OK K.O. S1E32: "No More Pow Cards"

This review was comissioned by @firefossil


I didn't like the last episode of "OK K.O., Let's Be Heroes" that I saw, to say the least. But, I'm open to the possibility that that was just a particularly bad one. So, let's have a look at this one and find out how good it is and also what the hell is even a "pow card."


Well, at least one of those questions gets answered right off the bat. Pow cards (presumably named for the "biff! pow!" onomatopoeia) are trading cards made to commemorate real life heroes. Not any particular type of hero. Just, people who do heroic things generally. Going by the title and vibe of the series, I'm guessing that "heroes" are just a thing in this world.

Anyway, we start with K.O. hanging out with his friend Dendy and showing off his pow card collection (including one bearing his own name and face, presumably merited by whatever heroic things he's been up to in the previous 31 episodes). Dendy is happy for him, but feels sort of ambivalent about pow cards as a whole on account of their discriminatory "hero" identification process. Specifically, her species is never featured on pow cards as a matter of company policy. You wouldn't guess it from looking at her, but apparently Dendy is a kappa.

I know, right? Either she's a freakish mutant by her species' standards, or else she's just a master of disguise, because later in the episode we see her parents and they look like this:

Like I said, either she's a really fucked up looking kappa or she's a real wizard with the wigs and makeup kits.

The legends about kappas drowning people are...well, the show isn't being shy about the historical inspiration here, so I won't be either...they're basically blood libel. Human expansion forced the kappas into territorial overlap with them, and competition over waterways led to humans inventing stories about kappas being bloodthirsty monsters in order to justify their subjugation. Even though at least some kappas have managed to integrate into modern society, they still face heavy systemic discrimination as well as direct targeted speciesism to this day.

Well, if OK KO is to be admired for any one persistent quality, it's boldness!

What I especially like about the framing here is that kappa persecution is neither a thing that just happened in the past, nor a consciously held bias that the hero has to unlearn and then turn against his evil former comrades. It's just an unacknowledged background fact of the world he exists in that was never brought to his attention until now, even as the entire society he exists within continues to commit it with one hand while trying to sweep it under the rug with the other. That's a lot more relevant and a lot more hornet-nest-kicking than cartoons are normally able to get away with being when it comes to this type of subject matter.

On the other hand...I'm looking at the face KO makes when he learns about this, and I don't think I'm ever going to grow to like this show's visual style.

KO's first instinct when he hears about the pow cards' active participation in this ongoing historical injustice is to run to the nearest volcano and throw all his cards away. He can't quite bring himself to do it, though. Which leads to him and Dendy having a discussion about ethical consumption under capitalism in the context of the intersection between capital and racial injustice.

It's not a very *sophisticated* discussion about that subject, but it is still a discussion about that subject. So, once again, bold move for the show.

In the end, KO decides that while he's capable of enjoying the pow cards while being cognizant of their flaws and those of their manufacturers, he can't quite look his friend in the face while owning them unless he does some activism as well. And, Dendy has an idea herself on how to do activism! They'll go to the company that makes the cards, join a guided tour of the facility, sneak away from the tour group, break into the control room, and hack the computers that the company uses to select individuals for heroic valorisation to make it include kappas as well as humans and other reputable species. Simple!

They end up having to fight a giant robot or two to get into the control room, but that's pretty much par for the course for KO and his companions. Unfortunately, tripping the security robots brings down more active attention on their heads in the form of some very unflatteringly portrayed racist thug cops and the company's snake oil salesman techbro CEO. The latter also happening to be a cat person or something.

Techbro Kitteh hides behind excuse after excuse to hide his laziness, ignorance, and unquestioned anti-kappa racism he picked up in his schooldays. They repeatedly almost get thrown out by the rent-a-cops. But then they manage to twist his arm into trying to let his computers scan for heroic kappas just to get rid of them, and it immediately detects a huge number of them all over the world's oceans and waterways. He still doesn't want to actually print cards of them due to simple laziness and pride, but then it turns out that kappas - despite their persecuted status - have a fair amount of money to spend on trading cards. Once the sales start going up, his greed overcomes his pride and he keeps printing the kappa pow cards.

It's kinda weird how often that DOESN'T happen in real life. Even otherwise rationally greedy executives have been known to prioritize their petty bigotries over sales. But, in this case it seems to have worked. So...yay?


Not liking the way this show looks or sounds (its bop of an intro theme notwithstanding), even as the sort-of parody of 2010's animation that it wants to be. But hey, they were really bold in their subject matter here! They kind of wimped out at the end, with everything turning out alright after winning the asshole businessman over with an appeal to his colorblind avarice (like I said, not how this usually works. And even if it was, it's uh, not great), but overall I think this episode does a really good job of helping kids understand what social injustice looks like and how ubiquitous it is. And also includes a few different perspectives on how to reconcile this awareness with the need to engage with society and its injustices in order to get by day to day.

So, I dig this one overall. Certainly worlds better than the flea episode. On top of the mostly good politics, I also just liked the humor better this time around. Not all of the gags landed for me, but a lot more of them did than last time.