Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts

I understand that it was cut for time but it's so twisted that I wish that they were able to put it in.

It's probably why they chose to have her fall into Fun Gus in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if they created Fun Gus specifically for her to suffer that fate. Which might be why the only explicit two-parter episode was named after him; he was always meant to be more than a side-villain.

I'm fine with it being cut for time. Dr. Emilia falling into Fun Gus's clutches already conveys all the information you need to understand her terrible fate and, honestly, Nothing Is Scarier. Never truly knowing the full extent of the horror Dr. Emilia was made to suffer or how long she lasted is satisfying enough.

But this?

This absolutely needed to be in the final product. Holy shit, that is important information to convey. I was completely lost for why her Mega Mute side was so freaked out. For complete lack of information, I was forced to assume that it was either afraid of Dr. Emilia because she's so nasty or afraid of the Mega Jaguar that was attacking her. Cowering and sobbing in the midst of a violent altercation, one way or the other, looked like a fear response.

Either way, "overcome with guilt about what she did to her brother" is a very specific reason for the Mega Mute to be behaving in a very strange way that ultimately the show did not explain at all. This needed to be in the text, not on the creator's Twitter or buried in an interview somewhere.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 2nd 2020 at 7:21:13 AM

I actually thought that was canon.

One of the times I saw the Mega Mute in the mindscape it really looked like him to me.

Took it as internalized bigotry.

I took it as her Mega Mute side being afraid that Emilia would use the Cure on herself once the fight was over. Though the whole fight was weird in general since even though the show treats Kipo losing herself to the Mega Jaguar as a thing the one time we saw into Song's mind while she was the Mega Monkey we didn't see any sort of separation between her human and mute identities.

They used the water to represent it instead. The water dragging Emilia down.

Lots of things it could have been. If they were expecting us to just know that it's her guilt over her brother... well, then Dr. Emilia needed to be a very different character in order for the audience to make that logical leap.

Because here's the thing: it's hard to just assume that she's wracked with guilt over her brother because, in every scene Dr. Emilia is in from start to finish of the show, she never once demonstrates even the slightest bit of guilt or reservation about anything. In her every waking moment, she is an ultra-confident rendition of The Unfettered. She knows what she's about, she's gonna get it, and nothing is holding her back or giving her the slightest reason to doubt that everything she says and does is absolutely right.

We didn't even find out about her brother until Song, an unrelated third-party, dumped that information in our lap. Dr. Emilia never brings it up, not to Kipo or to her own team or even to herself. She doesn't even get a scene alone to show a crack in her resolve and suggest she has some doubts or reservations she's not sharing with the others. She does not show the audience that she cares about what she did at any point, ever. It does not weigh on her actions or influence her choices in the slightest. For Dr. Emilia, it was Tuesday - at least, that is what the writers convey through her characterization.

She is not the kind of character where you can see something like the sobbing Mega Mute and go, "Yeap, that is her firmly-established traumatic background and the devastating emotional impact it's been having on her throughout her appearances in this series." So if that's what the sobbing Mega Mute is supposed to be, the writers needed to explain that in the story proper.

This is also another reason why I think the Nothing Is Scarier of leaving Emilia with Fun Gus is a better conclusion than the longer version that explicitly quantifies her punishment via her dead brother. "Oh no, she's haunted by her dead brother forever" only works if we've been given reason to believe that she cares. And we never really have been. Even if the Mega Mute had been properly explained, it'd still feel like too little, too late.

Both the true nature of the sobbing Mega Mute and Fun Gus using her dead brother to torment her are ideas rooted in Dr. Emilia being a mysterious and complex character with a deep, dark secret that Song finally defined for us. But she isn't. She's "Bad Guy Does Bad Things". Understanding her has always taken a backseat to stopping her, and the crime of murdering her brother is ultimately window dressing on the more pressing issue of her genocidal bigotry.

So, yeah, I still prefer the more generic Nothing Is Scarier result of leaving her to Fun Gus's mercy and never knowing what became of her beyond that. Trying to convey at the literal last possible second that she suddenly feels guilty about her brother would just feel cheap in a way that isn't even necessary when all the scene is doing is punishing her for being wicked anyway.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 5th 2020 at 7:53:06 AM

Finished the last season. Enjoyed it, though I agree Hugo's death felt very unnecessary. And going "not even Emilia deserves such a fate worse than death" only to follow up with "here is a totally separate fate worse than death for Emilia" was an odd, dissonant choice to make.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DRMWRX/status/1325887988019195904

There's a question and answer tomorrow.

I think the writers felt like they had to do that for the sake of Kipo's performative hero-ness. Dr. Emilia deserved to get fucked, needed to get fucked, but they felt it would be bad for Kipo's character if she decided of her own volition to fuck Dr. Emilia.

It's something that used to happen a lot in 90's kids' media. The villain needs to die but they don't want to dirty the hero's hands killing them, so the hero tries to save the villain only for the villain to do something wicked at the last second, which accidentally thwarts the hero's attempt to save them and plunges the villain to their doom. Villain dies, but it's not the hero's fault and so the hero's moral goodness is spared from making a grisly choice.

It's an old cliche that Dr. Emilia played out to the letter.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 9th 2020 at 12:16:33 PM

Dr. Emilia had already undone herself though. Kipo's hands weren't exactly dirtied. But once you bring up the point of "fucked up endings ain't cool", her hands start feeling dirtied because she just goes "Welp, nothing I can do about Fun Gus".

Not without Mulholland at least.

