"Centaurworld": An Experiment in Childish Maturity
On the show's themes of child-like self-expression, re-parenting and age regression
Content warnings:
discussions of trauma
discussions of parental abuse
mention of partner abuse
discussions of war
mention of death & murder
(As I delve into the topic of age regression as a trauma response, I would appreciate a lot of respect, care and consideration in how everyone approaches it in their minds and any potential discussions 🙏🏻 Thank you!)
Have you all heard of Centaurworld? The zany colorful animated musical series about a war horse getting isekai’d from a dark PG-13 anime world into a whimsical and wacky cartoonland populated by centaurs with weird magics and tendencies for bodily function humor?
It’s a real dang treat, and while there is a lot of criticism over the writing and pacing of the second season floating around, the show still offers an amazingly impactful trauma narrative (and incredible soundtrack).
The way the show explores that central theme is something I’ve been very passionate about for a good while, so it is about time I rambled about it at length! Let’s dive in :)
Horse’s Journey
(Like Hero’s Journey, but cooler.)
The heart of Centaurworld’s story is, very openly, Horse’s trauma recovery, and it’s done in a way I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before. I’m used to watching a character slowly unravel in front of me, reach a tipping point, hit the rock bottom and from there have a life-saving breakthrough that leads them back to love, hope and self-acceptance. I know this trope, I love this trope, and for me there can never be enough of raw, unbridled anguish culminating in rich emotional payoff.
That is not Horse’s case, however. We do not see her fall deeper and deeper into the pit of obvious anguish, because Horse’s defense mechanism is extreme stoicism. The real angst starts once Horse is actually forced to get better, and, well, that is fun!
Our character starts off holding her resilience above anything else and seeing it as her most important quality, and that is understandable. Prior to ending up in Centaurworld, Horse was stuck in a land consumed by unending all-out war; therefore, she was in constant survival mode, with no space for emotional processing and no chance of actual recovery. Another motivation for her to remain resilient is Horse’s relationship with her Rider. The two are pretty openly trauma-bonded, they rely on each other to stay alive, and so Horse feels the need to remain collected, unfazed and ready to face the most dreadful of situations - all for her closest friend’s sake.
Horse does go through an “unraveling” arc of her own, but it’s not one of descending deeper and deeper into unhealthy coping mechanisms. Instead, Horse is forced out of the environment that held her trapped in survival mode and is basically shoe-horned into developing a healthier outlook - and that disturbs our hero more than anything else.
We see Horse go through different stages of trauma recovery, some of which are very normal (having breakdowns and incorporating new and alien perspectives of the world) and some of which are highly fantastical and bizzare, like acquiring a magical talking tail and having her body physically transform into a more soft and cartoonish one.
Regardless of whether the transformation is physical or internal, every step represents a change in her that feeds into Horse’s growing identity crisis. She is only used to conceiving of herself as a survivor, fully defined by her circumstance and her role in the relationship with Rider. She is a dramatic and cool PG-13 character, that is the narrative of her life Horse has constructed in her head, under the influence of her environment and background. To have that story challenged and to have herself grow into something different is life-shattering. A happier, healthier, healing existence seems to be an anti-thesis to everything Horse was taught to be, and, paradoxically, healing feels like it threatens Horse more than the dangers of her original world.
So, fascinatingly, her arc is not one of accumulating mental breakdown forcing eventual personal growth. Instead, it is the stages of her healing, just how different she has become over the course of her journey, that result in a rock-bottom moment. Recovery grabs Horse by the scruff of her neck and drags her through the thankless ordeal of facing her feelings, making new connections and outgrowing a narrow stoic image of herself, and that terrifies her.
All of that is expressed through Horse’s “cartoonification” over the course of the show. The writing hints at it as being something like a “second puberty” (which is great news for everyone who sensed some trans undertones in Horse’ arc). The closer she gets to becoming a part of Centaurworld, the more similar she becomes to its inhabitants, with their soft bouncy designs, over-the-top emotions and weird magic. But, unlike the rest of The Herd she joins, Horse develops those traits much later in her life and in a very short, condensed period of time. And that works great as a trauma allegory!
As we learn as the plot progresses, Centaurworld was once connected to the human realm. The reason why the portal between them is closed is connected to the war that has turned the human world into the barren, dark land we see at the start of the show. Were there no war and were Centaurworld still connected to the human world, Horse would have technically had the option to go through these experiences earlier in life - but the circumstance of her adolescence locked her out of that. So instead, she had to adapt to an environment that required survival skills instead of providing a young being with safety and security. Therefore, Horse had the gradual process of coming into adulthood completely neglected. (There is also the factor that she was never expected to be anything more than, well, a horse. It was Centaurworld specifically that gave her the ability to communicate with others and outgrow a very narrow externally enforced role.)
