Series / The Cry of Mann

aka: The Call Of Warr

The Cry of Mann: A Trool Day Holiday Spectacular is a series by Wham City that streamed on the [adult swim] website in late October/early November 2017. It tells the story of a family whose patriarch, industrialist Tank Mann, has gone missing; meanwhile, due to the machinations of the stepmother, Courtney, the company is on the verge of a hostile takeover. Viewers could call in and talk to the characters thanks to the many orange phones that the "Ghost Lady" sets up around the house.

Episodes of the show were followed by Tanking Mann, a parody of aftershows like The Talking Dead.

In 2018, a new series, The Call of Warr was announced, continuing the Trool Day celebration. This time the focus shifts to a group of soldiers from the "M" Company lost in an abandoned town, along with some civilians. The callers and "Ghost Lady" now take on a more active role, and must decide to help the soldiers survive or aid the mysterious "Vid."

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Tropes that apply to both series:

• Agonizing Stomach Wound: occurs sevearal times:
  • In The Cry Of Mann, Jouglat has a war flashback of his Near-Death Experience, in which he not only had a major stomach wound, but a wound so bad the medics had to stuff his organs back into his chest as he was only barely staying alive with the help of his callers, and was left a bloody, bandaged mess.
  • In The Cry Of Mann, Frank stabbed Jouglat in the gut, causing him to bleed out. Though the death was implied to be instantaneous, the wound was so bad he didn't move even after "waking up" again; he just laid with Ghost Lady, eating and talking to callers, too shocked and agonized to do anything else.
  • At the end of Call Of Warr, Prince is knocked over...onto his knife. He spends the rest of the scene flailing around and screaming in agony with his blade sticking out of his stomach. Gravesite's attempt to help are only met by shrieks and Prince's constant collapsing.
• Always Night: The show only takes place at night, despite everyone being awake, active, and working in each episode. Courtney points out how it feels like it's always night, and seems confused about it, so it's implied this isn't normal. This carries on into Call Of Warr.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • While Tank Mann returns and the family seems to be slowly returning to normal, Jouglat was killed by Frank and Jack has turned into an orange-muscled behemoth. Agent Martinez's attraction to Berry also ends badly as a caller preoccupies Berry as Martinez is about to leave, who was planning on making her move.
  • Call of Warr ends with Killsin, Prince, Durkin and Mabel all dying, leaving the M-Company with only three members: Gravesite, Glintz-Terry, and the newly appointed Ashes. However, the Train-Man robot comes and defeats Vid, Gravesite has returned to his role as captain, and all the deceased characters come and help Ashes with her magic.
• Color Motif:
  • Orange is associated with "supernatural" elements, including the phones, Ghost Lady, and Jouglat's funeral clothes. In Call Of Warr, there are now orange pills, and Vid is told he needs something orange to talk with Ghost Lady. Killsin's outfit after death becomes orange, too.
  • Blue is associated with happy things, such as Trool Day and Tank Mann's return, as his vest is blue.
• Comfort the Dying:
  • After Jouglat gets killed by Frank, Ghost Lady stays by him as he passes on, even giving him food and talking him through his pain and fear. He also gets support from caring audience members, both in-call and in-chat.
  • When The Prince stabs himself with his own knife, Gravesite holds him close as he passes on. He lets Prince get one last look at his favorite photograph, and they spend his last few moments talking until he dies.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Jouglat repeatedly talks about meeting up with "Soldier Erin", a caller he met early in the series, which is one of his main motives for going back to the warr. He also tells Frank that "I'm not just a bear you can poke with a stick", referencing the game he used to play with his "childhood friend" Emerson, while Frank is threatening him and stopping him from leaving the house.
  • Durkin mentions off-handedly that his troop used to have nine soldiers, one of them being The Cry Of Mann's "Soldier Erin". Apparently, she died in the explosion discussed.
• Fictional Holiday: Trool Day, which is apparently a very important holiday for the people in the story's universe. The details are vague, but it's known that people eat lemon muffins and send blue letters in celebration.
• Love Triangle:
  • In Cry Of Mann, Jouglat is attracted to Agent Martinez who is attracted to Berry.
  • In Call Of Warr, Mabel has a crush on Glintz-Terry, who has a crush on Ashes, who has a crush on Durkin.
• Poor Communication Kills: A major theme of the show. Everybody just talks at each other, only truly holding conversation with the callers, who in turn struggled to keep up with the conversations and often failed to make things better. When Jouglat was killed, it was heavily implied that it could've been avoided, had the callers communicated with him properly. The theme continues in Call Of Warr, with the soldiers being desperate for mail, and the callers having to communicate directly through "The Prisoner".
• Previously on…: Ghost Lady starts each episode by telling viewers what happened on the last episode, as well as who all the characters are and what they're doing.
• Steamrolled Smart Guy:
  • Berry takes on the role of trying to keep her family from falling apart and keeping the business from going under. Unfortunately for her, her quirky brothers slowly undergo Sanity Slippage, and nobody will ever listen to anything she says, whether it's trying to keep Jouglat and Courtney respectful at Jack's art show, or getting Jack to stop ruining Jouglat's funeral. She gets increasingly frustrated as time goes on and undergoes Sanity Slippage of her own because of it, eventually loudly complaining that nobody listens to her and threatening to hurt people if they don't.
  • In Warr, Prince is a very by-the-book soldier who follows the rules very strictly. When the rules call for the execution of Prisoner Sarah, he relentlessly tries to get Gravesite to go along with it, to no avail. As the series goes on, he gets more and more frustrated with Gravesite's lack of action and eventual disinterest in his leadership, and is constantly begging to just kill Prisoner Sarah. Of course, everyone else finds his attitude grating and don't trust him with any actual authority, for good reason, as when he gets it he attempts to kill multiple people.

