"My Wakfu Is Stronger Than Yours": On Jumping Through the Netflix Portal · 7:53pm Jul 27th, 2023
Question: What can you say about a high fantasy series when its heroes are a group literally called "The Brotherhood of the Tofu"?
Answer: 
We interrupt our usual Ep-By-Step series to bring you a sidequest! Do you accept the challenge?
Wakfu in a nutshell.
Blog Number 228: "Everybody Was Wakfu Fighting!" Edition
For those of you who are completely lost, a simple summary of how Wakfu came to be, and how it came to be here on my blog series:
First, there was a French entertainment company called Ankama, founded in 2001...
...who created an MMORPG-style video game called Dofus, first released in France in 2004...
...which spawned a sequel (Wakfu the game) that began development in 2006...
...which was planned to be accompanied by an anime-inspired TV show called Wakfu (Wakfu the show)...
...the first season of which was released 2008-2010...
...and then the second season of the same was released 2011-2012...
...while (whoops) the game Wakfu (Wakfu the game) itself wasn't officially released until 2012 (development hell, I guess?)...
...before an OVA was released two years later in 2014 (Wakfu the show)...
...at which point Netflix got ahold of the TV series for its streaming service...
...and a third season was released in 2017...
...and a fourth season's Kickstarter campaign began in 2020...
...scheduled for release this 2023...
...which is the year when I actually caught and watched any of it (Wakfu the show).
And that's ignoring the spin-offs and side stuff!
Phew! There! Wasn't so hard, was it?
So yes, I recently hopped onto the Wakfu bandwagon.
If that seems like a bit of an unwieldy intro, then good: that should give you some idea of how little hand-holding the show does when you first watch it. As far as I can tell, it was very much a "for the fans" thing that outsiders like me would have been woefully unable to grasp right away. Made even weirder by the fact that it was for the fans of a game that hadn't even been released yet.
So, if you have little to no idea what "Enutrof", "Sadida", "Eliatrope", or "Wakfu" mean, then sorry; you're gonna have to pick it up as you go along. (Eventually, I resorted to using subtitles just to catch the terms at all, which helped a bit).
That said, high fantasy tends to follow particular traditions, so it's not hard to play a few broad guessing games. Firstly, that our boy hero Yugo is a precious little bundle of power, even as a baby foundling.
True to fantasy form: As a baby, he's obligingly dropped off with a nice bounty-hunter-turned-mayor-and-restaurateur who becomes his "muggle" foster father (and, surprisingly and pleasantly for this type of story, doesn't die). This is presumably to protect him from the forces of darkness, which in this case took the form of the robot-looking powermonger who picked a fight with the old delivery boy - who turns out to be a dragon in human guise - en route. Feel your mind wobble a bit there? Read on.
Yugo is, in fact, an Eliatrope, a member of a powerful race tied to the ancient, mysterious dragons and fated to save the world from evil. His companions along the way are fantasy class specialists of one sort or another, complete with a self-superior archer elf, an overly boisterous knight, a crafty and cunning bounty hunter, and a princess with the powers of nature. Naturally, this is all going to start with trickles of worldbuilding and character lore, and end with the bad guy getting what's coming to him.
So far, so typical, right? Well...
I don't usually lay out the basic premise of a show like that as an excuse for analysis, largely because it's normally more interesting to just dive into the nitty-gritty and take it apart to see how it works. In this case, I make an exception because it outlines two sides of a very strange Kama - I mean, coin.
Without spoiling too much, what I like about the show is weirdly twofold: its comfort-food embrace of traditional fantasy tropes, and then its absolute glee in doing whatever random, odd, stupid, or crazy thing it wants with them.
Let's put it this way: halfway through the first season, the show calls a halt to the plot for the sole purpose of hosting a three-ep game of "Gobbowl". Oh, how to describe Gobbowl: it's like a cross between American football, the World Wrestling Federation, and the basketball game from Space Jam, as filtered through shonen anime logic and commentated on with as much ham and cheese as they can get away with. Filler or not, I strongly recommend you do not skip any of it.
