- Released: 2 September 2016
- Creator: Trevor Pryce
- Total amount of seasons: 1
- Seasons watched: 1
- Rating: 3/5
Synopsis
A simple small-town frog named Darel must gather the mythical army of Kulipari frogs to fight the forces of darkness.
My Thoughts
This was a series I first watched a long, long time ago, I believe when it first came out and I only just had Netflix. Obviously it interested me, being animated and about anthropomorphic animals.
The story is a very simple one: it's a good vs evil story. We have the good forces (the frogs and other peoples such as the platipuses) vs the scorpions and spiders. At first this had me roll my eye a little, with me being a huge fan of anthropods and kind of tired of seeing them consistently portrayed as the bad guys. But the execution was well-done overall. A bit cliche, obviously, but I didn't dislike it as much as I initially thought I wood. It's your basic zero-to-hero story, but the execution is fine. Not groundbreaking, but definitely serviceable.
The characters are honestly very mixed. They mostly just fall into archetypes. They do develop, but that doesn't change the fact that they feel kind of stock-y. We have the young small-town boy who dreams of living up to his father's legacy and becoming a hero, the old mentor, the fat best friend, the big bombastic main villain, the more subtle secondary villain, so on and so forth. Not all of them are bad because of this, of course. Heck, I quite enjoyed Jir, Quoba, Jarrah and Killara, even though they're pretty standard characters. I just kind of wish they did more with them than just the pretty standard arcs. That said, I am glad they actually didn't off Jir like I expected them to. Old mentorly figures usually don't have a long run in war stories.
The same can be said for the visuals. While the character designs, settings and backgrounds all look very good, the animation is a bit on the stilted side. Which would maybe work for a more toned-down non-action-based show, but since this is a show literally all about war and fighting and such, the animation just doesn't really suit the story and could use a bit of improvement. I know it's improved a lot in season 2 (we'll get to that, don't worry), but I'd have loved to see a more visually appealing season 1.
The worldbuilding is probably my favorite in this show. I just love this mythical realm with light and dark magic inhabited by all kinda of anthropomorphic creatures. It has some really neat stuff in there.
For my final complaint: the sliding levels of anthropomorphism. I don't mind this too much and it's really more of a personal nitpick, but it feels a bit weird to see the sentient lizard Killara ride a non-sentient Komodo dragon as a mount. I don't know, something about it doesn't quite look right. I'd have understood if they used a completely different non-sentient species, but this just feels a bit off.
That said, despite my gripes with the show, I very much liked what I got. Yes, it's pretty standard fantasy stuff, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I liked Darel's journey of becoming a hero and living up to his father's legacy, I liked following him on his quest to find the remaining Kulipari, I liked finally seeing Marmoo defeated for good(?). I guess my main problem is that the series has more potential than what it ended up living up to.
Still, I do recommend you give at least season 1 a watch. Whether you should continue to season 2 (Dream Walker) I'm not quite sure, as I have my own set of gripes with said season. If you liked season 1, you probably will find enough to like in season 2 as well. Just be prepared to be left hanging on a cliffhanger that so far hasn't been followed up on.
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