Wakfu S1E2: “Yugo the Eliatrope”

I googled the unfamiliar word "eliatrope," but then saw nothing but Wakfu sites and quickly went back without reading any blurbs. If it's a made-up word for Wakfu, then I'll let the show define it for me on its own terms. Which will probably be sometime in the next 22 minutes, since it's in the episode title.


The cliffhanger is prolonged a little, as the episode opens on those two elf girls sitting around a cooking fire they just set while their yoshis graze on the surrounding grass. They're arguing about whether or not they should have stopped at the village and got an inn room instead of moving on and making camp as they did. Green-haired elfgirl is apparently a prophetess, and they're out here chasing after a prediction that she made. Blonde elfgirl is starting to get skeptical, and indirectly accusing her friend of making it up to get out of having to attend the birthday of a brother she dislikes.

There's also some nice random setting detail thrown into the smalltalk preceding this. Apparently, the Iops (Goultard's people from the special, I'm pretty sure?) include insects in their cuisine. Also, the yoshis are called dragonturkeys. I, um...I don't think any of you are going to judge me for choosing to stick with "yoshis." Anyway, the dialogue is all really natural, and the setting information contained therein is all very convincingly placed. I'd point to it as a good example to follow for fantasy scene-setting.

Blondie is also less than enamored with Greenie's root-and-berry-skewers. Yeah, seriously Greenie, couldn't you have at least found some hearty wild carrots or something? If you're stuck eating roots, you might as well go for the hp boost.

Meanwhile, back at Yugo's village, tentacle monsters are still turning people into plants. Like, they touch them with their tentacles, and they turn into human-shaped topiary hedges, like that scene in Annihilation.

Ruel and Alibert are killing these things by the score, but there are a lot of them, and townsfolk are getting...how to verb this?...bushwhacked nearly as fast. Yugo is making a solid contribution himself, and doesn't appear to even be using his powers to do so. These monsters are fragile. This...kind of makes the rest of the townsfolk who are helplessly fleeing or cowering look pretty bad, actually. Well, I hope being turned into a plant is reversible, or else this village may no longer be viable with the losses they've taken.

Well, from how this next scene is framed it seems like bushwhacking is not, in fact, reversible. Alibert crushes his umpteenth monster, only for the dying thing to weakly reach out and hit him with one of its bushwhacking limbs. There's another villager standing literally a few feet away while this happens, and all he does is stammer for Alibert to look out instead of running up and stomping the rest of its life out himself as he easily could have done.

You'd think that in a world full of monsters, the average person would be used to fighting in defense of the village, no? Even if dedicated soldiers or lawmen like Alibert and Ruel are a rare few, everyone else should at least...eh, whatever. Maybe this has been an unusually monster-free region by the setting's standards until just now.

Anyway, Alibert has some last words for his adoptive son as his flesh transforms.

Unfortunately, he's unable to tell him where the message Yugo needs to listen to is before the transformation claims him.

This adoptive parent death scene hit a lot harder than they usually do, on account of how likable (and, more importantly, how detailed and well fleshed-out of a character) he was. Yugo is left staring at a green, leafy mannequin, and its clear that nobody expects it to ever revert to its previous state.

...

These villagers had better have a good excuse for not knowing how to help.

...

Okay, well, it seems like they might have such an excuse after all! One of Xelor's drones is monitoring the scene, and when we cut to the android himself he's cackling to himself about the excellent work his "polters" are doing. Okay, if he arranged for this monster attack (which might also mean that he was responsible for implanting that one guy with the shushu dagger) and there normally aren't just random aggressive creatures in the surrounding woods as a fact of life, that makes the townsfolk's helplessness much more understandable. Anyway, his drone transmits a picture of Yugo, who has abnormally high wakfu concentrations, and his pet bird, who also does (probably on account of Grougo's various spells being stored in it). Xelor cackles over the unexpectedly good haul he's discovered, even after Ruel breaks his drone due to not being sure if it's a monster or not. He suspects he may have found remnants of that dragon's visit a decade ago.

I wonder why Xelor was attacking the village, if he didn't already know that Grougo had left stuff in it? Or, perhaps a better way of putting it: if Xelor was here a decade ago, and had reasons for attacking the village, why would he have waited so long before doing it? Perhaps this will be explained.

