Wakfu: First Impressions

Come around here often? Yeah, I know, you probably don’t. We’ll see if I’ll be able to change that somewhere down the line. 

So, I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty opinionated person, when I want to be, which is why I’ve decided to make a critic blog. I will be reviewing things such as television shows, movies, games, fashion, and anything else that strikes my fancy. The vast majority of the blog will probably be dedicated to television shows and movies because, considering the fact that I live out in the middle of nowhere, I spend a lot of time watching that stuff. Most of what’s written will have bias to because if I like it, I will tell you, but I’ll also point out things about it that could be improved or that bothered me, same goes for things I don’t like, I will point things out that I actually do enjoy about it.

I don’t want to always choose what I’m reviewing, though. I’d rather the readers (Note: That means YOU) can write suggestions as to what I should look at. I honestly will watch anything and I have a tendency to spend time on media is not very popular among the general public. So, in the comments, you can suggest some things you think that I should look at. It can be anything, short books, movies, video games, board games, etc. 

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This week, I will be writing my first impressions of Wakfu. 

                

Wakfu is an animated series from France that has visual similarities to Japanese animation.

My first experience with Wakfu was through a friend in England who suggested that we play the Massive Multi-player Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) of the same title. I loved the game and I had tons of fun playing it. About a week after we started playing, though, my boyfriend suggested that we watch the children’s cartoon.

The opening impressed me right away. The animation for the series was much like that of the game, which, may I add, is utterly impressive on its own. It’s hard to tell it’s aimed towards children off the get-go because of its anime-esque opening and style. After finding out it was aimed towards children, though, it made sense because the movements were fast, it was colourful and the music, though upbeat, held little relevance to the actual show. 

 Sadly, I could not find the opening with subtitles.

Yes, the animation is the same as the opening…throughout the entire thing. Yes, it is amazing.

I’m not going to go through every single scene of the first five episodes I have watched, but I’m going to highlight one of the really good scenes and one of the really bad scenes. 

The best scene in this entire show thus far has to be the opening scene. It introduces the origins of our young hero, introduces the villain, starts the plot in a subtle matter, contains an amazing fight scene, and introduces the meaning of Wakfu. We start out with a town scene, a man, whom everyone seems intimidated by, transports in with a cradle and pushes it out of town like it’s nobody’s business. The man gets into some minor fight on a bridge, which stalls for the real villain, who shows himself immediately afterwards. He says he’s interested in sucking the Wakfu out of all living things (which, out of context, sounds like an innuendo). Wakfu, therefor, can only be assumed to be a life source or magic force of some kind. In any case, the villain finds out the man is truly a dragon and then duke it out in a, for a lack of a better word, epic battle. We learn that the villain is a Xelor time mage, whom inevitably gets burned to all hell by the dragon, who then continues to walk like it’s nobody’s business and he didn’t just set a whole bridge [and the forest behind it] on fire. The plot is then started by the villain getting over-excited by the fact that he found a dragon, which he will obviously search for to steal his Wakfu. This scene is so utterly mind-blowing because it does contain a lot, but all the information is placed so perfectly and so precise that you only notice how much is actually in it by analyzing it.

Too long to read?:

Now, for the bad. This scene I’m going to go through here is also in episode one and I like to try and forget it.

Looks pretty delicious right? I thought so when I saw the first few plates. However, this plate is really special. There is a certain scene before it that makes this plate of food seem magnificently disgusting due to scene transition. The scene before this food is plopped onto the plate; there is a living scarecrow in the outhouse, reading a playboy. 

You know, for the family. 

He is yelling at a monster for him to wait his turn, and then his face goes red with effort…the scene then changes to the food being thrown down onto the plate. Before the scene with the scarecrow, I was watching food porn, guys. Stupid Europeans and their poop jokes.

One of my favourite things when it comes to children’s shows is if there are one episode stories as well as an over-arching plot, which Wakfu does. This leaves the target age a little more open because if it were one episode stories, older people would lose interest, and if it were one over-arching plot, younger people would lose interest. Much like most children’s shows, the episodes hold a valuable life lesson that children can learn in front of the television as opposed to going into the outside world and learning it for themselves. All the lessons are really good, until the fourth episode. There are a bunch of ugly princesses who are stealing princes to try and break a cruse that was put on them for rejecting a bunch of princes and being rude to them. After the whole episode, our knight in shining armour character, Sir Sadlygrove, learns the valuable lesson of not judging someone by how they look, but by how they act. Then the lesson is ruined in the final scene of the episodes when the princesses GO BACK TO DOING THE SAME EXACT THING THEY DID BEFORE THEY GOT A CURSE PUT ON THEM. Sure, it’s supposed to be a joke scene, but it’s completely negating the lesson of the episode. But, despite that episode, the lessons are taught in a cute and educational fashion. 

One of the great things about this series is the characters. When they are first introduced, they are stock characters. We have the hero, the greedy one, the knight, the princess, and the princesses’ guard. Now, even though I only watched the first few episodes, I was able to see some little points that would change the stock characters into something more interesting. The knight, although stupid, can be really sweet and the princesses’ guard, although strong and mighty, seems to wish she could appear beautiful all the time. I honestly hope these characters continue to grow because I already love them for their obvious good and bad traits. 

From Left to Right: Sir Sadlygrove (The Knight), Yugo (The Hero), Evangelyn (The Princesses' Guard), Amalia Sheran Sharm (The Princess), Ruel Stroud (The Greedy).

Overall, despite the bad parts, I really do like this series. Its animation is stellar, the story is interesting, the characters are lovable and the fight scenes are just plain epic. 

P.S. My boyfriend said people are going to avoid my Blog like the Black Plague because of long posts. What do you think? Should I shorten it? Keep it the same? Give me honest feedback!