Netflix’s wonderfully whimsical new cartoon remains grounded
Horse only knows a life of war. But during a mission with her Rider to collect a mysterious artifact that’s supposed to help their side to victory, she finds herself suddenly transported into a colorful, magical world inhabited by singing and dancing centaurs.
Lost in a weird, unfamiliar place, the battlehardened warhorse soon discovers she now has the ability to speak. Understandably, she freaks.
“I wanted it to genuinely feel like you took someone from a different series and put them into Centaurworld,” says Megan Nicole Dong, the showrunner and executive producer of “Centaurworld,” a new musical animated fantasy series now streaming on Netflix. “… We tried to make it look like it was almost like marker on paper, to contrast the way Horse looks and the way that her world looks.”
The 10-episode first season follows Horse (voiced by Kimiko Glenn) and her new centaur friends — Wammawink (Megan Hilty), Durpleton (Josh Radnor), Glendale (Dong), Zulius (Parvesh Cheena) and Ched (Chris Diamantopoulos) — as they travel across Centaurworld to collect the items she needs in order to get home.
In contrast to Horse’s world, Centaurworld is vibrant and whimsical. In addition to traditional human-horse hybrids, the world is inhabited with “half-animal, half-man things” of all kinds, including beartaurs, moletaurs, cattaurs and whaletaurs. Even the mountains, trees and weather phenomena in Centaurworld look like quadrupeds with hooves.
“Biology was always something that I was really interested in, so I wanted to have as many different kinds of creatures be the centaurs,” says Dong. “I wanted it to also be a place that, because we have so many different kinds of creatures of all different sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, naturally felt inclusive.”
The show is delightfully fun and strange and the soundtrack slaps. It’s also a sincere story about embracing change and how you can learn about yourself when life throws you a surprise challenge.
While “Centaurworld” is remarkable for its aesthetic ambition — in addition to distinct styles that visually emphasize how different its two worlds are, the show has two studios, Mercury
Filmworks and Red Dog Culture House, handling its animation in both styles — it’s the music that first gives viewers a hint there’s more to the series than the “Wizard of Oz”-like journey that initially meets the eye.
The songwriting “was super integrated into the scripts and into the writing process, which was a lot of fun,” says Dong, who along with co-executive producer Dominic Bisignano wrote all of “Centaurworld’s” songs. “We wanted to make sure that the songs weren’t just songs happening for the sake of having them. They had to be actual musical moments that progress the story or informed the audience of where a character was emotionally.”
As wonderfully whimsical and weird the show’s world may be, then, Horse and her story — as well as the magical centaurs — remain very much grounded.
“Animation is one of those things where you can kind of visually show anything,” says Dong. “The fun of it is being able to portray relatable themes in the most unexpected ways possible. I’ve always loved taking advantage of the freedom you have in animation to do that.”