Western Animation / Onyx Equinox

Onyx Equinox is an American adult animated web series created by Sofia Alexander for Crunchyroll. It is based on the mythologies of Mesoamerica, featuring deities of Aztec, Zapotec, and Mayan myth.

The series focuses on an adolescent Aztec boy named Izel. After being saved from death by the Gods, Izel is given a weapon and a mission to close the five gates of the underworld. Along the way, he must learn to cope through his grief and trauma and love his fellow man again.

The series premiered on November 21, 2020 and released new episodes on a weekly basis before the rest of the season was released simultaneously on December 26. A Nahuatl fan dub has since been released.

On November 5, 2023, Alexander announced that the series had been cancelled for various reasons out of her control.

---

General Tropes:

• Action Girl: Pretty much every female character that shows up is a badass in some capacity, but special note goes to Zyanya, the team's Big Gal and best warrior.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Olmecs are essentially treated as precursors (true to real life Mesoamerican civilizations), with obsidian technology so advanced as to make giant mechas and gates to another plane of existence.
• Alien Blood: Gods appear to bleed glowing blood, while monsters such as the guardian of the first gate and Yaotl bleed teal blood.
• All for Nothing:
  • Almost. Nelli offers herself as a sacrifice so that Izel won't be taken as one but he's so grief stricken by her death that he attempts suicide, meaning he would have died either way if not for the interference of Quetzalcoaltl and Yaotl.
  • Mictecacihuatl engineered the entire conflict to bring her lover Yaotl back to her and restore his memories. Unfortunately, by the time she's able to do this, he has grown to care for the children and chooses them over her.
• Always Identical Twins: K'in and Yun are this, the only different between them being that Yun has longer hair that is draped over one shoulder in a ponytail.
• All of the Other Reindeer: This has always been evident with Izel; in the first episode, he gets beaten on the way home by other Mayan children who resent the fact that he helped out the refugees from Danibaan. In the second episode, Izel quickly becomes ostracized and chased out by the city folk after they see his bright teal eyes, which are a sign of the underworld and thus makes him a harbinger of bad luck.
• Ambiguous Situation: According to Yaotl, the reason Xanastaku's wings are red is because she committed some sort of crime. While there's still some ambiguity over what really happened, it's heavily implied that said crime was murdering her abusive caretaker.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The story takes place somewhere in Mesoamerican history, deliberately unspecified. It does show the remnants of the Olmecs and Classical Mayan temples, but also major Maya cities co-existing with the Aztec empire.
• Animesque: Like a lot of action animation produced in America in the 2010s, it has an anime inspired art style with seeming influence from the Avatar franchise. It's even partially animated by DR Movie.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Averted. The monkey-apes in the jungle the group encounters in episode 5 are more than happy to rip each other apart as well as their successors.
• Arc Number: Five. There are five gates, each of them have five switches, and there are five human children on the quest. Xanastaku implies that this number was important to the Olmecs, who believed that humanity could never accomplish anything alone and designed their tech to require a team of five.
• Awesome Underwater World: The underworld is envisioned as looking like an undersea realm, filled with dreadful coral-like structures and jellyfish-like spirits. This is based on Mayan associations of water with the underworld.
• Bat Out of Hell: The guardian of the third gate is a gigantic bat with oversized ears.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Averted. The majority of sacrifices are a simple slashed throat, and the only time we see a heart being removed it's after the person is dead and clearly not beating.
• The Bet: One between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. Quetzalcoatl chooses a champion from the lowest of humanity to close the Underworld gates (which are made of enchanted obsidian that repels gods) and if he succeeds before the next equinox, Tezcatlipoca doesn't destroy humanity. The winner also apparently gets the blood sacrifices of the other. So that Quetzalcoatl doesn't try to cheat, he agrees to let Yaotl, a loyal subordinate of Tezcatlipoca, to accompany Quetzalcoatl's champion.
• Big Good: Quetzalcoatl, for a given value of "good". He may thrive off human sacrifice like his fellow gods, and have no issue with fatally possessing a child, but he's also the one who sets in motion a plan to end the blood drought that does not involve wiping out humanity.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Downplayed. By the end of the first season, Yaotl, the group's main powerhouse, and Zyanya, the group's main warrior, have both been reduced to mindless animals through different means, cutting them off from the group for the time being.
• Big Sister Worship: Izel adores Nelli, which makes her death in the pilot all the more heart wrenching.
• Blood Magic: Strong emphasis on this. The gods need blood for survival and Izel found a dagger that transforms into a powerful weapon via drinking blood. Also, the only way to summon Yaotl is for Izel to shed blood on the earth.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Izel is splashed with Nelli's blood when she's sacrificed.
