Babar's Kingdom

Babar's Kingdom is an American-Canadian-French animated television series based on the Babar the Elephant children's book series by Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff. Produced by BBToons Originals, Bear Bones Classics, Ellipsanime, The Clifford Ross Company and LuxAnimation, in co-production with TF1 and Nelvana and premiered on BBToons on September 8, 2020. The series features characters and elements from the original Babar the Elephant books, the 1989 Babar series, and Babar and the Adventures of Badou.

The English version of the series first premiered on in Australia on ABC2 and in Canada on Teletoon.

Overview
Although the series features a majority of new characters to the Babar universe, some of the original characters remain though, such as Babar, Celeste and Lord Rataxes, with other original characters also involved.

Babar's family

 * Babar: The King of Celesteville. He brought his love of the city back to the great forest and built the beautiful, happy kingdom of Celesteville. However, he is a dedicated ruler and world traveler. His mother was shot by a poacher when he was young, so he is very protective and caring of his family, as well as the elephants and other animals of the kingdom.
 * Celeste: Babar's wife and Queen of Celesteville. She has also travelled the world and has had many great adventures. She has a regal presence, an engaging manner, and a gentle sense of humor.
 * Arthur: Babar's mischief-making brother-in-law. He often gets himself (and one or more of the children) involved with practical jokes and stunts.
 * Pom: The oldest of the triplets and the leader of the children. He is protective of his brother and sisters though he will gladly join in with Alexander in playfully teasing his sisters Flora and Isabelle.
 * Flora: Flora is fun-loving and strong-willed.
 * Alexander: The smallest of the triplets, is a non-stop ball of entertainment who is disarmingly naïve about the commotion he causes.
 * Isabelle: The youngest of the four children. She begins to walk and talk at an early age. Isabelle starts as a baby in the series but eventually develops as a toddler.
 * Babar's Mother is an unnamed elephant that gives birth to Babar. After she is murdered by the hunter he is adopted by Madame. She is Pom, Alexander, Flora and Isabelle's grandmother and Badou's great-grandmother
 * Badou: An elephant, who is prince of Celesteville and lives here with his grandparents. Badou ("Bou" to his friends) is bursting with a sense of adventure. He has inherited his grandfather's daring spirit, plunging into any situation with boundless confidence that he can handle whatever it can throw at him. He idolises his grandfather, and feels the need to prove himself worthy of his legendary status.

