Unicorn: Warriors Eternal creators on the animated marvel 20 years in the making

Watching Unicorn: Eternal warriorsthe latest creation from acclaimed animator-director Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, primeval), in the media landscape of 2023, feels about as wondrous as seeing a real unicorn graze in a parking lot. In an era defined by sequels and reboots, spinoffs and reimaginings, Unicorn: Eternal warriors is that all-too-precious rarity: a truly original animated series with no affiliation to any existing franchise, a passion project envisioned by one of the preeminent creators working in American animation today. Even Tartakovsky feels it’s a small miracle that it’s finally here.

“For me, it’s a new kind of storytelling,” Tartakovsky told Polygon via Zoom. “It’s all I’ve trained for over the years, doing all these different shows, culminating in this one thing.”

While Tartakovsky has developed a reputation for creating animation that is both conceptually ambitious and visually quirky, Unicorn: Eternal warriors represents a new challenge for the experienced director through its emphasis on emotional storytelling. “With each project I have learned more and with each project I hope to get better at storytelling,” says Tartakovsky. “It took a while, but by the time we got here and someone finally bought it, I felt like it Oh, now it’s fate; it’s fate, because I never gave up.”

The production of Unicorn: Eternal warriors dates back to the time when Tartakovsky was working on it Samurai Jack at Cartoon Network Studios, over 20 years ago.

“It started around the end of Jack And Clone Wars‘ says Tartakovsky. “I was thinking about what the next step is for me. I wanted to break with the graphic look; that very flat, stylized aesthetic of Right, PowerPuff GirlsAnd Samurai Jack. I wanted to do something more volumetric. Around the same time, Tartakovsky was asked to write and direct an unproduced animated film Astroboy, Osamu Tezuka’s iconic sci-fi boy robot. The experience of working on that film fed directly into Tartakovsky’s thought process Unicorn: Eternal Warriors.

Darrick Bachman, the lead writer for Unicorn: Eternal Warriors and an old collaborator of Tartakovsky, has his own memories of when the series was first conceived. “He had just shown it to me Howl’s moving castlewhich had just come out, and he loves castle in the airBachman told Polygon. “We both thought there was something wonderful about that Victorian style world. We were sitting in his office and he was just drawing this early version of Copernicus, something he had in his head when he went home that night. The next morning he just showed me this sketchbook full of pictures he drew and told me about this rough idea he had about warriors reincarnating repeatedly through time. It was really very fascinating. We just started throwing ideas around and yeah, I think that was literally 20 years ago.

Image: Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street

Image: Studio Ghibli/Toei Company

Image: Tezuka Productions

Top image: Unicorn Warriors Eternal; Bottom left: Castle in the air; Bottom right: Astro Boy

The influence of Hayao Miyazaki, Max Fleischer and Osamu Tezuka is clearly visible Unicorn: Eternal warriors: a sci-fi fantasy adventure centered on a trio of immortal warriors: Melinda, a powerful sorceress; Seng; a cosmic monk with the ability to traverse the astral plane of existence; and Edred, an Elven warrior prince and Melinda’s lover. Together, the warriors battle against a primal force of evil across space and time, reincarnated from generation to generation by their robotic comrade Copernicus in their mission to protect humanity.

If that premise sounds eerily like the 2003 Samurai Jack episode “Birth of Evil” in the 2010s Sym-Bionic Titan, it’s no coincidence. for Tartakovsky, Unicorn: Eternal warriors represents nothing less than the pinnacle of his career as an animator and director to date. But beyond those influences and the arc of his own career, Tartakovsky says he drew on his own personal experiences as a father watching his children grow up in creating Unicorn: Eternal warriors.

“So I tried to sell it for years, and during that time I had three children,” Tartakovsky tells Polygon. “And what I really saw was the kids growing from kids to teens, teens to adults. Suddenly your little daughter is 12, and then she’s 13 and she’s a completely different person. That’s amazing to me, and it tied right in with what I was doing Unicorn. Because the story is just a big metaphor for change, to find out who you are through change.”