Ending up in a safer environment conductive to healing later in life, Horse is unused to it, disorientated, and has all the arrested development catch up with her at dizzying speeds, like the snap of an elastic band that’s finally been released. She has one emotional experience after another, and what they require of her is not stoicism, resilience or heroics but vulnerability. As one of the songs states, “Those war tactics you know, they got no utility, / Not in this world”. What she has to apply herself in are the much less glorious things, normal and uncomfortable: everything that comes with being a living person with imperfect feelings and a few messy but involved connections with others.
Horse is having a child-like arc both in the meaning that she is sort of a newborn to the whole “healthier environment” thing, finding herself in a coming-of-age period of acquiring all these new overwhelming experiences, and in the meaning that the very expressions of her healing are very “childish”, making her more at home in the zany bright rainbow “haha fart joke” world of centaurs. That is awesome, because it’s a very rare representation of maturity: Horse is catching up on her emotional development by seemingly descending further into childish silliness.
This fun take on “child-like maturity” is echoed in other characters’ arc, more specifically in my favorite duo: Durpleton and his age-regressed adopted son Stabby.
Durpleton’s Re-parenting Arc
Durpleton’s whole character is a fascinating case. He is goofy-looking, sensitive and very child-like in his manner of speech, and has all the makings of what in a different show would be an uncomfortably ableist comic relief trope.
Basically every member of The Herd appears caricaturistic in some way, but the show’s approach to each one of them is very pointedly genuine and heartfelt. The characters never shed their cartoonishly exaggerated traits, but the viewer gradually becomes aware of the fact that this exaggeration is not meant to be mocking: instead, it’s just the zany centaur-like expression of heavy trauma, deep-seeded self-consciousness, overwhelming anxiety and so on.
But even among the colorfully quirky cast of characters that is The Herd, Durpleton is still a bit of an oddity. On top of appearing a bit out-of-this-world and hard to understand, he may come across as naive, and is probably the only one whose “cartoonishness” gets expressed as explicitly child-like. His canon age being 47 is something that startled a lot of fans, which I’m guessing is at least in part because that implies similar ages for the rest of the herd, and we are unused to seeing a show centered around middle-aged characters; but I have certainly seen someone express confusion over Durpleton’s general demeanor in the light of that. It seems that he was unconsciously infanitlized by a portion of the audience, despite having very obviously adult anatomy.
It’s important that the show itself never made Durpleton’s child-like behaviour a point of ridicule, and none of the characters (including Horse, who is new to the friend group and would’ve lacked the necessary context) ever seem confused by the fact that Durpleton isn’t “acting his age”. The lines establishing exactly how old he is are humorous, but not in the way one would expect. If anything, they are mostly playing on the prevalent parental dynamics within The Herd and how they interact with the characters’ generally very similar ages.
That interaction between age and parenting is very relevant to Durpleton’s arc. As Wammawink watches him and Stabby settle into their familial dynamic over the course of season 2, she gets emotional about her figurative child raising a son of his own. That’s noteworthy, because that sets a specific “mark” of maturity for the characters.
Obviously, adulthood does not look the same for everyone, and you do not have to make child-rearing a part or an indication of your maturity. One can be an adult without being a parent. But in Durpleton’s case, the journey is one of reaching a point at which he is ready to provide care to someone on top of receiving it from Wammawink. That challenges the focus on a person’s age as something that determines when they are supposed to become “independent” from their caregivers, materially as well as emotionally, and instead focuses on the unique path of personal healing that opens the possibility of new relationship dynamics. And, quite beautifully, what that healing looks like here is Durpleton becoming a nurturing parent to himself.
When watching the first season of Centaurworld, my partner and I were absolutely blown away by Episode 4: “What You Need”. The premise of it is fairly ridiculous when it comes to Durpleton’s part. The Herd journeys to the Tree shamans that grant gifts - not the ones their visitors wish for, but the ones they truly need. Unlike the rest, Durpleton knows what he needs immediately. He is struggling with his talking farts, which he adresses as “Father”. His fart-dad is harsh, mean and critical towards him, and Durpleton’s wish is for him to be nice and nurturing instead.
At the end, his need-wish is recognized and granted - and there is a lot of meaning to that.
