Three reviews today, starting with the trailers for:

The first two can be skipped, and the third is a maybe.

It’s time for the third annual review of furry shorts released the prior year. In these I go through the previous year’s released animation shorts released, typically on YouTube, to see which ones stood out to me. I will note however that this year really was all kill and no fill on the recommendation list. I’m glad to see that there are so many passionate fans finding good content out there and the improvement over all.

I will admit I did miss a bit of the “what the heck did I just watch” surprises for this year. Hopefully things don’t get too sterile. But when it comes to short stories worth a watch there is no shortage of goodness this year.

So without further ado, let’s continue.

(Prior Years: 2023, 2022)

The Ursa Major Awards has opened nominations for the best furry content of 2024! Anyone can nominate works, with nomination phase going from February 1 to the end of February 28, 2025.

After the nomination phase has closed, there will a voting phase (Ursa website doesn’t say when, but probably will start in mid-March).

Hello! And welcome to the January edition of Digging Up Positivity, from this year on we are aiming to have a new video every first Saturday of the month featuring amazing charity results from the furry fandom, wholesome animation and animal news and a special guest! This month we are having an interview with Maying from Maying Fantasy Creations.

And trust me when I say, we can use some positive news this year, now more than ever. So here are the charities, starting with a little update from last year from the Furry Charity Index.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, and Rakuen Growlithe.

Welcome to my top ten list of movies for 2024. It's pretty self explanatory, and I've explained "the rules" plenty of times in the past, but I think I should explain one qualification for what constitutes a "2024" movie for my list, as it applies to one movie this year and has caused confusion in the past. Basically, I'm going by theatrical release, not festival premiere, like IMDB does.

Other than that, just a reminder that this isn't supposed to be a specifically furry list, even if this is a furry site, but I will award a Best Furry Movie, with this year going to The Wild Robot. At the start of the decade, this had a pretty high correlation with the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, with victories for Wolfwalkers and Raya and the Last Dragon, but in the last two years, I seem to have lost my short status as furry middlebrow tastemaker, as Turning Red lost to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 lost to Nimona. All four of my picks for Best Furry Movie also ended up being my number one pick those four years, as well (spoilers for this year's list?). I also, just for fun, as a fox fan, give out a Cutest Vixen Award, and this year that goes to Zhen from Kung Fu Panda 4. In less furry accolades, I do sometimes list a movie from the previous year that might have made the list if I'd seen it before publication (not that this is a correction) and for 2023 I'll say The Holdovers was pretty good.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds (trailer) is a 2D children's animated fantasy film, a Franco-Belgian production released in 2023, directed by Benoît Chieux who co-wrote it with Alain Gagnol. Imdb rates it 7/10.

Carmen and Juliette are sisters, whose mother drops them off with her friend Agnes to babysit for a day. Agnes has forgotten they'd be coming, and asks if they can be quiet for a half-hour while she takes a much-needed nap. She's the author of a long-running book series called Sirocco, and had been staying up all night writing.

Unable to sit still, Juliette rifles through one of Agnes' books, weird stuff happens, and the sisters end up in the world of the book, transformed into cats. After Juliette gets them in trouble with the local mayor, they embark on a quest with an avian opera singer named Selma to find the elusive Sirocco, a mysterious, reclusive, and mercurial sorceror.

A janitor finds himself on the night shift as a desperate CEO presses for his employees to work later into the dark for the week. This would normally just be an annoying inconvenience, but for Kyle the janitor, there are far worse implications to this situation as in the darkness of night, the humble cleaner becomes a bloodthirsty werewolf. As the head of security, Daryl, starts to become wary of the presence of the beast and becomes obsessed with bringing him down, will our precariously employed wolf be able to clean up the messes assigned to him and not create any new ones caused by satisfying his carnivorous appetite? The hunt is on.

The game’s premise is quite simple, and the game is short, which is probably why it is offered for no cost on Steam. When I streamed the game I was able to beat it in about an hour, and subsequently was able to replay the pre-designed levels for each day to lower my times and be as pacifistic as possible. It took me one additional hour to get all the visible accolades.

December was a quiet month. Happy New Year everyone! Several Flayrah articles have been getting an unusual number of 5-star votes lately. Even if our traffic increased, that's still an unlikely voting distribution, so there may be some kind of bot at work. Meanwhile, our contributors for this month are dronon and Rakuen Growlithe.

