Evangelyne, the Broken Bow, and the Courage Nobody Sees
β¦and why season 1 Evangelyne is far more interesting character than we tend to give her credit for
A personal analysis of Wakfu Season 1, Episodes 19β20
I think what gets me is how surprisingly bold it is for a 6+ show. Imagine you're 6β8 years old, watching your favorite character Percedal lose it, turn into a genuine threat, break Evangelyne's bow, and then freeze in horror at what he's done.
For kids 6β12 years old, that's actual drama. Hit me harder than The Lion King ever did.
Let's talk about the real reason Evangelyne is FUCKING brave in that scene. For real.
Everyone focuses on the broken bow. No one notices what actually happened before that. So let's actually look at it.
And the entire fandom says: "Look, Evangelyne lost again. Can't do her job. Always in distress. Always weak."
But what if I told you that just drawing a weapon on the monster is already an act of insane courage?
Let's talk about possessed Percedal's actual stats (based on screenshots and scenes, and yes, I'm an engineer, this is what I do)
Tristepin Percedal, possessed form stats
Β· Height: ~2.30m (Razortime is officially 2.90m)
Β· Muscle mass: insane relative to height
Β· Weight: ~350β500kg
Β· Fang length (from gum): Β±15β20cm (visible above lip: Β±8β12cm)
Β· Jump: we don't know the exact number, but from the scene from e19 β his jump height is something about 300+ meters. That's the height of a skyscraper. His jump distance? Around a kilometer. I'm not joking. The human record is 9 meters. He does 100 times that casually. This is not a jump. This is a ballistic launch.
Β· Punch force: based on the fact that he can destroy a two-story building's load-bearing wall in one hit, and he can (barely) hold his own against heavy mecha-tech β 50β100 tons of force.
I'm a structural engineer in building construction β and that hit is a FUCKING INSANE amount of force!
For comparison: a heavyweight boxer's punch is ~1 ton.
This is a force of a moving freight train.
Who can actually fight this beast in canon?
Β· War machines (Razortime)
Β· People with superpowers (Yugo)
Β· Someone who's literally over a thousand years old and survived the Dofus era (Joris)
No normal human being ever defeats this creature in the entire series. No one.
And now, imagine you're a 17-year-old girl with a bow.
You're standing in front of this monster. Alone. Everyone else is already down.
You know this thing could tear through the elite Sadida guard like wet paper. You know it could do exactly the same to you. The only reason this scene didn't turn into a bloodbath is the 6+ rating. That's it.
You're not thinking: "Oh, I'm a character of a kid's show, I'll be fine."
You're thinking: "If I miss, if I hesitate, I'm dead."
Β· Going at a terrorist with a pocket knife because there's literally no other option
Β· Standing your ground against a polar bear with a single-shot rifle
Β· Captain Crozier from The Terror aiming his gun at the Tuunbaq and saying: "STOP. Don't move. Let's talk."
And you don't shoot immediately. You give it one last warning. Because it's not a monster. It's Pinpin.
I've seen people ask: "Why didn't Evangelyne just shoot him immediately? No warning?"
Let me give you a parallel.
Imagine you're sixteen. Your dog gets rabies. Foaming mouth, bloodshot eyes. You were playing fetch with this dog a week ago. Could you shoot it yourself? Even with a tranquilizer, not a bullet? Could you aim it at her head without flinching?
And most of you would too.
We're all so brave when we're sitting on the couch eating chips.
Evangelyne was seventeen. At that age, you're maybe a junior lieutenant at best β not responsible for a royal's life. You shouldn't trust a child with another child's safety. It's insane.
Giving a seventeen-year-old a job as a royal bodyguard, a job for an elite experienced adult warrior, and expecting them to act like a seasoned security officer means whoever hired them is clinically stupid.
Not Evangelyne. The one who hired her.
Put me in charge of engineering at Moscow City at 22, and then β OOPS, why did the tower collapse? NOBODY KNOWS.
Or let's put a first-year art student in charge of illustrating the Divine Comedy, and if they don't do better than Gustave DorΓ©, get them out of the profession.
Or a first-year med student doing oncology surgery in London. How much would you sew up?
Almost any normal person at seventeen would break before shooting a friend they love. Everyone's hand would shake. Everyone would try one last warning.
To shoot quickly and quietly, you need years of service in law enforcement to build up that cynical armor. Or, if it's a dog, years of euthanizing animals as a vet tech.
Human psychology is much weaker than people think β especially at a young age. All that heroic pioneer stuff we were fed in school is just propaganda and genre conventions.
But here's the episode no one takes seriously:
Look, I know it has issues. The romantic fluff, the damsel-in-distress scenes. I'm also here for the unrealized potential, I'm not blind.
But this episode has a very mature core: some things cannot be fixed. The broken bow can't be glued back together. Amalia's dead mother can't come back. Pulling yourself out of a sticky dream is painful, but it's necessary.
And Evangelyne herself sends away the illusion-Percedal with his promises of a fairytale happy ending, and runs to her actual duty.
I love that Evangelyne gets herself out of that sticky sterile trip. She decides that she and Amalia don't need to be fed sugary lies with a repaired bow and a resurrected mother.
There was a great quote in the art book:
When the ground fails under Evangelyne, she sinks deeper into the heart of the Tree of Life β metaphorically, into the layers of her own subconscious.
I'd joke about "late Bergman for six-year-old girls," butβ¦
The surrealism here is way above 6+ level. Evangelyne literally sinks into the tree's epithelium and walks through its veins. It's almost Tarkovsky for little girls, I swear to god. Rewatching it now, I'm reminded of Solaris.
And I love this dialogue:
Evangelyne: "What are those lights?"
Amalia: "Each one represents the soul of a Sadida."
Evangelyne: "So one of them represents you?"
Amalia: "Yes."
Evangelyne: "Do you know which one?"
Amalia: "No. They're all anonymous, becauseβ¦"
Evangelyne: "β¦because no one life is more important than another."
Yes, yes. Boring unnecesarry episode.
And well so, this episode shows: season 1 Evangelyne is not Β«Pinpin's girlΒ» AT ALL, it's a fandom stereotype.
formal and protocol-driven when needed
genuinely invested in the kingdom's fate, standing her ground during an audience with the prince
So, yeah. It's not much. Wakfu has problems. Evangelyne has problems. Not good bodyguard enough. Too much failures. Problems in a love story writing. I'm an Evangelyne fan and I'll be the first to admit it.
But here's the difference between a completely empty character and one with unrealized potential: with potential, there's something to hold onto. There's something to explore.
I feel nothing for, say, Toross. But with Evangelyne, I can explore, dig deeper on my own, write, build things.
You can't explore emptiness. But here, there's at least a terra incognita with arrows pointing into the white. No wonder my favorite childhood book was "The Voyage of the 'Fox' in the Arctic Seas" by Sir Francis Leopold McClintock.
And that's the whole point.
She's not flawless. But she's not only flaws either.
