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I was a little underwhelmed by Scarlemagne after all the build-up. The big guy that everyone's afraid of is... some dipshit monkey with pretentions of nobility. Neat, I guess? I don't know, Victorian Chimp wasn't really what I was expecting when people are like, "Everyone, literally every single group, instantly fell in line and snapped to obedience the second this guy, this unholy terror of a person, showed up."
But apart from that, this show's pretty great. I want to second how much I appreciate not only the fact that Benson's gay, but that he just came right out and said it. No beating around the bush, no couching it in delicate language to avoid saying the words outright, no endless hinting that never goes anyway. Dude's just like, "I'm gay, that's a thing, thought you should know."
He's not a metaphor for gay, he's not a maybe-sorta-ambiguous gay, he's not "Surprise, it's the final episode where we don't have to care what the network thinks!" gay. He's just gay. And everyone's just cool with that. It's no big deal. He's just gay. Also, he's a gay male, which is pretty rare in media aimed at younger audiences.
10/10 Gold Star for Benson.
The dynamic between Kipo and Wolf is my favorite part of the show. Kipo somehow manages to be a highly educated Idiot Hero. She has very high INT but very low WIS, but she makes up for it with phenomenal CHA. She makes consistently bad decisions and it works out great because she is impossible to hate even for predators and adversaries. This girl has no business surviving post-apocalypse for five minutes, but she does because she could talk her way out of a titanium box by convincing the metal to bend.
Kipo is great and Wolf's dour, edgy Wolverine demeanor makes for a perfect foil. They have a bit of a Starfire and Raven dynamic, but with that relationship taking center stage of the show rather than being tucked into the corner to pop out on rare occasions when not reacting to the male Titans' nonsense. Kipo and Wolf's blossoming sisterly friendship is the show's main attraction.
10/10 Gold Star for Bechdel Test. And also 10/10 Gold Star for depicting platonic male/female, male/male, and female/female relationships in general.
There are a lot of shows that have ruined themselves trying to chase the Avatar: The Last Airbender audience without understanding why that show was really good. People remember Avatar for having a deep, epic plot and being this continuous story, but it wasn't. It truly, truly wasn't.
What Avatar had was a rich setting and premise, mixed with a very simple overarching plot. Bad guy's doing a bad; Aang needs to master his training and go make him not be doing that. It had some very important plot-centric episodes, typically for mid-season and season finale.
But what it had more of than anything else? Episodes where the characters just stumble into a thing and have some wacky shenanigans. These episodes built up the characters, fleshed out the world, laid down some lore, but were mostly just an opportunity to have a wacky adventure. Aang does Footloose in the Fire Nation, Sokka cheats at a Tunnel of Love, and the audience has a good time. Silly romps with 5% developing a plot point or two and 95% wacky romp.
Kipo actually does a pretty good job of chasing the Avatar legacy because it gets that. It, too, has a rich setting and premise mixed with a very simple overarching plot. "Get Kipo to her dad." That's it. That's the plot. That is the entire plot.
And each episode advances that plot a little bit. 5% getting Kipo to her dad, 95% wacky romp with this new animal tribe, building relationships between characters, and fleshing out the setting.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 21st 2020 at 3:20:36 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Or the Marvel Comics Mandrill
, but his pheromones work on women and men instead of only the former.
It's not a power, it's tech. We see that with the mega-mute that attacked the burrow; he has a collar that sprays some sort of gas in his face to make him attack.
Which, yes, is threatening. But it's not "One look at him and you INSTANTLY fall in line because he's just that scary" threatening. Scarlemagne was hyped as immediately intimidating, but his actual threat is a subtle menace, something that you need to discover the hard way in order to even know exists.
And it would require time and effort to put into place the kind of infrastructure that makes it so threatening, which also doesn't fit the whole "Immediately terrified everyone into submission the moment he arrived" thing. Scarlemagne's particular brand of villainy, while effective, is not reconcilable with the impression of the character we were given before he showed up.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 22nd 2020 at 12:32:18 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The gas is the same pheromone he uses to control the humans, which would count as a power.
But I get your point. Going by the initial reactions it seems like mostly stories exist about him, leading to his reputation. However with the reveal it seems like he more of a danger to humans than to Mutes. Having Mega Monkey at disposal would explain part of his threat, though it wasn't immediately connected back to him so that might be out. So my guess is that he did something major in the past to shift the power dynamic among Mutes in his favor.
Yeah, I'm more interested in Scarlemagne's implied history with Kipo's father than how threatening he actually is.
Latest blog update (November 5th, 2022).https://io9.gizmodo.com/exclusive-netflixs-excellent-kipo-and-the-age-of-wonde-1843028327
Season 2, which also has 10 episodes, comes out June 12.
Damn that's soon. With how nice the animation is, I figured we'd be in for a year+ long wait like with Hilda.
Here's the embedded trailer.
Looks like a lot's happening this season.