Just look at the names of the fantasy class "races": Enutrof? "Fortune" backwards, as they tend to be obsessed with money. "Eniripsa", the healing class? Aspirine. It gets weirder with the Sadida, Sram, and Feca classes: Adidas, Mars, and Cafe, suggesting a bunch of gamers who made up names from whatever happened to be lying around their room. Tofu? A small canary-looking bird that wouldn't look out-of-place in Angry Birds.
They don't have demons in the world of Wakfu: they have "shushu", most of which are locked in cursed artefacts and watched by guardians (whom they snark at constantly). "Wakfu" is not, as I'd guessed, some obscure martial art, but their name for the divine energy flowing through the world. Even "Eliatrope", which at first I took as a riff on "heliotrope" and assumed they had something to do with the sun, is just "portal" backwards with modifications.
Not all of them are puns or plays on words, but Wakfu isn't shy about tossing something in for the heck of it, which is part-handicap (like I said, it took a while to get used to the jargon) and part-charm (because after a while, it really feels like its own unique thing).
And that's just the names. As the series progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that Yugo's legacy is a lot more bizarre and complicated than the average Chosen One's, to the point where - well-intentioned as he is - you start to wonder if he does more harm than good. It's crazy what piles up on his plate, and Season Three especially is absolutely brutal in confronting him with the consequences (let's just say one reason the third season emerges as the darkest in the series is because of how that factors into the plot).
Whereas Nox - the first major villain the heroes confront, and arguably the best - ends up being a lot more sympathetic than his undead robot-looking form would suggest (to the point that his defeat is more tragedy than triumph). I won't dare give away the details here, but let's just say one reason the first season has a strong second half is because we learn more and more about his past there.
And then there's Rushu, a major villain in Season Two who's kind of a jerkass for the sake of jerkassery. Let's just say one reason the second season is a change of pace is because the villains are a little less nuanced and a little more obviously evil.
I mean, look at the guy. He's not exactly subtle.
What? Not everything can be a subversion.
Moreover, the apparently stereotypical members of the main fantasy classes start showing subtler sides to their characters. My favourite in that regard is old Ruel the Enutrof, who's presented as a crabby, miserly jerk early on but turns out to have quite a colourful history and more than a little method behind the money madness (to say nothing of his fatherly care towards Yugo).
Although arguably the standout there is Sir Percedal of Sadlygrove. At first, and for a long time thereafter, he's presented as an idiot always looking for a scrap. Yet - without necessarily changing at the core - he gets put through the wringer and given more personal challenges further down the road, some of which tie into his budding romance with Evangelyne (ironically the most no-nonsense and cautious of the Brotherhood) and his shushu's actions (who, in turn, ends up less of a dumb thug than initially advertised).
Oh yeah, and there are some romances that emerge late-Season-One onwards. They're nice and dramatic enough, but I'm not the best person to judge; they were a case of "OK, neat enough, I guess we'll go with that" for me personally, even if they did lead to some strong individual moments.
If I seem too cagey, that's because I'm trying to avoid spoilers here. That's partly because it's hard to gauge how popular the show is (and therefore how much I can assume, something that was less of a problem with the Disney rigmaroles Gravity Falls, The Owl House, and Amphibia). And partly because the lore is crazy-convoluted: it's hard to describe to a non-initiate without either massively oversimplifying or revealing too many curveballs too fast.
Best I can do is give overall impressions for now:
Firstly, I watched the English dub, eventually with subtitles because I was having a hard time keeping pace with the terminology. Yeah, the dub's not great, but I found it charming enough. For instance, Ruel's old man voice started with me going "Oh no, that's seriously what we're going with?", though I got used to it and even liked it later on, to the point that his redubbed Season Three voice - despite being more professional and credible - ironically got the same reaction out of me: "Oh no, that's seriously what we're going with?"
To be fair, "That's seriously what we're going with?" is a valid question for chunks of the series.