"The Cry of Mann":

• Afterlife Welcome: When Jouglat is dying, he is greeted and kept company by the Ghost Lady, who remains with him even while he's in his casket. Notably, she'd been there the entire time, but his death allows him to actually see her, unlike everyone else.
• Ambiguous Ending: Tank Mann returns and solves the conflict almost instantly, which leads the callers to question in his subsequent faux-Q&A whether they did the right thing at all. Tank dodges every question posed to him, including those calling him out for not being there for his family, and the whole thing ends with a bright white light followed by several minutes of ocean noise.
• Awkward Handshake: Jouglat and the Mailman share one, which lasts for far too long and consists of an uncomfortable-looking Jouglat keeping his distance, while the obliviously happy mailman just keeps shaking.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: When Tank defeats Gergiev, he disappears in a puff of smoke; Courtney and Jack are left holding his empty jacket in awe.
• Family Drama: Focuses on the drama going on with the Mann Family and their associates.
• Flashback Nightmare: When Jouglat faints at the end of a scene, the next scene shows him re-experiencing his Near-Death Experience in the warr, eventually waking back up in the living room.
• Flowers of Romance: Courtney states that her boyfriend before meeting Tank Mann was a sweet young man who brought her a bouquet of wildflowers.
• Forbidden Holiday: Trool Day is very nearly cancelled as a result of Jouglat's death, however Tank Mann makes sure it comes back.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Both Ghost Lady and Gergiev could communicate with the stream's chat. Played down with Ghost Lady, as she was her usual kooky and adorable self. Played straight with Gergiev, who actively threatened the chat on a regular basis. After Jouglat dies, he also joins the chat, wondering where he is and eventually gets comforted by those in the chat. Once Tank Mann returns, he begins answering calls himself, all while staring at the viewers the entire time.
• Insistent Terminology: Berry like the fruit, Jouglat like the plant. Courtney, like the fabric. Frank, like "HOT DOG." Jouglat also responds to a caller saying his name is Dalius with a confused "like the food?" Another caller introduces himself as "Heath, like the candy bar."
• Jealous Romantic Witness: Jouglat had a crush on Martinez since they met, but she doesn't return his feelings. She does, however, have a not-so-secret crush on his sister, Berry. When he catches them together, listening to one of Tank's tapes and having a private moment, he gets insanely jealous. It helps spur him further into his drinking and Sanity Slippage.
• Last Episode, New Character: Tank Mann is only officially introduced into the cast at the end of the last episode.
• Low Count Gag: When Jack becomes obsessed with working out and getting stronger, he makes a caller guess how many reps he did. The caller guesses 200... and Jack responds with "close, I did like, 30!"
• Moment Killer: In the last episode, Berry and Martinez are about to have a romantic moment, sealing the deal after all the Ship Tease...and then a phone rings. Berry answers, Martinez is forced to leave, and the whole moment was forgotten before it could even start.
• Mythology Gag: One caller tried telling Jack that he had Lynks Disease, much to Jack's confusion. Another caller namedrops the source of this when talking to Martinez.
• Nap-Inducing Speak: Jouglat pours his heart and soul out to Agent Martinez, who responds by going to sleep in the middle of his monologue.
• Ominous Knocking: Every single time someone knocks at the Mann family's door, it's played dramatically, as everyone in the room goes silent and stares at the door in fear as the knocking continues for several seconds. Each time, it drags on just long enough for it to feel just as worrying for the audience as it does for the characters, despite it usually just being the mail-man.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Gergiev's appearances are occasionally accompanied with TV Static overlapping the image and audio.
• Percussive Therapy: After his art show is ruined, Jack goes berserk and destroys not only the work in the living room, but also the work in his artist's studio.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Downplayed as a Running Gag in the series, and overlaps with Insistent Terminology. Characters will repeatedly introduce themselves as "X, like the Y", in order to help people pronounce their name- most commonly, it's "Jouglat, like the plant". One caller even got in on the action, introducing himself as "Heath, like the candy bar".
• Salt the Earth: Courtney claims that she wants to destroy the house piece-by-piece, and then literally salt the ground so that nothing can ever grow on the land again, simply out of pure hatred for being there.
• Say My Name: The mailman screams Jouglat's name when he sees him dead.
• Shout-Out: Most of Frank's cryptic questions to the callers are references to various H. P. Lovecraft stories.
• Showing Up Chauvinists: Played With. Courtney at first seemed to just be Tank's new Gold Digger wife and a Wicked Stepmother to the Mann children. Then she has her Motive Rant and it's discovered that all the major war machinery advances people credited Tank Mann for were actually her ideas. She stood up and did incredibly in her male-dominated field...only to be ignored and for Tank to take the credit.
• Silent Credits: There's usually at least some noise being made during the credits, often a scene that runs straight to the end, often where viewers can still call and talk until the last second. At the end of episode 4, however, the scene is notably silent, just featuring Ghost Lady silently eating popcorn, emphasizing the drama that was Jack's disastrous art show.
• Working Out Their Emotions: Jack struggles to make art his family can be proud of. When his art show becomes a disaster, he destroys his work in a fit of rage, and then decides to start obsessively exercising in his bedroom until he is the aggressive and muscle-bound "Jack Prime", a far cry from the sweet and creative brother his sister begs him to become again.