• Book Ends: In the first episode, Izel tries to cut his own hand for blood to beg the gods for Nelli's life, but is too squeamish to do it. In the first season finale, he cuts his hand to summon Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl and let them know he's done playing their game.
• Cassandra Truth: Izel tells K'in and Yun why he needs the ball the have and why he's on his journey to begin with, they both laugh at him and only Yaotl showing up, saying Izel's not lying and threatening to eat them has them helping.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The magical ball that bonds to K'in and Yun, automatically returning to them whenever it gets too far.
• Cold Iron: Obsidian is essentially treated as this. Merely touching it can kill any supernatural deity, even a god.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Izel and Nelli's parents appear to be long deceased, which makes the latter's death all the more painful since it means that the former is now truly alone in the world. Bringing his sister back also proves to be the main motivation of Izel's, and why he agrees to go on the quest in the first place. Initially subverted in that he actually finds Maak, his first guardian (who sold him to slavery as a young child) in another city and confronts him; later, his city is dragged into the Underworld by Mictlantehcutli, which means Izel is truly an orphan now.
• The Chosen Zero: Izel, chosen champion of humanity, is an orphaned servant with nothing to his name. The trope is outright invoked by Quetzalcoatl, who declares that he will have "the lowest of the low" seal the Five Gates.
• Cool Big Sis: Izel's sister Nelli, with a dose of Parental Substitute.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Blood Magic and even Human Sacrifice are not automatically evil in this show, and can even be heroic.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Downplayed, since part of the point of the series is how the Mesoamerican view on sacrifices wasn't that different from the modern one. However, realistic things these cultures liked that modern ones do not crop up from time to time, like slavery.
• Demonic Possession: Or rather, Divine Possession. The gods are capable of possessing human bodies, though the bodies never last long.
• Didn't Think This Through: Nelli gives herself up as a sacrifices for her brother Izel's sake, not considering how her brother, who adores her, will react to her death.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Izel's actions in the first season finale. He summons Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca just to point out that he can decide their lives simply by pulling a switch, threatens to kill Meque so they know the fear of losing a loved one, and tells them off for their entire test, saying that humanity is flawed because they themselves are flawed. Tezcatlipoca nearly kills him for it, but is held back by the bet, and the group flee while he and the other gods are distracted by their bickering.
• Divine Conflict: Due to a drought of blood sacrifices, Mictlantecuhtli has sent his forces to forcefully sacrifice people for their blood, even dragging an entire city to his domain. This puts him in conflict with the other gods, who also need the blood and would rather destroy humanity and start over, or seal the Underworld gates to prevent Mictlantecuhtli from taking further sacrifices.
• Divine Date: As revealed in episode 11, the god Mictecacihuatl once had a human lover, and secretly triggered the events of the series in order to get revenge on the gods that took him from her.
• Doomed Hometown: Zyanya's home city of Danibaan is dragged to the Underworld by Mictlantecuhtli, along with her parents and any live person still in it. K'in and Yun's hometown of Oxte'tun (more commonly known as Calakmul) suffers the same fate shortly after they leave it.
• Downer Beginning: Between the Establishing Series Moment featuring the destruction of Danibaan and Nelli's death followed by Izel's suicide attempt, the only thing keeping the overall tone of the episode's ending from being completely bleak is that Izel was spared by Quetzalcoatl and chosen to be his champion.
• Driven to Suicide: Izel attempts to kill himself after seeing his sister be sacrificed in front of him. Unfortunately, Quetzalcoatl had chosen him as humanity's champion, so he survives.
  • Upon Izel's disappearance, their master also goes to do this and unlike Izel, succeeds, since Quetzalcoatl proceeds to possess him with fatal results.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Mictlantecuhtli's servants, who look like vaguely bestial creatures made from slime that can assimilate people within their bodies.
  • The guardian of the first Underworld gate is a huge, multi-armed spider-like Super-Persistent Predator with a skull for a mouth.
  • The monsters that attack Izel on episode 3 look like some sort of coati with tails made of flames and eyes on their necks. Its leader is much bigger, has horns and even more eyes. Also, its head can survive briefly after being torn from its body.
• Eldritch Location: The Underworld, as seen in episode 7. It's a dark place inhabited by strange creatures, which drains the energy of the living just by being there.
• Elite Mooks: The tzitzimime, humanoid, ghoulish monsters that fell from the stars, are far more dangerous than the average monster.
