#but what about Kipo and SU huh

[arthdoesart]

Bonus:

(Posting my old IG artworks here)

[raeynbowboi]

My Thoughts on KIPO

This post serves two purposes: first to give my thoughts on the third and final season of KIPO, and second to also address the show as a whole. Be advised, because this is the final season and the story is now over, I will be getting into MASSIVE spoiler territory. THIS IS YOUR FINAL SPOILER WARNING.

The Good

I am so happy they kept Dr. Emilia unredeemable, and in a good way. With shows like Naruto or Steven Universe where the MC has a weird knack for befriending the worst monsters in the universe, Kipo helps subvert this by doing with Dr. Emilia what SU should have done with White Diamond. They made her an antagonist the talk no jutsu MC couldn’t just reason with, showing that even non-violence can only take you so far. I like that Kipo still tried to give Dr. Emilia a chance, and her ultimate fate is largely her own fault, not something done to her by Kipo.

I liked how for the most part, no two antagonists were won over the same way. Zayne was won over by a legitimate friendship with Label. Haugh was won over by seeing his daughter dance with the Korean pop band narwhals, Daugh was won over by meeting the Korean Narwhal leadsinger and seeing all of the prisoners in Dr. Emilia’s lab. Even Greta was won over by Wolf just asking her “what do YOU want?” and letting her do it. And the rest were won over through PRAHM.

The solution to curing Kipo’s mother was a stroke of brilliance. I didn’t see it coming until seconds before they did it, and I loved it. Getting to see Kipo and her mom hug was just so wholesome it melted my frozen tiny little black heart.

Speaking of Song and Leo, they remained relevant! Look at that. A young character hero’s journey story where her parents remain important supporting cast characters through the whole thing.

Between seasons 2 and 3, they confirmed that Asher was non-binary, and I liked that we saw that in their hairstyle change for this season. I appreciate that the cut didn’t seem overly masculine or feminine.

Dave... actually earned my respect. Kinda. At least, it explained why he’s such a self-centered asshole in season 1. He’s used to being the leader. So that gave me some new respect for him.

I LOVE that Hugo was forced to see the ruins of Aurum and the self-reflection he shares with Wolf is just icing. Speaking of Hugo, his redemption is handled really nicely. The trial and error, the old habits that are hard for him to break, Kipo easily keeping him in line, and his slow work toward being a better mandrill. He felt like he was growing a lot.

When Wolf is deciding what to do about Margot, Kipo aggressively supports her, waiting for Wolf to ask her for help, and then decreeing that only Wolf has a right to decide how she wants to handle this situation. You go Kipo. Getcha woke on. Speaking of Margot.

The Bad

Margot might as well have not shown up. We learn nothing new about her, nothing new about Wolf, and then she just gets cured by Emilia so there’s never really a resolution to this character tension. I get the reason why, I just praised it in the above section, but this was still poorly handled in my opinion. Their just isn’t enough story payoff to bother dragging this out of the backstory.

Dave created Skyscraper Ridge.... for a battery-powered hand-held fan? Which survived for 200 years of battles between humans and mutes. Over a hand-held fan? Dave and Benson met... by fighting over a hand-held fan? I’m sorry but what the fuck? If you wanted me to take this seriously, you should have made it about something important. Now, I will give this some credit: Maybe Dave has dementia and is misremembering the item he’s talking about. Cuz Benson doesn’t know what he’s talking about at first. So maybe he’s using a toy fan in the place of the actual thing they were fighting over. 

Speaking of Benson... You don’t make a backstory episode that raises more questions! Why is Benson the last of his kind? What happened to his parents? Did Dave kill them? Cuz if he did, that’s seriously fucked up that Benson’s best friend killed his parents.

Song just kinda stopped being important once she was human huh? She spoke dubstep to the bees and got the death ivy wall put up, and then said she was going to work on a vaccine to the Cure... and then never finished it. Five years later, and Yumyan and all the others are still Cured. I get why this is, it’s so that there’s lasting consequences, which YES. Good on Kipo for not wimping out and pulling its punches, gimme them lasting consequences baby! I feed off it. But again, this leaves Song kind of … irrelevant.

So Kipo turns into a Mega Jaguar and she runs on all-fours (well... sixes), Song has the anatomy of a Mega Monkey... but Dr. Emilia’s Walrus form... has arms and legs? Sorry, that just kind of breaks the immersion for me. Two megas follow a consistent world building mechanic: you adopt the features of your mega animal... and Dr. Emilia just... doesn’t. No sir, I don’t like that.

Kaiju battles are kind of lame. There I said it. Come get me, Internet. I’m not apologizing. I don’t care much for great big things beating up other great big things. Now with a show and world like that of Kipo, I fully expected there’d be a Kaiju battle at some point, and with Kipo being a mega jaguar, I get why they went this route, but even so, Kaiju battles just aren’t my cup of tea.

Why did Hugo have to die? It kind of smelled of Redemption Equals Death, a wholly loathsome trope. He went through the best arc of all the characters, so let’s axe him off in the end. Sure, we lost other characters we cared about. Yumyan, Collette, Brad, but this was deliberately a noble sacrifice, and one he didn’t really have to make. He could have just jumped out of the car before it ran into Dr. Emilia. I don’t approve of killing off Hugo. That was not the right way to end his story.

Who is Wolf wearing? It’s never explained to us who this wolf was to her. It’s just a wolf. But this wolf was a person. And now she’s wearing its skin.

