Dr Ingrid Colville, 68
A Norwegian marine biologist who found a coin 40 years ago and never fully bonded with it, then built a company around its signal. She's right about the emergency.
Why Kith9
Everything they fight for is real. Only the magic is invented.
Kith9 is set in nine real places, and every threat to them is real: forests cleared for what lies under them, reefs bleaching white, pollinators dying across farmland, Arctic ice letting go of what it has held for thousands of years. Young people are growing up inside that emergency, and most of what reaches them about it is either despair or a lecture.
Kith9 hands them wonder first. A forest that remembers, a reef that's a city, a sky with rooms. The audience loves the living world before the series asks them to fear for it, so when something is lost, the loss lands. Its heroes win with attention, knowledge and restraint. Buzz wins by counting correctly, and Sol wins by deciding when her fire ends.
The idea underneath
The living world has been mending itself for four billion years. Kith9 is the story of that mending switching back on, in nine young people.
Nine places, nine real emergencies.
- The Amazon, Brazil · Beasts
Rainforest is cleared every year for what can be taken from the ground beneath it. In Episode 1, 31 old trees on one ridge are ringed in yellow paint.
- Cloud forest, Colombia · Trees
Forests are sold as carbon offsets while they're still being logged, and Dottie's valley is one of them.
- A Pacific reef · Seas
Warming water bleaches coral white, and the sea reaches further into low island villages with every king tide and every storm.
- The savanna, West Africa · Bees
Pollinators are dying across farmland. In Buzz's savanna the dead bees run in a straight line to a company's model farm.
- The steppe, Central Asia · Sky
One of the great raptor migrations crosses a new turbine corridor, built at exactly the height the eagles fly.
- A volcano, the Philippines · Fire
A community defending its mountain from drilling is branded a pack of foreign-funded agitators by a paid media campaign.
- The delta, Bangladesh · Freshwater
Families who've read the river for generations lose their homes to floods made worse by what's built upstream.
- The ice, Greenland · Ice
The Arctic is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet, and its permafrost holds roughly twice as much carbon as the air.
- The Rift Valley, Kenya · Soil
A teaspoon of healthy soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth, linked by real underground fungal networks scientists are only beginning to map.
Each episode closes on a title card with the true facts behind the story, so families can keep the conversation going after the credits.
The show in one breath
The living world has an inside.
Nine young people can get in, each bonded to a real place under real threat: a rainforest, a cloud forest, a reef, a savanna, a steppe, a volcano, a delta, the Arctic ice and the soil of the Rift Valley. Each coin lets its guardian drop into the living world and feel it from within, and each one offers its guardian the power they most want. As an extraction company hunts the connection between their gifts, nine strangers on four continents become a family.
It's family adventure with real weight, in the tradition of Avatar: The Last Airbender, made for young people and their families watching with them.
The question underneath
How do you love something without owning it?
Wonder comes first
Every episode opens on something impossible.
A boy crosses 6 metres of open air, 40 metres above the Amazon floor, laughing, with a capuchin screaming on his shoulder. A girl grows a vine bridge across a cloud-forest gorge and tells the fig beside her it's a show-off. The audience loves a place before anything threatens it.
- An impossible thing the audience wants to experience.
- A relationship it wants to spend time with.
- A problem whose outcome it needs to know.
Nine animal companions
The companions carry the comedy.
Goes through Frankie's pockets with the confidence of a customs officer.
Coco CapuchinEats a $200 tower of guava pastry at a corporate showcase, then belches at the man who organised it.
Neblina KinkajouLays an arm across Estelle's grandmother's pot at exactly the wrong moment. "Don't you dare look smug."
Professor OctopusLeads Buzz to an ancient coin, then sends him an invoice. Every favour gets one.
Ledger HoneyguideKiki won't name it, because you don't name the weather. It sits in a way that's a whole speech.
Kiki's manul Pallas's catSix grams of alarm, named for the one thing it has never been.
Steady TarsierTreats a catastrophe as the greatest thing ever arranged for its personal enjoyment.
Ladoo OtterHe steals. Isla named him for the one thing he isn't, and she's stopped apologising for either.
Honest RavenAfraid of nothing that walks, flies, swims or burrows.
Grit Honey badger
The world
The real world, with one invention.
Every place is real: the Brazilian Amazon, the Colombian cloud forest, a Pacific reef, the West African savanna, the Central Asian steppe, a Philippine volcanic ridge, the Bangladeshi delta, the Greenland ice and the Kenyan Rift Valley. So are the species, the ecological pressures and the corporate tactics. The coins, the powers they wake and the world they open are the invention.
