Once upon a time, a dog was walking down a lonely dirt road, when it squatted down and took a crap. No, I swear to God, this is not a joke set-up for a Golden Time review. After the dog waddled away, likely looking for a prime location to wipe his ass on the ground, the piece of shit came to life, gaining sentience, and wondering who he was and what his purpose in life could possibly be. Lying in he one spot undisturbed for almost a year, the piece of shit would have numerous memorable encounters, either by pretentious birds who would rather insult him than eat him, or by other ill-fated beings who help him to understand the concept of life and death, and how the two concepts pertain to non-animal organic matter.

This is a real movie. No, I’m serious, this is a real movie. One that requires an actual spoiler warning.

If you haven’t heard of Doggy Poo before, it might be because this isn’t actually a piece of Japanese animation, so it’s debatable whether or not it qualifies as anime. I mean, it’s listed on this site, so apparently a South Korean stop motion short film about a piece of shit is more legitimate than an animated short from a Japanese live action anthology movie. I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed any Korean anime before, so I’m kind of at a loss when it comes to talking about its production history. I know it was directed by a man named Oh-Sung Kwon, and written by a man named No-Mi Park, and it was based on a Korean children’s book by Jung-Seang Kwon, and despite my respectable amount of weeb cred, I know so little about Korean culture that I don’t even know if it would be considered racist to ask if the two Mr. Kwons are related.

I have no prior experience with any of the names that were involved with this movie’s production, but what I can tell you is that this film was produced with stop motion animation, which is something I have touched on before, and probably will soon again. This isn’t the first claymation anime I’ve reviewed, as I have reviewed the horror works of Takena Nagao, and just as a general rule of thumb, stop motion animation is a very tricky thing to talk about critically. Stop motion animation is an extremely difficult and time consuming art form, and even at its worst, it can’t be understated how much patience and effort has to go into it... And yet, as a consumer, as a viewer, and above all as a critic, you have to be able to look at the final product with a level of objectivity that can both feel, and sound, especially cruel, even to your own ears.

Still, having said that, I can’t not give my honest opinion, and that is that this is probably one of the least impressive stop motion animations I’ve come across, at least on a professional level. It’s easy to look at some of Takena Nagao’s earliest works, the ones with the really rough looking and poorly defined glob characters, and say this movie looks better on some levels, but in actual animation, there’s actually something going on in those shorts. There’s intricate, dynamic movement telling the story, whereas Doggy Poo might look better on pause, but it’s still almost entirely composed of characters sitting in place and talking to each other. Even then, the animator did a really sloppy job with the texture of the characters between shots, because while facial movements may be more or less on point, the way the wrinkles and printing on their skins change is pretty unnerving to say the least.

There are characters who move more convincingly... A couple of birds, a farmer pushing a cart full of soil... But they don’t get a ton of screen time compared to a piece of poop, a lump of soil, a leaf and a dandelion sprout that had to be a lot less complicated to animate. Again, I mean ‘less complicated’ in a relative sense, I’m sure all forms of stop motion are a pain in the ass. If there’s anything impressive about the visuals, it’s the environment, which is a really rich and immersive rural setting, and the camera work, which can be epic and whimsical on a level that a movie about a piece of shit does not deserve. The same could be said with the musical score by Yiruma, whose entire soundtrack for the film is somehow twenty minutes longer than the film itself? The soundtrack is beautiful, but you can’t listen to it without thinking about Yiruma as that one overachieving coworker who takes the job way more seriously than everyone else does.

The english dub is a mixed bag, but it is a mixed to positive bag. It was licensed by Central Park Media... Literally the only name associated with this movie that I’ve heard of before, and yes, that includes the entire cast of no-name actors... But the bad news about that is the fact that Central Park Media is, like Manga Entertainment, not the most promising name in the anime market, as it’s one of those studios that will pick up any potentially marketable shit they can get their hands on that nobody else wants. Fiona Stuart voices the main character, and I actually really like her performance, there’s a really nostalgic feeling to the way she portrays Doggy Poo’s childlike innocence. Josh Smith is also heavily nostalgic with his performance as a lump of soil, just sounding like a good natured old southern folk singer. Anna Demaris took a very sharp and slightly shrill approach to two different bird characters, which is nice, but she made the dandelion sound way creepier than she should have, especially with that character’s dialogue already sounding way too sexual. It’s a good dub overall, has a real eighties-nineties sincerity to it.

So here we are, talking about poop. This is my life now. Most of my last ten reviews have underperformed, and instead of riding some bandwagon by saying glowingly positive things about a popular trending anime... Which is the only surefire way to get a ton of upvotes around here... My hipster ass decided I’d write a review about Doggy Poo, the thirty-five minute South Korean masterpiece about the life span of dog shit. I swear to God I don’t hate myself, despite all evidence to the contrary. But hell, because I did pick it, that must mean I see something in it, right? I wouldn’t be writing about it if I didn’t have something interesting to say about it, right?

Well, much like the review I wrote a month or two ago that Anilist wouldn’t let me post, this is a story about life and death, seen through the eyes of someone who has a unique perspective on the issue. As weird as this may sound, one of the best ways to explore heavy and potentially upsetting topics with younger and more sensitive audiences is to take a metaphorical approach... Instead of just bluntly stating what the concept means for humans, you can explore it through the eyes of animals, or even anthropomorphic inanimate objects. Throughout the story, which follows the entire existence of a piece of literal dog crap, we meet several other objects that have their own circumstances that, well, they wouldn’t be very interesting on their own, unless you were really high or just in the shower(or both), but they do contrast nicely with Poo’s story.