He also mentions something about an oak tree having been effected by his "noxin." I'm guessing this is something to do with the polters' bushwhacking power? And maybe, as well, related to how he was having his drones kill trees a while ago? Did he spend years turning wakfu-drained trees into armies of little plant imp monsters, or something? Maybe-

-or...okay, never mind. Whatever's going on with plants and suchlike here, it's much weirder than anything I just guessed. The drone that Ruel smashed disintegrates into a little patch of blue vapor that causes the grass and clover it settles on to start overgrowing at an unnatural rate. Than a James Cameron Avatar sized tree tears itself up out of that patch of ground and takes up the entire village square, probably destroying some of the nearest buildings in its way.

Did the tree that the drone killed before somehow...gather interest...inside of it? I don't know what's going on with this at all.

Well, they don't know what to do with/about the giant demon-tree just now, so Ruel turns his attention to comforting Yugo as best he can. He tells him that there's an "Eniripsa" who might be able to turn Alibert and the other villagers back into themselves. Eniripsas are a type of wizard or something, I'm guessing. As he tries to reassure Yugo that his father can be saved, the guy who they removed the shushu dagger wakes up and comes running over, looking to thank the boy who saved him from the control of Rubilax. Rubilax being the name of the shushu demon in that knife, I presume.

The young man identifies himself as Sir Percedal of Sadlygrove, a knight of an order tasked with keeping shushus safely contained. Well, that explains how he was exposed to one, though not how Xelor was able to get Rubilax to help him with this attack. Maybe he didn't, and Rubilax's attack just gave Xelor the opportunity he'd been waiting for? That could also be it. Anyway. Percedal owes a life debt to Yugo, which is convenient, because Yugo can use all the help he can get right about now.

Hmm. Percedal also has very similar hair to Goultard. And come to think of it, his face is drawn in kind of a similarly flat way and his ears are pointy and elfin (though not to the degree of the two elfgirls') like those of Goultard and his people. Percedal is an Iop, maybe?

Just then, the dagger that has Rubilax in it speaks up and starts insulting Percedal. Percedal retaliates by banging the dagger against a stone wall and yelling at it, and Rubilax reacts in pain and curses him out even more. I guess they have a more complicated relationship than it seemed, heh.

Anyway, Percedal and Rubilax (interrupting and accusing each other of lying all throughout) manage to tell their story. The polters have attacked several nearby villages, which apparently isn't typical behavior for them. Percedal went into the cursed forest that the attackers emerged from to find out what was going on, and for some reason he brought Rubilax with him. Maybe shushu-weapons are super powerful as long as you can keep them under control, or something? That would make sense. Anyway, they were attacked by something much more dangerous than a polter, and Percedal only survived by accepting Rubilax's offer and allowing him to possess him and pool their strength. It worked, apparently, with the downside of Rubilax then walking them off to the next village that the polters and the other monster with them were about to hit and attacking it himself, because that's just what shushus do.

I guess the other monster that attacked them was Xelor? Hmm, actually, no, probably not. I don't think Percedal and Rubilax would have had any way of fighting back against za warudo. Maybe another minion of his, then.

Yugo decides that the group should head into that forest and investigate with the two advantages of numbers and the enemy having just lost a bunch of its troops.I guess they'll go looking for Ruel's "Eniripsa" later. Some other surviving townsfolk wish them the best, and beg them to find a cure soon. Yugo is visibly not the only orphan of this attack. Off they go.

Cut to what I assume is the cursed forest, where a huge swarm of Xelor drones is amassing.

They stream into Xelor's fortress, a spider-like structure made entirely out of clocks and clockwork machinery. It looks like they're dumping their payloads of stolen wakfu into a machine that then infuses it into Xelor himself, or something like that.

In addition to feeding, he's also looking through drone footage to see what else he can learn about Yugo and his bird friend. Also, the drones are called "noxins." So feeding on a tree using his noxin wakfu-harvesters somehow caused the polters to become aggressive, and (seemingly) fall under his control. A necromancy type deal, maybe? If polters are connected to the trees, and he can raise anything his noxins drain the wakfu from as zombies or the like, maybe he sent an army of zombified polters that he made by draining the trees?