The Meh

So Jamack is here. That’s pretty much it. He finished his character arc when he joined Puck’s minstrel show and now he’s all smiles and buddy buddy and there’s not much else to say about him. I’m glad he was part of the final battle against Dr. Emilia, but by season 3, Jamack is just another ally. There’s no more of that redemption arc, which makes it feel slightly flat. For what we got, his redemption arc was alright, but the vast majority of it happens off screen, so unlike Hugo, it just doesn’t have that satisfying crunch.

So, ever since Mullholland, I’ve been under the impression that Wolf likes Kipo. Then with Kipo at the PRAHM very verbally saying she wishes Wolf was there, I thought maybe they were a ship? In the end, they verbalize having a sister-like relationship, which I totally get. I’m fine with it. That’s why it’s in the Meh section, not the bad stuff. But if they wanted to hammer home the sisters angle, having a character at a dance wishing the other was there doesn’t exactly send sibling energy.

I kind of wish we got to see how the first burrows got formed following the appearance of mutes. That would have been a nice thing to learn.

Final Thoughts

This show is probably in my top 10 cartoons of all time. It’s funny, colorful, the music is amazing, the characters are great, the villains steal the show, and it’s a good story. Is racism solved a little easily? Maybe, but A. it’s a kid’s show, and B. it’s kind of the whole point of the show. Unlike say Star Vs where it was a show about a princess who doesn’t want to be queen ohandalsomonsteracismiguess, this show’s core focus was on prejudice and racism. That was the forefront topic of the show. So, I’d say it sends an important lesson. I’d even go so far as to say it may be this generation’s Avatar. Is it as good as Avatar: the Last Airbender? Mmm no. But it’s damn good. Even with it’s flaws. I’d probably rate it about an 8.5 out of 10. So about a B+. Which is still really good. Does it have a few problems? Yes. Most shows do. It’s not perfect. But at the end of the day, it’s still a good show, and it has a LOT of rewatch potential, which is good for any show.

[onceuponalegendbg]

Thoughts During Kipo 2x09 All That Glitters

Here we go.

Kipo gonna try to befriend Scar. But I’m uncertain how that will work. I mean, if it’s SU rules.... Part of me hopes it’s not SU rules. 

Good luck killing Kipo. She’s got stupid plot armor luck. 

Oh those flapjacks. 

“Maybe if you weren’t so quick to assume someone’s a lost cause we wouldn’t be here.” .....Tea. 

BENSON YOU MORON! 

“My daughter’s amazing.” Lol this whole thing is great. 

Huh. I think we’re going by SU rules. However this is very sweet. Too bad Amelia is going to ruin it all. 

Go Mandu. 

Ah, good. He’s still himself. I mean, I’m all for reformation but.... he’s not shown much remorse or anything. So this is about what I expected. 

“No one ever chooses me unless I make them.” ......Well dude...you’re kind of... extreme. 

[doomsdayink]

genuine question, coming from someone who has seen *checks notes* probably over 20 different posts about (insert cartoon)s villain, about what a breath of fresh air it is that it isn't redeeming everyone - where is this trend? where, except su, actually is it? one show is not a trend. i can count almost every cartoon i've ever watched as a quote-unquote counterpoint. gravity falls, adventure time, spop, tangled the series, otgw, etc. i feel like if its the default, you dont get to call it fresh.

"and i'm not saying this to dismiss kipo or anything else, far from it, i'm a huge believer in media plurality and different stories with different moralities co-existing. if every story were the same, that would indeed be boring and unnecessary. what i'm worried about is actually that, but in reverse - if we praise every villain actually being a villain as 'refreshing', which, again, is the default, as this groundbreaking thing, then i don't think that's good for media plurality either."

Hm. Never called it fresh. Maybe I wasn't articulate in my post? I guess, rereading it, it's kind of implied that way though, huh. Let me address it.

I liked that he remained bad technically, given his character and the type of series Kipo is. I classify Kipo as a Gotta-befriend-them-all where the majority of antagonists if not all are befriended, that is what the protagonist sets out to do, and their growing friendship hoard is brought up regularly. I love these kinds of series but I like to see the protag fail to win over a bad guy once or twice. Not because it's revolutionary, but because failing to win over somebody is the befriend-them-all-equivalent of a protag is the action series equivalent of losing a battle to a the big bad. A somber reminder of their limitations. Would I like to see Scharlemagne won over eventually? Yeah, actually, but not at that point. Zuko's choice in the end of season 2 upset a lot of fans, but the result was that his final turnaround was made 10x more powerful.

Now to reiterate, what I especially loved wasn't that the character remained evil, but that he remained evil out of naivety rather choice. I suppose Ice King is in the same vein as that and I love him too, though that was regularly played off as a gag. There is something uniquely sad and chilling about a character who is so warped that they genuinely mistake evil for reason (I'm thinking Thanos) not to be confused with morally grey positions like Robin Hood, but truly deluded evil itself. Now put that into a series where the protag befriends their enemies and technically she succeeds, they can be reasoned with. But she misread the signals. He is evil not just out of pain, though it does very much contribute, but because evil has become the only thing he knows anymore. That he thinks skipping out on mass murder for a the murder of his enemy was a fair trade. I just find that rather funny, and I'm glad they seem to be taking a baby steps approach with an explosive failure. I just hope now it distinguishes itself enough from frog dude's transition which I'm sure it will.

Probably not fresh, I'm quite spacy, but I had to say, I liked the aspect a lot.