Hayop Ka!: The Nimfa Dimaano Story, variously translated into English as You Animal! or You Son of a Bitch!, is a 2020 Filipino fully-animated feature film. It was produced by Rocketsheep Studio, the same burgeoning local animation studio previously responsible for hit live-action/animation hybrid Saving Sally. Voice talents were provided by an Ensemble Cast, with Angelica Panganiban voicing the titular Nimfa, and Robin Padilla and Sam Milby as her two dog lovers (lovers who are dogs, not characters who love dogs, though one of them is also this at one point). The film premiered on Asian Netflix on 29 October 2020.
Set in an all-animal analogue of modern Metropolitan Manila, this decidedly adult animal animation centres on the eponymous Nimfa Dimaano, a young and lusty perfume salescat working in a giant mall. She navigates modern problems, like making ends meet, providing for her family, paying for her sister's tuition … oh, and the alternating affections of similarly working-class, janitor askal (mongrel) Roger on one paw, and huskyish, "Englishero", tycoon purebred Iñigo on the other. Sparks and fur are both definitely bound to fly in a situation like hers.
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: Nimfa keeps calling Jerry the frog "Larry". He constantly, but politely and patiently, corrects her each time.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The movie is drawn in a colorful and bouncy cartoon-y style with a cast of cute looking animals, but it's a raunchy rom-com with many subtle and not-so subtle references to sex.
- Beach Episode: Sort of. Iñigo repairs to his family's seaside resthouse and invites Nimfa along … overnight.
- Big Fancy House: Iñigo Villanueva's family home. The provincial family resthouse is a close second.
- Bittersweet Ending: After Nimfaa (violently) breaks up with Iñigo, the last person she is still on good terms with, she has no other choice but to take care of the baby by herself. However, it doesn't go without saying that the film ends on a lighter note. She strikes up a friendship with Jerry, hinting at a possible relationship, and seems to be doing fine as a single mother. She even patches things up with her sister, who along with her mom and Jerry, helps her out.
- Carnivore Confusion: One wonders just what … animals make up things like hotdogs in a world where Roger beats up two chauvinist (and literal) pigs for (literally) cat-calling Nimfa. (Possibly vegan options, but that wouldn't quite explain the at least nominally carnivorous species—dogs have adapted to be omnivores, but cats are largely obligate carnivores; they can't survive on plants, though they occasionally chew grass.)
- The Casanova: Iñigo has had a string of lovers as relayed by several characters with Marie and Nimfa being his latest conquests. This does not end well for him once the latter catches him with the other woman.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Downplayed with Iñigo. He's affable and charming, and Nice to the Waiter, but he does start off as being complicit in antipoor and antilabour practices, such as offering to help politicians with informal settler and union problems.
- Destination Defenestration: Iñigo's ultimate fate after Nimfa finds out he only liked having sex with her and not much else.
- Disappeared Dad:
- The Villanueva patriarch, i.e. Iñigo's dad, has been dead for some time.
- Nimfa's father is likewise not present, but is unknown if he's deceased or simply separated from her mother, but a picture of him is seen hanging in their family home which implies he was part of their lives, thus giving credence to the former.
- Double Entendre: A lot of them abound, visually and verbally, starting with hotdogs standing in for … you know.
- Double-Meaning Title:
- The Filipino "Hayop Ka!" translates to English as "You Animal!", reflecting both Nimfa's wild habits and the fact that literally every character is an animal.
- Taken one step further: the phrase is actually a derogatory expression used to convey contempt towards someone, in the same vein as "You son of a bitch!", alluding to Roger's reaction towards Nimfa after the latter's romantic encounters with Iñigo.
- Either/Or Offspring: During the slideshow epilogue in the credits, Nimfa gives birth to Roger's child: a kitten, but it clearly got its colors from him. Earlier in the movie, her younger sister Linda is revealed to have given birth to a foal, being knocked up by their neighbor Ramil, who is a stallion.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: The main cast at least has the classic "female cat x male dog/s" pairing, but literal bitches (female dogs) are present in the form of Iñigo's mum and sister, and his previous poodle girlfriend.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Well, they are nonhuman animals, many of whom in Real Life have vestigial thumbs.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Sometimes they're not dressed in a lot, witness Nimfa and Roger at home, but "fully dressed" is still the default animal clothing mode here.
- Funny Animal
- Furry Reminder: The characters occasionally display their animal behavior but Roger slips into this a lot, like growling when angry or whimpering when Nimfa tells him to get out.
- Gratuitous English: Wealthy Iñigo naturally resorts to this, largely an auditory symbol of his class (and/or breed, in this case).
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: Iñigo covers his … hotdog with a rubber duck when Nimfa accidentally wanders in on him in the shower.
- Inter-Class Romance: Working-class Nimfa with oligarch Iñigo.
- Interspecies Friendship: To be expected here; Nimfa (a cat) and Jhermelyn (a rabbit), be(a)stie coworkers in the Mall of Aso department store, is just one example.
- Interspecies Romance: A cat shacking up with two dogs.
- I Want Grandkids: Iñigo's mum straight-up tells him this and wonders when he'll find said "babymaker". Then she straight-up asks this of Nimfa when Iñigo brings the latter to visit. (The potential appearance of their biological offspring, assuming it were viable, is somehow never questioned.)
- Latin Land: Iñigo's family home is clearly based on old, Spanish-colonial bahay na bato (stone house) styles, with thick red roof tiles and latticed capiz (oyster shell) windows.
- Left the Background Music On: A low effort cover of Jose Mari Chan's "Beautiful Girl" is used as the ending theme. The Stinger reveals it was Jerry singing karaoke.