Poo doesn’t know his purpose in life. He just lies around, immobile, letting the world pass him by, which those of us in the working world would kill to be able to do. Why did God create him? Is it a coincidence that God is Dog spelled backwards? Compared to him, the lump of soil knew his purpose; He failed to fulfill it by accident, which was surely divine punishment for his sins. But no, after repenting, he’s granted another chance. The piece of poop has no idea what’s going to become of his life.. Will he just lie there forever? Will he dry up and rot? How many cold, lonely winters will he have to endure, covered in snow? Compared to him, the fallen leaf knows exactly how long he’s going to live, and he knows exactly when he’s going to die.

Combine these encounters with a couple of birbs who refuse to eat Poo because he’s not good enough for them, and we have a narrative that feels consistently mean spirited and cruel towards the protagonist. He spends the entire movie either being reminded of his own worthlessness, or having to witness the comparative fortunes of others, until finally, a dandelion offers to absorb him as fertilizer so he can finally have a purpose, becoming part of a beautiful flower... Except no, dandelions are weeds, they need very little help growing, so even that’s kind of a let down.

Now, there was a point in my life where I believed that when it came to media, there was an objective good, and an objective bad. If somebody I knew was a fan of something I didn’t like, I would consider them wrong and hold it against them. I had a friend once who had a Blu-ray copy of the Dreamworks version of The Lorax, something I badgered him relentlessly over. In recent years, I have made an effort to change this. I’ve tried a lot harder to see other peoples’ perspectives compared to mine. When I enjoy an anime that people call boring, I don’t say “this isn’t boring!” I say, “I can see why people call this boring, but personally...” And when I hate something that’s popular, I still don’t hold back my opinions, but I don’t disparage fans either, unless we’re talking about pedo shit.

With Doggy oo, if I squint at it hard enough, I can see some potential value to the film. I can see how it might offer entertainment on a so-bad-it’s-good level, although I also think it doesn’t carry this effect for a full 35 minutes. I can see where people could fall in love with the animation style, and how they can appreciate the work that went into it more than I do. Most of all, I can see where people may see depth and poignancy in the story. It is, again, a rumination on life and death from a unique perspective, and stories like that will always have the potential to touch someone... But personally, I’ve seen the same thing tried before, by a full decade, and it was done better.

When I was a kid, there was this short animated film I really liked called Noel. I don’t know how many times it appeared on TV, but my family were able to record it onto a VHS tape alongside countless other Christmas specials, ranging from enduring classics like The Grinch to forgotten curiosities like Bump in the Night. I saw Noel so many times on that tape that even if I still had it, I guarantee it wouldn’t play anymore. Anyway, Noel is about a glass Christmas ornament who was enchanted by the happy tears of a glassblower who just found out he was going to be a grandfather, so now, Noel has a happiness. That happiness endures within him through the decades, as the house goes through several families that somehow don’t take the belongings from the attack with them when they move, until Noel falls and shatters, and his happiness lives on as the spirit of Christmas.

What do Noel and Doggy Poo have in common? They’re both short animated films around the 30 minute mark that are about inanimate protagonists who go through a complete life cycle. They both explore the meaning of life and death in subtle and thoughtful ways. They both meet a number of colorful characters along the way. What do they not have in common? Well, Noel is obviously Christmas themed, and he has companions that stay with him over the years, and oh yeah, Noel isn’t about a talking piece of shit. Also, Noel has a much more cheerful and inspiring tone, compared to the constantly dour and depressing Doggy Poo. Between the two, I’ll bet you ten times out of ten that most children would pick Noel, unless they were the gross kid who picked Doggy Poo because it’s about a piece of shit and can’t stop pointing at the screen and loudly telling his peers “look at the poop!” throughout the film.

I don’t want to think it would be impossible to make an idea like this work, because I don’t think it’s impossible to make ANY idea for a story work, but I’m sorry, feces is a hard sell even when it isn’t the central focus of the narrative. I’m going to point to my Dumb American cultural ignorance on this, but I don’t know if poop has any special significance in other countries, I’m guessing it would have to have some significance in South Korea if somebody made a children’s book about it, but I’m used to poop being seen as gross... I guess the exception is the fact that it can be used as fertilizer, which does happen in this movie, but that still doesn’t justify thirty minutes of being expected to sympathize with that turd’s plight. Your best option for fecal subject matter is usually to lean into the grossness, but even then, you’re more likely to come up with something revolting(like in WWE), something lazy and cringe(like in Adam Sandler movies) or maybe, maybe, something brilliant like South Park’s Mr. Hankey, but even that was skating on the thinnest ice imaginable, and I’m sorry, this movie just doesn’t manage to justify its own existence.

Doggy Poo is out of print from Central Park Media, but can still be purchased from Amazon at the minimum price of almost $15, but you can also watch it for free on Youtube.

I don’t know, I feel like I really tried with this one, but I also feel like there’s only so much you can do to polish a turd before people realize that it still stinks. I can’t for the life of me think of any good reason to recommend this film to anyone, as there isn’t a thing that it does that you couldn’t find better elsewhere. There’s a ton of far more superior stop motion animation out there, even in the realm of anime. The story has substance, it has meaning, but you could get the same kind of substance and meaning from far more entertaining and heartwarming sources. Even if you held this film up purely as a novelty, some weird little curiosity to make your friends watch while drinking, I honestly feel that it’s kind of boring, and the LOL WTF effect wears off surprisingly fast. I don’t know what else to tell you, it’s an anime about a piece of dog shit, and as much as I hate to admit that’s not a deal breaker, I still just can’t recommend this.

I give Doggy Poo a 4/10