You Don’t Need To Know Anything About The Game, But It Helps
As most video game enthusiasts will attest, TV shows and other adaptations of video games are usually disappointing, if not completely terrible. One of the absolute best exceptions to this rule is Wakfu.
Wakfu is a French animated adaptation of the MMORPG of the same name that was released back in 2012, though the show predates it by about four years, having been released in 2008. The game still updates and is available to play for free on Steam, though there are in-game purchases with real money. To be honest, though, when watching Wakfu the TV show, Wakfu the game needn’t have ever crossed your mind or entered your hands for you to enjoy this show for all its qualities. It is the rarest kind of video game adaptation – one that stays very true to the established world of the game it’s based on, but also doesn’t require you to know anything about it to enjoy it, and is actually ripe for expansion as an epic series unlike many other games that get the same treatment.
The show follows a young boy named Yugo, who was left in the care of a retired bounty hunter named Alibert by a mysterious stranger, and must leave home to discover his true origins once he begins to manifest the ability to create magical portals. He is assisted along the way by a cast of characters comprising of several of the major races that make up the World of Twelve, and they must all work together and grow as people in order to aid Yugo in his quest for the truth.
So many video game adaptations fail either because they take no effort to resemble the thing they’re based on, or the opposite, where they stick too closely to the established rules or formula, leading to a TV show or a movie that hardly feels like a TV show or a movie. Wakfu doesn’t have any of these problems. The story that takes place in the show works with the game’s established lore, races, locations and so on, and then builds on it rather than relies on it. The cast of characters and journey they go on are original and independent, so the show and the game serve to both enrich each other. What helps all of this is that the world of Wakfu feels huge, colorful, and very realized as a setting.
This post was originally written by Greyson Ditzler.
Epic World-Buliding and Compelling Storytelling
Wakfu’s World of Twelve and all its inhabitants are creative, cohesive, and feel truly alive. The world is large and populated by numerous races (all of whom are classes in the game) with their own cultures and tons of unique characteristics, and every episode feels like it pieces the whole scope of the world together a little bit more. From entertainment to religion, to beliefs and prejudices, every race in Wakfu feels like a distinct entity from every other, and the world as a whole is more believable because of it. Every location feels like it has a history, and secrets within that history, and that makes the act of traveling through this world throughout the story entertaining on its own (if the three-part Gobbowl arc doesn’t impress, then we can’t be friends).
On the storytelling front, it’s really not terribly complicated. Wakfu is a show that is accessible to children, but it can also be easily appreciated by older viewers, and that’s where the French origins of the company get their chance to shine through. As a kids show Wakfu has a great deal of comedy both subtle and overt, but as a French show it isn’t held to the same standards for children that an American one might be, and actually presents intelligent and challenging concepts and themes that help make it entertaining and engrossing for kids and grown-ups alike. There are tons of layered jokes for adults, and there is some seriously dark and serious subject matter that is treated with straight-faced respect, ranging from love and death, to the ethics of imprisonment and gaps between cultures. The show is very good at balancing various tones at once, and it can alternate between body humor and a genuinely oppressive sense of threat in an instant.
The setup may be familiar, but the character relationships, unraveling mysteries of the world, and the constant creativity and surprises found within are what elevate it to something more than the sum of its parts. It also doesn’t hurt that when they aren’t building the world or progressing the story through dialogue, they’re humping around fighting each other with magic, swords, shovels, and god like powers whenever they get the chance.
Jaw-Dropping Fight Scenes
This one’s pretty cut and dry – Wakfu has a lot of well-choreographed, visually complex, and viscerally satisfying fight scenes. Action is a big component of the show, and it’s most of what happens in between dialogue and plot progression. Every one of the main characters has a distinct fighting style, and the events of the show are always putting them and other characters up against opponents with their own unique powers, cool designs, and varying motivations. Sometimes they’ll be fighting against a teleporting mechanical wizard with the ability to slow down time, and other times they’ll be fighting off zombie bamboo creatures whose only weakness is a special kind of milk, and the creativity of these encounters never slows down.
