The New Adventures of Encanto Vol. 1: Time to Shine

For anyone hoping for some sort of sequel of the wonderful Disney film Encanto, the news of a comic series with the new adventures of beloved characters must sound exciting. The comics are written by Amparo Ortiz, drawn primarily by Andrea Greppi (with a supporting team), and published by Papercutz. So far, only the first volume is out (the second is announced for August 2025), so let’s have a look at it!

Pretty preview pictures taken from the Amazon and Papercutz websites.
Ugly crooked photos are my own. :)

The official blurb doesn’t give us much beyond an overall happy and light feeling:

It’s time to peek behind the curtain at the fantastically gifted family Madrigal! Mirabel and her extended family live together in an enchanted house named Casita, where the magic of their miracle keeps the Encanto going every day. But behind the scenes, everything can’t be perfect all the time! From secret visions and making new friends, to talent shows and tall tales, the Madrigals face their share of challenges. Luckily, Mirabel is always there to remind her family of their greatest strength… each other!

The book contains four comics: the first two take place soon after the events of the movie, while the other two are (mostly) set in the time while the Madrigal triplets were young. Apparently, similar “New Adventures” of other Disney characters also exist, and Papercutz also publishes The New Adventures of Turning Red, so this book also contains a 4-page preview of that in the end. Personally, I’m not a fan of books ending with something else (a simple back-cover ad would have been preferable), but someone may find the preview useful. Anyway, let’s have a look at the comics themselves.

 

The art style

As you may see from the pictures, the art style is very cutesy and somewhat caricatural, almost chibi, with all the characters having big heads, as well as more delicate features than in the film. The colours, too, are brighter and softer than in the cartoon, with no genuinely dark scenes. To be honest, I am not too fond of this style choice, not because it's unappealing in itself (it's cute), but precisely because it deviates from the original aesthetic so much. Obviously, this was done with the idea to attract an audience of younger children, but that still doesn't make it good enough for me, because the characters don't quite look like themselves. At best, they look like younger versions of themselves. Some people complained that the movie Mirabel looks older than her official age of 15 (and I also initially thought she was older), but here she looks to me like she's maybe 10, and Isabela 12 or so. (Camilo seems to be the least affected.) When I first saw the cover, I actually thought the comic was going to be a prequel about the younger Madrigals as children.

This aspect is additionally problematic in the actual prequel stories, as it is really hard to guess how old the triplets are supposed to be. (And the use of “kids” for their friends is equally vague, so it doesn’t help.) The story seems to imply that they're teens, but Julieta looking like a Latina Shirley Temple really doesn't help. Some of the character profiles also seem unnaturally narrow, almost rodent-like: while there is one similar brief shot of Mirabel like that in the film (as she faces Abuela in “Waiting on a Miracle”), this seems more pronounced and looks a bit uncanny to me. 

That is not nearly what she looks like frontally.

Also, some shots just seem to evoke the Asterix art style to me – and while I adore Asterix, it just doesn't sit well with Encanto for me. As Papercutz is currently publishing the English editions of Asterix, it’s quite possible the team was inspired by the classic.

Don't know about you, but these just resemble Uderzo to me!

To sum it up: other Encanto comics (in magazines) and picture books (we've reviewed a lovely one about Dolores!) kept the art style much closer to that of the film, despite being aimed at very young children. I wish this series had done the same. This way, it reminds me of Pony Life. Beyond that, the drawings are good, the shading is nice, and there are some very cute frames now and then. But – the story is always more important to me, so let's move on to it!                

