A music-driven animated series
It's raining at Orion Akino's funeral. Two dragons conduct the service, a gargoyle sniffles through a stone nose, and the café down the street has sent umbrellas.
A tale of monsters. (Or are there none?)
The show in one breath
Venus Akino is 17, a vampire, a hacker and an inventor. She buries her brother under a headstone that reads: Took every breath. Lived every second. Embraced every experience. It was awesome.
The whole monster community turns up. A banshee's tears burn holes through every tissue a werewolf offers her, so he switches to a ballistic nylon napkin. Ghost children drift through the umbrellas, and every raindrop that crosses them turns into a tiny prism. A soaked phoenix shakes out her wings, a hedge catches fire, and the gargoyle beside her spits on the flames without looking up from the order of service.
That night a song rises out of the cooling fan in Orion's lab, and he assembles in green pixels across her screens, dead and entirely unbothered. He'd been halfway through a formula that would let their kind walk in the sun, outside and without glass.
O. is typing…
VENUS What the…
ORION …fab. Love what you've done with the place.
Vitamin X
A mix so potent, follow with care,
Unicorn spit with chai, so rare.
Medusa's tears, from laughter so bright,
To bring healing and joy, and banish all fright.
Hurry, go get a freshly spun web,
From a Jorōgumo, a silky smooth thread.
An Amazonian vine, natural and true,
A Cyclops' eyelash, or even a few.
OxA
The cure for sunlight
Every ingredient in Vitamin X lives inside somebody, and it's the exact part of themselves they've spent a lifetime keeping out of sight.
So Venus goes looking for ingredients and finds a family. Eva, a Medusa fashion icon whose 8 snakes have opinions, and who's terrified of being seen. Bolt, a gentle Cyclops trained to fear his own strength. Lola, a Frankenstein chef whose donated parts remember other lives. Lucky, a unicorn whose horn carries the songs the city has forgotten.
In a city that watches anyone becoming too visible, giving a gift freely is an act of resistance.
"Eight gifts. Freely given. Choice is the catalyst. Taking creates something else."
Orion Akino
The question underneath
What if the limits they inherited were engineered?
The world
A Gothic-neon city where monsters, mythical beings and humans have lived side by side so long that nobody remembers it being remarkable. Gorgons run fashion houses, a three-headed dragon pulls the coffee and Cyclopes study engineering, under the soft blue glow of a city that keeps its monsters calm, managed and polite.
The city
San Mágos wears its differences loudly. At the cemetery gate a djinn adds a line to the sign with a flick of her fingers: Yes, that includes necromancers. Meanwhile the cameras quietly follow anyone becoming too visible.
MTHRNTR, pronounced Mother Nature
A vine curls around the door handle and lets go as you arrive. The floor gives underfoot like grass, the plants lean towards conversations, and the tables make room for tails, wings, stone hips and extra knees.
Echo Beach
Beyond the cameras, a small wave travels inside a larger one until you can see the seam. At the water's edge the family finds room to grieve, breathe and imagine.
The more honestly someone lives their own nature, the stronger their magic runs. Masking, shrinking and apologising drain it.
The L.O.V.E. Coalition runs Project S.A.V.E., the Sanctuary Against Violent Extremes. Every act of love is a camera.
A song changes what a character understands, or what they can do. One forgotten song can become a hundred voices.
The family
Every one of them carries a quality the world taught them to hide, and for the first time somebody is asking for it.
Vampire. Hacker. Has never seen her own face.
Her mirror shows the room and leaves her out, so she does her eyeliner by feel: one perfect wing, one ambitious disaster. She can get into almost any system, and grief is the one she can't code around.
"I object to any beverage with coagulation ambitions."
Vampire and Jorōgumo scientist. Walks through mirrors.
Red dress, four-sleeved denim jacket, gumboots and mismatched socks, with a polka-dot umbrella hiding more eyes than one face should hold. She was Orion's research partner, and she keeps cold-pressed extra virgin web in her jacket pockets.
