Kid Cudi animated special Entergalactic combines his eighth studio album with a story of two young artists navigating the twists and turns of finding love in New York City. Liam Maguren writes about this breathable, fresh take on both the animated album and romance genres.
Entergalactic
If you’ve caught the behind-the-scenes videos for Entergalactic, the animated special created by Scott Mescudi (AKA Kid Cudi), you may have heard someone say: “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen.” If you’ve also seen even a couple of frames of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, you’ll probably think that sentiment isn’t completely true.
Not that it needs to be: Sony Animation’s Oscar-winning masterpiece deserves the compliment of imitation. Applied here, Entergalactic‘s use of the hypnotic visual style popularised by Spider-Verse—the striking geometry, selective use of frame rate, a drinkable colour palette—fits handsomely with the hefty, heartfelt, high-as-a-drone tunes of Kid Cudi’s eighth studio album. It’s this application of the style, and not just the style itself, that gives the 92-minute special such a breathable sense of freshness.
(As fresh as the prominent red ‘Closure’ hoodie which, I admit, I browsed the Netflix store for a real one. They’re all sold out. Typical.)
The story has the key ingredients for an average rom-com—a super bubbly depiction of New York City, two good-looking and well-off leads Jabari (Mescudi) and Meadow (Jessica Williams), a third-act misunderstanding chucked in to question their relationship—but everything else in Entergalactic feels hellbent on leading viewers away from familiar territories.
At its heart are two characters looking for something genuine, and at first, they’re not thinking about love. Jabari’s just dropped out of a relationship and landed a dream gig making a comic based on his own street art creation, only to be given unsolicited advice from a fellow colleague to make his character “bright, lite and white.” Meanwhile, Meadow’s trying to keep her head afloat as a photographer on the rise, a job made difficult by her agent who keeps throwing her into the depths of NYC’s ultra-pretentious art scene.
The pair try to stay grounded in their separate worlds, with Entergalactic generously giving the characters moments away from the plot to show the viewer who they genuinely are and displaying them as hugely likeable people.
Meadow meditating in her studio may not add anything to the story but it does lend heavily to her character’s headspace, visualised seductively by the animated haze of her lit incense. And technically, we didn’t need to hear a laundromat-based sexcapade from Ky (Ty Dolla $ign) but seeing Jabari shaking his damn head lets us know where he’s at—a contrast illustrated superbly by the anecdote’s radical shift in animated style into something more playfully cartoonish.
These moments away from the story feel more akin to a Richard Linklater hangout movie, the kind dedicated to capturing people who they are and as they are. But Entergalactic is also a love story, and by building its characters in such a grounded way, it makes the possibility of their romance feel much more real. And when that possibility gains ground, it earns its butterflies more than many of its live-action peers.
When explaining his driving forces for Entergalactic, Mescudi talked about depicting Black love outside of a stereotypical or struggle-induced setting. In particular, he wanted to champion the tender side to Black masculinity. By keeping the drama to a minimum and matters of the heart heightened, you can’t help but feel they’ve absolutely nailed it.
Entergalactic‘s all about experiencing these vibes within moments, a feeling amplified through woozy animated flights of fancy and Kid Cudi’s specified songs. These moments could be pivotal like Jabari and Meadow’s romantic BMX ride through metaphorical space, boosted by the trippy-tender track In Love, or as simple as Jabari and his crew going on a club-hopping bender, a scene that digs deeper with a flurry of wild transitions and Cudi’s pulsating earworm Do What I Want.
This vivid painting of time, place, and sensation sets Entergalactic apart from fellow animated album movies—and there’s a lot of them. Stretching all the way back from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, through to The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and Daft Punk’s anime opera Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, this subgenre typically molds animation around the tracks. However, Entergalactic feels more like a melding of the two—not quite a musical, nor a collection of music videos, but something else in-between or outside those disciplines.
By forging its own path in familiar territories, Entergalactic is truly unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Or heard.