 

The writing 

All the stories are mostly light-hearted in nature: while there is some drama, it is tangibly lighter than in the film, and always gets resolved by the story's end. (You could argue that young Bruno's drama doesn't, but that's more because we know where things went later from the film.) Narratively, the writing is fairly decent. Probably the biggest plus (as much as we could say it's a prerequirement) is the fact that all the Madrigals act very much in character. You'll never think: “Mirabel wouldn't say this!” and thus immersion is preserved. There might be some minor plot holes that we'll mention in the context of individual stories (mostly related to side characters), and some of the references to characters' movie behaviour might be a little too blatant copies for my taste (see the first page of Tall Tales below, and there are many others), but it is all within acceptable limits. The references to Colombian culture are also there, not just in the occasional tidbits of simple Spanish in spoken lines, but also in the mentions of traditional dishes, dances and items of clothing. Some of those are obvious – for example, Bruno mentions his ruana while gesticulating to his upper clothing, making it obvious what it is – but if you're not sure what postre de natas is and what it tastes like, it remains up to you to look it up. 

However, there is also a downside: Ortiz either wasn't fully steeped in the atmosphere of the Madrigal family and the town from the movie, or she made a conscious decision to deviate from it, to make the stories more relatable to modern children in the Northern hemisphere. While the movie was all about joint family life and joint work for the community, most scenes here feature only a few characters. While I'm sure this was simpler for both writing and drawing, it also reduces the lively communal feeling that the movie showed. Also, you might think that the young triplets have so little duties around the house (we just see the girls cooking and Bruno having visions) that they're always relaxing or hanging out with their friends. The latter is particularly problematic, as it seems to imply a highly separate social life of teens, which simply wasn't the case in 19th-century traditional communities. I'm not saying that a gathering of young people having fun without either elders or children could not have happened. In fact, I am sure those did happen – but if that is all that we are shown (not even Alma ever appears in the prequels), the picture is slightly skewed. 

Language adds to this same issue. While, of course, modern stories have to be written so as to be comprehensible and natural-sounding to modern readers, they also need to make the illusion of being in a different time and place credible. And one thing that tends to crack that illusion is the use of modern colloquialisms and slang. While this is a problem endemic to Disney movies as well, the Encanto film doesn't suffer too heavily from it: modern slang is mostly confined to some jokes, and those mostly in songs where, again, our suspension of disbelief is greater. The comics seem to be more infested. I'll accept the ubiquitous “kids” in the stead of children or youngsters as so entrenched that it is barely viewed as slang nowadays. I'll even tolerate Julieta telling her brother: “Bruno, why don’t you tell us something interesting? Like a fun fact!” – though I’m really hard-pressed to believe anyone would say that in real life even today, let alone in 19^th-century Colombia. But the repeating insistence on “cool” breaks the bubble for me. It's not just a generic superlative, replacement for “great”: in that way it was used in the movie as well, and while slightly annoying, it’s also tolerable. But in some places in the comics the word is used precisely in the sense modern young people use it, as a person being impressive, but also with implications of popular, yet cold-blooded, hard to emotionally shake or touch etc. That concept, never mind the word, was not really the ideal of young people at the time: I dare say it didn't even exist back then. I’m aware this won’t be a flaw for most readers, but some of us more attuned to the settings of the story find that such details break immersion. The same story in essence could have been told without the use of such anachronistic concepts – and would have been slightly better for such readers without, I believe, visibly detracting anything for the others. 

 

Let us now have a look at each story in turn: I'll detail the basic outline, but I'll try to avoid spoilers for the very ending of each – though, as could be expected, there are no major plot twists and you can probably presume how each of these ends. 

 

Tall Tales

The opening story is focused on Camilo. Mirabel shares with him a problem that his younger brother, Antonio, has: a slightly older boy keeps scaring him with made-up monster stories. Mirabel's idea is that Camilo should provide some brotherly moral support and confidence-building, but Camilo decides to do things his way, shapeshifting into a strong, muscular boy to scare the offender off. That works very well - but causes a new problem when Antonio tells all his little friends about the awesome “Sebastian” who came out of nowhere to rescue him, despite nobody knowing such a person in town...

The story does teach a decent lesson about the importance of honesty, and that everyone cries sometimes and it is not a thing to be ashamed of. However, I have an issue with the premise. It seems somewhat hard to believe that a school-age boy would bully Antonio Madrigal, and even try to excuse himself to “Sebastian” by saying: “I was just messing around! He is just a silly kid, anyway. No need to act all bothered.” The importance of the Madrigal family in town, their powers and significance simply make it hard for anyone there to view any of the Madrigals as “just a silly kid” with whom it’s appropriate to “mess around”. Not to mention that Antonio can speak to and command animals – shouldn't the boy have been at least a little scared of the idea that he might send a dangerous animal to attack him? But if you overlook this, the core of the story holds up.