The Quick
Down there, nothing can lie.
The guardians speak in old, plain words used strangely. The rules hold all season, so the audience learns a world it can play by.
- The Quick
- The living world from the inside. A guardian drops into it and surfaces out of it. Time runs wrong down there, and nobody can predict which way.
- The Standing
- Living things alive so long they've become someone, like a 400-year-old fig whose only advice is "slow down".
- The Left
- The shapes of what has gone, still doing their jobs, like a bird call with no bird.
- The Tally
- One courteous presence walking all nine under-places, a step behind, counting what's gone. Every year it gets busier.
- Rhyming
- Nine coins, nine strangers, and something that finds them before they find each other.
- The Deafening
- Some things can't be undone, and the coins know it. One of them has never made a sound.
- The Return
- A coin can't be got rid of. Ask anyone who's tried.
- The Marrow
- What lies under everything. The guardians have a word for it, and the company has a drill.
Against them
OrendaWorld speaks engineering.
An extraction company that has spent 30 years drilling for what it calls "the deposit", through subsidiaries with friendly names.
- La Société Forêt VerteCarbon offsets, Colombia
- PacifiCoreSeawall works, the Pacific
- AgriNex"Pollinator Restoration Programme"
- VulcanCoreClean power, the Philippines
- Room 3 wet.
- Asset held in Room 3. Recommend moving asset.
- Asset moved to Room 4.
- Room 4 now wet.
- The final entry in this log is withheld
Final entry withheld.
Steal a coin and it makes the thief's life unliveable. Every animal within a kilometre knows where he is, and nothing in his house will ever dry.
Rutherglen
Calm, grey-haired, with a tablet he never looks at and his hands behind his back. He calls himself a reasonable man, and he means it. He'd just like the forest to be quieter.
The guardians
Nine strangers on four continents.
Each coin has a will that mirrors its guardian's deepest wound, and each one offers a way out. They meet one or two at a time, so the audience loves each of them before they meet the next.
Frankie16
He crosses six metres of open air, 40 metres up, laughing, and the forest has started lending him things. His jaguar, Theo, walks like the forest owes him money.
The nameNamed for Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals.
Gold coin, in a medallion called Luzia, worn at his collar since infancy. Coco, a capuchin.Song: Hear My Running Feet (Beasts)
Dottie15
"I know the world is bigger than my valley. My valley is the part that's disappearing."
The nameNamed for Saint Dorothy, patron saint of gardeners.
Green coin, in her great-grandmother's staff. Neblina, a kinkajou.Song: Lean on Mine (Trees)
Estelle16
"It's always dark at two in the morning. That's what two in the morning is for."
She leads with a grin she makes for everyone else, and lately the sea has started answering her.
The nameNamed for Stella Maris, Star of the Sea, a title of Mary as protector of everyone at sea.
Sapphire coin, in her grandmother's clay vessel. Professor, an octopus.Song: Room for Two (Seas)
Buzz14
Dry, wry and cheeky, and he counts everything. Then the bees start finishing his sentences.
The nameNamed for Saint Ambrose, patron saint of bees.
Crimson coin, sewn into a grain bag. Ledger, a honeyguide.Song: A Thousand Wings (Bees)
Kiki15
She runs a herding camp by default, and her coin keeps handing her the sky. Her hair moves in a wind nobody else can feel.
The nameKiki is short for Chiara, after Saint Clare of Assisi, Saint Francis's companion. Chiara means clear and bright, like the sky after rain.
Silver-white coin, in the crown of the family ger. A manul with no name.Song: We'll Catch the Light (Sky)
Sol17
"No. But thank you. It's a generous offer."
The lawyer's daughter, politely declining a coin that wants out.
The nameSol means sun. Her saint is Saint Agatha, called on against fire and volcanoes.
Amber coin, in her grandfather's bolo. Steady, a tarsier.Song: A Little Spark (Fire)
Titas14
"You must be the others. I'm so glad you came. I've felt you for weeks. Isn't the water strong?"
The nameNamed for the Titas, a river in Bangladesh, with the strength of the Titans in it. His saint is Saint Christopher, who carried a child across a dangerous river.
Teal coin, from river clay. Ladoo, an otter.Song: Race the Ripples (Rivers)
Isla16
She learned to keep things exactly as they are. Her coin would gladly keep her, unchanged, forever.
The nameIsla means island, and Greenland is the biggest island on Earth. Her saint is Saint Brendan, who sailed the northern seas.
Crystal-clear coin, in the ice. Honest, a raven.Song: The Ice Is Waking (Ice)
Terra17
She tends bean rows and an old fig at the edge of the Rift Valley. Her coin has only ever said one word: "welcome".