The reason why my partner and I were so excited about the episode is that we are both very passionate about the concept of re-parenting: a way of healing the wounds of inadequate upbringing by learning to become a parent to yourself and your inner child; the kind of parent who is patient, compassionate and knows how to show up for our most vulnerable hurting parts. The idea isn’t just to compensate for the love one didn’t receive from their caregiver (though that on itself can be very healing and important). The focus is on the fact that the way our caregivers treat us in childhood becomes unconsciously and subconsciously internalized and affects how we interact with, see and treat ourselves. If our needs were met with dismissal and our outburts were criticized, we are unlikely to honour our limits or be compassionate to our emotions. Re-parenting aims to rewire the way our brains have learned to react to our needs and hurts, and to help us develop a new way to handle the challenging and challenged parts of our psyche and our everyday life.
Durpleton obviously has a loving caretaker in Wammawink, but as early as Episode 4 of the first season it becomes obvious that his youngest years were spent in a critical and abusive environment. In making his request to the Tree shamans, Durpleton shows a great degree of awareness and maturity. He probably wishes his birth family were different, he would probably want his actual father to be nicer to him. But he understands what he needs, above all of those things: he needs to be kinder to himself, and to show himself the care required to heal from his childhood trauma. He needs to tranform the part of him that has absorbed the messaging of his childhood and created a version of his father in his own psyche, so that now that Durpleton’s free of his abusive family, he can also become free of the things they made him believe about himself.
Season 2 gives us even more insight into Durpleton’s past, and that provides a lot of crucial context to his child-like manner. Our lad grew up in a house that, among other things, would not allow him to be a kid: to make noise, to play with toys, to be expressive and unrestrained. He wasn’t given the warmth and love and guidance that a child needs, and wasn’t allowed the freedom to do child-like things. The culmination of his conflict with his abusive father is Durpleton failing to “control his farts”, his father lashing out, throwing away his hand-made toy, and Durpleton running out to get it as his parents drive away, fully abandoning him for not living up to their expectations.
The toy is then revealed to be a little figure of his father giving him words of love and affirmation. The metaphor here is obvious: Durpleton was given a choice to either stay in a loveless environment and make peace with the fact that he would never receive parental affection or be allowed to express himself, or he could hold onto his childhood and his hope to one day be loved - but that meant losing his biological family and home.
All of that provides a strikingly tragic context to the whole “uncontrollable farts that trigger parent-induced self-loathing” thing. And at the end, what we see in the adult Durpleton is him tending to his unloved and traumatized inner child’s needs. For him, much like for Horse, thrown into a war-torn world without a chance at a peaceful childhood, trauma recovery looks like childishness. To become truly “mature”, Durpleton needs to allow himself to be “immature”, express all his previously repressed tendencies and overcome body shame - something children notably aren’t that burdened with.
Durpleton’s child-like behaviour is a sign of healing and a mark of a grown, knowledgeable person who understands himself and chooses to do a very smart, brave and adult thing: to be kind to himself and be a good parent to his inner child. Through that, he becomes ready to be a caregiver to Stabby, and even though his traumatic experience makes Durpleton’s parenting flawed in its own special way, he is still “mature” enough to eventually own up to that.
Stabby’s Age Regression
Stabby’s arc is therefore directly tied to Durpletons: who would make a better caregiver to an age-regressing 43 years old lizard minotaur than a 47 years old centaur who is both extremely mature (i.e. possessing emotional intelligence and finding himself in a good and stable place with his trauma) and joyfully immature, not forcing himself to act “appropriate” to his age?
Stabby is also a direct narrative foil to Horse: both of them only knew the war waged in the human world their entire lives, and they fought on the opposite sides of it without really choosing either. Stabby was created by the Nowhere King and controlled by his hatred; Horse was, you know, a horse, raised and trained by humans for the specific goal of helping them. At the end, Horse’s bond with Rider makes the fight more personal, but her and Stabby’s origin is strikingly similar.
Much like Horse, Stabby is thrown into Centaurworld suddenly and unprepared and is force-adopted by The Herd and Durpleton specifically. Much like Horse, he resists the absorption into the group for a while and refuses to make himself vulnerable. Then, quite tellingly, it is a variation on “Rider’s Lullaby” that seems to soften Stabby into his new situation and accept the notion of being cared for.
And, finally, much like Horse, Stabby goes through a physical transformation that makes him more “Centaurworld”: cuddly, round, soft and cartoony.
