Season Review: Koala Man Season One

Overview:

Koala Man, a humble street-level superhero, does everything in his power to protect Dapto, a quaint community in New South Wales, Australia. Koala Man’s efforts frequently go overlooked and undervalued, which creates additional pressure for Kevin, the man behind the mask, as he tries to keep his family happy and avoid becoming the supervillain of his home and losing sight of what really matters.

Our Take:

The world’s growing obsession with superheroes has progressed to a point where the street-level heroes who lack superpowers are now beginning to take center stage. Koala Man isn’t just a street-level hero, but he’s a suburb-level hero who’s consumed by housing association bylaws and what days the garbage gets collected. This type of humor can fall flat in the increasingly sanitized Marvel and DC universes. However, it’s ripe territory to explore for someone like Michael Cusack, the Australian animator and creator who’s responsible for Bushworld Adventures, YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, Smiling Friends, and a wealth of niche Australian comedy that’s been able to find a mainstream home in North America.

Cusack’s Koala Man was initially conceived in 2015, which was hardly before superhero supremacy took over the media, but it was still long before the fatigue of this heightened genre started to kick in. This is not a fresh creation that’s explicitly a reaction to the past few years of superhero media. However, Koala Man is the perfect property from Cusack’s back catalog to revisit and rejuvenate after entertainment’s obsession with superheroes continues to soar. In doing so, Koala Man is an entertaining comedy that’s far more than meets the eye. It’s a series that everyone deserves to check out, especially those who feel like they never need to consume another piece of superhero media. Koala Man is eucalyptus-laced Kryptonite that brings superhero stories to its feet.

It’s not long into the first episode of Koala Man until Kevin gets told, ”You’re not even a real superhero. Everyone hates you.” This essentially becomes the season’s thesis statement and the rest of the episodes work hard to effectively prove the contrary. This eucalyptus oil-dispensing vigilante spends his days cleaning up Dapto’s streets, both figuratively and literally, and Koala Man quickly dismantles the typical superhero worship to establish that Kevin’s alter ego is of extremely low status. Kevin’s fantasy has just as much to do with the lack of respect that he receives at home from his family as it does with a genuine desire to help the helpless and improve the world. This first season has Kevin repeatedly ask himself if Dapto truly needs Koala Man or if this is some misguided vanity project that’s a reflection of his insecurities. It matures into a deep journey over the course of this first season.

The standard Koala Man episode devolves into hyperbolized silliness of the best variety where an innocent mistake like forgetting to take out the garbage results in the release of an irate, hungry Old God, or how a school-wide soda ban can somehow trigger an elemental turf war with disgruntled tradesmen. This is the right vibe for Koala Man to embrace and most episodes juggle mundane minutiae with unbelievable mayhem, all of which culminates into unexpected madness. Koala Man is indebted to superhero tropes, but the series either avoids or overturns many of the conventional conclusions that fill comic book stories. It uses the superhero structure to amplify Cusack’s surreal humor to even greater levels of chaos. There are some uniquely hilarious superhero riffs in this show, which is impressive for a genre that’s been done to death. One of the season’s smartest ideas is an X-Men-esque group of hired hands whose powers all reflect their specific trade skills.

There’s also a pitch black bluntness to certain gags where a sweet sequence is punctuated with graphic nihilism or violence, which is certainly in line with Cusack’s sense of humor. It helps give Koala Man a little extra edge that has the audience temporarily speechless and caught off-guard at least once per episode. Koala Man installments can be incredibly broad with rubbish mechas, vagina meteors from the sixth dimension, sentient sausage rolls, or Titanic mummies on the moon, only to then feature jarring cuts to an innocent man who gets shot in the face, graphic vehicular manslaughter, or an elderly woman who relaxes to her personal snuff films.

Koala Man’s superhero spectacles are the biggest setpieces of each installment, but it’s Kevin’s family that he does all of this for and unsurprisingly functions as the comedy’s beating heart. Koala Man makes Kevin and company feel like a real family in a short amount of time. There’s constant shade being thrown from them all, but there’s natural chemistry between these characters. Any scene that allows all four family members to bounce off of each other becomes an immediate highlight. Most of Koala Man’s episodes divide up Kevin’s family in order to maximize its storytelling opportunities, but there are still plenty of moments where everyone is able to congregate together and playfully exacerbate each other.