Babar's close friends and royal court

 * Madame (The Old Lady): A human who adopted Babar when he ran away from the hunter who killed his mother. From their first meeting in the city, the Old Lady and Babar shared a special friendship. She gave him a home and taught him about life in the city. Though she missed him greatly, she understood his decision to return to the forest. Babar built her a home in Celesteville, where she now lives with her elephant friends.
 * Zephir: A monkey who is one of Babar's oldest friends, and is considered one of the family. He is the first to take off with Arthur and the kids on some crazy adventure, but Babar knows that Zephir can always be trusted to look after the children and bring them home safely. Zephir runs the local malt shop.
 * Cornelius: The oldest and wisest elephant in Celesteville and the prime minister, who takes his job as Babar's chief advisor very seriously, whether accompanying Babar on state visits or organizing numerous Celesteville parades. His catchphrase is "My tusks!"
 * Pompadour: Another advisor to Babar, his finance minister, and the minister of royal protocol, to which he strongly adheres. A high-strung elephant, he often opposes radical ideas and is easily alarmed.
 * Troubadour: Pompadour's assistant, a smaller elephant who does not speak but is very dedicated to helping Babar and his family. He is prominent in the earlier seasons.
 * Chef Truffles: The palace cook, often easily upset by various situations in the palace which concern food preparation. He speaks with a French accent.
 * The Old King: The late King of the Elephant who died after eating poisonous mushrooms.
 * Chiku: A monkey who's like her father, Zephir. Chiku means canary in Swahili. Chiku is widely inquisitive and easily distracted. A fast-talking chatterbox who can ask a dozen questions at once, she is convinced that there is something wonderful under every rock, at the end of every wire, and at the heart of every lesson. She is quite inventive, often building toys or tools for the others to use. She is an accomplished dancer due to her natural acrobatic skills and sense of balance.
 * Munroe: A courageous crested porcupine who has been eaten many times, but, due to his spiky body, has always been spit out again. Munroe considers himself Badou's personal champion: a spike-laced Lancelot. Despite being quite chubby he is very athletic. He dreams to one day become a member of the Royal Guard as he is currently too young to actually join and in "Point Guard" Munroe becomes a member of the Junior Royal Cadets, a new training program created by King Babar as a youth training camp to prepare kids like Munroe who aspire to become the next generation of the Royal Guard. He is also a practitioner of the martial art Quill-Fu, though in Fu Finder, it is revealed that most of his Quill-Fu moves were learned from comics, in which, after a suggestion from Babar, Munroe seeks out the legendary Quill-Fu master, Jabbsi, who becomes Munroe's martial arts mentor.
 * Zawadi: A zebra who, like the rest of her kind, sees the world in black and white; right and wrong. Outspoken and sometimes bossy, Zawadi hates blending in with the herd and is determined to make her own stripe on the world. Zawadi means gift in Swahili. Like King Babar, she is shown to have a love of flowers and gardening.
 * Jake: A scruffy, five-year-old fox pup. Jake was orphaned as a wild kit and found his way to Celesteville, where he befriended Badou. Cornelius is his legal guardian.
 * Miss Strich: An ostrich, she serves as a teacher, the palace guide for tourists, and also organizes most of Celesteville's events. She is very flighty and excitable, with Badou and his friends' merry-making usually making her even more so. Occasionally Badou and the kids end up teaching her new things such as tennis and baking.
 * Crocodylus: A crocodile, who is the ambassador of the Alligator and Crocodile kingdom. A consummate schemer, his underhanded strategies range from trying to take over Celesteville to winning contests. When things go wrong, he groans "Muck and mire!"
 * Dilash: A young crocodile, Dilash is the nephew of Crocodylus. He, along with his cousin, causes trouble and tries to interfere with Badou and his friends' adventures. He lives in Celesteville, along with Tersh, in order to make his uncle Crocodylus seem more respectable. Unlike Tersh, he is mean and a somewhat of a bully to Badou and his friends. As a result, he is more willing to go along with his Uncle Crocodylus' schemes. Both he and his uncle have no problem taking advantage of Tersh's gullibility. (voiced by Lyon Smith)
 * Tersh: A younger crocodile who's Dilash's cousin and Crocodylus' nephew, he is usually seen unwillingly helping his relations with one of their schemes. He can be mean, but is generally backing up his older cousin or his uncle as opposed to being outright malicious. He is much kinder and friendly than they are, and the other children eventually forged a friendship with him especially Prince Badou. He tends to be a bit less intelligent than the others and somewhat gullible, and his uncle and cousin often take advantage of this. However, despite this, Tersh cares deeply for both Dilash and Crocodylus as he once asks his friends Badou and Munroe to help him keep his uncle from getting into trouble. In another episode, he took Zawadi's Zebra book of Stripes for Dilash who kept telling him how much he liked it, causing Zawadi to wrongly suspect that Dilash had stolen it, unaware that Dilash was innocent and that Tersh had taken the book in order to make Dilash happy. When the truth is revealed, Tersh apologizes for taking it without asking, though ironically Zawadi herself had borrowed the book without asking her parents, causing both her and Tersh to learn a valuable lesson about taking things without permission.
 * Boss of the Slogs: The matriarch of the Alligator and Crocodile kingdom who rules the swamps. Like Tersh, she is friendly and is a just ruler, unlike Crocodylus. She is protected by a group of elite bodyguards known as the Brawlers.

