this debut episode of
Catshit One was released free on the web to coincide with the DVD/
Blu-ray
release earlier this month...
In this debut episode, the two rabbit soldiers from Special Force 'Cat Shit One',
PACKY and BOTASKY, infiltrate enemy lines to rescue hostages captured by unidentified militia. Knowing the hostages are in need of immediate help, they launch a snake attack without waiting for backup.
Cat Shit One started out as a manga of the same name by written and illustrated by Motofumi Kobayashi. It was originally published in Japan in 1998 by
Softbank Publishing, but for obvious reasons was renamed
Apocalypse Meow
for the US release. The manga takes place in Vietnam instead of the middle east. The recon team Cat Shit one probably gets its name from the fact that the bad parts of the conflict are called "the shit" and the Vietnamese are all characterized as cats. The Americans are all rabbits (Japanese for rabbit is Usagi [U.S.A. + G.I.]).
I was talking to my dude Rod from
Planet Griffin this morning about this episode and he pointed out that the Studio Anima dudes did this indie style on PCs in their garage, and that they raised the OPM ("Other People's Money") to make it with a series of YouTube trailers. I actually like that they kept the name
Cat Shit One (even though it would definitely keep the DVD out of Wal-Mart), because it reminds me of the military (I grew up on in a military town). Dudes in the military have mastered the art of using profanity and sounding official at the same time... Anyways,
Cat Shit One: The Animated Series episode 1
is on sale now on
Amazon, and I'm sure other respectable anime outlets have it too.
holla!
-samax.
I don't know. I watched the whole free episode.
ReplyDeleteWhile I thought the animation was top notch. The movements of the characters were very, very good, especially the bunnies.
The story? Not so much. The plot, dialog and shooting skills were way too 'action movie' for my taste. Actually, it was more like an FPS, almost to the point of being insulting. To offset the inherent silliness of bunnies v camels, the realism would have played better.
The details bugged me, too (an South African Super Hind? Sure it looks cool, but a private military force probably couldn't afford something so cutting edge. And what was with the human headsets? That was just a failure of the imagination to me.
Wow. I can't believe I wrote all that. Sorry, had to be done ;)
lol! All legitimate points... I still liked it.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read Kill Box?
no*
ReplyDelete*trying to make up for the previous verbosity.
verbosity should not be conserved. What really exited me about this was the notion of indie cats getting something like this done. I'm all about that.
ReplyDelete