Wakfu: shorts and extras

Season 1 impressions here: http://adziu.blogspot.com/2011/03/wakfu-season-1.html

Goultard le Barbare
More a Dofus special than one for Wakfu really, this appears to be really where the whole Ankama animation effort begins. There’s next to no information on Goultard le Barbare’s inception online, but it seems to have first been screened at the 2007 Japan Expo in Paris. The animation style also looks like the iffy first previews of the Wakfu cast, especially in the lack of pupils in the eyes of iops, but somewhat to my surprise, there are some animated sequences in this 20-minute short that really show Flash used to its fullest.

Goultard tells the story of a character who features prominently in Dofus and its comic adaptation, and appears (with little explanation) in one episode of Wakfu, where he proves himself incredibly cool and powerful. Here, though, his story is just beginning, at first in Heracles-like scenes from his childhood and then in a big showdown. This early animation effort from Ankama is a little throwaway and ends just as it gets interesting (which makes sense as a tie-in), but ultimately doesn’t have anything of the polish or cuteness of the series it would prove possible. An interesting companion piece.

Wakfu Webisodes
From what I can tell, these showreels and little gags predate the main series’ release. The first two are impressive showcases of what Yugo and Ruel can do, respectively, and last only a minute or two each, while the rest are silly comedy pieces about the tofu birds. They are interesting little nuggets, and show that the remarkably smooth flash animation that sometimes it felt the series had to build up to (forgetting the first Nox/Grougal clash) was in place early on.

Mini Wakfu
Continuing the tradition of the webisodes was the little gag episode accompanying each main serving of Wakfu, in cutesy SD-style. Like Avatar’s similar attempts, the style doesn’t quite look right, the rhythms, fluidity and variable models of anime’s SD not quite captured. And honestly, while some raise a giggle and justify the rest, others are horribly unfunny…

Noximillian special
Now this is the reason I am giving the specials their own impressions. I was overwhelmed with a great sense of ‘wtf’ while I watched this – because the character background special was animated by Madhouse in the style of Kaiba – one of my top two or three anime of the past five years. This was rather mindblowing for me, being so unexpected. Not that many people have seen Kaiba and I’m sure still fewer have seen Wakfu, and I thought them worlds apart, so seeing them together was rather startling. I presume, based on little but a hunch, that the makers of Wakfu were impressed by Yuasa Masaaki’s work and requested he work on the special episode. He provided only character design, but it’s clear that the rest of the team could continue the thematic stylings of Kaiba, especially when the characters give such a strong aesthetic.

As a standalone piece, it’s unoriginal but functions well as the dark past of a primary antagonist, making him more sympathetic and comprehensible, even if it ends too abruptly and it would be better had Nox lived his loss, rather than simply hearing of it from another. But the look of the piece is striking and unsettling, and above all, it’s a clash between French and Japanese animation that has become very dear to me but I never expected to see melded in this way. That stuns me, and kept me in a state of near disbelief throughout. In so many ways, this was a stroke of genius.

Ogrest: La Legende special
Ogrest: La Legende is the second of Wakfu’s special episodes, telling a side-story separate from the main story arc. Ogrest is a major figure in the backstory of the Wakfu game, but thus far has had little impact on the series, until now. The special, framed by some adorable scenes of a sick Yugo being told a story by his father Alibert, tells of Ogrest’s birth and childhood adventure with a group of Ecaflips. It’s a cute and winsome story, and a long way from the tragedy that forms the backstory, although there are hints of darker themes here and there.

Ogrest is the second special animated in Japan, rather than in-house at Ankama. According to the credits, Madhouse were once again the major studio involved, but work was also undertaken by the Korean in-between powerhouse Dr Movie (who do a lot of work with Madhouse), and also by Ghibli. This is likely mostly token background work and perhaps some character animation, but it is nonetheless apt because Miyazaki’s work is here – and I don’t mean in some abstract, this-feels-a-bit-like-Ghibli-so-I’ll-namedrop way: there are character animations here taken more or less directly from Toei’s Doubutsu Takarajima – which Miyazaki worked on as key animator, and which more or less defined his signature chase style back in 1971. The homage is subtle, but they made it explicit in a recent Inside Ankama, juxtaposing the clips. It was a great little nod to an important but much-neglected piece of anime history, and I have to hope more Wakfu fans go and find the original, because it doesn’t seem like many people have ever heard of Animal Treasure Island.

And the plot is all more or less a reference back to that film, too: after his unusual birth story, adorable little Ogrest (une catastrophe ambulance) gets mixed up with three animal pirates looking for treasure. They ultimately find it, but Ogrest doesn’t find what he’s looking for – or does he? We get a happy ending, but with plenty of foreshadowing of what is to come.

Wakfu’s specials are getting more and more interesting. With more to come – as well as feature films – I am only getting more and more excited about what Ankama will come up with next.