Watched all the eps last night.
TLDR - this was great. I did like that they were all standalone episodes. I wish there were more episodes.
Animation was great. There some shades of some other things I've seen, but a lot of these fights would have felt right at home at Crunchy Roll. They really put their foot into Eps 1 and 3.
Art Style - They weren't afraid of African forms at all. It was refreshing to see Black Facial Features and Black Hair so stylized.
Power Levels could have used some help wrt to consistency. Much like the sense of "power" levels isn't ever clear in MCU (or Anime/Any Animation), it terms of stakes, it's never clear to me who's more powerful (and whether I should "worry" about a character)
World Building - Some stuff can be said about the internal politics of Wakanda, "traditional" gender roles, succession issues....But there wasn't
much commentary or exploration - the world was presented as is. That said, I don't really know the age group this was aimed at, seemed to be about the Batman:The Animated Series level - which I think of us as high schoolers that are still buying toys, and in 2025 it's older millennials and Gen Xer's
still buying toys.
The Politics of Wakanda - It's an isolationist ethno-state, full stop.
Coogler examined what that meant throughout BP1. My CPU (Color ProcessingUnit) really gets a workout whenever I think about it. #KillmongerWasRight, don't @ me.
It's just an interesting backdrop to do a series on, for a series that's gonna be primarily watched by Americans (Black Americans at that).
I'm honestly still not sure what I think about it.
- Nakia - We should help
- W'Kabi - Don't invite that trouble in
- Kill Monger - Let's destroy the imperalists/colonizers and take over the globe, by any and all means necessary.
- T'Challa - opens up tech centers in Oakland?
The entire series here says, W'Kabi is right.
Overall - pretty good. Better than the last batch of What If that we got, imo.