#the darker colored mice have relatives in Africa which is a horrifying implication on what they are trying to say

[ceiling-karasu]

Watched Black Cat Detective and started thinking about Squirrel and Hedgehog as well.

It's been a few days so I have lots of thoughts and rambling. I'll start off by saying that since the main villain of Black Cat Detective is named the 'one eared mouse,' and we already have one of those in this fandom, I'll be calling him Lǎobǎn (no idea if there is already a fan nickname for this guy).

Putting these two together in a room would be fun, but I think Oegwipali is way smarter, to be honest, especially since he is a trained soldier. I'm not sure they would get along.

I would not do a Squirrel and Hedgehog and Black Cat Detective crossover in The Rod That Blocks the Lightning, though, since on is a North Korean cartoon and the other is strictly Chinese. I would be interested in doing a cross over in another, less serious, AU, though, since it is pretty similar with the violence and some other themes.

I watched the original series, then the reboot, and then the movie. Animation wise it does have that 'these kinds of thing happen in the first few episodes' issues, but it is only five episodes so they don't get ironed out. Still entertaining! It was pretty interesting, although I think the movie takes place in a different continuity. The series takes place in a forest with its own 'Forest Law,' and the movie is set in a massive futuristic city with space faring technology.

(I think the giant hairdrier is a leg section of what is a science museum of futuristic space vehicles).

It is about as violent as people say it is, especially for the time period and the fact that it was made for children. I thought it really could not be that bad, that the FH spike impalement scene was wild, but no, an eagle really does beat a bunch of children and eat one alive on screen. Said child is never seen again. The police even know what is going to happen.

Also, are the 'rats that eat cats' supposed to be vampires? Those are some wet slurping sounds, and then the talk of drinking blood later...

I really wish that had been expanded upon. It would make for a fun murder mystery AU.

Definitely a police propaganda cartoon, but maybe (maybe?) not as much racism as we previously thought. The cats in the first episode do not jump to the assumption that the mice stole all the food immediately, and actual detective work is shown throughout the series. I think I saw a mouse living in a village normally in a later episode, and the cats don't even blink an eye at her presence. But when they do figure out who committed the crimes, they do not hesitate to brutally beat the mice half to death and shoot limbs off, if not shoot them dead, with absolutely no mercy. They are overly enthusiastic in sprinting forwards with their batons to beat criminals unconscious in general. At one point there's a stun baton, and they deliberately use it in sensitive areas for extra effect.

Then again, later, a criminal elephant trying to murder a group of cops later is simply tranquilized, so make of that what you will. Although, honestly, the elephant is referred to as a citizen of the forest, and the mice are not. Which would actually rival Flower Hill's xenophobia on the matter, and they don't even have a war going on. Maybe. They have tanks in the forest in the reboot outro?

We noticed a weird issue with the clinking of shackles and chains on arrested prisoners being one of the loudest and crispest sounds in the audio.

There's also the fact that Black Cat will reveal to the public that a prisoner committed a terrible crime, but declare them innocent based on the fact that the crime was 'only in their nature' and they couldn't help it. Which is a very strange thing to say, feels weird, and also suggests that the mice trying to steal and kill everyone were making a choice which is why (according to whatever lesson is being taught here) they 'need' to be punished so brutally and killed without mercy (the elephant and company needed a mineral in the laterite bricks they were stealing, so they were 'only ' sentenced to heavy labor so to speak).

They start talking about using interpol to track down Lǎobǎn at one point.

Which means I think it would be pretty interesting if Lǎobǎn managed to escape to Flower Hill or something like that, and the cats were the Special Forces of the Rabbit Village police. Or the surviving mice could end up with the Weasel Unit and used a propaganda tools of 'this is why we hate Flower Hill, look what they did to your fellows' type thing.

Now as for the movie:

I'll be honest, there was no English release of the movie, so I watched it raw in Chinese while discussing it with rei-does-stuff and sah-headcanons. Maybe we can make a post of our live-blogging with each other later.

There's a Tumblr user named ernestelm who made a review on it, but it is one of those things where none of us would have bothered getting into Squirrel and Hedgehog if we listened without taking a look ourselves.

I'll have to rewatch the movie frame by frame with a deepl translator, but what I get is that a gorilla gets betrayed and floats off into space, and comes back with telekinesis and fireball magic he learned out there and wants revenge.

Either way, he needs some sort of special green star gravity device so he can kidnap people in a museum, and enlists the help of Lǎobǎn for some reason (in case he gets captured or because he might be a local?). Except a pig kid sees this all happening, and Black Cat realizes that this kid has seen too much, and takes him into police custody for his own safety. Amazingly, he tells the parents he has to take the kid with him, from what I can tell.

It makes sense that the police would have Black Cat take care of the kid, since he has apparently always had a way with children.

Side note: What is this character? We think it's a fennec fox? The ears don't look right enough to be a cat. I'm not even sure it's a living person, it might be a computer program. Black Cat sure does give commands into an electronic watch a lot.

ernestelm is completely right about the duck/goose, though. I watched one of the most entertaining animations I've ever seen with meteors damaging a prison complex for six minutes, and then got hit with THAT voice. Maybe he is actually useful, I don't know yet, I'll need the translator. Not one of the police officers hesitates to follow his orders and start a musical number, which turns out of be a legitimate distraction, which means the singing was police protocol intended to confuse a target. Everyone keeps forgetting he can fly at crucial moments?

And why do unimportant characters have a different animation style near the end?

(What is this? Why is it like this it looks like The Amazing World of Gumball?? Also reminds me of Pleasant Goat but these are not goats)

Black Cat Detective is just a slight bit expressionless as well. It would have been nice to see him actually in trouble or in distress like the original, instead of the calm to cocky attitude the whole time. Oh no, he's falling from very high up. Luckily the kid who hero worships the police enough to have studied their flying bikes, and whose father is a pilot, has been hanging around on said bike for just such an occasion. No peril at all.

The real question in the movie is this;

They just casually happen to have a containment unit for the gorilla? Are superpowers and magic just a thing in the Black Cat Detective movie universe, and common enough that they have protocols for this? So many questions.

The city, plus the casual power containment unit, reminds me of Loonatics Unleashed, honestly. Someone could easily make a crossover out of this.

Funny enough, the three of us found that this cat police officer looks a lot like Geumsaegi or Commander Darami.

There's always the idea that Black Cat Detective takes place in the same universe as Squirrel and Hedgehog. The amount of firepower these police officers have is far too much if they are not expecting a war to happen, even if they are referenced as a more elite unit. The implication is very interesting.

Now, if I get to writing the Clever Raccoon Dog PSA fun series, which I headcanon as taking place in Flower Hill because it might be canon (they are both SEK anyway), I would most definitely have the main characters visit and do a ride along with Black Cat Detective (preferably in the cartoon series universe. They are fine with criminals being beaten up, heck they do it themselves!) for a chapter or two. It sounds like it would be fun!

The other one would take place in the movie universe. Maybe a kind of Jimmy Olsen situation with a mouse reporter who keeps getting into trouble, and Black Cat or other people in the police force have to keep saving him. Although, we still have that pig kid who wants to be a police officer, if I understand correctly. It actually sounds better if I just used the pig child continuously getting into situations and needing to be rescued by the police, all the while trying to balance school into the equation. Maybe he becomes a young deputy.