After much buzz about its trailer and its unusual mix of cute characters and bloody wartime violence, the 3-D animated version of Motofumi Kobayashi's military manga Cat Shit One (a.k.a. Apocalypse Meow) is now available for online viewing via YouTube.
Starting from Saturday, February 5, viewers in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will be able to view the entire 22-minute English dubbed episode, uncut and uncensored in high definition via YouTube for free for two weeks.
You can check out this first episode of Cat Shit One now via the CharacterTank.com website, or go directly to YouTube to watch it now. There's a short commercial for action figures from Kaiyodo and a rehash of the trailer before the episode airs, but if you want to get right into the action, skip to approximately the 4:00 mark for the start of the episode.
This first episode of Cat Shit One focuses on two rabbit commandos, Packy and Botasky working for the Carrot Mystery Service, a private military contractor. The two rabbits are charged to find and rescue hostages from a group of camel terrorists. When the situation goes from bad to worse and backup is at least a half hour from arriving, Packy decides to go into the terrorists lair to try to rescue the remaining hostages.
Armed with only an submachine gun, a pistol and some grenades and greatly outnumbered, Packy sneaks into enemy territory with only Botasky covering him with a sniper rifle. Can the two save the hostages without getting killed?
UPDATING THE MANGA: FROM VIETNAM TO THE DESERT
Cat Shit One was adapted from Motofumi Kobayashi's Vietnam war manga that featured rabbits as American soldiers, cats as the Viet Cong and various other critters representing soldiers, officers and civilians from different countries. In some ways, the concept is a bit similar to Art Spieglman's Maus, which featured cats as Germans and mice as Jewish people in World War II Germany. But what makes Cat Shit One a very different comic than Maus is its attention to detail, regarding military strategy, history and munitions.
Cat Shit One was published in three volumes in English by ADV Manga in 2004 under the title Apocalypse Meow. It is currently out of print, with prices for Volume 1 sometimes commanding prices up to 6 to 10 times its original cover price.
However, compared to the manga, the 3D animated series of Cat Shit One only retains the rabbits, the munitions and the violence of the graphic novels. Instead, the story is updated by setting the scene in some unnamed desert country during some as-yet-unspecified conflict. While the characters are very cute, make no mistake, this is a very violent clip and it is definitely not meant for children.
It's very disquieting to see adorable bunnies shooting to kill and yelling like hard-boiled G.I.s or action heroes. If you took away the bunnies, the story, the action, the dialogue and the level of graphic violence in Cat Shit One would be just like any other war movie -- but maybe that's the point. It's definitely worth a look if its available for viewing in your country.
BATTLING ONLINE PIRACY BY GIVING IT AWAY
In any case, what's also new and notable is how IDA, Inc. (International Digital Artists) has opted to make this content available for free online, mostly in response to concerns about digital piracy.
"If it's going to happen anyway, then I'm going to do it! This is my passionate response to rampant piracy," said IDA CEO and Cat Shit One Producer Junya Okabe.
When it was made available online in Japan in Summer 2010, Cat Shit One marked the first time that first-run animated HD content was made available free to viewers online. In two months, this initial episode of Cat Shit One attracted over 480,000 pageviews.
Cat Shit One was also recently nominated for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Short award by the Visual Effects Society, a visual effects professionals group, recognizing achievement in film, television, commercials, music videos and games.
The DVD and Blu-Ray versions of this first episode of Cat Shit One are also available for purchase from Amazon.com. The DVD is priced at $19.99, and the Blu-ray version is available for $29.99. Both versions include the full 22-minute episode, plus lots of extras including commentary from the film's military tactics advisor, interviews with the director Kazuya Sasahara, producer Okabe and the Japanese and English voice actors, and behind-the-scenes featurettes.
Have you checked out Cat Shit One? If so, what did you think? Add your comments below!
Image credits: © 2010 MOTOFUMI KOBAYASHI / anima * IDA All Rights Reserved.
Comments