see them die.
  • Troy and, to a lesser extent, Asher and Dahlia are popular in the LGBT Fanbase with Troy having a lot of Ship Tease with Benson (the two boys later having a Relationship Upgrade) and Asher being confirmed non-binary.
  • Several mute groups tend to be Popular with Furries. Most notably the Timbercats, Newton Wolves, Ratland Rats and the Fitness Raccoons.
  • One Timbercat named Shoelace McCutty has some fans who love her for her derpy and adorable design.
  • Margot. She's a cute little wolf pup who seems to genuinely regret what she did to Wolf when they were younger. Too bad she was forced to betray her again lest she risk being devolved by Dr. Emilia. And what's worse, that's exactly what happens to her anyway.
• Fan Nickname: Dr. Emilia is often called a “Karen” by the fandom due to being a mute-hating sociopath who refuses to admit when she is wrong.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: More like the new them, but many fans have quickly latched onto Asher’s new hairstyle in Season 3. Most fanart featuring Asher even features them with short hair and the lighting-shaped curl as their default look despite having a different hairstyle for most of the series before the third season.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: In one plot, Kipo was raised on the surface by Scarlemagne rather than in a burrow with her father after the season one finale revealed these characters are Connected All Along. After Season 2 elaborated more on this tidbit, fics wherein Lio raises both of them were added to the mix.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, thanks to having very similar themes and style. It also helps that the series was ending just as Kipo premiered and that Kipo herself shares a VA with Glimmer.
  • With The Hollow after Season 2 has Adam revealing that he's gay in a similar way that Benson did.
• Fanfic Fuel: Finding a way to reverse the condition of the cured Mutes.
  • What was Margot’s life like after Wolf killed her mother? Considering how she lives with one of her brothers and mentions how she had been living a rough life ever since that night, that leaves a lot of room to explore what she has been through.
• Genius Bonus: Good Billions and Bad Billions are a nod to astronomer Carl Sagan, who (among his other accomplishments) is known for frequently saying the phrase "billions and billions" in his educational series Cosmos.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Timbercats acting as if Yumyan Hammerpaw will never come down from the trees and Kipo initially believing he's dead becomes this in the final season where he is the first to be cured onscreen, effectively killing him off. And he and the other Mutes that get cured aren't changed back either.
  • Around the end of "Code Word Milkshake", Camille congratulates Kipo for saving her from Emilia, fearing she would never get to play guitar again. Sadly, just a few episodes later, Camille would be one of many mutes hit by a cure dart and turned into an ordinary snake. Now she will never be able to play her guitar.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The scene in Season 1 where Kipo calms down and gets through to the Mega Monkey by singing a song becomes this with the reveal in Season 2 that the Mega Monkey is actually her mother, Song, having transformed as a result of side effects from her pregnancy, meaning that she probably recognized the song, and possibly realized that the person singing it was her daughter. The same goes for Kipo getting through to her again in the first episode of Season 2.
• I Am Not Shazam: The sapient mutated animals in this story are called Mutes. Despite the show's title, they are never referred to as "Wonderbeasts" until the final episode when Kipo gives a Title Drop.
• Inferred Holocaust: "Requiem for a Dave" shows a flashback set 200 years in the past where Dave has a fight with a nerdy man over a fan. When the man steals the fan from him, Dave actually leads a group of colossal Mega Beavers into the city so he can get the fan back. The thing is, Dave tears down an entire city while people and mutes are still populated in it. Since the destroyed city eventually became known as Skyscraper Ridge, just how many people and mutes died while the Beavers’ reconstruction was going on?
• It Was His Sled: Benson being gay was supposed to be a surprise to the audience after a seemingly romantic trip between him and Kipo to Ratland but with The Reveal shared across social media due to how well received this was by the LBGT community, many viewers begun to watch this series thanks to Benson's homosexuality.
  • Kipo being a human-Mega Jaguar hybrid is no longer a secret to most people, especially since Netflix has shown her half-mute form and full Mega Jaguar form across promotional images for the show.
• Les Yay: Kipo and Wolf have some interactions like this and in "Mulholland", Wolf's dream seems to suggest that she wants to be more than just friends with Kipo.
• LGBT Fanbase: Many fans fell in love with this show, particularly of how they handled Benson explaining to Kipo how he's gay by being completely open about it.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Emilia crossed it when she murdered her brother after their first trip to the surface led him to befriending Brad and Amy and he wanted to convince the people in their burrow to coexist with Mutes. Song invokes this trope by relaying the first story to Kipo as proof Emilia is beyond saving. Kipo tries anyway, and Emilia predictably attempts to kill Kipo in response to confirm she's never, ever going to change for the better.
• Mis-blamed: Many fans like to accuse either Netflix or Dreamworks of purposely cancelling the show, which admittedly is supported by the fact that the show had very little promotion from either company. In actuality, the show was always intended to end with three seasons, something that the showrunners even had to confirm multiple times.
• Narm: One episode ends with Kipo inviting the villains to "P.R.A.H.M.," with the show not explaining what that means until the following episode, but the scene is still played completely seriously like we're supposed to understand it. Plus, unless you have the subtitles on it just sounds like she's talking about a prom.
• Paranoia Fuel: As of Season 2, Tad Mulholland, the Lotus Eater Hive Mind has apparently inflitrated the entire water system of the local area and possibly entered the greater water cycle. This, combined with water bears' famous ability to survive extreme temperature, radiation, and even space means that the only Tad-free water is that which was bottled before he left his old home, and that there's pretty much no way to remove him from the water once he's in it. Good thing he's nice now!