Nowhere is this theme of change more apparent than in the case of Emma, ​​a young bride-to-be living in Victorian London who unexpectedly discovers that she is the reincarnation of Melinda. As the main protagonist of the series, Emma struggles not only with mastering the extraordinary new powers that have been thrust upon her, but also with the tension that comes with reconciling her former self (as well as her past lives) with who and what she is now .

“When you go through life, you constantly wonder who you are,” Tartakovsky tells Polygon. “And as you grow, you start to wonder: Am I growing into the person I want to be or am I growing into something less than what I want to be? Am I not satisfied with how I am growing?”

Image: Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street

For the director of Unicorn: Eternal warriorsalso plays that question into his experiences as an animator working his way through Hollywood.

“Hollywood is a little crazy with some of the characters we meet,” says Tartakovsky. “When I got to Hollywood, there was all this craziness around me, and so I started questioning myself. There were times when I tried to be more than myself so people would say, “Wow, look at Genndy, he’s so creative and crazy,” and I hated it because it wasn’t sincere to who I was. It also stems from the fact that you are a comics fan, that question what you do and what your responsibilities are now after you get these new powers. That all went in Unicorn; I’m never beside myself, I always try to be sincere in my stories and not just post cliche stuff just because it feels like that’s what it needs to be.

Despite, or perhaps because of the novelty of Tartakovsky’s vision, Unicorn: Eternal warriors was a difficult series to land for studios otherwise obsessed with the reliable bankability of existing franchises. “He’s pitched it many, many times since he first came up with the idea,” Bachman told Polygon. “We had talked about this, and it’s always there; it always kind of seeps back to the top.

From Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, to Netflix and HBO Max, the series went through multiple stages of pitching and pre-production, each thwarted by disinterest from some of the studios or pre-existing commitments to other projects. “I think there are about four different versions of the show that have existed so far,” says Bachman. “It’s kind of like the team, it’s reborn over and over again.”

An aspect that has remained a constant throughout Unicorn: Eternal warriors‘s development is the setting: an alternate version of 19th century London filled with semi-sentient automatons, flying airships and fantastic gas-powered technology. For Bachman, the appeal of the series’ Steampunk setting is attributable to what it represents to audiences engaged with it in modern times.

“I think it’s because it’s the birth of modern technology,” says Bachman. “It is a time when so many different forms of technology: the internal combustion engine, refrigeration, high-speed trains and indoor heating became part of our daily lives. People were so enamored with the idea of ​​the future, and now we think of it as the past and the beginning of the modern conveniences of our technological present. There’s a romance in it.”

Image: Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street

It has taken almost 20 years Unicorn: Eternal warriors to finally make it to television screens, and now that it’s finally here, Tartakovsky has plans for more stories following Melinda, Seng, and Edred’s many adventures throughout history.

“It’s a giant world, it’s designed like a big franchise,” says Tartakovsky. “We could go to the future, we could go to the Middle Ages. There’s another story that’s next to it, but this has to be successful before we can do that next one.

In his conversation with Polygon, Bachman floated the potential of future storylines that explored a steampunk version of 1920s Chicago. “That would be a great era to explore because Genndy lived in Chicago and I like that Roaring ’20s aesthetic. And I would really like to explore all of Europe, you know, this fantasy version of Europe and Asia and the Middle East. It would be great to be able to play with the terrains of those different locations.”

Whatever the future may bring Unicorn: Eternal warriors, Tartakovsky remains committed to pushing not only the boundaries of what audiences expect of him as a creator, but also his own artistic ambitions. “I want to push myself,” says Tartakovsky. “Even from Samurai Unpleasant primevalI was like, OK, he won’t have sword action; the combat must be caveman style and he will rely on a spear. I don’t want to repeat what I’ve done before.”

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal can be watched and streamed weekly on Adult Swim and HBO Max.