Centaurworld is a show that’s pretty much impossible to describe to someone else. It contains such a wide variety of heavy themes and wildly different tones that any description wouldn’t really do the show justice. It can be colorful and quirky one moment and then be dark and tragic the next. One moment you completely understand why this is a Y7 show then the next you have no idea how it managed to get a rating below a PG rating. I will say for certain though that Centaurworld is a wacky, fun, and surprisingly heartfelt ride from start to finish. There’s so much to talk about and cover so I’ll just get right into it.
With season 2 having just released I can talk about the series as a whole. I really enjoyed the whole thing but I will say I think the first season is overall stronger than the second. The first half of the second season meanders and doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to do and as a result it makes it so that the second half is jam packed with all this progression, character development, and twists that I think would have been better served being spread out over the course of the season. One big thing is that the general should have gotten more screen time and his relationship with rider should have been expanded upon because of how important he is in the finale. Also Wammawink gets sidelined pretty hard in this season in comparison to her role in the first. They seemed to be setting Wammawink up for a much bigger role in the finale in the first season with her being revealed to be a shaman in training, have powerful magic and potential, and have a tragic backstory that makes her the perfect candidate of the characters from centaurworld to want to take the minotaurs down. It just seemed really strange that they would backtrack on Wammawink’s importance especially with how well received she has been.
Pacing issues and Wammawink’s sidelining aside the final 4 episodes of season 2 were really good. They managed to fit a lot of backstory and world building alongside the main story without it feeling overcrowded which is a struggle for most shows to do. And while I think the character build-up between The Nowhere King, The General, and The Purple Haired Woman in the present timeline was lacking I still found their ending to be emotional especially the reprise of the nowhere king lullaby during his final moments.
The characters are probably what is most likely to make or break the series for you. I had a lot of fun with the characters. The only one I wasn’t a big fan of was Durpleton because I wasn’t a fan of the humor that he was used for especially in the first season. I liked him more in the second when he became a father to Stabby and we learned his backstory. Everyone else I really liked with Wammawink and Zulius being my favorites. The reveal of Wammawink’s backstory was really well done. Horse seeing her home destroyed and thinking that she’s returned home only to see a baby Wammawink alone among the wreckage was devastating. That one reveal makes so much about Wammawink snap into place and you completely understand her character in just a few minutes. This along with her moment in the season 1 finale where she asks the purple haired woman to let her go back into the void with her friends really cemented Wammawink as a favorite of mine. Zulius is just pure fun and I love his larger than life energy while still being a team player and caring about his herd which is a welcome departure from his character archetype.
Horse herself has a strong arc in season 1 and I was invested in her getting back to rider. I didn’t expect how far the show would go in exploring the pain and effects of losing a loved one. Episode 8 was a thinly disguised metaphor for depression and suicide that actually covered the topic with quite a lot of tact that I wasn’t expecting from the show because the marketing does not prepare you for the darker aspects of centaurworld at all. I like how Horse becoming more emotional and soft, both literally and metaphorically, is shown as horse growing and doesn’t make her a less capable warrior in the slightest.
I had a lot of fun with this show and I really think that other people should give it a shot. I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did and I can’t wait to see what netflix and Megan Nicole Dong do next in animation. (Netflix is on a roll with its animated originals. They’ve had so many great animated shows release this year. Centaurworld, Arcane, Maya and the Three, Inside Job, etc. Netflix has become my go to for animated shows.)
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