The nameTerra is Latin for earth. Her saint is Saint Isidore, patron saint of farmers.
Ochre coin, in the ground under her grandmother's garden. Grit, a honey badger.Song: Room to Grow (Earth)
The album · Out now
Every guardian has a song.
Ten original Kith9 tracks: the title song, Beasts, Trees, Bees & Seas, and one song for each of the nine guardians. You'll find each guardian's song on their card above.
You bring you.
I bring me.
From the title track
Words and music by Charbel A. Zeaiter. Released as Charbel X.
Season 1
Twelve episodes, twelve kinds of story.
Every episode is a different kind of story in the same world. The audience returns each week to a new place and a new shape, with one mystery assembling underneath.
- Episodes 1 to 4 · The world opens
- 01The Beast GuardianThe AmazonA pursuit
- 02The Forest SentinelThe Colombian cloud forestA heist against the clock
- 03The Tide CallerA Pacific reefA rescue told in hours
- 04The ColonyThe West African savannaAn investigation
- Episodes 5 to 8 · A family forms
- 05The Things We CarryOn the roadA caper
- 06The Sky SovereignThe Central Asian steppeA siege
- 07The EmberA Philippine volcanic ridgeA descent
- 08The CurrentThe Bangladeshi deltaA flood already under way
- Episodes 9 to 12 · Everything is tested
- 09The PermafrostThe Greenland iceA rescue
- 10The FoundationThe Kenyan Rift ValleyA homecoming
- 11Title withheldThe Tally is still countingClassified
- 12Title withheldThe Tally is still countingClassified
Episode 1 · Pilot
The Beast Guardian
Frankie is 40 metres above the forest floor with nothing under him, and he's laughing. He crosses 6 metres of air to reach a stranded harpy eagle chick, then feels a heartbeat in the kapok that isn't alive, with long gaps, all the same length.
Thirty-one trees on the ridge are ringed in yellow paint. A calm man below says "the deposit runs the whole ridge", then looks straight up at the boy on the limb.
Inside the pages
The look is already drawn.
The Kith9 comic pages by Ardee Delmo set the visual language for all nine guardians: heavy ink, flat colour and a palette for every ecosystem.
Wonder, magic, stakes
Always in that order. The audience loves a place before it fears for it, and wants a power before it learns the cost. Humour comes from character, and the emergency plays out on screen in real places, with real species.
Nine coins, nine palettes
Each coin has its own colour, motion, texture and sound, so a guardian is recognisable at a glance. Inside the Quick, colour has sound and sound has length.
Why animation
Nine real ecosystems on four continents, forests that remember, seas with opinions, a sky with rooms and rock minutes old. Animation holds all of it in one frame, and lets the whole season be made in Australia.
For producers, broadcasters and partners
A whole saga, ready for its first season.
An Australian-authored family adventure set across the real world, with a mythology that has written rules and an ending unusual for the genre.
What exists today
- Nine finished novels, about 161,000 words
- Season 1 mini-bible, with beat-by-beat plans for all 12 episodes
- Pilot draft, "The Beast Guardian", written for the 35-minute animated format
- Nine earlier screenplays drafted from the novels
- Comic pages and character art for all nine guardians
- A second season seeded
Why now
Young people are growing up inside the ecological emergency, and they want stories that take them seriously. Kith9 meets them with real places, real species and real science, carried by wonder and humour, with heroes whose power is attention, knowledge and restraint. The true facts behind every episode give schools and educators a natural way in.
Comparables
Avatar: The Last Airbender for a young ensemble with spectacle and moral weight. Princess Mononoke for ecology as myth. Pixar's Coco for emotional truth inside comedy. Maya and the Three for a world-spanning animated saga with real loss in it.
Nine real places, told with care
The living world's interior is the series' own invention. The guardians meet people who already hold the living world as kin, and that recognition stays in the abstract, with no ceremony, tradition or belief attributed to any real people. People from each setting shape the daily life, family, language and landscape on screen, and that consultation runs through development.
Created by
Charbel A. Zeaiter
"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.
Kith9 is one of three animated series he's developing for the screen. For Kith9 he's written the nine-book source story, the Season 1 mini-bible, the pilot draft and the songs. The other two are Momo & Yeti, a music-driven animated series set in the monster city of San Mágos, and Dino Loco, an animated comedy-adventure series for families.
Get in touch
Producers, partners and fans start here.
Producers, broadcasters and partners can connect with Charbel on LinkedIn for the series materials and development conversations. Everyone else can follow along on Instagram, where the guardians will turn up first.