Post 4: ENA — The Best Animated Series You Probably Haven’t Heard Of
If you had told me a year ago that I’d be obsessing over a character based on a Picasso painting in a series that feels like taking LSD without actually being on drugs, I would’ve called you crazy. But here I am, obsessing over ENA and encouraging anyone who has a spare 26 minutes to check the series out. ENA is an animated series by Joel G and follows the titular character, ENA, and her adventures through the world she lives in. The entire series is abstract, however, feels familiar enough to not alienate a large audience while still allowing the viewer to put their interpretations onto what is occurring. This post will cover my interpretations of each ENA short and why I love this series so much as well as some predictions for the trailer that was revealed while working on this post.
Auction Day
Being the first and shortest entry to the ENA series, Auction Day introduces us to Moony (ENA’s best friend) who is inspired by the moon in “A Trip to the Moon” as well as ENA’s personality (or rather, personalities). In this video, we’re introduced to 3 personalities that ENA has, her “happy” side (the yellow side), “sad” side (the blue side), and her depressed/self-deprecating side (when ENA glitches and her blue side becomes white with a blue eye and other side of the face becomes black). Moony is shown to be a toxic friend, rushing ENA and getting after her for throwing up static by telling her that she’s rude and should “ask before doing that you know?”.
The actual premise/story doesn’t have a lot of weight to it and just seems to be setting up the characters and the atmosphere as abstract. ENA and Moony travel to an auction where the “hourglass dog” is being put up for auction and the crowd begins bidding. Before the bidding has completed, they’re attacked by rain rocks and Moony comments on how the auction will be canceled. Afterwards, ENA throws up static that then morphs into the hourglass dog before the episode abruptly ends. There doesn’t seem to be much connecting everything other than wacky abstractness, however it does set up some plotlines that are followed up on later such as Moony acting strange. At 1:27 ENA calls out Moony for saying something weird, following it up with “What is wrong with you?”, which could be seen as foreshadowing for the later episodes where there seems to be something wrong with Moony. In general however, this episode was mainly to introduce us to ENA and Moony and how they interact with each other while setting the tone for the entire series.
Extinction Party
Extinction Party is about twice the length of Auction Day and is where ENA really comes into its own as a series. Many of the elements introduced here continue to be used in the following episode. This episode is about ENA traversing a maze in order to give Moony a gift. While in the maze, we’re introduced to new characters who speak in different languages who, according to the subtitles, help guide ENA to Moony. When ENA finally traverses all of the halls 1st-person CDi game style, she arrives in a dark, starry room with Moony in the center. When ENA approaches her and the final “cutscene” plays, ENA ends up glitching out and appearing as monster-like versions of herself, prompting Moony to ask if she’s drunk. ENA responds with a comedic string of “no”s and says she has brought her a gift while outstretching empty hands. Moony originally takes this as a prank but then states that she’s the gift as the episode ends. This is an already abstract premise and ending, however, there is more to this episode than just the surface-level premise.
While the characters of the maze seem to be helping ENA out by telling her directions to Moony according to the subtitles, in reality, what they are saying is a warning message (which explains their frantic body language). The first character met, Merci, speaks in Korean. While the subtitles say she says “Chut, Ena…Long time yet no seeing me, oui? You must be on a real special quest here today. Moony? Hm…she’s just a leap straight ahead and then a dance to the right.”, the actual translation of what she says is “Wait, Ena? Where are you going? You’re not supposed to be here! Leave this instant before you get captured forever! What? You stuffy fuck! Just run away! And don’t accept anything from people around here.” This warning seems to be what Merci is truly trying to tell ENA but somehow it’s being warped by either the maze itself (or the entity controlling the maze) or by ENA herself. Fast forward to later in the maze and ENA stumbles across Robert who speaks Japanese. As with Merci, the subtitles say that he says “Ohhh? Moony, I heard? Well, to reach the Moon, you will have to take the horrifyingly dizzy path behind me. Perhaps you shouldn’t with an untrained mind like yours. You could die.” while the actual translation of the Japanese is “Oh? Young miss? What are you doing here? Please forget about your friends. The things happening in these corridors are things too shameful for words! My only hope is that you leave this place without being polluted by our sins!” With this added depth, the holographic hand beckoning ENA to where Moony is (inside of an eye) makes more sense as possibly this eye and hand belong to the entity that is affecting the people in the maze. The “polluted by our sins” line is something that really stuck out to me because maybe this is some sort of place for sinners to go and it’s controlled by an entity that prevents them from leaving. Which then also begs the question of, why is Moony in here? Why does ENA know this is where Moony is? Moony seems pretty surprised when ENA meets her there, so it’s unlikely that Moony told ENA. There are so many possibilities and the changing of the translations in the subtitles proves how powerful this entity is.