• The End of the World as We Know It: As per Aztec mythology, this is not even the first time that the fate of the world and humanity is at risk. Quetzalcoatl notes the world and humans have been wiped out 4 times before. In one instance, the humans of the 3rd (or fourth, he can't quite recall) sank into depravity and were turned into apes.
• Evil Is Bigger: When Mictlantecuhtli manifests after receiving sacrifices, his form towers over the other gods that were defending the city.
• First-Episode Spoiler: Nelli dies.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Yaotl in the opening is at the base of a pyramid with blood flowing down the steps. He was once a Human Sacrifice.
  • A heron is spotted at least twice in the series, once when Izel and Yaotl set off on their journey, and again when Izel and Yun talk in the village in "Death From Above". While it's clearly supernatural from its glowing eyes, its true significance isn't revealed near the end of "The Bet": It's the reincarnation of Nelli, now working with Quetzalcoatl. Notably, it seems to take a particular interest when Yun mentions that Nelli would be proud of Izel.
  • A lot of Zyanya's montage in Episode 4 takes greater meaning with later reveals about her character. Notably the part where she paints her forehead (to hide her Slave Brand from Mictlantecuhtli) and chipping a bit of obsidian into an amulet (it's a piece of stone from her hometown which helps her stay in her human form).
  • Zyanya is often shown to prioritize The Needs of the Many and advocates for leaving K'in and Yun behind in "Predation", even though they're needed to guide them to the gates. This is because she's only planning to bring Izel to Dani Baan and thus doesn't need or want to find the other gates, and probably doesn't want anyone getting in the way of her sacrificing him to Mictlantecuhtli.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The guardians of the second Gate are gigantic crabs that can assimilate into each other to make one gigantic crab.
• Glass Weapon: Obsidian is used in weaponry, as it was in real life Mesoamerica. Unlike real life, obsidian, especially Olmec obsidian, has the added bonus of repelling the gods' power.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Tezcatlipoca can be considered this, because of the bet that he agreed to. As of the end of Season 1, He is now the Big Bad, after winning the bet and de-powering Quetzalcoatl.
• Groin Attack: In episode 5 one of the monstrous apes forces K'in to give it his cacao fruit, and in return it gives K'in the eye of another monkey and a punch to the balls.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In keeping with the significance of human sacrifices, this is a recurring element in the story.
  • Nelli volunteers to be the sacrifice in place of her brother Izel. It's specifically noted that a willing sacrifice is the most noble and desirable of all.
  • One of Danibaan's priests slashes his own throat to call upon Cocijo and Xoo in a last-ditch effort to save the city.
  • At the first season's climax, Zyanya uses her amulet to dispel the massive concentration of divine energy that Xanastaku absorbed, saving her, but at the cost of dooming Zyanya to a permanent existence as her monster form.
• Hotter and Sexier: Since episode 11 is a Whole Episode Flashback centered around the adult Yaotl and Mictecacihuatl as opposed to the kid protagonists, it's the only episode in the first season to have overt sexual content, in the form of at least two orgies with both male and female participants.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Mictelantechutil and Mictecacihuatl both have multiple forms, but even his smallest form is twice as tall as her largest. When they're both in their godly forms, she's barely the size of his face.
• Humanity on Trial: The basis of Tezcatlipoca's and Quetzalcoatl's bet is whether humanity is worth saving or if they should kill them all and start again. Izel then deconstructs the whole concept to their faces, pointing out that humanity is too vast and varied to ever be reduced to simple good or evil, and that no matter how often they remake humanity, they will remain so because the gods are flawed and imperfect beings themselves.
• Human Sacrifice: Being set in ancient Mesoamerica, there is a lot of blood sacrifices, which the gods need.
• Humans Are Flawed: Izel gave up on humanity following Nelli's death, but his experiences with others teach him otherwise, and he winds up concluding that humanity is flawed and imperfect, but will never be fully good or evil.
• Humongous Mecha: The Olmecs built several to use in their war against the gods, and one of their broken shells is found slumped over the last gate.
• Hungry Weapon: K'i'ik is a dagger that becomes a much more powerful weapon when it's fed blood.
• It Can Think: The coati-monsters of episode 3 prove to be smarter than expected when they draw the attention of a couple of guards and lead them to a place where the rest of the pack and their leader can torn them to pieces.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: A variation. In the first season finale, Yaotl leaves the group because Tezcatlipoca can seek him out and use him to find the group.
• Jerkass Gods: Not only is Mictlantecuhtli dragging entire cities to the underworld to quell his thirst for blood, the other gods are planning to destroy humanity for a fifth time and the only reason they have a chance is because of a bet between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.