 

A Madrigal Showtime!

The second comic follows up, albeit in a circumstantial way, on the love story between Mariano and Dolores. Mariano is planning a public talent show for his mother's birthday, of course, intending to read his own poetry there, but also inviting anyone interested to participate. Mirabel volunteers to help by hosting the show, and Dolores is all too eager to sign up, when obstacles appear one after another: not only does Mariano set a rule that the Madrigals may not use their gifts (to keep the contest fair), but he also asks Mirabel if Isabela might also want to participate. Dolores tries to amend this by inviting both Isabela and Luisa to participate with her, and they plan out a joint dance number - dancing the cumbia to Mirabel's accompaniment on the accordion. However, performing in public without relying on their powers is not so easy, and so the cousins will have to learn to persist even when things don’t go smoothly.

There is a little plot hole in the story. Somehow, Mariano both hosting and reading his poetry was an issue that caused him to ask Mirabel to host, but Mirabel's hosting and playing for the other Madrigals is not a problem. Only Dolores, Isabela and Luisa seem to be counted as contestants, while Mirabel's playing, apparently, isn't considered a part of the act. Now, that’s not a major problem for the plot: to be fair, in a small, local event, I don’t think anyone would object to either Mariano or Mirabel both hosting and participating, since the host doesn’t judge: the winner is decided by Mariano’s mother. Still, it comes off as slightly inconsiderate towards musicians in stage arts, I dare say: as if the musical accompaniment is so secondary that isn’t too important for the dance.

 

Meet... Hernando!

Set completely in the past, this story shows young Bruno struggling to fit in with his sisters' friends. Firstly, he is somewhat socially awkward, and tends to fly into long digressions on subjects the other youngsters find confusing. On top of that, they only seem to be interested in Bruno having visions about their futures, and not actually getting to know him for who he is. Julieta has an idea to try fixing this by throwing a party with Bruno as the host, and herself cooking. In the course of the story, we get to see how Bruno started with his acting and invented the persona of Hernando, who is scared of nothing!

While I remain by the above critique of teenagers seemingly left to their own devices in a society that simply didn't work that way, I do have to praise the way the siblings' relations are portrayed. Just like in the film, we see that both sisters do love Bruno, but Julieta is closer to him, readier to try to help or to get him to open up about what's troubling him. This creates a lovely sense of continuity with the film – maybe even more so than Hernando himself.

 

Lovestruck

The final story begins and ends in the “present day” (i.e. post-film time), but most of it takes place in the past. After Mirabel witnesses a romantic display of affection between Pepa and Felix, she expresses curiosity about how they met each other. They tell her that, in fact, Bruno had a vision they would meet, and the story shifts to the past. Bruno sees Felix, a boy whom he barely knows at that point, helping Pepa when she slips and falls, and Pepa flirting with him afterwards (thus my conclusion that they are teens, and not children). The vision then shifts to a more distant future, where he sees that they are destined to marry. He is certain Pepa will be happy to hear of her future husband; however, she gets nervous and doesn’t want to hear a word of it, both because she doesn’t want to know it in advance (huh, I never thought of prophecies as spoilers to one’s own life), but also because she doesn’t feel ready to fall in love. Bruno persistently keeps trying to get her to calm down and accept to talk about it… and it is only after he gives up that the prophesised encounter actually happens. The story in the present day ends with appreciation of Bruno’s gift, and Mirabel’s proclamation of “I’m so glad we can talk about Bruno now!”

