Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

Kipo Oak, a thirteen-year-old girl, is searching for her father after being forced to flee from her underground city. To do so, she travels through an overgrown post-apocalyptic urban wasteland called "Las Vistas", ruled by sentient mutant animals ("mutes"), together with her new friends Wolf, Mandu, Benson and Dave.[3] Sechrist compared the series to The Wizard of Oz, "but instead of ruby slippers [Kipo] has Converse on".[4]

In the first season, Kipo is separated from her father Lio after their burrow is attacked by a monkey "mega mute". Traversing through the apocalyptic surface world of Las Vistas, she meets and befriends Wolf, a cold and hardened girl who has been surviving on her own after her adoptive wolf family turned on her, the upbeat Benson and his insect companion Dave, and the pig Mandu. Together, they set out to find the burrow Lio and the rest of Kipo's community fled to after their first one was destroyed. As the five travel along they make many mute allies and enemies, including the despot Scarlemagne, who rules over all the mute factions with an iron fist and intends to create a human army with his mind-controlling pheromones. Kipo also starts to experience strange physical mutations that give her mute-like abilities, which she uses to help her friends and herself against the various hostile mutes they encounter.

In the second season, Kipo seeks to rescue her people after they are captured by Scarlemagne, and also discover the origin of her mute powers. Kipo learns she was experimented with mute DNA by her parents before her birth, turning her into a half-human, half-jaguar hybrid. She also learns about Scarlemagne's tragic past and his ties to her family, and that her mother Song, previously thought to be deceased, is actually the mega monkey who destroyed her burrow, mutated as a side effect from her pregnancy with Kipo and mind-controlled by the manipulative Dr. Emilia. Kipo starts to lose control of her abilities, putting her at risk of transforming into a mega jaguar permanently, but she is able to regain control with help from her friends and family. She defeats Scarlemagne and frees Song from her mind-control, but meanwhile Dr. Emilia has managed to turn most of Kipo's people over to her side and plans to reverse all mutes back into normal animals so human civilization can rise again.

The series was announced at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2019. It is based on Sechrist's 2015 webcomic Kipo.[5][6]

The series has five writers in addition to showrunner Radford Sechrist and executive producer Bill Wolkoff. They worked in two teams, each comprising a director and three board artists. The animation is made by Studio Mir in South Korea using traditional animation methods. About sixty people worked on the series at DreamWorks, and about fifty-five at Studio Mir.[7]

The soundtrack to the series, including several original songs, was composed by Daniel Rojas. It draws on an eclectic mix of musical styles, from folk to classical music and hip-hop.[8] The first soundtrack album, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Season 1 Mixtape, was released in January 2020 by Back Lot Music.[9]

At io9, Beth Elderkin described Kipo as a "must-watch", writing that it joined the likes of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe as a series with a broad appeal to many age groups, and highlighting its music and art design.[3] At Collider, Dave Trumbore noted Kipo's similarity to other recent female-led animated portal fantasy series such as Amphibia and The Owl House, and described it as a "classic in the making" that drew on cultural touchstones such as Fallout, The Warriors, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Planet of the Apes and Alice in Wonderland.[10]

Writing for Polygon, Petrana Radulovic appreciated that beneath a standard fantasy exploration quest, the series is a "vibrant mosaic, with a unique world, multidimensional character relationships, and a deeper underlying plot" about the tensions between mutes and humans.[11] She also noted that Benson was the first character to have an explicit coming out as gay in an all-ages animation series, and that the understated manner of the scene, in episode 6, made it all the more noteworthy.[12] Charles Pulliam-Moore at io9 likewise wrote that the series's "casual queerness is fantastic" because Benson's orientation is not treated as a plot point to complicate Kipo's feelings for him, but, "with a distinct matter-of-factness", as just one aspect of his character.[13]

• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts on Netflix
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts on IMDb