Also, didn't he have just one eye before? Maybe the hat only left one of them visible.

Xelor has determined that Yugo is an eliatrope, a humanlike species closely connected to dragons in ancient accounts. Eliatropes were thought to be long extinct like their dragon masters, and incredibly rich in wakfu. If Xelor can take this one alive, he might be able to lead him to more like himself, and perhaps let him catch up with Grougo himself again.

Granted, I'm not sure what Xelor would be planning to do after that point, considering how his last battle with the dragon went. I'm guessing he has an anti-dragon weapon he's been working on that he thinks will make the difference this time.

Back to the party. They've entered the forest, and are marching through looking for the source of the problem. Ruel is complaining about how being a bounty hunter sucks, and avoiding questions about why he does it then, and also being low-key racist toward Percedal for being an Iop. Percedal made a "map" of the forest on his last foray, but it's mostly just a sketch of trees and animals arranged randomly. He's an odd one. Yugo is using his portals to play dumb pranks. I've seen this beat in quite a few fantasy movies and shows, where a traumatized (often freshly orphaned within the past couple of days) kid goes on a mischief spree with dissonantly upbeat music and framing. Is this supposed to be a coping mechanism? But like, within literal hours of the event? I don't know if kids actually work that way, but if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me. Eventually, they send Yugo up into the canopy to have a look around from above the treetops.

Yugo's got this portal thing down.

His upward movement through the trees is like a cross between Portal and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. And it's really smoothly animated and fun to watch.

Up ahead, he spots an insanely large tree that towers above all the others at least three times over, very much like the one that inexplicably sprouted in the town square. They figure those must be connected, so they decide to head toward it.

As they move, Percedal starts telling them about his shushu-guarding duties, and how much he hates the entity bound in his sword in particular (naturally, Rubilax has some choice words for him in return). Also, Rubilax's sword seems to have grown from a small dagger into a big scimitar type thing. Maybe it adjusts itself as needed, when wielded by someone with the proper training and the shushu is fully contained? Could be. As they advance, a polter watches them from the treetops and surreptitiously signals to its offscreen comrades.

The scream of a woman in distress gets all of their attention. Especially Percedal's. He's apparently wanted to rescue a maiden (and, implicitly, get laid for it) forever, and goes charging off leaving the others to follow as best they can. As it turns out, it's two maidens, and familiar ones at that. One yoshi has already been turned into a plant by the swarm of attacking polters, while the other is looking not long for the world.

Percedal's arrival is timely, and it quickly becomes clear that while he might be the obligatory dumb, impulsive, horny one, he does know how to use that demon sword of his. He carves a literal trail through the mob of polters in a way that Ruel back in the village battle couldn't. In addition to immense skill, his choice of weapon is perfect for cutting down masses of the little creatures at once, which in retrospect explains why he might have been the one sent in to deal with the polters. Now that the brunt of the attackers' heat is off of them, the elfgirls get to safety, and now that she has someplace to stand and aim from Blondie starts shooting some magic arrows that explode and take out more of them. Only a lone polter is able to get through them and get within striking distance of Greenie, who doesn't seem to be a fighter herself, but Yugo portals up there and throws it off for Ruel to deal with. The remaining polters flee back into the woods. So does the other yoshi, but still, maidens saved!

The girls introduce themselves as Evangeline (Blondie) and Amalia (Greenie). They were traveling on a pilgrimage to somewhere (presumably for Amalia's brother's birthday) when Amalia had a prophetic dream that took them off course a couple days ago.

"Sadida" is a god, I'm guessing. Notably, the girls' dialogue before the rescue implied that Amalia had thought the polters were friendly and tried to approach them before they attacked. Combine that with the color of her hair, and I'm guessing that Sadida is a forest god, and that Amalia is from some sort of noble priestly lineage within elf society.

Speaking of, shortly later the party comes upon a copse of dead, blasted-looking trees that Amalia starts crying at the sight of. Evangeline notably doesn't, so yeah, Amalia's the druid who sees into the spirit world and smells the pain of the forest, and Evangeline is just a fighty type. Amalia feels an "ancient, evil presence" lurking nearby. Also, behind these dead, blasted trunks are the roots of what I think is supposed to be the giant tree that they've been moving toward.

