Series Thoughts: Kulipari: Dream Walker (Full series)

• Released: 20 November 2018
• Creator: Trevor Pryce
• Total amount of seasons: 1
• Seasons watched: 1
• Rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis

Darel and the younger generation must stand up to dark forces once more as a certain "Dream Walker" gets kidnapped and held against his will by the evil Darkan.

My Thoughts

I gave a pretty neutral review with a positive edge of series one. Did season 2 improve? Why, yes. In some areas, some things I actually enjoyed less here. It all kind of depends on what your tastes are.

Story-wise, I liked this one a lot more than season 1. Season 1 has a decently-executed story, but it did really come down to just a generic good vs evil battle. That is still present to some extent over here, but I definitely liked the more unique approach of a rescue mission rather than an all-out war more here. 

I also quite liked some of the characters more. Old favorites return (Darel, Jir, Killara, etc.), but we also have some new ones. Darel's siblings have now grown into adult Kulipari of themselves as well, and it also turns out Marmoo had an offspring named Stinger whom Darel took in. Stinger is just...my favorite Kulipari character. I just love this guy and I wish we could see what his fate was in any future media. He ended up with the scorpions in the end, being away from anyone he ever knew. Not a very bright ending.

The animation is also just vastly better than in season 1. While season 1 looked great in stills (pleasing character designs, colors, backgrounds, locations, etc.), the animation ultimately brought it down due to how stilted it was. That's no longer the case in season 2! All of the characters move much more fluidly. 

That said, one gripe I do have with the animation is the inconsistency in some of the designs. Though An Army of Frogs looked worse movement-wise, Dream Walker really has a lot more inconsistencies going on. Stuff like eyelashes, scars, blind eyes, etc. all swap from left to right quite often, which is distracting on some characters like Jir, whose blind eye is a prominent feature of his character design. 

Also, I do have some gripes with this series still. First of all, I don't like the Dream Walker character that much (sorry, I forgot his name). I just didn't find him all that compelling, especially since he's our main goal of this series. Darkan also just feels like a worse version of Marmoo. 

Finally, though I can't really count this against the series, there's this vagueness about what happened to Quoba after losing her poison. She apparently "walks a different path" and hints are given, but it's never outright addressed what happend to her. Which of course could be referenced in future materials, but so far nothing new has been released after Dream Walker. We do also end on a big cliffhanger ending. Oh dear.

So while I do have my gripes with this season, I do consider it an overall improvement over season 1. If you couldn't get into season 1, I wouldn't say the improvement is vast enough to suddenly make you like it, but it definitely improved on quite a few areas! If you like your martial art frogs, I definitely recommend you check this one out!