Netflix Highlights Filipino Mythology in new Series ‘Trese’

“Tabi, tabi po.”

Filipino Mythology gets featured on Netflix’s new animated series Trese.

Trese is based on the award-winning Filipino graphic novel with the same name written by Budjette Tan and illustrated Kajo Baldisimo.

The graphic novel gets an anime adaption produced by Tanya Yuson (series writer and co-executive producer) and directed by Jay Oliva (series showrunner, director, co-executive producer) who also worked on The Batman and Jackie Chan Adventures.

Trese takes place in contemporary Manila, where supernatural creatures such as the duwende, aswang, nuno sa punso, tikbalang, kapre, santelmo, tiyanak, manananggal, and others lived in hiding amongst humans.

Alexandra Trese, a babaylan-mandirigma is the Lakan and is tasked to maintain the balance between the human world and the underworld.

Together with her companions, twins Crispin and Basilio, and Hank, they investigate crime scenes with supernatural links and slowly uncover the ulterior motive of the criminal underworld ruled by malevolent supernatural beings.

Revise, reboot, revamp, and retell Filipino Mythologies and folklores

As Netflix drops Trese on June 11, one of the creators of Trese, Bugdjette Tan talks about the importance of retelling Filipino Mythology and Folklore to our younger generation as they are part of our history and has been put aside for the longest time.

“We need to constantly revise, reboot, revamp, and retell these stories. We need to find new ways to tell these stories and even to investigate them deeper,” Tan told Metro Cebu News in an interview.

Tan also added that stories about Filipino mythology had mostly stayed black and white where the creature is just pure evil and lacks character development.

“For the longest time our stories have just stay on the surface, it was like: my mananggal na gusto kang patayin so kailangan mong patayin yung mananggal (a mananggal want to kill so you need to kill the mananggal), and it just ends with that, but rarely do we have stories about, Where did the mananggal come from? Does she want to be a mananggal in the first place? What made her want to be a mananggal? There are different aspects to our mythology, even our gods and goddesses we don’t enough stories about them,” Tan said.

Tanya Yuson, series writer and co-executive producer also backed Tan’s call for reintroducing Filipino mythology and folklore to the new generation.

“For the series and for the books, for the new generation who maybe didn’t grow up (knowing Filipino mythology). At least this is a way to kind of catching their attention to clue them in that there is a part of our mythology that they haven’t quite seen and for the kids growing up not in the Philippines but in Filipino families, it may be can bridge a generation to a younger generation and get them interested in finding out Where is the culture from? Where their parents from? How did they grow up? and what kind of stories were there but it fresh and it’s modern so in a way it connects to them as well,” Yuson said.

While working on the series Trese, Jay Oliva, series showrunner, director, and co-executive producer of Trese said that working on the series helped him rediscover his Filipino roots.

“I didn’t grow there (in the Philippines) I grew here (in the United States) and all of my stories of the mythology and folklore in the Philippines were just things that my parents would just say.

“Working on this series and doing the research, being in Manila, and having visited all the locations as well as the museums — It was like me rediscovering culture that was familiar but not familiar. I didn’t really know too much about Filipino history, mythology other than very topical mentioning of these stories,” Oliva said.

Trese premieres on Netflix on June 11, 2021. (ASC)