- Love Triangle: Classic scenario: woman has boyfriend. Boyfriend does not satisfy her enough. Woman meets another man who is richer and handsome. Man likes her back and they start seeing each other. Boyfriend gets suspicious. Yeah, you get the picture.
- The Mall: The Mall of Aso, where Nimfa works as a department-store perfume salescat.
- Mature Animal Story: Nothing too explicit, but the frequent mentions of sex, dirty puns, and plethora of Unusual Euphemisms lend itself to this type of story.
- Maybe Ever After: Nimfa and Jerry seem to strike a friendship at the end of the film after she dumps Roger and later Iñigo throughout the course of the film. Whether it leads to something more is left ambiguous, but he does become something of an uncle to Nimfa's child.
- Meaningful Name:
- "Nimfa" is close sounding to "Ninfa", the Spanish derivative of "Nymph", as in, say … nymphomaniac.
- This was almost certainly unintentional, but "Roger" to British audiences can mean screwing, as in "give her a good rogering", and that's exactly what he and Nimfa get up to in the first half.
- Melting-Pot Nomenclature: Among others, you have old-school Spanish names (e.g. "Nimfa" (sort of, as this isn't exactly the correct Spanish word, but it comes quite close), "Iñigo"), modern Western/Anglo-American names (e.g. "Roger"), Tagalog surnames (e.g. "Dimaano"), and very uniquely Pinoy Flanderizations of Western names (e.g. "Jhermelyn").
- Minidress of Power: Nimfa gets into certain scrapes and fights even in her very short salescat uniform.
- Morning Sickness: Nimfa feels nauseous one morning and retches. A check up with the doctor's confirms that she's indeed pregnant...but not from Iñigo, much to her horror.
- Pregnant Badass: Nimfa manages to get into an action-packed fight with Iñigo's other lady friend who is a poodle, and this is after she finds out that she's been pregnant for two months.
- Preppy Name: Old-school Hispanic names like Iñigo Villanuevanote , as befitting its oligarch (and purebred) bearer. Subverted with Nimfa, who despite her fancy (sort of) Spanish given name, is decidedly not elite by any means.
- Prince Charmless: Iñigo, as it turns out, when his idea of stopping Nimfa and Marie from tearing each other apart is by telling them they could share him, disregarding the feelings of both women. Nimfa sends him flying out the window of his office for this.
- Punny Name: A lot of place-names in this Metro Manila animal analogue are animal species-based puns, e.g., the Mall of Aso (based on the Real Life SM Mall of Asia, and "aso" being the Tagalog for "dog"), for just one example.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Nimfa calls a radio show that gives out love advice to talk about her cheating on Roger with Iñigo, getting pregnant by her ex who was now shacking up with her best friend, the deejay gleefully tears Nimfa a new one by calling her a slut (using her Meaningful Name against her—see above), a social climber (when Nimfa says she would have a better future with Iñigo), and basically reprimanding her for leaving a good man since another woman has taken him already. Obviously, it just made her feel worse, but she got a free burger from Jollibog out of it.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: There's even different kinds, too: one with Nimfa and Roger is all audio with them offscreen, and one with Nimfa and Iñigo has no dialogue and is depicted with stylised stills reminiscent of classic, Pinoy romance novel covers.
- Sharp-Dressed Dog: Iñigo, as befitting his upper-class businessdog fursona (este, persona).
- Shock Jock: Papa George, the ox radio DJ who dispenses advice on love and relationships, and to which Nimfa, Roger, and the masses in general listen to; he tends to be alright and even-toned for the most part, but when Nimfa actually calls him up, he berates her for screwing up her existing relationships. He even goes so far as to lampshade Nimfa's actual name as being a derivative of "nymphomaniac", which is unreasonable in-universe; it's not her fault her name suggests promiscuity.
- Smoking Hot Sex: Lampshaded by Nimfa herself, who says it's a shame she doesn't smoke, otherwise she'd be doing this after doing it with Roger. She does mime the action though—both with him and later with Iñigo, the respective scenes deliberately animated the same way.
- Soap Opera: And not necessarily in a bad way. The creators have explicitly said this was based on Pinoy radio deejays who dispense wisdom on love, sex and relationships to their adoring audience. Also, it shares certain tropes with Telenovelas, including Latino-style "smouldering passion" scenes and certain old-school Hispanic (think colonial) names.
- Super-Strength: Roger's fights with other people exaggerates it to the point that it ends up looking like this, especially when he totals Iñigo's car with his bare paws when he thought he was inside it. Likewise, when Nimfa decides to get physical, it also ends up with the other person being flung a good distance away or in Iñigo's case, thrown out of the window from the top floor of a super tall building.
- Teenage Pregnancy: Nimfa's younger sister, who's apparently only seventeen, is revealed to have already given birth to a child when Nimfa returns home to visit her family in the country. The revelation causes her to lash out at her sister for hiding the fact that she hasn't been going to school and the money she'd been giving her was for nothing.
- Uncertain Doom: Iñigo suffers Destination Defenestration courtesy of Nimfa and is never seen again. She even lampshades this with a joke by saying he's at a flight and she does not know when he'll be landing.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Ironically not involving any literal mice, but Jhermelyn and Roger just kinda disappear after Nimfa sees that they've become live-in partners and angrily telling Roger she's pregnant with his child. And whether Jhermelyn and Nimfa remained best friends after that is not known or if Roger is involved in the life of their child.
- Woman Scorned: Nimfa catches Iñigo making out with Marie in his office and a cat fight (a bitch fight? Or both...?) ensues. Iñigo tries to placate both women by offering a threesome and gets cat scratched then thrown out of a window by Nimfa for his troubles.
- World of Funny Animals: Every single character in the film is an animal.