The transformation goes further than Horse’s, though, and basically makes him a child. The show depicts age-regression in a way similar to how we understand it in our world and culture: a response to extreme stress and trauma, and a coping mechanism that allows us healing and recovery. Stabby needs a parent figure he finds in Durpleton, and he needs to allow himself to be a child - something he was probably never given, considering that he was magically crafted rather than born.
That seems to be the main mechanism of Centaurworld’s magic overall: those who are new to it never have it work how they want, and more often than not it affects them in ways that feel like a horrifying attack on who they are. The reason for that is that Centaurworld is here to soften your hard edges and exaggerate your struggle into cartoonishly caricaturistic expressions; and those expressions may be quirky and weird, but they do mean that your inclinations, symptoms and authentic traits are no longer repressed to your detriment. Through that, Centaurworld gives you healing. And healing can challenge our entire sense of identity, if all that we’re used to defining ourselves by is our trauma and the way we’ve been coping with it.
Neither Horse nor Stabby intially want to become happier, because what that happiness looks like is dreadful, it’s antithetical to everything they’re used to associating with safety and survival. But they need that happiness - and so Centaurworld forces them into an identity crisis breakdown. At least they have a great support group through that.
Stabby’s age regression arc is, perhaps, the culmination of the theme of child-like healing that we’ve observed through Horse’s cartoonification and Durpleton’s forever-childishness and ongoing re-parenting. This really cements the fact that Centaurworld’s magic is in making your trauma responses into something “unsightly”, something an average viewer may find way too weird to actually continue observing, because, well, the show is wacky.
But all those “unsightly” expressions actually do is give your authentic needs and coping mechanisms some breathing room. Defenses get pulled down, and raw and unabridged hurting need comes pouring out in an extremely intimate display we would normally be asked to keep to ourselves - but there is space for it in Centaurworld, and there is space for it in a truly connected, compassionate, loving and accepting found family friend group.
Redefining Recovery
I’ve talked about “child-like” behaviour a lot here; but then again, how would we even define childishness?
The “childish” label is something that gets thrown around in a derogatory fashion to point out that someone struggles with communication, emotional regulation or emotional intelligence, gets “hung up” on things someone else wouldn’t, so on and so forth. It doesn’t really accomplish much, other than shaming people for not having had the chance to safely and healthily grow into a secure relationship with themselves and others. Sometimes, it seems to shame people for having strong feelings at all.
Such use of the word implies that the way a child reacts to hurt is inherently irrational and ignorant, like the trick is to become smart enough to know what the “correct” way to behave is. That shifts the focus to an individual person’s supposed skill and away from what actually makes children more vulnerable and more likely to react in big ways: their unique needs, the amount of support they require to truly feel safe and alright and to know that the pain is going to pass.
An average child is more reactive than an average adult not because they purely haven’t had enough time to learn to how handle their pain: on top of all the complex brain chemestry and development yada yada, it is also because they’ve yet to receive the formative experience of being guided through it in a supportive, compassionate and kind way. If a person was not given that experience in early childhood, they may still struggle with feeling okay and secure in later years. That is not because they are not “skilled” enough in being a grown-up; it’s because the security some of us were given and sometimes take for granted was not available to them, and so the challenge of dealing with certain things is much greater.
Of course, sometimes early trauma, struggle or neglect can make someone “grow up fast” and develop an appearance of resilience prematurely as a means of survival. That is a narrative presented to us a lot: someone becoming “mature” and “serious” early because they had to put up with more than their peers. That narrative is troubling to me, because it equates “maturity” with independence, resilience and strife, as if the most “adult” thing we can do is push through all our pain, never expect any kindness or accommodation from the world and let out trauma fester under the surface. An approach like that is not much different from Horse’s conviction that the way to survive is to be a “mean, lean killing machine”, and that gaining weight and becoming softer as a sign of healing makes her less fit for the challenges of a dangerous an scary world.
Centaurworld’s narrative is important, because the show challenges this idea of stoicism as a mark of maturity. It shows that the people most equipped for dealing with their hardships are those that allow themselves to be taken care of, to be messy and emotional and vulnerable and child-like. We see Horse go through a “second puberty” because her trauma didn’t accelerate her development and growth - it stifled her, it made her less accustomed to the essential experience of friendship, fun, safety and communication.