Speaking of him....did he get cured during the final battle? I remember the wave of weird "tadpoles" during it, but I didn't think anything of that until Dave called one of those creatures "Tad" in the epilogue.

Pretty sure that was just a Mod Frog tadpole.

If Mulholland got cured more attention would been given to that, especially since he outlined how bad that would be for everyone before he put himself on the bus.

Overall Kipo wrapped up pretty good, but it felt like it introduced a few ideas that it didn't have time to flesh out, like Wolf's siblings and Benson's cult backstory (seriously that's kinda fucked up).

Also I don't want to sound mean, but Kipo made some extremely dumb decisions here. I get you don't wanna hurt people, kid but inviting a Mute hating fanatic who experimented on and tortured your mom and brother is not a good idea. Nor is it a good idea to try and lecture said fanatic about community after she's just tried to destroy said community.

I also wish they'd done a bit more with Mega Monkey Song, maybe give her mute powers like Kipo. Besides that final battle would've been more satisfying if she got to join in. I wanted to see Song rip Emilia a new one for all the shit she pulled.

TBF, Kipo was 12 years old when she made those choices and was established to be somewhat naive. We all make faulty judgment calls

The show got a GLAAD nomination (which is about recognizing LGBTQ content in media).

https://www.glaad.org/blog/glaad-announces-nominees-32nd-annual-glaad-media-awards

A logical choice, with the Benson/Troy romance; but I predict She-Ra will win, based on the plot-importance of gay relationships.

I'm gonna be honest, I think the reason I had issue with the finale is that Emilia just wasn't very intimidating as a villain, not because she isn't evil or incompetent, but because the show doesn't treat her as the Knight of Cerebus she should be. Emilia is supposed to be a menacing, truly dangerous threat but then Kipo and friends are simultaneously inviting her to a party, even though this woman mind-wiped several sentient beings and murdered her own brother. It honestly feels like the heroes treated Margot more as a threat than the actual villain.

Kipo also constantly tries to convince Emilia to change, even though it's painfully obvious that's not happening, which has devastating consequences and nearly gets her killed. I honestly would've loved Kipo to hit a Rage Breaking Point and come within hairs-length of killing this fanatic, only sparing her when she realizes she's losing herself to the beast.

Kipo already had her moment where she almost went Knight Templar long before she finally faced Emilia head-on and she snapped out of it as well during that timeframe. And honestly them trying to forgive Emilia to end the cycle of hatred hardly reduces how Emilia is framed as an actual threat and irredeemable bastard the whole season, even when Kipo shows some concern as she's taken by the Fungus no one makes a token effort to actually save her afterwards.

Been a while but I think my issue with Kipo is how it handled it's main conflict. For one, Scarlemagne compared to Emilia isn't an example of "sympathetic anti-Villain vs genuinely depraved one". Until Season 3, Scarlemagne was just as vicious and ruthless as Emilia and some of his crimes were actually worse. Like yes, Emilia's truly evil for killing her brother, mind-wiping and experimenting on dozens of Mutes and using Song, but is that really more heinous than Scarlemagne turning helpless people into brainwashed puppets, executing three frogs by boiling them alive in gold, trying to kill Lio out of spite when Kipo calls him out, and then trying to drown an entire arena with boiling gold when they won't submit to him?

Also it's weird that of all characters, Margot is the only one Kipo treats like a true monster. A little girl who was pressured into doing something terrible by her parents. I know her deed was very personal to Wolf but the fact that Kipo is more forgiving of truly heinous characters like Emilia and Scarlemagne is kind of ludicrous.

Speaking of forgiveness, Kipo's attempts to redeem Emilia just make things worse. Her inviting Emilia to a crowded party gives the Speciesist fanatic an attack opportunity and ultimately lead to both Emilia and Scarlemagne dying. Kipo doesn't even really defeat Emilia and she doesn't have to make any hard decisions, Emilia gets beaten by a pig after Kipo tried and failed to redeem her again. I feel it would've been far more satisfying if Kipo saved Emilia like shown...but immediately captured her with a big paw and made it clear that she's going to face justice before she can atone.

Oh hey, I watched and finished this show a few weeks ago. Man, shit's amazing. Just all around a great time. Also, I think it's really cool the team finished the whole thing before it even aired and actually stuck the landing and ended the story naturally and on their own terms. You can fill in the blanks here.

Emilia’s evil is no less insidious, as she radicalizes others to her cause while using her own actions as propaganda against her enemies to instill fear in them, not to mention she’s pretty clear she’d happily kill Kipo for the same reason.

Not to mention her own actions helped set in motion Scaelemagne as he was with the treatment she had him undergo as a child due to being just a lab rat in her eyes.

What Margot did was basically the same as what Emilia did, which is why I feel both should have been treated equally in that regards. Which is where my problem lies in how they were handled. Trying to save Emilia when she’s shown she can’t be reasoned with before that point.

I dunno if this is a hot take, but as far as irredeemable cartoon villains go Emilia is...pretty mild. Like you have Ozai trying to blowtorch an entire country, the Lich unleashing nuclear death on Ooo, Bill Cipher fucking up a town with his warped playtime, my problematic fave Canaletto ruining a family while planning universal annihilation, and Emilia... trying to turn a bunch of talking animals to regular ones. Oh and trying to kill Kipo and pals along the way. It doesn't help that Kipo seems unable to understand that she can't be reasoned with. She literally hears that Emilia killed her brother and still thinks it's OK to invite this woman to Prahm.

Like how are we supposed to treat the cured Mutes with gravitas if the main character isn't pissed at their loss?