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The Bad Guys 2, directed by Pierre Perifel, is the latest theatrical release from DreamWorks Animation, and is the sequel to 2022's The Bad Guys, which has gone on to become very popular with furries. The titular "Bad Guys" are a gang of "scary" animal ex-thieves featuring Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (voiced by Marc Maron), Miss Tarantula a.k.a. "Webs" (voiced by Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (voiced by Craig Robinson) and Mr. Piranha (voiced by Anthony Ramos), plus Diane Foxington (voiced by Zazie Beetz), the current fox governor of the state of California and also secretly an ex-thief known as the "Crimson Paw", who, unlike the Bad Guys, was never caught. Having given up their lives of crime last movie, this movie begins with the Bad Guys living the trials and tribulations of ex-cons.

The movie is already available for digital purchase, despite the movie only being out a little over two weeks. However, DreamWorks Animation has been playing Moneyball recently, spending about half as much as most of the other major studios on their theatrical releases, so they've already made back most of their money domestically, and are in the black (more or less) counting international grosses. It's not a big hit, but it is a "base" hit, and that's what DreamWorks is aiming for. DreamWorks Animation has never gotten past the billion mark (Shrek 2, way back in 2004, was the closest), and the company seems to have accepted this fact. If anything, when they make a "big swing" anymore, it's an Oscar play rather than box office, like last year's The Wild Robot, which ultimately did not win (once again, Shrek is DreamWorks's only Best Animated Feature, despite being the second most nominated studio in the category).

But the point of bringing up this "inside baseball" bit about box office is that this has already been earmarked as a DreamWorks franchise. Ironically, they were bumped by The Wild Robot in the studio's logo sequence this year, but that seems to be more about DreamWorks wanting to avoid having them appear in front of their own movie than lack of confidence. I'm very confident there will be a The Bad Guys 3, and am looking forward to it, because both movies have been a lot of fun.

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There is a lingering misconception, less common in the furry fandom than in broader society, which I would like to dispel. That misconception is the view that non-human animals (hereafter, just animals) are mindless, thoughtless, base creatures rather than fellow persons.

There are countless accounts and videos of animals doing amazing things and demonstrating great intelligence. However, we can never be sure if those are representative examples of animal behaviour or just once-off events. Furthermore, those are interpreted through untrained eyes and may not actually show a behaviour that people think it does. To try to avoid these issues, my goal here is to primarily rely on peer-reviewed scientific literature, ideally that which is publicly-available, but presented in a way that can be understood by all. To distinguish between scientific references and ordinary links, links to scientific sources are presented in the format [Author, year] based on academic referencing conventions.

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Death’s Door is a game where you play as a crow who has been tasked with reaping a soul. However, things become complicated as someone rips one of your assigned souls from your grasp. This leaves you on a quest to hunt down some monstrous beings who are doing everything they can to stall their egress from the world of the living.

Gameplay-wise it has the exploration and dungeon crawling elements of a Zelda game. However, the large boss fights are punishing and far more difficult than the Nintendo faire. They seem closer to Dark Souls boss fights in terms scale— but not quite as brutal, a nice moderate difficulty.

I honestly hope this one wins the Ursa Major award for gaming in 2021.

Usually, I don’t have a horse in these races, as most of the games I get an opportunity to play are in a backlog from prior years. Luckily, as a furry, I don’t ever feel compelled to keep up with the Joneses of the world and consume the latest titles. Instead I play anthro games as my audience votes on which one they would like to see me play. So it is rare that I get to play a game in the year it came out.

This treat of a game was published in July of this year, developed by Acid Nerve and published by Devolver Digital. It is available on PC and XBox consoles. And this October the voters decided this would be a good game to play. You know, death is spooky. However, the game is not of the horror genre.

Daniel and Dawna Davis, known collectively as Steam Crow, refer to themselves as “a husband and wife team based in Phoenix, Arizona, who make friendly monster-inspired art, prints, books, and other oddities”.  With a weird sense of humor and an extreme graphic-arts style to boot. Their books include Caught Creatures, a book of “monster haiku”. You can find that and much more at the Steam Crow web site, as well as a blog updating the latest of what they’re working on — and what’s the next convention or festival they’ll be appearing at.