• Jerk Jock: The twins K'in and Yun show heavy signs of this in Episode 3, being incredibly certain and arrogant in their abilities despite not having played against real players and having had their games rigged and mercilessly teasing Izel with the mysterious ball he needed, though Yun also leans more towards Lovable Jock due to offering Izel fruit when he was hungry and generally being nicer to him than his brother.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Fitting for a pre-colonial setting, none of the modern Mexican names are used, instead using indigenous names for locations, properly pronounced at that. For example, Monte Alban is rendered in Zapotec Danibáan.
• Killer Gorilla: The monstrous apes in Episode 5 are most definitely this, considering savagery towards each other let alone humans.
• Kryptonite Factor: Obsidian burns the gods and their monstrous servants by its very touch. The fact that the stones meant to seal the Five Gates are made of the stuff is what prompts Quetzalcoatl to seek out a human to do it for him.
• Land Shark: The guardian of the fifth gate is a huge four-legged shark.
• Large and in Charge: The leader of both the dog monsters of episode 3 and the monkeys of episode 5 are bigger than the others of their kind.
• Like You Were Dying: Invoked in the rite of ixiptla, where a human spends one year preparing to be a sacrifice for a certain god. The ixiptla spends the entire year living it up with orgies, feasts, dances, music, and being all but worshipped by the people before they're sacrificed at year's end.
• Maniac Monkeys: Episode 5 features huge, ape-like howler monkeys that once were the gods' second attempt at creating humanity, before they were turned into their current form for letting their base desires to control them. They're highly violent towards humans and each other.
• Mayincatec: Averted. The show has a remarkably accurate portrayal of the different Mesoamerican cultures and religions of Mexico and Central America compared to most works.
• Misanthrope Supreme: In Episode 2, Yaotl asks Izel if he loves his race enough to save them from possible extinction (for the fifth time). The latter tells him how he no longer cares what happens to humanity due to the fact that they sacrificed Nelli, the only person he ever loved. The only reason that he eventually agrees is so that the gods will restore Nelli to life.
• Monstrous Humanoid: The tzitzimime, skeletal, female demons with bone-like crests that fell from the stars. They are incredibly relentless and much harder to kill than other monsters.
• Multinational Team: Since the gates themselves range all over Mesoamerica, the team gains members from the many different cultures they pass along the way. Izel is Mexica by birth and was sold to Maya cities, K'in and Yun are Maya, Zyanya is Zapotec, and Xanastaku is Totonac.
• Mr. Fanservice: Yaotl in his original form is very muscular with long hair, only wears a loincloth when he wears anything at all, is first seen at an orgy with both men and women, and even gets a full frontal shot in his first scene.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When K'in and Izel get into a fight and Yun tries to intervene, Izel pushes him off a branch in a rage and breaks his leg, effectively a death sentence in this era. Izel is horrified by what he's done and spends the rest of the episode trying to make up for it, even risking his life against the monkeys rather than leave K'in behind.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Lyrics in Yucatec Maya and Nahuatl pepper the background, sometimes to ominous effect.
• Origins Episode: "The Last Year" is this for Mictecacihuatl and how her actions have impacted much of the plot.
• Panthera Awesome: Yaotl looks like a huge jaguar.
• Parental Abandonment: It's revealed in the third episode, Izel and Nelli were young orphans who were taken in by Maak, who later sold them just as Izel grew attached to him.
• Possession Burnout: When the gods possess the bodies of humans, their power eventually causes the body to mutate and decay until they're nothing but bones.
• Power Gives You Wings: The inhabitants of Tajin can manifest wings and fly. Xanastaku is one of those people, but at first she doesn't like to use it.
• Precision F-Strike: The first thing Yaotl says in response to seeing that Izel is humanity's champion is that they're fucked.
  • K'in has taken to asking the magical ball "where is the fucking gate?", to the amusement of his brother.
• Precursors: The Olmecs seem to be this, as the Five Gates were apparently made by them.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Mictlantecuhtli summons himself and drags a city to the Underworld by capturing several people inside some of him monstrous minions and forcing them to slit their own throats.
• Race Against Time: Izel and his companions have until the new equinox to close the five gates to the Underworld before Tezcatlipoca destroys humanity once more.
• Rage Against the Heavens: The Olmec precursors were planning to do this, or at least building failsafes in the form of the underworld gates. This ended up spelling their doom as the gods wiped them out for building it, only to ironically / Hypocritically plot to use them against Mictlantecuhtli.