There is maybe one little immersion issue here – when Bruno and Pepa are in town browsing new ruanas, it feels a little more like a modern shopping trip than one appropriate to the setting. Bruno refers to the woman selling the ruanas only as “the vendor”. In a community as small and as tightly knit as that in the Encanto (and likely a bit smaller than in the film a generation ago), with literally no outside traffic that we know of, it is hard to believe that this woman would be a nameless salesperson to them. She would be a neighbour, a part of the people they’re protecting, someone whom they not only know by name in her role as a shopkeeper, but whom they also know outside of her work, whose family they know as well. I know she is not an important character, but if the man with the chickens in The Missing Sound could have been Don Osvaldo, she could also have been a Doña Maria or something similar without it interfering the story. Even the mention of “new arrivals” in her shop sounds a bit strange: where did they arrive from? Is there a route to the outside we’re not aware of, or did she simply put a new batch of clothes of her own making up for sale? But this is a brief scene in the story, so it doesn’t change it much.

 

Final thoughts

In the end, I still think this is a pretty good and fun comic! It is true, I dislike the art style, and I think that many details of the writing could have been done better. But they still are details, and if you don’t mind the style, all the better. This project clearly didn’t have the ambition of writing yet another epic story, like in the film, but giving us some small, slice-of-life stories with troubles that are easier for children and young people to relate to in everyday life. No huge new revelation has been made regarding the past, nor advancement in the future – there is no heavy drama behind the creation of Hernando, Dolores and Mariano don’t yet marry, etc. – but those are still four nicely written tales in the universe of Encanto, where the members of the family Madrigal we got to know and love act true to their character, and where we still get a few new tiles in the mosaic of Encanto. Personally, I prefer the prequel stories, but that’s a matter of taste! And I think they did hit the mark with young readers, because we must have read it with our daughter at least 20 times, if not more, since we recently obtained it. We should have bought the hardcover version. :)

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As always, I’d love to read your comments below!

The rare opposite sex in children's media and toys

 

It will likely come as no surprise to you that popular children's media and toys are very, very segregated along sex and gender lines. The more something is created out of commercial motivation, and not artistic inspiration, the more prominent the issue. Your average children's novel might aim primarily at a male or female audience, and thus have (mostly or solely) boys or girls as the main heroes, but the rest of the world within it will nevertheless be populated by people of both sexes in a statistically credible mix. However, if you visit the toy store, it will be good if you can find one Ken for every twenty Barbies in there, and you won't find many more (if not fewer) female soldiers and officers among the military-themed action figures.

You can see them. Top right, all in the same black suit. Just as diverse as the girls.

Of course, toy companies do that because they believe this is more likely to sell and bring them profit. Not only do they assume girls will prefer to play with the themes of fashion and home, while boys will favour action and adventure – they also assume that girls will want to dress up only or almost only female dolls, while the boys’ action heroes will be almost exclusively male. Now, personally I disagree with this: I always liked both types of games, and I was always annoyed by the lack of diversity available. Getting a good selection of Kens for my Barbies was always a very difficult mission, and my G.I. Joes had Happy Meal Barbies and Disney princesses of the same scale as both romantic interests and combat allies. I’ve known other children who complained of the same (including my own now), not to mention adult toy collectors. But let’s say those are all exceptions, that the average child does prefer more toys of their own sex (though I think this is dominantly market-induced even when it is the case), and that the companies made correct calculations. As annoying as it may be for me personally, this is the lesser problem.

The greater problem is the media. The main culprits are cartoons, and cartoon shows more than feature films, though there are video games, books and comics (mostly parts of big franchises also focused on selling merchandise) that have the same problems. Again, I am not talking just about who the main characters, the heroes are – but all the characters in the medium overall, primary, secondary and background characters all together.

Take My Little Pony as an example: in the first and second generation, female characters vastly outnumbered the male ones, to the point that most ‘baby’ ponies had known mothers, but not fathers. The third generation, aiming at a target audience of younger girls, did away with boys completely, without a single male pony even being mentioned, let alone showing up. (Even non-pony male characters were extremely scarce in G3: there were only Spike the dragon and, mostly off-screen, Santa Claus.) On the other hand, My Little Pony Tales (the “G1.5” show) and the later G4 and G5 introduced normal amounts of male relatives, friends, colleagues and simply random male ponies in the street. The main cast of both Tales and Friendship is Magic remains all-female: we are undoubtedly following a story about girls (or mares, if you prefer), but they inhabit a world normally populated by ponies of both sexes.