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Season 1 Dave, being a Jerkass and rather useless, annoyed some fans. The writers seemed to realize that and dialed down those traits in future seasons.
• Self-Fanservice: When Jamack is drawn as a human in fanart, he tends to be designed as a very attractive man with a slick pencil mustache, well groomed hair, and a slender body.
  • The K-Pop Narwhals are also turned into a group of Pretty Boys when they are drawn as people. People especially don’t mind making Hyun-Soo’s muscles even more detailed now that he is a human.
• Signature Scene: Benson revealing to Kipo that he's gay quickly made its way around social media, as most if not all LGBT representation in children's shows by that point in time never dropped any LGBT-related words or phrases.
  Benson: I'm gay.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Kipo/Asher. Asher is a pretty minor character who has barely even had any interactions with Kipo despite being one of her friends, yet many people ship them together anyways.
• Special Effect Failure: The Unmoving Plaid on the Timbercats' shirts can be very distracting.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The post-apocalyptic world filled with mutated wildlife, exotic technology (or rather improvised versions), and civilizations formed by sapient animals made it an adaptation of Kamandi and Gamma World.
  • Set two hundred years after the apocalypse with the surface dominated by mutants and most of humanity being forced to live in secret underground settlements, it's like they made a family friendly Animated Adaptation of Fallout.
    • Or possibly Endtown.
  • A world forever changed by a mass event that unleashed massive mutated animals. A protagonist with shapeshifting abilities and are a factor for the cure. Sounds a lot like Generator Rex.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: In “Mute-Eat-Mute World”, the background music accompanying the Humming Bombers sounds very similar to an instrumental version of the song “Danger Zone”.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Troy was never given any characterization beyond just being a love interest for Benson. Likewise, not much is known about Asher and Dahlia other than that they're Kipo's friends and classmates from the burrow. Even after these three made their debuts, they rarely appeared as focus remained primarily on Kipo's group.
  • Emilia and Liam's Father is a very intimidating character. After all, he's the reason why Emilia turned so evil. However, not only does he appear in only two scenes but also, he's never even mentioned again in present day by his daughter. Leaving his fate and current relationship with Emilia ambiguous. And what the heck happened to his wife? Although his old age makes it very unlikely he would've still been alive during Kipo's time. Also, given his lack of experience on the surface, it's also unlikely he would've been an actual threat towards Kipo and her friends.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite reintroducing Wolf's old sister and setting up a redemption arc for her, Margot gets unceremoniously "cured" in the very next episode and is never mentioned by Wolf or anyone else again. Even moreso since Wolf killed their own mother and this is never addressed. Sechrist has said he hopes to make more supplementary material for the show, including a deeper exploration of Wolf confronting her past.
  • Some people think Lio should have had a role in the episode Margot was reintroduced in, particularly in the subplot where Hugo tries to get along with the other mutes, considering Lio is Hugo's adopted dad.
  • The Mod frogs don't appear except as random stragglers in the background in season 3 and we never learn of what happened after their leader died. They don't even join HMUFA unlike every other major mute pack from season 1.
    • Additionally we don't see Jamack's reaction to his ex-leader's and ex-teammates' deaths or if he was bothered at all.
  • We don't get to see Scarlemagne's reaction to the cured Yumyan Hammerpaw.
  • Despite all the pain Emilia caused her, Song Oak never gets a proper confrontation and is mostly sent to the sidelines after being made human again. What makes this frustrating is that she has every reason to want payback, given Emilia tortured her adopted son, enslaved her as a Mega-Mute for 13 years, and tried to murder her daughter. The final Behemoth Battle could've easily been between Emilia and Song, but instead she literally gets tossed aside when she tries to help Kipo.
  • Asher and Dahlia's parents got very little to do after realising they were wrong about Mutes. At the very least, we could've gotten a scene at P.R.A.H.M where they thanked the Timbercats for taking their kids in for all those months. At least they saved Molly Yarnchopper in return for her saving their kids.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Wolf is confused for a boy by many a viewer. It doesn't help that her androgynous young appearance and voice don't really give any indication.
  • Most people don’t consider Shoelace McCutty to be a girl due to her lack of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
• Watched It for the Representation: The show included not just a racially diverse cast, but a black gay character (Benson) who actually referred to himself as "gay," a rarity in children's television. This got the show a sizable LGBT Fanbase who used Benson as a major selling point to animation fans.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While generally a light-hearted show, it also includes surprisingly dark elements like a cure that permanently strips Mutes of their intelligence and a villain who unleashed the aforementioned cure on children and even murdered her own brother.
• The Woobie:
  • Wolf is a Stoic Woobie with a dash of Jerkass Woobie. She was raised by a pack of Mute wolves to serve as a final hunting test for their pups, and had to spend the next five years fending for herself all alone.
  • The humans forced into Scarlemagne's control by his pheromones doing exhausting act and capturing more humans for Scarlemagne while being completely aware they can't control their bodies.
  • The Mega Monkey for not only having her free will taken away by Scarlemagne’s pheromones but also being a human stuck in the form of a Mega Mutant (namely, Song Oak) and being separated from her family (Kipo and Lio) for years.
  • The Ratland attendants Amy and Brad become this after Scarlemagne and his army destroy the Ratland amusement park, with them only escaping with their van. Later, Brad was one of the Mutes who got hit with the "cure." Amy is reduced to tears, and she brings him to Prahm to show the humans what they did to him.
  • All the Mutes who get turned back into normal animals by Dr. Emilia in Season 3, but ESPECIALLY Bad Billions, whose final words while he's still sentient compare the fading of his intellect to a dying star.

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