Donald Glover and Zack Fox’s animated comedy Yoppaman is completely insane
On Wednesday, actor-comedian Zack Fox shared the first episode of Yoppaman, an animated comedy series about a run-down southern restaurant, and it’s fucking crazy. The project was first teased in April, when multi-hyphenated Donald Glover mentioned that he was working with Fox on an “anime” project during an episode of his livestream on Gilga radio.
The first episode is over at just over two and a half minutes Yoppaman revolves around the eccentric employees of a Waffle House-inspired restaurant called Happy Grits. While beating up an unruly customer outside the restaurant, the group transforms into Power Rangers-style heroes to battle the minions of a maniacal alien warlord who happens to be hovering above the restaurant in his ship.
It’s chaotic and weird and bursting with personality; the exact type of anarchic comedy that would feel right next to those of Adult Swim staples Black dynamite And Freaknik: The Musical.
“In 2022, I started developing an animation idea with my good friend and collaborator Chibu Okere,” Fox wrote in the episode’s YouTube description. “We’re both Atlanta-raised artists who grew up doing things like Devilish man, FLCL, Evangelion90’s Cartoon Network, and of course black southern folklore/music/comedy/fashion etc. So we wanted to make something that put all of that together in one big gumbo pot. Yoppaman is the product of that synthesis.”
The resemblance is certainly striking. The character and background design feels like a combination of Hiroyuki Imaishi’s cult anime film Dead leavesTaiyo Matsumotos Tekkonkincreeand Ronald Wimberly’s graphic novel GratNin. But even beyond these comparisons, Yoppaman feels like a passion project through and through and a creative breath of fresh air for fans of both anime and adult animation.
The episode was produced by Six Point Harness, Inca Los Angeles studio that previously worked on the 2019 musical film Guava Island starring Donald Glover, with music written and performed by Devin Morrison. From the show website indicates that more episodes of the series will be released soon, with Fox and Okere looking to nurture the project “without the influence (or hindrance) of a network” before turning around. Yoppaman into a fully realized show.