I know, boys. I’m confused, too.

We see similar things on the male side of the aisle. The only action woman in the old Action Man cartoon was Natalie, and the supporting cast wasn’t exactly swimming in women, either. And I’m really regretting not having bought Natalie’s toy back in the day while she was new in stores, because she fetches quite a price on the second-hand market now. How wouldn’t she? She’s the only female toy! The same goes for male G1 ponies, and so on.

On the other hand, the team behind He-Man may have understood that there were plenty of girls who would like some sword and sorcery action as well, but instead of fully integrating the protagonist’s sister into the main storyline (where her role is secondary at best), they gave She-Ra a separate spin-off, which had the same issue (maybe even more so), just reversed: female heroine, female allies, female villain, with an occasional man here and there.

Don’t even get me started on the heels. :)

What’s the problem with such settings? They don’t feel natural. They don’t feel like living worlds – places where, beyond our heroes running to save the world every week, some people (or whatever creatures) live, work, fall in love, raise families and grow old. Whether or not we have issues with a dominantly male or female main cast (some people find it fine, some are militantly in favour of at least relative gender equality in this respect), we can, at the very least, understand that sometimes the story is such that focusing on characters of a single sex makes sense. Perhaps the story is set in the army or in a maternity ward, or in a sex-segregated school. Perhaps it’s not that extreme, but a tightly-knit group of boys or girls is simply in the focus. But if everyone or almost everyone else is of that same sex, it will feel fake. Like a play set in a sex-segregated school, where simply not enough girls were willing to play male parts, and we’re left wondering why almost nobody has a father, brother or boyfriend.

To be fair, modern media is improving in that respect. Mixed-sex casts are getting more frequent, and when the main cast is diverse, the background usually follows. However, offenders still exist. My latest pet peeve are the Enchantimals, where the male Enchantimal characters can be counted on the fingers (it’s slightly better with their besties, i.e. animals – but even those are mostly female), and even most of those were issued as toy-only. You can’t help but gaze at the lovely Enchantimal villages and towns and wonder where have all the good men gone… And that in a universe that has no hostility and no actual villains, just misunderstandings or accidents, so they can’t just all be off fighting in a war somewhere. It almost feels like the producers said “let’s not bother designing a character if we’re not going to sell a toy of them” – returning us to the toy problem – but that can’t be all. Even the existing male toy characters are underused in the show. Could they really believe that girls would watch less if they showed a boy on screen more often than once every leap-year?

Take a good look. You won’t see too much of him!

To circle back to the toy issue, there are examples of the opposite – shows that do feature characters of the opposite sex, even in important roles, but sadly pass them over when it comes to toys and other merchandise. For example, Shimmer and Shine, while it does have some writing problems, does feature male characters on every level of its female-focused cast: we have Zac and Kaz, who are very prominent secondary (borderline primary) characters, interesting episodic male characters (such as the lightning genie Shaya), as well as a number of background characters – e.g. ordinary boys in the playgrounds on Earth, genie vendors in Zahramay Falls etc. But the main toy line reflects the usual stereotypes. While Zac and Kaz do appear among the (fairly simple and cheap) plastic minifigures, the line of larger, dressable dolls that accompanied the show consisted of female characters only. That means that tertiary female genies who only appeared in one or two episodes got dolls - but not Zac, who was there prominently for half the show. Surely, my daughter can't be the only little fan disappointed by this? To be fair, I found her a bootleg plastic Zac. He has many flaws - he's of different proportions, his limbs don't move, all his clothes are moulded and his colours are a bit off - but at least he's roughly of the same height as the female dolls and has Zac's recognisable features. Not a perfect alternative, but it works. Only… if bootleg manufacturers are making one of the 5-6 main characters of your show instead of you… don't you think you're doing something wrong?

Well, Zac would at least know what to say to that: “It happens. It happens a lot!”