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The age rating on this is “8 and up”. This is one of those “all ages” books like The Wind in the Willows that you will not want to miss just because it may be in the children’s section of your bookshop or public library. Seek it out! It is worth it.

Lillian Kindred is a little girl whose parents are dead and who lives with her Aunt on a farm at the edge of Tanglewood Forest. The book doesn’t say how old she is, so that’s probably not important. What is important is that she’s established as old enough to be allowed by other people to play in the forest alone, and young enough to look for fairies. One of the things that she sees is lots of cats wandering freely – feral cats and farm cats. She does not bother them, but she does put out dishes of fresh milk for them.

One day she falls asleep in the forest, and is bitten by a venomous snake. Vess’ illustration shows a coral snake; the worst kind. Wikipedia says that, “Coral snakes have a powerful neurotoxin that paralyzes the breathing muscles; mechanical or artificial respiration, along with large doses of antivenom, are often required to save a victim's life.” Lillian does not have any of that. She is alone at the foot of a tree, dying.

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This anthropomorphic graphic novel requires going back and forth several times to understand the complex and incomplete story. In a bleak landscape of perpetual winter, a civil war has ended but the losing revolutionaries are continuing a guerrilla warfare. James Hardin (rabbit), a secret agent of the Resistance, has stolen a top-secret document to distract the N.P.O. (National People’s Organization; roughly the militaristic government) from a planned sabotage of a train over a strategic bridge. General Hanslowe (lion) assigns Officer Pavel (crow) and Captain Engel (tiger) to track him down and get the document back. Engel berates Pavel as a coward for allowing Hardin to escape in the first place. During the search, the N.P.O. team does not realize that Pavel accidentally kills Hardin.

The surviving rebels (Giles, a goat; Timothy, a frog, and Charlotte, a fox) plan to carry through Hardin’s real plan. Hardin’s orphaned children, James Jr. and Patricia, trying to help, sneak away and board the train. James triggers the detonator prematurely, destroying the train but not the bridge.

The rabbit children are taken to a military orphanage for rebel children; Engel plans to use them to find their father, who he believes is still alive. Subsequent events show which of the children, and of the adults, is the stronger.

Los Angeles, Archaia Entertainment, January 2013, hardcover $24.95 (152 [+ 8] pages).

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We are not men! We are chickens!!!

The Cartoon Brew website presents “Chicken Core: The Rise of Kings”, a 6’02" preview for an epic fantasy directed by Oricha Aliyu, about an oppressed kingdom of chickens (apparently all male) fighting against a dark crow overlord.

Not too impressive, until you consider that it has been made by a group of young self-taught animators in Lagos, Nigeria who formed the Sporedust Media studio just this May. With commentary on Nigeria’s nascent by-its-bootstraps animation industry by CB’s Amid Amidi.

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The Cartoon Brew website has posted the trailer for the forthcoming French animated feature, The Day of the Crows/Le Jour des Corneilles, directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint, to be released on 24 October.

The synopsis says nothing about it being an anthropomorphic feature, but the end of the 1:56 minute trailer (at 1:31) shows brief glimpses of animal-headed people in the forest – a tiger-man, a lynx-man, a horse-man, a frog-man, a deer-woman - “the ghosts haunting the forest”? The film reportedly received a standing ovation at the 2012 Annecy Festival.

Going by the trailer in French, this animated cartoon feature does not have enough anthropomorphic scenes to be called an anthropomorphic feature, except by very diehard fans – but, as I always say, watch the trailer and decide for yourself. Nothing is said about a forthcoming English-language release.

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People, including scientists, have wondered for ages how intelligent crows are; alternately, under what conditions crows (or other animals) ever use tools as humans do. A recent video, shot at long distance in an uncontrolled situation, shows striking evidence of this. A crow finds a jar lid and takes it up to a snowy rooftop, where it stands on the lid and sleds down the roof. It then picks up the lid, returns to the rooftop, and sleds down again. Repeatedly.