"Too many questions, mi chica guapa."
Medusa. Fashion icon. Nobody has seen her face.
She runs the fashion house GAZE anonymously, because her gaze turns living things to stone. Her 8 snakes, the Style Council, drill avant-garde hairstyles to a whistle like a parade ground, and Shimmy answers to Bartholomew on formal occasions.
"Historically accurate? Absolutely not. Fabulous? Undeniably."
Cyclops giant. Meditates daily. Sings karaoke badly.
He came to meditation because he needed it, and he holds his temper as a practice he chooses every day. He once meditated through a magnitude 4.2 earthquake, and the spilled tea bothered him more. He's measured that love warms the air between two people by 0.3 degrees.
"Then be brave."
Frankenstein. Chef. Author of herself.
Her right hand belonged to a chef, her heart to a 22-year-old cellist, and her left knee was at Woodstock, which is why it still bends out of time when guitars come on. Her hands cook dishes she never learned.
"Eat. Then save the world. In that order."
Unicorn. Filmmaker. Keeper of forgotten songs.
When he was born, the stars rearranged themselves 3 degrees counter-clockwise for 11 minutes, and the city filed it as The Sparkle Incident. His horn picks up music that won't exist for another 300 years, and it once played a dead man's actual favourite song halfway through his eulogy.
"I'm Lucky. Lucky Glitterbutt. And yes, that's my real name."
Three-headed Balaur dragon. One café, three minds.
Joy reads the room like weather, Prince tests three spoons against a cup for pitch, and X improves the queue by moving one sugar bowl 4 centimetres and the other 8. When Bolt mentioned the chairs were too small, three new ones appeared overnight.
"You stopped exactly 1.4 metres inside the door. Last time, 0.6."
Phoenix. Professor. Seven deaths, seven returns.
She holds appointments across three departments, because no faculty can agree where a phoenix belongs. Her dress sheds embers like fireflies, and she has set her own whiteboard on fire mid-lecture.
"Safe truths don't need documenting."
Human. Heir to the family that built the machine.
He offers his first name only, and tells his father he's at the library when he's at MTHRNTR. His running joke, that he was adopted from a monster orphanage, winds his parents up every time.
"I'm not them. I'm really not."
On air from the back booth
From a booth inside MTHRNTR, Madame Momo, Yeti and Momo Jr. open and close most episodes of Monsters on the Mic with songs, quasi-philosophical arguments and charming, cryptic foretelling. Momo decides what can be told and when, Yeti hears the emotional and musical truth, and Momo Jr. asks the questions, lots of them.
MOMO JR. They called it uneventful.
YETI A phoenix set fire to a hedge.
MOMO JR. Exactly.
MADAME MOMO The hedge recovered.
MOMO JR. You're giving the story away.
MADAME MOMO Barely. Official records have no ear for rhythm.
"We'll tell them everything and nothing."
Season 1: The Resistance
A grieving vampire turns a private act of mourning into a found family, and the found family wakes a city that has been quietly forgetting itself.
A funeral, an impossible mirror and a dead brother who stays.
Eight snakes drilled like a parade ground, and the worst karaoke in San Mágos.
A daughter who won't be looked at, and a mother who has hidden her face for 20 years.
Stones arrive at 3am and carve themselves with a history older than the city.
Glasses designed around monster eyes, and a design nobody is allowed to buy.
An ancestral kitchen where the oven speaks in the voices of the dead.
Lucky's footage is full of light nobody else can see.
A room sings a song it has never heard, one voice at a time.
No equipment, no agenda, and a small wave travelling inside a larger one.
Episode 1 · Bye. For Now.
Venus walks into MTHRNTR as somebody actually present for the first time since the funeral. Joy has already plated an almond croissant for her. Venus tears it in two, slides half towards the empty stool beside her, and orders a croissant for every occupied table.
PRINCE We have nine.
VENUS Then nine croissants and five things you believe deserve the same confidence.
