Back in early 2010, Axe Cop was a webcomic that developed a strong cult following for its incredibly bizarre ideas and execution. It was the product of the Nicolle brothers, with 29 year old Ethan Nicolle drawing his five year old brothers’ characters and letting them live out all of their insane fantasies. I bring up Axe Cop because I’m getting that same general impression from the first trailer for Dreamworks’ upcoming animated series Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts.
The story follows Kipo, a 13 year old girl, who emerges from the underground city where she lives to explore the surface world. However, Kipo soon discovers that the surface world is populated by sentient animals, like skunks on motorcycles, knife wielding cats, and baboons dressed in fairly dapper suits. It all looks wacky and crazy, but a part of me is somewhat reserved by the series.
January is actually a fairly busy month so far as far as animation goes. The excellent Infinity Train has returned for a second limited series, The Owl House, which was my most anticipated show from NYCC, debuts on Friday, and then there’s Kipo premiering next week. The animation looks very nice, but something about the show just seems like weirdness for the sake of weirdness. The animal hybrids are all mutants, referred to as “Mutes,” but they seem to be a mixture of stuff that sounds cool in general, and stuff that seemed like it would have been cool back in 2010. I’ll gladly eat my words if the show turns out to be awesome, since Dreamworks has been knocking it out of the park with their original Netflix series, so here’s hoping.