Alison and Liam, Kevin’s children, negotiate the social strata of school and their dad’s secret identity and fortunately this material is just as wild as Koala Man’s conflicts. Liam and Alison head down compelling paths over the course of the season. The same is true for Vicky, Kevin’s wife and it works in Koala Man’s favor that the show takes temporary breaks from Kevin and that the whole series isn’t completely filtered through him. Vicky, Liam, and Alison are real characters and not just one-note plot devices. Koala Man is just as much an “origin story” for the rest of Kevin’s family as it is for its titular superhero. 

Koala Man also excels with its representation of Dapto, which takes no time to gain the nuance of a Springfield-like location. There are even flashbacks to Dapto during the 1910s to build even greater context. This first season creates a well-established, lived-in world that never struggles to build a shorthand with its audience so that they feel like they’re official Daptonians. Darren and Damo pop, but without ever derailing episodes, and supporting players like Big Greg, Spider, and Principal Bazfield all get their individual moments to shine. Koala Man digs progressively deeper into each character’s psychology and there’s legitimate depth to them all by the end of the season.

In fact, the toxicity between Big Greg and Kevin is reminiscent of the irrational hatred that Lex Luthor and J. Jonah Jameson have towards Superman and Spider-Man. Only in the case of Koala Man, it’s the pig-headed boss that society recognizes instead of the actual hero. It all adds an extra level of pathos to Kevin’s dreary lot in life. What’s essential here is that Kevin is knocked over by basically everyone that he meets, but he doesn’t let this get him down or dissuade his passion to protect his people. It’s easy to imagine another version of Koala Man where Kevin is more of a broken Travis Bickle-like figure who’s one discretion away from snapping. 

Koala Man benefits from keeping Kevin’s softer edges and not pushing him into sociopathy. Some of Koala Man’s most successful moments are when Kevin gets out of his own way, appreciates life’s simple pleasures, and helps inspire his peers as himself–not some bizarre animal-based vigilante. Koala Man allows its titular hero to save his community, but it’s the human underneath the mask who’s the subject of mockery and ridicule when he preaches the same values. It’s a fun way to celebrate Koala Man’s virtue and abilities, while also mocking the saccharine, preachy nature of superheroes that can be genuinely annoying to everyday people who are just trying to get through their day.

There’s lots of fun to be had in Koala Man when it comes to superheroes, but the series is truly a passionate celebration of all things Australia, whether it’s benign showbags, injured koalas, The Great Emu War, or the country’s enduring love for the Wiggles. This cultural commemoration covers Koala Man’s storylines and characters, but also the stable of guest voices who are assembled, all of which are a who’s who of Australian celebrities (Hugh Jackman, Sarah Snook, Hugo Weaving, Mirando Otto, to name a few). One of the best storylines from the season involves Australia’s 15-hour time difference and how this is actually a simplistic form of clairvoyance that allows Australians to know the future slightly before it happens, but are strictly forbidden to interfere with the laws of physics lest a universal collapse occurs. Simultaneously, there are some exceptional takedowns of rampant Americana that are even funnier when expressed through enthusiastic Australians.

A lot of the surreal silliness that comes out of Koala Man feel like stories that could also be in Cusack’s YOLO: Crystal Fantasy (which is not a complaint), but it’s also not just a shameless rip off of what Cusack has previously done. This is a strong addition to Michael Cusack’s oeuvre and in many ways it feels like an evolution of the type of comedy and storytelling that was experimented with in YOLO: Crystal Fantasy. This first season even experiments with larger serialization over the course of these eight episodes in the form of a determined archvillain who pledges to wage war with Koala Man. It’s an approach that helps make this silly series gain some significant gravitas once these dots begin to connect. The final two episodes carry the collective weight of the season and contain some very satisfying emotional payoffs.

Koala Man is a delight in every regard and it’s another extremely satisfying adult animated comedy that Hulu has added to its library. Koala Man benefits from knowing exactly what it is and how to use that to its advantage, but while staying faithful to pure anarchy. The series delivers as a hilarious parody of superhero culture, but there’s also a surprisingly deep meditation on identity, family, and the power of community that’s Koala Man’s secret weapon. There’s a lot more to say and do in this twisted take on Australia and Koala Man isn’t just the hero we deserve, but the animated comedy that we deserve.

The first season of ‘Koala Man’ premieres January 9th on Hulu