PRINCE Finally. Creative authority.
By the end of the hour Project S.A.V.E. has caught her hacking, and 17 versions of Venus leave the building by 17 different streets.
Venus's search for 8 gifts gathers a resistance, and their broadcast restores fragments of the city's memory.
Forgotten bargains surface, and at the Monster's Ball music turns a poisoned celebration into an awakening.
The family races to complete Vitamin X and comes face to face with something ancient that feeds on forgetting.
The music
Music is the magic system of San Mágos. A song changes what a character understands, or what they can do, and one forgotten song can become a hundred voices.
Three albums and a single were written alongside the novels, and every song has its moment in the story. Press play on any of them below.
The unicorn farts sparkles
The medusa sips her tea
At MTHRNTR Café
You can be who you'll be
From Welcome to MTHRNTR, on Nothing True, Nothing False
Is it her, or is it me?
A shattered prism, what do you see?
Nothing True, Nothing False
I know what you think.
You think I'm gone.
But look again.
Nothing True, Nothing False
Kiss the mask,
Miss the girl.
Electric Peach Zen Social
So if you feel too much. Good.
It means you're alive, and you're not alone.
Electric Peach Zen Social
All of it at once
All of it too much
All of it like honey
All of it like rust
I Am. (EP)
Medusa's hairstyles and
Vampire sunscreen
Cyclops' yoga mats and
Unicorn ice cream
Electric Peach Zen Social
Seven told me, "Stay contained"
I turned scars to champagne
Electric Peach Zen Social
Mirror, mirror, monster there,
Twist the truth, pretend you care.
Nothing True, Nothing False
Step right up, the show's begun,
A tale of monsters (or are there none?)
Nothing True, Nothing False
Overtures, mirrors, funerals and the first door inside the door.
Songs of voice, visibility, reinvention and refusing the edit.
Five songs about judgement, becoming and the selves that return.
Open on Spotify ↗
Single
A first listen to the emotional language being developed for the screen.
Lyrics by Charbel A. Zeaiter, released as Charbel X. The current recordings are development demos that prove the songs and their place in the story. The production plan is new recordings with performing artists for the screen.
For producers, broadcasters and partners
What exists today
Why animation and music
A Medusa whose snakes have opinions, a dragon with three minds, a unicorn painting a ballroom with sound and a city that changes colour when it remembers. Animation holds all of it in one frame. The songs are built into the story's machinery, so the soundtrack can travel into markets before a single episode airs.
The look
Stylised and painterly, in the band occupied by Arcane, Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters. Every monster carries its own warm palette and moves against the corporate blue of the city's systems, so the colour grade argues the politics on its own. Mirrors, roots, eyes, waves and a red recording light return again and again.
Comparables
Arcane for character stakes and political conflict. Spider-Verse for expressive animation. KPop Demon Hunters for music inside a supernatural adventure. Wednesday and Umbrella Academy for irreverence and a found family.
Available on request: the pilot screenplay, series development material and selected music demos.
Created by
"I never fitted either world, so I built three."
Charbel A. Zeaiter is a Sydney-based writer, designer and founder with 30 years across design, technology, entrepreneurship and education. He founded Faster Zebra, a school, studio and intergenerational community for people building ventures that build them back, all under one line: good things come to those who make.
"Momo & Yeti came from being rejected by two worlds and working out who I am. Every monster in it carries a part of themselves the world taught them to hide."
For Momo & Yeti he's written the six novels, the pilot, the three-season plan and the lyrics for three albums of songs. It's one of three animated series he's developing for the screen. The other two are Dino Loco, an animated comedy-adventure series for families, and Kith9, an animated ecological adventure about nine young guardians bonded to the living world.
Get in touch
Producers, broadcasters and partners can connect with Charbel on LinkedIn for the series materials and development conversations, or leave a message here. Everyone else can follow along on Instagram, where the characters turn up first.
Rights and development enquiries go to the creator directly.