Another important part to touch on is drunk ENA. Given the aforementioned entity, this could be ENA being “poisoned by [their] sins” and having the entity take control of them. The glitches into monster-like versions of themself make it seem like it isn’t the real ENA talking or that ENA is at least being influenced in a way by the entity especially given that she’s back to normal in the very next scene. This drunk side has a distorted over ENA’s voice which also leads me to think she is under the influence of the entity. I’m not sure exactly what that means in terms of ENA’s personalities, however it was very interesting to watch and speculate about what it could mean. This entire episode refined the style that ENA was going for as well as showed the viewer that not everything is what it initially seems.
Temptation Stairway
Temptation Stairway is the longest episode of the ENA series sitting at a 17:38 run time and was the main reason why I wished to write this. There is so much to unpack so I will only be focusing on more broad terms as well as explaining some interesting bits and stating what meaning I think they have. As with Extinction Party, Temptation Stairway continues the 1st person CDi game-like feel and I’m all for it. Another thing of note is that ENA gets a blood ID similar to the blood sample asked for by Guardian Entity in Extinction Party, which is a nice callback. This episode also introduces a couple of new characters (including fan-favorite The Shepherd), some of the most memorable lines (Turrón!), and is the first time we see ENA’s voices mix (with the sad voice sometimes coming out of the happy side and happy voice coming out of the sad side). In terms of ENA’s personalities, it introduces a stressed out/mental breakdown ENA that I will proceed to call “anxiety ENA” who is completely greyed out and her eyes are on her hands which are covering her face. At the end, it also sees ENA turn from her normal look to all yellow.
This episode starts out with ENA acting like me whenever I’m at a crowded party. Moony is acting like a selfish jerk and forcing ENA to come along with her to this party in order to reach The Great Runas and make a wish. Once Moony spots The Great Runas and gets trampled by people, ENA begins throwing up and glitches and ends up becoming her depressed side. She exlaims “I CAN’T GO ON, I WON’T ACHIEVE ANYTHING! SOMEONE PLEASE END MY SUFFERING!” and flailing about before becoming so overwhelmed that she transforms into anxiety ENA. A clock begins ticking as she makes her way through the crowd, meeting the Brick Frog who acts pretty insensitive talking over her crying and ends up kicking her, snapping her back into her normal state. She then meets Merchant who speaks Spanish and ends up giving her a turrón. Unfortunately with this run-in, ENA runs out of time and is faced with a pile of bodies, a single standing up person in a blue dress, and some glitched stairways in a black void. This is where the tone of the episode shifts to being even more nonsensical than before. According to Ulysses, the next character met, The Great Runas teleported her to this void. After another scenery shift, ENA makes her way to a field of hourglass dogs and we meet The Shepherd who speaks in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. She is initially annoyed by ENA and calls her “another ENA troublemaker”, alluding to other ENA entities existing. When she notices ENA’s turrón, she gets excited and accepts it as a gift from ENA, giving her the blood ID in return. ENA then proceeds to travel through a glitched void that has what appears to be other ENAs floating around in it before popping through a doorway onto a platform with different paths. On each cross-section of these paths is a person bent over slapping the ground. However, one of these cross-sections has a banana which is where ENA meets MARIYA and GABO and they ask her for a blood ID. When MARIYA gets angry, saying the blood ID doesn’t taste like ENA, ENA exclaims “YOU’RE ALL LIVING A LIE!” which prompts MARIYA to let ENA continue on with her journey. In the next location, ENA meets PhinDoll who acts like your stereotypical surfer dude and then hits ENA while saying “KAPOW!” prompting her to freak out as depressed ENA while both her happy/sad voices come out screaming that she essentially wants to be killed. PhinDoll then tells ENA how to get to the next location and she does what he says proceeding to The Great Runas. However, before she finally get to him, she is surprised by Moony with The Shepherd’s staff in her who then dodges questions about The Great Runas and her wish while ENA’s sad side turns yellow. Eventually, Moony’s wish is revealed as she turns into a humanoid creature and states her wish was “to be thinner”. The episode ends with ENA shaking her head in disappointment.