Rakuen Growlithe: Despite a lack of scientific justification (in fact, it's against the advice of conservationists), the EU is reducing protections for wolves.

dronon: Furry artist Richard Bartrop has passed away. (FA page.)

dronon: Trailer for the Latin American animated film Dalia and the Red Book.

dronon: There's an Okami game sequel in the works!

Rakuen Growlithe: The gene responsible for ginger coat colour in cats has recently been discovered. It is located on the X chromosome which explains why it is more likely in male (XY) cats.

After tallying up the charities collected by conventions and streams for 2024, furriers came together to raise $1,953,149.29. The breakdown for the causes can be found below:

• LGBTQ+ Welfare: $299,619.71 (15.34%)
• Animal Welfare: $1,108,623.81 (56.76%)
• General Humanitarian Welfare: $544,905.77 (27.9%)

Spreadsheet of the breakdown can be found here.

L'ogre Lion is a three-volume French hardcover comic published from 2022 to 2024. The story and art are by Bruno Bessadi, with colouring by Joo, and it was published by Drakoo. Reading it with mid-level French, I had to look up a lot of words, and I doubt that it'll get an English translation, so... spoilers ahead!

This is an action-fantasy comic with lots of anthropomorphic mammals! The story begins in a medieval European setting. A badly-scarred lion stumbles through the woods, not native to this part of the world. (People keep mistaking him for a lynx.) He's afflicted in three ways: with amnesia, with a recurring nightmare of his dead children, and with an extremely angry, vengeful spirit inside of him.

Whenever the lion dies, he suddenly transforms into an 8-foot-tall antelope who slaughters any carnivores nearby, before the pain of manifesting in the mortal realm becomes too difficult to bear. The antelope then retreats into the spiritual realm, and restores the lion to life. Needless to say, the lion is not happy.

Welcome to The Furry Game Awards 2024, presented by Gaming Furever! Every year, we'll come together as a staff and decide on our most beloved, most played, and most exceptional games from the past year of new gaming experiences. 2024 was filled to the brim with so many games featuring anthropomorphic characters and animals. It was hard to choose just one winner for all of these categories, and the separation between the nominees and ultimately the winner was miniscule. All of the games on these lists are highly recommended by our staff, and we can't wait to continue enjoying them! 

Check out the Full list of Winners on Gaming Furever!

What were some of YOUR favorite games this year? Let us know in the comments!
 
 

On December 16, 2024, an announcement for a new short film reveals an emotional tale featuring two furries who have made a lasting real-life connection starting from the world of VRChat. This new short film is called "The Reality of Hope", which follows the journey of 'PhotographOtter', and 'Hiyu'; portraying a story of two close friends in VRChat, living in separate countries, and a life-saving decision in live organ donation.

Flow is about a black cat who lives alone, and then one day, it doesn't anymore. Because one day water came, too much water, and all the land was flooded. The cat ran away from the water, but it couldn't run forever, so it went to live on a boat with a friendly capybara. Together, the cat and the capybara followed the water, which flowed towards a giant pillar in the sky. It seemed like this would be the last dry land in all the world. Along the way, the capybara and the cat met a lemur, a dog and a secretary bird. Did they become friends? Probably.

There is no dialogue in this movie. Nobody explains anything to each other, for the convenience of the audience, because all the characters are animals, and they only say cat things like "meow" and dog things like "woof woof" and capybara things. If man could talk the animals, perhaps they would only find out that these animals don't really know what's happening either. Where did the water come from? Where did all the humans go? This is a world that has passed on.

Midwest Furfest finished its festivities for 2024 with 16,800 people in attendance, and raised $136,000 for their charity the Street Dog Coalition. This shows continued healthy, yet slowing growth. It also allowed Anthrocon for the first time since 2017 to retain the lead as the largest furry convention to the end of the year and recapture their status as the largest furry convention in the world.

It was highlighted that despite MFF being such a large convention, there was relatively little to no drama about the service or situation on the ground on social media. The only critique shared heavily was a member of contracted staff being a bit heavy handed with getting ID for 18+ events. However, part of this good vibes may be due to the continuing shift of media platforms from X (formally Twitter) to Bluesky, which accelerated after the US Elections in November.

It was noted that the Rosemont, IL convention certainly is impressive in getting people through the registration line. Where Anthrocon had line waits of several hours, the winter convention didn’t have many complaints about line waits.