OK, on to the seasons themselves...
The first half of Season One starts off with that handicap I mentioned: if you don't grasp what's going on, the show's not going to help you much. After a way-too-crammed opener (to be fair, on a rewatch the "crammed" feeling is partly because of the flurry of jargon: I had less of a problem with the pacing once I got over that hurdle, though it never disappeared entirely), it took a while for me to stick with the show and start seeing its better elements come to the fore, and it does show promise here and there.
Mostly I stuck with it for the trickle of characterization (Evangelyne and Princess Amalia get some nice-but-brief episodes detailing their professional and personal friendship, and this is when Ruel's secrets start coming to the fore). Helps it had a goofy, not-taking-everything-all-that-seriously vibe, most triumphantly expressed in the Gobbowl mini-arc.
The second half of Season One is where it kicks it up a notch, as the lore of the dragons and the Eliatropes comes to the fore, the story focuses on the plot rather than on random monsters of the week, Nox and his associates are fleshed out, and there are genuinely tense stakes come the finish. Depending on who you ask, this could count as the best run of the whole show.
The first half of Season Two has a hell of a punch, focusing more on the "shushu" side of things and tossing some cool new stuff at us (including a complicating factor in the form of a ruthless Rogue who repeatedly crosses paths with the heroes). The Shushu villain is flat as all hell, but still pretty fun as a credible threat, and it's a far bigger punch than the mostly aimless wandering at the beginning of Season One. I had a great time with this stretch.
Also, for some reason, this guy makes me think of Anubis.
The second half of Season Two suffers a lot from misplaced filler, though, which causes the pacing to stretch and lurch at the wrong time. While it's still fun, it feels like a bad time to self-indulge, and the quality demonstrably picks up in the last quarter as the big threat makes his move and we finally learn a bit more about Yugo's past.
Also, it's really hard to find a pic that doesn't spoil too much about Season Two.
The three OVAs feel in hindsight more like a prelude to Season Three than anything else, since not only do many of its characters return or tie in to Season Three, but it marks the point where the show stops goofing around and starts wailing on its heroes hard.
(Believe it or not, in spite of his looks, this isn't "Nox v.2.0").
The ending kinda shocked me for how deconstructive it was, painting Yugo less as an ultimate saviour and really hammering home that he doesn't actually know what he's doing at any given moment. It's overplayed a bit, especially a particular moment that ends up changing another character's alignment, but I have to give the show credit for refusing to pull its punches.
Unfortunately, Wakfu very much is a show that relies on goofiness as well as grand-scope mythology, and for me personally? Season Three felt like a step back in some areas.
Instead of epic-scale worldbuilding, it's mostly confined to one (very big) building which is mostly just a boss rush. Never completely innocent, Wakfu in its third season seems to lean a bit too much on immature "mature" comedy instead of general silliness (I think you can get some idea of why I found it distasteful when I mention that one enemy compulsively collects the underwear of his foes), which sits incredibly awkwardly with the much, much more sombre and brutal storyline. And some of its story beats are a tad too sombre and brutal. Remember how I described a character changing alignment in the OVAs? We see the result here, and it takes a long time to feel right or believable.
On the plus side, this guy is an absolute hoot.
That said, when Season Three is good, it's really good. Some of the bosses are either fun or surprisingly sympathetic. The main villain this time has an absolutely insane backstory, but is presented with such dignity and conviction that it mostly climbs over that hurdle to become pretty damn interesting. The overall goal is the right kind of morally grey too, and while I can't say I fully liked the romance drama (which here felt a bit "wait, that's what they were going for all along?"), it admittedly does lead to some pretty strong scenes.
In brief: Season One's a self-indulgent lark that starts flexing its chops just in time for the finale; Season Two had strong stretches worth the price of admission, but also some badly placed weak gaps; the OVAs are suitably epic and take things to another level; Season Three probably leans too hard on that whilst struggling a bit to split the difference, but absolutely earns some of its cred and, again, is worth the price of admission for those stretches.
