King Star King
Entry updated 8 December 2025. Tagged: TV.
US animated tv series (2013-2014). Mirari Films, Titmouse, Williams Street. Created by Eric Kaplan and JJ Villard. Directed by J J Villard. Written by Tommy Blacha and James Merrill. Voice cast includes Tommy Blacha, Rachel Butera, Robin Atkin Downes, Eric Kaplan, Mallory McGill and J J Villard. Seven episodes comprising the pilot plus a season of six episodes of circa 11 minutes. Colour.
"Twelve trillion years before the alleged Big Bang" (see Cosmology; Time Abyss) King Star King (Blacha), "the greatest hero who ever was" arrives at the Heavenly Realm to declare his love for the princess Snow White and to offer her rings torn from the ears of Death ("Can there be a more romantic gift?"). However, the princess (Butera/McGill) is in her bath and when told by the psychotic Spring Bunny (Kaplan) that our hero has seen his daughter naked, her father, the giant God Star God (Downes) (see Gods and Demons), afflicts King Star King with Amnesia and Teleports him to Hank's all-night waffle restaurant, located in the Crud Zone: "a place full of diseased women, terrible food and some Monsters". Snow White seeks and finds him – now employed by Hank – and her kiss restores his memory, only for the Spring Bunny to arrive in his Rocket ship, blow out King Star King's brains and kidnap Snow White, departing with a cry of "next stop virgin powered evil Robot!". This being Scrod (Kaplan), the schizoid robot of death, whom the Spring Bunny wants to activate to obtain God's crown. Recovering, King Star King summons Gurbless, his flying robot bear, and Pooza the Wizard (Villard) – the latter transferring the soul of the dying Hank (Blacha) into the restaurant's waffle-headed mascot – and they go in pursuit: the rabbit's plan is foiled by King Star King and Snow White having Sex, thus ending the robot's Power Source. God is not grateful, and the pilot ends with him exiling his daughter (now bearing the moustache of shame) and King Star King.
In the season opener, Snow White is grabbed by Alfonso Molestro (Downes) ("one of the more depraved degenerates in all of the Gigantiverse"), who tears off and discards her head ("I don't need this looking at me") which finds its way back to the Heavenly Realm; here a Scientist uses an Invention that replays her final thoughts, enabling King Star King to locate and kill Alfonso, retrieve his beloved's body and reattach the head. But despite alchemy, Snow White does not revive and so is buried (though she is not entirely dead). The rest of the series' stories include a cosmic Sexually Transmitted Disease who parasitizes (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) its victims whilst giving them visions of their "deepest, darkest fantasy" (see Dream Hacking). There is an attempt to help a child stand up to a bully: "We tried to train him the old fashioned way, with sweat, pain and humiliation: guess that never works! Your performance must be enhanced by strange drugs and artificial stimulants." King Star King turns into a giant slug-like creature, then pupates until a "new and improved" King Star King hatches. In "KWA KWA City" the waffle restaurant is held up by a criminal, or rather the Alien KWA KWA (Blacha) that lives inside him: everyone in the restaurant is sucked into a City within the criminal's body, where his other victims dwell (though hardly a Utopia, it doesn't seem an unpleasant life). Despite being assured no one has ever done so, they escape (using Hank's intestines as a balloon), to find only seconds have passed in the outside world (see Time Distortion). "Einstein was right!" declares Pooza.
Reflecting its animation style and characters, King Star King is loud, crude and obnoxious: the women all have enormous breasts and exist as sexual creatures (see Feminism; Women in SF), whilst King Star King consumes an inordinate and myriad amount of Drugs: gratuitous bad taste abounds. More importantly, perhaps, the Humour and stories can be hit and miss. The show's strength lies in the outbursts of grotesque, surreal, and psychedelic Horror that enliven most scenes, and are – at their best – what make the show memorable. Stand-out episodes are the pilot and "KWA KWA City"; others have their moments but drag at times. King Star King was revived in 2023 for a one-off special. [SP]
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