Hilda

Andy Coyle (director) Luke Pearson, Stephanie Simpson, Kurt Mueller, Clint Eland, Paula Rosenthal (executive producers) Adam Idelson (supervising producer)

Bella Ramsey, Ameerah Falzon-Ojo, Oliver Nelson, Daisy Haggard, Rasmus Hardiker (cast)

September 21, 2018 (Netflix)

What gives us bad dreams? What truly causes the weather? As our adult selves seek the answers and the meaning behind why the way things are, Hilda taps into our inner child’s wanderlust to go find them.

Netflix’s Hilda is an animated series based on the eponymous graphic novels written and illustrated by Luke Pearson. Published by Nobrow Press, Hilda is set in a world where fantastical creatures are normalized and incorporated into tradition and everyday life. It largely draws from Scandinavian folklore and has been compared to Tove Jansson’s world of Moomins.

The series follows a blue-haired girl named Hilda (Bella Ramsey) and the endeavors she faces with magic and monsters as a result of her strong curiosity and constant yearn for adventure. However, sometimes Hilda’s fearlessness for the unknown comes at a cost. Having lived with only her mother, Johanna (Daisy Haggard) and her pet deer-fox, Twig, out in the woods for her whole life, Hilda has trouble adjusting to societal customs when they eventually have to move into the city of Trolberg. She runs into conflict at school and sometimes pries her business into places she shouldn’t be.

She eventually finds companionship with schoolmates Frida (Ameerah Falzon-Ojo) and David (Oliver Nelson) as they join in on her shenanigans. With these newfound friendships, Hilda learns to reaffirm her identity within the wild simultaneous to the conformities of having to live in the city.

From a technical standpoint, Hilda is visually welcoming and wholesome akin to its premise. Its cozy and warm color palette projects the feeling of a timeless, eternal autumn. It employs a combination of digital and traditional animation techniques that are exemplified in shows like Disney’s recently rebooted DuckTales and Paul Rudish’s Mickey Mouse shorts.

The show’s soundtrack is certainly not one you would expect from a show revolving around traditional myth, ranging from electronic soundscapes to contemporary, acoustic-folk. Nonetheless, the show’s theme song is composed and produced by Grimes. What auditorily seems to be a clash to Hilda’s soft, visual aesthetics, the show’s music creates the appropriate immersion so that viewers lose themselves into the mysteries of a world they may be unfamiliar with.

Hilda avoids the habit of over-exposition that other shows tend to resort to, and instead takes more natural approaches to explain the folklore established. Ultimately, Hilda raises the deeper questions about humanity’s place and relationship with the world. Magic and monsters are pervasive in culture, which are things evidently synonymous with nature itself. How this greater question is discussed often becomes the key, poetic takeaway through all of the smaller situations Hilda faces with her friends.

For instance, the city of Trolberg is explained to have been founded on former troll-inhabited lands—hence its name. When the first human settlers of what would become Trolberg arrived, large walls were built to not only create a border, but to protect the settlement when the trolls are more active at night. To the citizens of Trolberg, this history is not unusual.

Some creatures invading Trolberg are treated as pests or like any other invasive creatures in our own reality. Meanwhile, other creatures that appear in the city are just everyday citizens, like the house spirits that are referred to as the Nisse. Just as these facts are normalized and not over-glossed upon in the show, it is normalized to the viewers.

Plot threads and well-timed humor are seamlessly recalled and sewn through episodes without suffering from the symptom of having to infantilize the audience. Its well-produced animation serves small visual gags well.

Overall, Hilda is an intelligent series. It is clear Hilda knows its target audience to be smart: through its own characters as visual avatars, it reminds us that children should not be reduced to their age and are better knowing than what people would often assume. It is reminiscent of other animated series centered on children exploring the unknown like Craig of the Creek, Gravity Falls, and Over the Garden Wall. Meanwhile, it shares some semblance to the unapologetic, and a bit unrated, humor to the Puzzle Agent games—which similarly contains fantastical elements drawing from Scandinavian influence. With that said, Hilda is not something that solely should be enjoyed by younger audiences, but is something that is palpable to anyone interested in what it has to offer.