There's also a smashed noxin nearby. This one does not appear to have vaporized like the one Ruel destroyed did. Curious. There's also a pile of dead adventurers being overlooked by an uglier, presumably carrion-eating, but still extremely cute type of bird. Ruel wants to start looting the bodies, but before he can some rotted-looking ents start attacking them. Percedal exclaims that these are the things that attacked him and forced him to let Rubilax possess him to escape.

So it wasn't Xelor himself who attacked him, then. That explains how he was able to escape, given how effective time-stopping is at preventing that. These "treechnids" as Amalia identifies them have the group surrounded, so they're forced to fight.

It's a more difficult battle than the last one, but the team still perseveres without taking any serious injuries. It turns out that Amalia actually can fight, it's just that she relies on spells to do so, and casting those requires her to have some breathing room for the gestures and concentration required. Hmm. She and Evangeline really don't complement each other all that well in combat, no wonder they needed help before. With Ruel and Percedal to hold the line though, she's able to score the first treechnid kill of the battle with some conjured attack-vines. Percedal and Ruel score kills of their own with their weapons, and Evangeline takes out the last one with a magical arrow. As I'm coming to expect from Wakfu, it's a well-directed fight scene, albeit with a bit more Anime Time Dilation than most. Yugo doesn't contribute much to this fight; hopefully he'll learn how to make bigger portals by the next time they have to fight something this large.

Speaking of large, the giant supertree that this was all around the roots of suddenly reaches down and grabs Percedal and Amalia just seconds after they finished with the smaller treechnids.

Percedal manages to wriggle free, and Yugo saves him from the fall by thinking quickly in portals, but the supertree still has Amalia. There's a very poorly timed gag here about Percedal getting motion sickness from his trip through hell that has all the other characters' full attention for at least 15 seconds before they remember that the tree still has Amalia and go back to being worried about this. Like I said, bad timing. Fortunately the Great Wakfu Tree is in a more talkative mood than I'd have thought, and begins speaking to Amalia while a huge army of polters slowly surround her companions below.

The Great Wakfu Tree seems to think that she's someone named "Leaf." Another green-haired elf nature priestess, perhaps? He explains that strange machines sucked the life force out of him and the lesser oak trees around him, and he's having his polters retaliate against...well, everyone. He seems unable to distinguish between different humanoid factions, just as he can't tell the difference between Amalia and this Leaf person. Amalia explains to him that she isn't Leaf, but Princess Amalia of the Sheran Sharm dynasty. She's royalty then, not just nobility like I thought. Unfortunately, the only part of this that Angry Treebeard here seems to understand is that she isn't Leaf, which puts her back in the same category as all the other humanoids.

The polters start closing in on the rest of the party. Percedal kills one, but it seems that in the presence of their god-tree the polters can regenerate within seconds of being struck down. Percedal gets bushwhacked, his last act being to try and get a goodbye kiss from Evangeline (lol), and it's clear that the others are about to end up the same way.

Amalia, in the seconds she has before the big guy crushes her or drops her back down for the polters to deal with, crouches down and lays her hands on his bark-covered hand. She tells him to "listen to her heart" and casts what I guess is some kind of powerful healing spell. The rotted and diseased look of Treebeard's bark gives way to a healthy wood texture, and his autumnal canopy turns green and spreads firmly outward again.

Ahhh, it's a Princess Mononoke type deal. Gotcha.

Healed and restored to sanity, the Great Wakfu Tree sends out a pulse that revivifies much of the dying wood around itself. Upon feeling it, the polters stop attacking, and promptly turn Percedal back into himself. Okay then, bushwhacking is reversible by the entities that cause it! That does explain Ruel's optimism, if he happened to know a little about how polters work.

Percedal unfreezes mid kiss-attempt, and stumbles into Ruel.

It's more just uncomfortable than funny, but eh, at least it's short.

The polters carry them (those little guys are stronger than they look, heh) back to the village, where they set about restoring everyone they've bushwhacked. Presumably, the same thing is happening at the other towns that the treegod blindly lashed out at in recent times.