Overall? For a larky lore tie-in to an MMORPG that then went on to get darker and edgier, it's pretty good. Flaws notwithstanding, I had an enjoyable time with it. Definitely worth hopping through a portal to see how this particular game plays out!
That's all for now! Impossible Numbers, out!
Why does Netflix need a Kickstarter campaign to produce a fourth season? Does it run out of money?
Also:
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images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/69237cc5-2d9c-48f3-8b9b-998d957d9bc4/d9xafce-4ad908b6-e0bb-4465-b3c8-6e2ae873e8bd.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzY5MjM3Y2M1LTJkOWMtNDhmMy04YjliLTk5OGQ5NTdkOWJjNFwvZDl4YWZjZS00YWQ5MDhiNi1lMGJiLTQ0NjUtYjNjOC02ZTJhZTg3M2U4YmQuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.QzPOCJA6eQw6RQJ09nI_-icP22Wgwjo34QUnC2ViBjs
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/empalu/art/Amalia-600109358
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/de3b3fde-2e0e-4218-97d0-75372906066a/d6f66yq-efb53d45-3761-4601-8389-79cecffc9854.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2RlM2IzZmRlLTJlMGUtNDIxOC05N2QwLTc1MzcyOTA2MDY2YVwvZDZmNjZ5cS1lZmI1M2Q0NS0zNzYxLTQ2MDEtODM4OS03OWNlY2ZmYzk4NTQucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Q5fhMVQWYYW55iKfEymFr_IGG431QV0GBbTNxd-zHFA
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/zwagyzonk/art/Wakfu-388280258
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fc9f2412-fdff-43a4-be13-437a9fdb89cd/d9tm9jz-50ac5752-95d9-43d3-9813-9e1bc78fe615.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_695,q_80,strp/wackfu_by_arcuswind_d9tm9jz-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9Njk1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZmM5ZjI0MTItZmRmZi00M2E0LWJlMTMtNDM3YTlmZGI4OWNkXC9kOXRtOWp6LTUwYWM1NzUyLTk1ZDktNDNkMy05ODEzLTllMWJjNzhmZTYxNS5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.UQ2nhXJMzS0wh84T45xCxfW2BWpFC3JQgvyhY4dlKTE
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/arcuswind/art/Wackfu-593943263
5739777
It's not Netflix who have to fund production: Ankama, the French entertainment company behind the series, started the campaign themselves. Rather heartwarmingly, the initial target that they set was surpassed by fan donations within about an hour of its announcement.
* OK, I take full responsibility for that pun.
Only question is: would Yugo count as an alicorn, or a unicorn? I'm inclined towards alicorn, given his importance, but you could argue he'd start off as a unicorn and ascend to alicornhood like Twilight in his later years. You don't even need to change Adamai: he looks like he could be Spike's brother already.
5739801
Huh, really, and I thought Netflix has more money troubles than what has been reported recently..... Oh, well. At least that means this show hasn't become a Netflix Exclusive. That's a win in the entertainment monopoly war.
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I was thinking the same thing, I love the first picture the most myself.
So well drawn and such a captivating, fulfilling portrayal of earth pony magic..... You cannot not love it. 
And now you made me want to play "Ogres and Oubliettes" so much (or "Tails of Equestria", how the version of this world is called, since the original game is not available in this universe), too bad that organizing such isn't easy and needs so much preparation. I even know exactly who my character would be.
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I would go for alicorn myself on that, he sounds like he has to undergo quite a journey to fulfill his destiny and become what he is meant to be. A very chaotic, misfit way of being alicorn. The ascension might happen for a completely random reason, too, pure coincidence, like tripping over a cosmic root.
5739810
Surely you mean "Krosmic" root?
5739813
I looked up that link to see what you mean and it says that this universe is an egg. Of course that gave me an idea.....
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derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/12/28/2518375.png
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What if all of that is in there? I mean, there was never a dragon who hatched from this egg, even though there really should have been one, so it could be.....