I started to piece together the Mega Monkey reveal when Lio was talking about how he lost Song and later found out how hard it was to control a Mega Mute form .
Latest blog update (November 5th, 2022).I finished Kipo in a few days and I really liked what we got. Some nitpicks I had were Benson and his love interest and how underdeveloped they were but I can think of reasons why that wasn't as strong. I really liked the way they took Kipo and the jaguar, I took to connecting it to episode 19 of Transformers Beast Wars Even if they didn't take that direction for Kipo. I want to categorize all the talking mutes so that I get their jokes more, especially since Tad got upgraded from a guest character to a minor recurring character.
Kubo from Kubo and the Two Strings and Kipo share something other than Asian heritage. They both have secret Monkey Mamas.
Season 2 Episode 1 thoughts:
Great starter, I'm glad that Benson's new crush wasn't something dropped when they picked up where they left off and that Troy reciprocates as well.
Unfortunately I did feel that this episode was pretty rushed since it had three plots to spend equal attention on, so Kipo's worries about trying to save her dad is very undercooked and it's left to the next episode to flesh that internal conflict out more.
It's very Kipo that she blithely brushes off Lio's super morally dubious case of experimenting on his own kid, but man that's quite the bombshell for a parent to drop.
Season 2 Episode 2 thoughts:
Had much better pacing than the last episode since it didn't have to juggle so much and the Chevre Sisterhood is one of those concepts that's silly and very clearly leaning into a literary tradition with the three witches but it works.
Kipo's making good progress on her training but I wonder how long she was meant to stay in a burrow as predicted by the Chevre sisters. Like, how far into the future can they see?
And I'm not going to get "FEDA, GOUDA, CHEVRE, FROMAGE" out of my head anytime soon
"I don't care if they don't care because I care!", one of Kipo's main principles in a nutshell and probably the most precise summation of every other encounter in the show.
Ended up binging the entire show, so I guess I should post my thoughts as a whole, this will be some long rambling.
I guess the first thing that should be addressed is Scarlemagne/Hugo given that he's essentially the main focus of the season for the latter half as they uncover his origin story and explore his idealogical rift with the Oak family. I think Lio made the wrong choice, but he's at least willing to do something about it with some pep talk from Kipo. He's definitely on the path for redemption, but whether everyone besides Lio and Kipo are going to extend their hand is another story. Which is understandable as his villainy has taken up so much of his life. Also I hope the music guys do a complete soundtrack or something because there are so many variants on his theme that can be picked out with season progression.
Speaking of Kipo, the show does a really great job of handling the All-Loving Hero trope with nuance and not descending into obnoxiousness. Some people like Fun Gus and Emilia refuse to even open up or try to compromise by being stuck in their ways, and that's what makes them a lost cause. OTOH, idk about Cappuccino's bigotry just kinda being shrugged around. Her Mega Jaguar arc was great, though seriously it's wack that the ethical implications of what Lio and Song did are just kinda there and not really discussed.
I like how in parallel to Kipo's anchor being destroyed, Benson's backpack and Wolf's stalky were also toast as a means of showing how they don't really need them to still be themselves and Kipo's friends. Out of the friend circle, Dave and Wolf definitely got the most attention, with the writers really having fun with what Dave's molting can do and Wolf really coming into her own and having a definitive moment of bonding with Kipo over the childhood aspect that didn't entirely suck. I have to admit, I teared up a little when Wolf really poured her heart out to Kipo in the final episode.
Yeah, nothing beats the Chevre Sisters in terms of new characters introduced. I just love how they handled the archetypical weird sisters by making them use cheese as their primary medium.
Mulholland ended up being apparently the most broken character this entire season because he's essentially completely nerfed the thing that made Scarlemagne and Emilia by proxy so threatening. I'm not sure if Emilia's goal to remove the mutagen would even work out with him given that he's a colony of tardigrades and goddamn near everywhere.
Jamack was back yayyy He's struck a nice balance between unrepentantly slimy and still listening to his slightly shrivelled conscience. And he found his new calling with the Theater Otters. Here's to hoping he comes back next season, still slimy and listening to that darn conscience.
Rounding out this lineup of characters I wanted to discuss is Emilia, it's a pretty logical conclusion that after a mute villain, the show would pivot towards a human villain. Despite that, it's kinda weird that Zane and Greta aren't as knowledgeable as her. There's gotta be some kind of backstory to be explored for the next season in those thirteen years after the destruction of the burrow and Emilia enslaving Song.
Some miscellaneous observations
The Karaoke machine is dated to 2088, which does give some plausibility within the setting for the advanced science.
So there's a falcon and komodo dragon mutagen that were potential candidates for Lio and Song's hybrids, wonder if that'll pan out in anything.
This season ended up having a similar ending in structure as the last one, which *shrug* isn't really that big, I thought it was just an interesting parallel.

I'm wondering if this would postpone any potential season 2 announcement.
Latest blog update (November 5th, 2022).