A severely traumatized person is dealt a shitty lot. They have to push themselves to “outgrow” their vulnerability in order to survive, and then later in life they have to go through the painful and horrifying process of unpacking their preconceptions about themself and the world so that they could actually give themself a chance to “grow up safely”. They have to do that at a point where most people around them have already had a chance to experience trust, safety and supportive relationships. Centaurworld may not fully reflect the raw grittiness of that journey, but it does show just how challenging it is, to have to question everything that has once made up one’s identity.
At the same time, having to conciously reflect on one’s life and experiences and unearth the secret golden nuggets of “who I am”, “what I want from life”, “what my needs are”, “what good communication looks like to me”, “what relationships I really value” leads to a lot of precious self-awareness and authenticity. And if in the process of our recovery we truly commit to being kind to ourselves and honest about our needs, we can liberate ourselves from some of the arbitrary societal limitations - like the pressure to act the way considered most “appropriate” or “mature”.
Centaurworld reflects this idea by functionally redefining what we mean by “recovery”. The language we use often seems to imply that a fully recovered person should generally function the same way as anybody else. An “abnormal” behaviour or emotional reaction is expected to fully dissipate - and that is the point at which we have to check if we’re still truly concerned with the struggling person’s well-being and healing, whether we’re asking for realistic things from them and what we ourselves are ready to contribute to help maintain a compassionate and safe environment.
It is my humble opinion that we cannot put a moral label on an internal emotional experience, and the external pressure to fully dissipate that experience will hardly be helpful. The purpose of recovery, healing and therapy shouldn’t be “to become like everybody else”: instead, it should be about learning who you are, what you need and how you can communicate that to your loved ones in a way that leaves space for open compassionate conversation.
It is unrealistic to expect recovery to mean a complete disappearance of trauma. Because of that, the process of healing is going to look different to every person - and at times, it’s gonna’ look weird. That is something Centaurworld shows in a goofy and exaggerated but ultimately affectionate way, by parading a colorful cast of characters each one of which is struggling with their own genuine challenge and is a bit of a freak about it. Healing becomes synonymous with easing into a more honest and gentle lifestyle, into vulnerability and child-like liberation and authenticity. The issues are still present and expressed in ways that sometimes inconvenience the character and their friend group, but what matters is that at the end, they are all genuinely compassionate towards each other and understand the roots of each other's struggles.
That seems healthy, good and convincing to me. People you love will have big emotions and “weird” symptoms at times. People you love will inconvenience you. The best thing both of you can do is be compassionate to each other and yourselves, and work out the best ways you two can interact from that place of unwavering love and compassion.
The Lullaby
I would like to leave you with a little mystery that I cannot quite figure out.
One of the Centaurworld’s leitmotifs is lullabies. “Rider’s Lullaby” opens the show as not only the first song but the first spoken word. It gets reprises and variations throughout the two seasons: Horse sings it as she wishes for Rider’s safety, sings it again to Wammawink to comfort her past self, and Durpleton sings his own version of it to Stabby.
Another lullaby repeating throughout the show is the Nowhere King’s theme, ominously luring characters to their demise.
The finale of the show is titled “The Last Lullaby”. The climax of it gives us two final reprises to both of the songs: as the Nowhere King turned back to Elktaur is killed by the woman he abused, and as Horse and Rider are finally reunited for good at the end of a life-long war.
The lullaby motif clearly appeals to the theme of childhood and inner child healing central to the show. Rider’s, Horse’s and Durpleton’s lullabies are meant to reach the vulnerable and scared part of a loved one, soothe and comfort it. The final reprise of that song is more triumphant and celebratory, signifying that the vulnerable part does not need to be afraid anymore.
When it comes to the Nowhere King’s lullaby, I am at a bit of a loss. Is it meant to be lulling rather than soothing, rocking the hurting, raw and aware part to oblivious sleep, so that the trauma projections can flourish and then be successfully exploited?.. I’m not quite sure, and I would love to hear any thoughts about how you think it relates to the inner child! Please share your thoughts if you feel so inclined ( :
Thank you for sticking around till the end of the post! You are my personal hero 🎉 I hope you had fun, and if anything didn’t sit right with you, please feel free to reach out!
As I was writing this, I realized I really wanted to talk about Centaurworld’s codependency narrative as well; there wasn’t much space for it here, so it will probably appear in a smaller essay in the future! Be sure to subscribe if you’re interested in reading it :- )
Other than that, though, I’m running a bit low on future post ideas, so I might take a little break from the (roughly) bi-weekly updates to brainstorm. We shall see!
For now, take care, thank you for checking this out!! If you like this lil’ analysis, please share & subscribe for more!
Have a good weekend, friends!