It seems like Xelor wasn't actually controlling these semi-undead plant creatures, then. Just exploiting the havoc caused by the creatures he inadvertently maddened through his harvesting operations. I guess that makes sense.

Anyway, back home, people fixed, Alibert and Yugo are reunited. The giant tree still appears to be in the middle of the village though, that might be a problem, but for now it's a happy reunion.

Alibert tells Yugo that their bird is the key to getting the second message. Percedal tells him that since he was already on his way to deal with the mad polters himself when he got possessed, he still owes his debt to Yugo, and will accompany him on the family-seeking adventure that lays ahead if he wishes it.

Then Xelor appears.

Or...oh, looks like he's a Xelor after all. He introduces himself as Nox, and Ruel shortly explains what the being they're facing is.

Are all xelors robots, then, or is "time wizard" just a skillset that anyone can learn? Ruel only identifies him as a xelor after he does some signature magic tricks, so it's not yet clear if the appearance alone would have been enough.

Also, Nox identifies Evangeline as a "Cra." Is that the name of the elfy race, or her type of archer warrior? Could be either. Also, come to think of it, I'm not sure if Evangeline and Amalia are actually the same species at all. In the OP, Amalia's hair looked like it could be hiding big pointy ears like Evangeline's, but now that I've seen her in action more I'm not certain. Hmm.

Nox casts za warudo, but leaves Yugo able to act. He can bring other people into the time stop with him, damn, that's powerful. He demands that Yugo tell him where Grougo can be found, on pain of death.

Of course, he's probably planning to wakfu-drain Yugo anyway as soon as he tells him. He'd have little reason not to.

Yugo tells him he has no idea what and who he's talking about, but Nox doesn't believe him. He then does the evilest thing conceivable in any universe, and threatens to torture the bird to death unless Yugo talks. As he makes that threat, he emphasizes the point by plucking out its magic feather, which immediately turns into more glowing runes (which Nox identifies as a dragonish script) and pours them into Yugo's mind. The message is that he must immediately seek out his biological family on Oma Island.

Nox might be able to recognize dragon text, but it seems that he can't read it himself, because he demands to know what the message just told him. Granted, the visible script may have not spelled out the message but rather the magic words for the "telepathic feather message" spell.

Then, somehow, suddenly, Alibert gains the ability to act during za warudo. Is this something you can just make a saving throw against every turn? Seems weird for a time stop effect. Anyway, he takes Nox by surprise, disarms him, and lands a few good hits, forcing Nox to do an emergency teleport away. So his teleportation and time stop are actually separate powers, then? I think?

Everyone unfreezes. In the wake of fighting off the time stop, Alibert's hair turns prematurely gray.

That guy really can't catch a break, can he? Just minutes after being de-bushified, he gets prematurely aged or whatever. Is this going to be another effect that they reverse within an episode or two? Is this just going to be a thing, where Alibert gets another weird magical effect on him every week?

Alibert loses consciousness, but seems to be alive and healthy-ish aside from whatever aging or hair-bleaching effect he's under. Nox's emergency escape teleport lands him in a random patch of forest. His armor has taken some visible cracks from Alibert's assault, but he's very much alive and active, and determined to keep tracking Yugo to see what other wakfu sources he turns up.

The episode ends with Ruel, Yugo, Bird, and Percedal going through what appears to be a public-use teleportation circle to a city where they can research this "Oma Island" place. Why is Ruel coming along for this? Seems a bit out of character, now that he's no longer trying to save his village. The elfgirls decide to come along too, Amalia out of boredom and frustration with the stupid ritual family stuff she's expected to do, and Evangeline because she has that big of a crush on Amalia. Alibert, meanwhile, is being helped running his restaurant and inn by some local children whose parents Yugo helped de-bush.


So, end of what was essentially a two-part pilot. This seems like a good show. Reminds me a lot of Avatar (arrow, not blue this time) in terms of subject matter, target audience, and quality, as well as the creativity and sense of whimsy of its fantasy world.

Well, its quality mostly does. Wakfu suffers from character-breaking moments and cringey attempts at humor that detract a bit from the total score. Hopefully it'll get better about that later on. Even if it doesn't though, it will still be a pretty great show.