Bee and Puppycat (pilot)
This review was commissioned by @firefossil
In which we take a depressing "cringefail girl" sitcom and suddenly invade it with a weird mixture of Adventure Time, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and maybe a little bit of Captain Harlock.
It kind of feels like a cartoon version of the "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" pilot. Just with the struggling loser's life getting double-edge-blessed by a big incomprehensible mystery inspired by weird Japanese and American animation instead of British scifi.
We start with cat-obsessed cringefail girl in question, Bee, on her way home from being fired. Just as she's struggling through the rain and being yelled at by cops for no reason, a portal opens up over her head and a cat-puppy hybrid comes tumbling through and knocks her umbrella out of her hand. She's not sure what it is, exactly, but she brings it back to her tiny apartment and does her best to feed and care for it within her highly limited means (she manages to find a leash in the dumpster, and she buys both cat food and dog food at the cost of not being able to afford anything for herself).
That night, her dreams are haunted by crystalline masses floating through space, dancing puppycats, and a haunting sense of abandonment when they all get sucked away from her into the void.
The next day passes in the expected fashion for Bee's archetype, with comically impolite and disapproving authority figures literally looming over her as she tries to get something from a temp agencies, struggles to feed herself and her new pet for at least one more day, and accidentally jabs a friend in the crotch with her umbrella when he comes by to bring her some food. Etc. Special shout-out to the temp agent who tells her she's too much of a loser to work with and then turns away to have a long phone conversation with his back to her, forcing her to look at the motivational posters lining his office walls.
I like how the brace on the back of his office chair looks like a screaming face.
The change comes later that day, when Puppycat gets a summons from a temp agency of its own. Prompting it to drag her through a portal to Adventure Time reality distortion space-hell.
Puppycat can apparently "talk" by singing in this high pitched, gibbering voice that Bee inexplicably finds herself able to understand. Puppycat is a good singer, for what it's worth. Kind of impressive that the VA managed that, considering they were limited to nonsense squeaks. The voicework overall has been reasonably good for an indie production, though I wish the music (reasonably effective though it also is) was a bit less minimalistic.
I'm not sure what exactly *happened* in the space temp dimension, and I don't think the audience is supposed to be able to make much sense of it yet. They get threatened by a hyperdimensional robot-thing that doesn't think Bee is allowed to be here, babysit a talking fish, and then Bee helps Puppycat defeat a giant monster that looks like Marceline at her not-quite-worst that inexplicably emerges from said talking fish. Bee also gets a cat-eared space suit, and the ability to pull the Sword of Dios out of her chest in a soft flash of rose-colored light.
Memorable exchange, with Puppycat's lines translated from alien squeaking noises:
PUPPYCAT: "Use the sword!"
BEE: *bashes the hilt against the monster ineffectually*
PUPPYCAT: "Use the sword AS a sword!"
Also, Puppycat can be used as a laser gun if someone picks him up and aims him, so that's also helpful in the battle.
Importantly, the monster's appearance (birth? emergence? transformation?) from the fish is precipitated by Puppycat telling it an apparently true, apparently autobiographical story.
A Dios-Harlock mashup "space outlaw" tried to elope with the space king's daughter, only to be betrayed by her and left at the mercy of her father's army of royal warlocks. The hatred and rage he felt at the betrayal apparently caused the warlocks' magic to mutate him into a nondescript "monster" instead of killing him, and he was able to escape.
The Marceline-demon-fish-parasite thing apparently identifies Puppycat as the outlaw, and incoherently accuses him of twisting the story to make himself seem more sympathetic as she attacks. Is she a mutated space princess herself? Maybe? No idea.
Anyway, apparently defeating the monster also counts as successfully completing the fish-babysitting gig, because Bee and Puppycat are sent back to her apartment with a big wad of money in hand. Paper money of the kind Bee's country on Earth uses, apparently. That's convenient.
Puppycat gives the lion's share of the cash to Bee, since she did the lion's share of the fighting and saved his life and stuff. She goes to get food (her first thought, characteristically, is to repay the friend who brought her some earlier, over her own growling stomach) and Puppycat goes off to stare at his reflection in the window and wish he was still an animu space pirate.
That sure was a thing.
Well-made. Derivative in the ways I've already pointed out, but well-made, and - importantly - very unpredictable despite its heavyhanded inspirations. The episodes are also short enough and easy to digest enough (at least, based on this pilot) that continuing it seems like a very low-investment prospect, and it's more than entertaining enough to return on that investment. Again, at least so far.
