Random Watch 07. Doggy Poo - "This was insanity"
Judging by the Cover: Well, there's no way that's a doggy poo covered in snow. That must be a blurry pic of a white dog with a brown face.
Official Description: Once upon a time, a little doggy poo lived on the side of a road. He felt all alone in the world. He believed that nobody needed him for anything, and that he had no purpose in life.
Technically, this was not an anime, but it was included in v0xtheriot's mystery box (not a euphemism). It's a stop motion short film from Korea, and holy crap. Obviously, it had the most interesting title of anything included in the box, so I'd been looking forward to this for awhile.
Life is full of disappointments. I could never have anticipated that a cartoon about dog shit would be so humorless, nor that anything so willfully strange could be so directly preachy.
The story is that Doggy Poo is, well, poo'd out by a dog. He quickly befriends a mound of soil from a nearby farm (who, by the by, looks like a pile of poop himself, and has potato bits or something that look like corn). Things quickly get philosophical, with Soil insisting that Poo has a purpose in life before being scooped up and taken to a farm to perform his purpose.
This runs only half an hour, but feels like forever Doggy Poo and the things he meets (Soil, a leaf, a super bitchy chicken, and finally a dandelion) is immobile, so there's very little animation. It's kind of quaint how it feels like a one-act play. Unfortunately, it's so slow, direct and obvious, it's not as much fun as its premise seems to promise. (It. is. a talking. dog shit pile. Why is it so, so sad?)
The story tries to play as weepy, but it really just feels ridiculous that a dog poo pile would be so existentially lost. Plus, even at 30 minutes, this feels a little long. There's padding, in showing seasons changing (does dog shit actually survive a full year?) and a couple of montages, plus some unnecessarily deep delving into the Soil's back story (I'm as serious as a doggy poo trying to find his place in the world).
But then, eventually Doggy Poo is absorbed by the Dandelion, and it looks like gentle facefucking. So maybe it was worth it.
Sticking with it? There's a pun here, I just know it. This is a standalone short, so there's nothing to stick with. But I do want to double feature this with The Happiness of the Katakuris sometime.
Theme Song: Just a light, string-heavy score. This isn't an anime, though, so it doesn't count.