SNAPSHOT
Bee and Puppycat follows Bee, ever the reluctant hero, who becomes entangled in the adventures of a puppy (…or is he a cat?) as they travel between reality and the void of Fishbowl Space. (synopsis via Laughing Squid)
Remember the old Superman series lead in where people would gasp and say “Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s Superman?”
Good, well that’s so 1950s people.
What you should be saying now, or will be saying soon anyway, is “Is it a cat? Is it a puppy? No, its Puppycat!”
There, much better!
The reason you will be driven to use this phrase will likely have everything to do with the surging popularity of Bee and PuppyCat, a web-based series that manages to be adorably anime-cute while harnessing a fair degree of Daria-esque humourous snark.
Conceived by Natasha Allegri, an artist who gave up college study to forge a career in the animation industry, eventually ending up writing for Cartoon Network’s gloriously loopy Adventure Time, and brought to the web thanks to the founder the YouTube-based studio Frederator Networks, Fred Seibert, it is, as The Wall Street Journal‘s Mike Shields, “a little bit out there”:
“For one, the main character, a single 20-something girl named Bee, takes in a pet that she’s not sure is a cat or a dog. At one point Bee falls asleep eating a pan of lasagna and has a feverish, anime-style dream. Bee also eats all the candy off a temp agency worker’s desk during a job interview and accidentally opens an umbrella on a potential date’s crotch.”
What is most astonishing about Bee and Puppycat is that it has created, on the basis on just one 10 minute episode – it raised an impressive $872, 133 to create further episodes which have just launched – a fervently-devoted fanbase who have embraced this unusual tale of a girl and her indeterminate species friend with remarkable enthusiasm as Shields observed:
“To date, the initial Bee and PuppyCat short has garnered 10 million YouTube views. That only tells part of the story. For example, fans flocked to the show’s Comic-Con panel last month dressed like show’s the characters. The online retailer We Love Fine sells dozens of Bee and PuppyCat-branded items, ranging from handbags to t-shirts. There are Bee and PuppyCat Squishable stuffed animal toys. The show has sparked a robust Tumblr fan art community. Keep in mind there has only been one episode.”
With that kind of groundswell of support behind it, and a delightfully idiosyncratic storytelling sensibility that helps it stand out from the animation pack, the arrival of the new episodes, initially hosted on YouTube channel Cartoon Hangover for one day (November 6, 2014), Bee and Puppycat is shaping up to be one of the biggest success stories of the brave new digital media world.
And who knows? You may just hear somewhere yell out “Is it a cat? Is it a puppy? No, its Puppycat!” too if you’re really lucky.
* You can sign up for news about Bee and Puppycat at Frederator.com