Rataxes' family

 * Lord Rataxes: The king of Rhinoland, Rataxes is typically depicted as a rude, selfish and often incompetent leader. Although he only appears once in the canon of the books, he serves as the main antagonist of the TV series. Rataxes often dreams of dominating the jungle and even claiming the elephant kingdom for himself, but his bumbling schemes to advance those goals generally fall apart or are easily thwarted by the elephants. As Rataxes himself admits, his resentment of Babar is rooted in jealousy of Babar's comparative popularity and the success of the elephant kingdom; Babar, for his part, tends to regard Rataxes mainly as an annoyance, but is not unsympathetic to him. Because Rataxes' dislike of Babar is rooted more in this resentment than any personal grudge, he often helps Babar and friends as an antihero; many of the episodes end with Rataxes listening to reason and accepting Babar's point of view as long as he or Rhinoland can somehow benefit. Rataxes does have some positive qualities, including his fierce devotion to his family and rhinoceros subjects; his forceful leadership is also helpful when various crises threaten the jungle. He appears to remain the same age both in the present and in Babar's stories from the past, as do his wife and advisor Basil.
 * Lady Rataxes: Rataxes' wife. She is very calm than her husband, and is also on friendly terms with Babar, Celeste, and the elephants. Her real name is Louise, but she is normally called Lady Rataxes.
 * Victor: Rataxes' son, who is also in the friendly terms with the elephants. He is friends with Flora, Alexander, and Pom despite the rivalry between their fathers.
 * Basil: Rataxes' chief advisor; he is highly capable, competent, and organized. Like Lady Rataxes and Victor, he is on friendly terms with the elephants, although Rataxes' various schemes occasionally force Basil into antagonizing them. Serving as a chief administrator of Rhinoland, Basil handles most of the paperwork, coordinates security for the rhino palace, and serves as Rataxes' travel agent and spy. He is also a self-proclaimed fitness expert, an advocate of clean living, and a skillful theatre director. He is extremely loyal and humble to Rataxes but not above subtly poking fun at his employer from time to time.

Villains

 * The Hunter was the primary antagonist for the first four of the five episodes of the series, the Hunter was introduced in "Babar's First Steps", shortly before he kills Babar's mother. Dressed in a classic colonial-era Africa outfit and sporting a Fu Manchu moustache, the Hunter is portrayed as a particularly malevolent human, who refuses to reason with the animals and sees them solely as a means to enrich himself. The Hunter holds a particular grudge against Babar after he disrupts his hunting expedition, had him fell into a shallow hole and Babar throwing his gun away. Babar had nightmares of him killing his mother in "City Ways". When Babar returns to the forest in "Babar Returns", The Hunter in his jeep and a group of poachers managed to capture all the elephants after foiling their doomed stampede plan. Babar with Celeste and Arthur were able to free the elephants, and with Babar's car managed to push The Hunter off a cliff and into the river. The Hunter returned in force in "Babar Triumphs" with more poachers and the jeep equipped with a plow. They were successful of capturing Lord Rataxes and the Rhinos, and were getting very dangerously close to the newly constructed city. While Babar helped to rescue Rataxes, The Hunter had been spreading crude oil throughout the forest to start a massive forest fire in order to flush the animals out. Teaming up together, the animals successfully fought the fire until the wind changes direction, taking the fire to the Hunter's Camp. The remaining poachers flee, leaving The Hunter yelling in rage, vowing to destroy them all before being engulfed in the flames.
 * Lord Rataxes fulfills the role of antagonist to Babar in various episodes, albeit normally on a much smaller scale (examples include consistently fighting Babar's attempts at bringing Western-style projects to the forest or unifying the forest). Rataxes' efforts in this regard are mostly portrayed as bumbling and comical.
 * The two lackey cheetahs who are the antagonists that only appeared in "Tour De Celesteville". They had a late entry and they still do not win and they use it as a spittoon. The race begins and the cheetahs set a trap for Babar, Arthur, Rataxes and Basil. Babar and Rataxes are gaining at them, but the four shows up for the fight. Arthur and Basil beats and wins them on the Tour de Celesteville, but they're very angry. The moles use the bike to boulder-rolling at them, killing them for good.

Cast

 * Fred Tatasciore as Babar
 * Mala Miles as Young Babar
 * Vanessa Marshall as Celeste
 * Tara Strong as Young Celeste
 * Eric Bauza as Arthur
 * Billy West as Young Arthur
 * Jess Harnell as Alexander
 * Alanna Ubach as Flora
 * Greg Cipes as Pom
 * Kari Wahlgren as Madame
 * Grey Griffin as Isabelle
 * Zig Miles as Babou
 * Kimiko Glenn as Chiku
 * Ben Diskin as Munroe
 * Trevor Devall as Jake
 * Jason Marsden as Zephir
 * John DiMaggio as Lord Rataxes
 * April Winchell as Lady Louise Rataxes
 * Gilbert Gottfried (seasons 1-2) as Basil
 * Scott Menville as Victor
 * Charlie Adler as Rhudi
 * Jim Cummings as Cornelius
 * Tom Kenny as Pompadour