There is so much to unpack with this episode, so I will start with the beginning. I think that anxiety ENA does a great job at representing what a mental breakdown feels like and her actions during the beginning of the episode perfectly resemble what it feels like being a loner at a party. Showing that Moony continues to be a toxic friend in the beginning is also relatable to real life since toxic, outgoing friends will force and manipulate their friends into doing things they don’t like. I think that this theme also ties into the ambiguous ending. I read the ambiguous ending as two possibilities. Either Moony’s wish also consisted of wishing that ENA’s sad side went away since she dislikes ENA’s sad side and thinks she is annoying as evident by Moony’s remarks in Auction Day; or, ENA has become more happy/confident due to her journey getting to The Great Runas. The timing of ENA beginning to turn yellow coinciding with when Moony appears as well as ENA finishing her transformation as it’s revealed that Moony wished to be thinner seems very deliberate as a way of saying these things are connected. I personally believe that this is the correct interpretation, however the other interpretation also holds some weight given her sad side’s voice coming out of her happy side and sounding confident while talking to Moony in The Great Runas’ bedroom. No matter which interpretation is taken, the overall message can be seen as toxic friends leave lasting impacts on us and change us as people.
While there were no inconsistencies with what was said compared to the subtitles, there are still hidden details as well as lore reveals in the dialogue and background. As mentioned before, The Shepherd implies that there is more than one ENA which can be seen in a void that ENA travels through while going to meed MARIYA and GABO. After coming out of the void, there is a data matrix code in the gray wall that states “FORGET YOUR PAST” when decoded. Many of the things ENA states while freaking out, like “YOU’RE ALL LIVING A LIE!” could be seen as breaking the 4th wall, however could also be interpreted in another way. What if Temptation Stairway is still the maze from Extinction Party? After all, there was no party in Extinction Party but there is at the beginning of Temptation Stairway. These outbursts could be ENA trying to expose the entity of the place, which would mean that the entity is The Great Runas. Then again, ENA is all about abtractness. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Closing Thoughts and Predictions
As you can probably tell, ENA has become one of my latest obsessions. There’s just something about the abstractness and mystery in the storytelling that really appeals to me. A couple more things that I like about ENA that I haven’t mentioned before is the Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime” references and the humor of the series. There are multiple scenes throughout ENA where ENA’s movements mimic that of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” music video, with some of the most obvious references being during the “Turrón!” segments in Temptation Stairway. These little references are extremely fun for fellow fans of the Talking Heads.
There’s just something about ENA’s wacky form of humor that appeals to me, and my friends are the same way. We love to make ENA references, everything from the hourglass dog to just shouting “Turrón!” over and over again. Most of the humor is on-point wackiness while still having witty line delivery. Some of my other favorite funny moments include every line the brick frog says in Temptation Stairway, “Are you drunk again?” followed by ENA’s “oh no no no no! no no no no! no no! no!” in Extinction Party, the Guardian asking for a blood sample in Extinction Party, “Please speak to me through the body language of the gods!” in Extinction Party, “sincerest apologies” in Auction Party, ENA and Moony talking about the hourglass dog and ENA asking “what is wrong with you?” in Auction Party, “my stuppiness never ends” in Auction Party, “cheese and rice moony!” in Temptation Stairway, the entire interaction between MARIYA, GABO, and ENA in Temptation Stairway, and Moony’s “Boo! Give me your lunch money” line in Temptation Stairway. Unrelated to humor but the details in each ENA episode are astounding. For example, while going down a hallway with holes orbiting around the hallway starting at 14:21 in Temptation Stairway, there are two moments (at 14:29 and 14:31) where the camera jumps and a jumping sound is played, adding to the immersion.
While writing this story, a new teaser for ENA was released. The creator of ENA has stated that this will follow a new cast of characters while still being a part of the ENA universe. I personally think that, instead of happy/sad, this new titular ENA will be angry/calm and the hidden personalities be based on having anger management issues while still also having the full gray ENA for having a mental breakdown. I think this would fit in with the colors of the ENA shown as well as be a natural continuation with the lore of ENA’s “species” (like there being more than one ENA). Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting the full episode being posted in a few months.