The high-concept foes that our heroes go up against are akin to the sorts of opponents you would see in something like My Hero Academia, or Yu Yu Hakusho, and the show constantly keeps you guessing on what new creative baddie is waiting around the corner. Things escalate nicely within the events of the story from smaller, though still interesting battles, until the plot naturally leads to absolutely massive, epic duels with grand villains with truly apocalyptic strength.
What makes the action all the more satisfying is the free-flowing movement, dynamic angles and unpredictability of each fight, and what makes these achievements all the more impressive is that all of it (in the first two seasons anyway) was done using Adobe Flash. Instead of using the low barrier to entry for Flash animation as an excuse to slap something generic and lazy looking together, Ankama used the advantages of Flash to make something flashy and genuinely impressive by utilizing their talents through a simpler, more cost-effective tool set. On the subject of animation…
Great Animation and Fantastic Art Design
Wakfu isn’t just a a unique video game adaptation due to its quality as a show, but also due to its distinct, lush visuals with a unique art style and quality animation. As previously mentioned, the show has mostly been animated using Flash, but it hardly does anything to affect the actual quality of the animation onscreen, and it certainly doesn’t do anything to hurt the truly gorgeous art design. Wakfu has an aesthetic that lies somewhere between Western and Japanese animation, and its visuals can change from bright and colorful, to cold and brooding at the drop of a hat.
Many shots are laid out like landscape paintings or portraits, and there is an immense amount of detail visible in nearly every shot. From the choice of angles and curve of most shapes, to the amount of movement and expressive nuance present throughout, every detail helps to make the world feel truly alive in front of you. It is true that you can see the Flash roots of the show if you look close, but it’s hardly a detriment to the quality of work done with it. The animation improves over time, as do most things, but the show never looks slapped together or sloppy in its presentation, and the shots and movement can feel so planned out you forget your watching a children’s TV anime.
It’s difficult to convey the quality of this show’s art without using more imagery, so give it watch and judge it for yourself.
A Cast of Well-Written, Lovable Characters
 
At the end of the day, a show like Wakfu is really made by its characters, and this show has some absolutely delightful ones. The show’s earliest episodes are as simple and childish as it ever gets, and after that the real relationships begin. Even if the basic characteristics of the main cast are very easy to understand, and nothing we haven’t seen before, the show builds on their relationships with each other and provides more depth and backstory to all of them. You truly begin to appreciate every one of them for how likable and special each of them is.
Especially with the original French audio, the characters all feel very well-realized. The English dub is fine, but it just can’t beat the authenticity and guttural elegance of the French performers as they thrust themselves into their roles. From Evangelyne’s warrior determination and cool confidence, to Ruel’s hilarious greed and pride in his skills as a highwayman, every character plays well off of each other and presents themselves in very entertaining ways. Even the one-off side characters and villains have strong personalities and motivations, and it’s rare to find a character that isn’t at least intriguing to watch or interesting to look at.
Percedal (or Tristepin as he’s known in France) started off as my least favorite character when I began the show, but over time he goes through an awesome arc and changes fundamentally as a person, and soon after that he was my unchallenged favorite. It is a show accessible to children, so there are some limitations on how much the characters change and how serious events can be, but much less so than in many other Western animated projects. As time passes in the show’s universe, you feel as though you’re there alongside Yugo and the other brave members of The Brotherhood of the Tofu. I’m not ashamed to admit that this show has legitimately brought me to tears more than once, because I became invested in the lives and struggles of these people I had come to know so well.
It’s just an overall fantastic show that way more people should be watching right now. Wakfu defies its role in life as a video game adaptation and doesn’t just give us something good, but something truly special.
Wakfu is available to stream now on Netflix. You can watch a trailer for the series here.
Published: May 15, 2018 11:29 am