• Rain Dance: The people of Tajin perform the danza de la voledores, one of the real life examples of this. This being a fantasy setting, the people are actually able to fly and the rain starts immediately, with the head priest even joking that he might have overdone it.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: Izel doesn't seal the fifth gate, meaning that Tezcatlipoca wins the bet and is free to destroy humanity on top of de-powering Quetzalcoatl. On top of that, his group loses both Yaotl and Zyanya, possibly forever. However, Izel stands up not just for himself but for humanity and tells the Gods that they are no longer their playthings.
• Religion Is Right: The Mesoamerican gods are demonstrably real, and require human sacrifice to survive, just as their worshippers believe.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca's bet has both their blood sacrifices as the prize but the mythological Quetzalcoaltl was the only Aztec god who didn't take human sacrifices. Then at the end of season 1 Tezcatlipoca de-powers Quetzalcoatl, meaning he no longer can take human sacrifices. Although this might be a case of Exact Words, as Quetzalcoatl only specifies blood sacrifices, which could come from the animals Quetzalcoatl did accept.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Seeing Mictlantecuhtli rise causes Cocijo to retreat before he's killed like Xoo.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: Izel's whole motivation for agreeing to the mission is so that the gods use their power to bring his beloved sister Nelli back from the dead.
• Sequel Hook: This is how the first season ends: Izel chooses to not close the final underworld gate, allowing Tezcatlipoca to win the bet and de-power Quetzalcoatl, then reducing Yaotl to a mere jaguar for defying him. Zyanya has lost control over her transformation and now is wandering aimlessly, while Izel and his group travel to Tenochtitlan to find allies against Tezcatlipoca and his plans to end humanity. Meanwhile, Quetzalcoatl and Mictecacihuatl form an alliance against Tezcatlipoca.
• Shown Their Work: Great care was taken to depict the Mesoamerican cultures correctly, from the games to the rituals to the individual architecture of the different cities, and even basic background things like food, toys, and clothing. Where they deviate from the source myths and history, it's a case of Artistic License, not the artists not knowing.
• Slashed Throat: This is how people are sacrificed to the gods, spilling their blood in tribute.
• So Proud of You: The last thing Yaotl says to Izel before they're forced to separate in the first season finale.
• Spiritual Successor: Many people consider Onyx Equinox to be a Darker and Edgier successor show to both Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, due to the startlingly similar Animesque art style and the fact that its a fantasy series inspired (partly, in the latter's case) by Native American peoples and folklore (Onyx Equinox being focused on Mesoamerican culture prior to colonization and the water tribe in Avatar being a fantastic version of the Inuit.) There is also an ongoing joke online about how the main Protagonist, Izel, heavily resembles Avatar Korra.
• Starts with a Suicide: The first episode ends with Izel attempting to drown himself in the cenote, having lost the will to live after Nelli's death. Yaotl rescues him, then refuses to let him go through with it when he tries again.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: People possessed by the gods gain luminous golden eyes that periodically flare with an inner light, to signify them talking. The healer woman also temporarily possesses these in episode 5.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Yun and K'in decide to cook up the Giant Enemy Crab they found in a temple. At the beginning of the next episode, all of the characters are on the tail end of food poisoning. Not all crabs are edible and even those that are tend to become unfit for consumption very quickly.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In Episode 5, Yun opens up to Izel and they have an emotionally open conversation for what was probably the very first time, with Izel telling him about Nelli and both apologizing for their prior behaviour. He also follows the Healer woman's advice to become nicer to Izel in order for him to help him on his quest. K'in to a smaller degree, as he is still quite abrasive, but is genuinely grateful to Izel for saving he and Zyanya.
• Wham Episode: Episode 8 reveals that Zyanya was forced to work for Mictlantecuhtli in order to save her people. Then, Mictlantecuhtli ends up getting decapitated when the underworld gate closes on his neck, revealing that the true Big Bad is his wife Mictecacihuatl, who had previously masqueraded as the healer.
• Wham Line: Episode 4 has one that reveals that Yaotl Was Once a Man.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Xanastaku calls out Yaotl for snapping at Izel in Episode 9, pointing out that Izel needs his emotional support as well as physical. Yaotl tries to shrug it off, but her words get to him, and he later reassures Izel that the massacre of the village was not his fault.
• Wife Husbandry: The Flashback Episode reveals that Mictlantecuhtli kidnapped Mictecacihuatl as a baby to make her his bride, and raised her himself. However, it's somewhat downplayed in that he clearly only wanted a wife for ceremonial purposes, and never did anything sexual with her.
• Your Days Are Numbered: The rite of the ixiptla, where a human is chosen to represent a god and lives one year as them before being ritually sacrificed at the end. Yaotl was one for Tezcatlipoca.

---