Bee and Puppycat Part 1 and Bee and Puppycat Part 2

The title card for Bee and Puppycat Part 1.

The end card for Bee and Puppycat Part 2.

Overview

Bee and Puppycat Part 1 and Bee and Puppycat Part 2 were uploaded to the Cartoon Hangover Youtube channel on July 11th and August 6th of 2013 respectively. Both shorts were shared as the fourth and fifth installments to the “Too Cool! Cartoons” collection of animated shorts. Cartoon Hangover describes the collection of shorts as an opportunity for “rising stars in animation…to produce a short film for Cartoon Hangover” (Cartoon Hangover Shorts - Too Cool! Cartoons). A day after the release of Bee and Puppycat Part 2, both shorts were uploaded together as one continuous animation to the Cartoon Hangover Youtube channel. These two shorts are considered the pilot of the series and are referred to as such by viewers online, although they are not included in the release of the episodic series formerly available on VRV.

Development

In an interview with Frederator, Natasha Allegri reveals that Bee and Puppycat came to be after head of creative development for Frederator Studios and Cartoon Hangover Eric Homan asked her to pitch a show (Frederator Times). Allegri briefly documents the process through which she pitched the short in a Q&A on Reddit, where she explains that she pitched the idea to Homan through an email with drawings included (Fred Seibert and Natasha Allegri - AMA). This email reportedly took a few days to compose. The subsequent storyboard made to be pitched to Frederator in February of 2012 took just over a week to make and includes details not depicted in the finished shorts, such as Wallace’s mother (‘Bee and Puppycat’ Storyboard). Several elements of the finished shorts are also absent from the storyboard, including Bee’s dream and the infamous battle against Doublemouth. This storyboard would go on to be added to and adapted into the both original shorts.

According to Allegri, Bee and Puppycat was based heavily on magical girl anime — specifically such classics as Sailor Moon, which Allegri notes as one of the first anime she watched as a child (Frederator Times). This influence is evidence in both the visuals and plot of Bee and Puppycat. Bee’s enlistment as Puppycat’s work partner, for example, is reminiscent of the transition from an ordinary person to a magical girl that many protagonists undergo in various magical girl anime. Allegri touches on the influence of magical girl anime and anime in general on the art of Bee and Puppycat, explaining that she was inspired by the art of “simpler anime from the 90’s…where everything’s really simple.” She elaborates further by noting that she did not want to incorporate “crazy layers of shading” or “elongated figures unless [there was] a reason for it” and that the story she aimed to tell “was very simple” and, for that reason, did not necessitate over-the-top visuals or character designs.

One of the most striking differences between the Bee and Puppycat shorts and the following animated series is the change in art style. While the series employs softer colors and thin, colored lineart, Bee and Puppycat Part 1 and Part 2 make use of solid black lineart and colors that exaggerate rather than mesh with scenes. In the interview with Frederator mentioned previously, Allegri cites her dissatisfaction with the designs depicted in the original shorts as reasons for the change, going on to say that she “wasn’t happy with how the animation studio interpreted the original [designs],” nor was she “happy with how [she] designed [them].” Allegri reports that, excluding a period of inactivity during production, Bee and Puppycat Part 1 and Part 2 took roughly five months to make.

Of the voice cast, Bee and Puppycat Part 1 and Part 2 feature Allyn Rachel as Bee, Kent Osborne as the Police Officer and Deckard, Tom Kenny as the Temporary Agent and the Ladybug, Frank Gibson as Wallace, and Marina Sirtis as both Tempbot and Doublemouth. The shorts are scored with music by Will Wiesenfeld, known by his stage name, Baths.

Summary

Bee, after being fired from an unspecified job, discovers Puppycat on her way back to her apartment when he falls out of the sky. She brings him back to her apartment while he is unconscious. Deckard, a friend of Bee’s, stops by to deliver a casserole, concerned about her unemployment. After some stilted conversation between the two, Bee brings the casserole inside to share with Puppycat, who has woken up. 

Later, Bee dreams of herself floating in space among various spheres of light. Six puppycats of varying colorations emerge from her hair before all of them land on a jagged rock formation. After clamoring incoherently around Bee and performing a brief synchronized dance, the six puppycats proceed to jump off of the rock structure one at a time. Bee catches the last one to demand where all of them are going, but it scratches her wrist until she lets go of it. From the wounds on her wrist erupt bright pink streamers. Bee then wakes up to find herself late for a meeting at a local temporary employment agency. 

During the meeting, which is going poorly, the temp agent is interrupted by a phone call, giving Bee the opportunity to take all of the candy from a bowl on his desk. After he gets off the phone, Bee leaves abruptly, returning to her apartment with gifts for Puppycat. After Bee realizes that she has no money to buy food for herself, Puppycat summons an envelope from the bell on his collar. The envelope transports them to the realm of Tempbot, who works for the Space Temporary Agency with Puppycat. Tempbot nearly incinerates Bee, but Puppycat steps in before they can. The two are assigned a job in Fishbowl Space. After arriving there, Puppycat reveals that they will be babysitting Wallace, who is a giant fish. After numerous failed attempts by Bee to console Wallace, who misses his mother, Puppycat tells him a story. Puppycat’s story follows a space outlaw and the daughter of the Space King, who were in love and planned to run away together. The Princess betrayed the outlaw, however, and led an army of the King’s warlocks to him. Instead of capturing the outlaw, the warlocks’ magic transformed him into a monster, and he was able to escape. Wallace, dissatisfied with the ending of the story, suddenly sprouts into a monster several times his size with two mouths. The monster seems to recognize Puppycat and ensnares him with her tendril-like tongue. Bee, despite having a sword, frees Puppycat by biting one of Doublemouth’s tongues in half. After the two of them defeat Doublemouth, Bee asks Puppycat if the story he told Wallace was true, to which he doesn’t answer. The two are paid for their work upon arriving home, and afterwards, Bee offers to help Puppycat figure out a nicer ending to his story.

Trivia

• Storyboards of the pilot are considerably different from the final product. For example, the pilot originally ended with Wallace’s mother returning after the end of Puppycat’s story. Interestingly, this is not the only source material wherein Wallace’s mother is depicted – she makes brief appearances in the first and third issues of the Bee and Puppycat comics. Some other minor differences include Bee’s more simplistic job uniform and Tempbot being referred to as Assign Bot.
• The uniform Bee wears in the beginning of the pilot bears striking resemblance to an outfit seen in the webseries that she wears in a photograph alongside Deckard, who wears a matching outfit, suggesting it was her job at the Wizard family’s cafe she was fired from in the pilot long before the cafe was first mentioned in “Cats.” This is retroactively confirmed in the Netflix release of Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space, which features a more modern version of the events depicted in the pilot.