"Call of Warr" and "Undercover Soldier":

• Abnormal Ammo: "Undercover Soldier" features a gun that shoots paper-work at the evildoers for breaking the law.
• Bald of Authority: Inverted. Gravesite is The Captain of a unit of soldiers and is initially depicted as a wise commander with long, flowing hair. However, when he has his position usurped by Prince, it is revealed that his hair is just a wig and he is actually bald underneath. So while Gravestite was technically always bald, his baldness is mostly associated with the loss of authority in the show and the wig is associated with having authority, to the extent that when Prince becomes the new leader, he starts wearing the wig.
• Ban on Magic: Using magic is a crime, which causes Mabel and Ashes to hide their powers from the soldiers at any costs. Mabel's magic shop, however, existed before it became illegal- which Prince decides is "preemptively breaking the law".
• Backup from Otherworld: All of the characters who died in the finale, along with Ghost Lady, come and help Ashes close the portal opened by Vid.
• Chained to a Railway: Gravesite's "Undercover Soldier" script starts with a bunch of scared people chained to the railway tracks, only to be confronted buy two firemen. This is almost immediately subverted when it turns out that the people on the tracks and in the train were all criminals, and they die in a massive explosion caused by the "firemen"- who are really the Undercover Soldiers.
• Choke Holds: Durkin attempts to kill Gravesite by strangling him, with his arms tightly around Gravesite's neck.
• Don't Go Into the Woods: Everyone, save Vid, is afraid of the woods- the trees specifically, because they heard voices coming from the trees and couldn't find their way out. The small town they reach is completely surrounded by trees, so they consider themselves trapped until rescue. When Gravesite decides they should go into the woods to find Durkin, even Prince, who was previously mocking Glintz-Terry's fear of trees, is horrified and opposed to the plan. It's then revealed that these woods are so scary because they're where Vid murdered and buried the rest of the town.
• Drinking on Duty: Prince and Glintz-Terry both get wasted one night, which is against the rules for soldiers on-duty. They get so drunk they burst into where Durkin, Mabel, and Ashes are talking and bonding, annoying and upsetting all three of them as they try to get the others to drink with them.
• During the War: The series takes place during the warr described in Cry Of Mann, with a focus on soldiers and civilians trying to survive.
• Fertile Blood: It was the blood of the murdered townspeople that caused the forest to grow so big and wide.
• Foreshadowing: Durkin kept talking about the "walking trains" being developed by Mann Corp. to help fight the warr. Nobody else believes that it'll actually happen... But the Train-Man does appear- and does so just in time to stop Vid.
• Forever War: Nobody has any idea why they're fighting the warr, just that they have to, and they seem to be making weird justifications for it, such as Prince's claim that the enemy "burns their bodies", while they bury them.
• Head Desk: Durkin starts banging his head against the door after it seems he didn't properly fix the mail-tube.
• Here We Go Again!: "Undercover Soldier" ends with Gravesite and Sarah having another Trool-day saving mission.
• Idealist vs. Pragmatist: Gravesite and Prince have this dynamic. Gravesite is The Captain of their squad and prefers non-violent solutions to conflict. He's a good guy with the respect of his team, but his slow and peaceful approach to interrogating Prisoner Sarah sends Prince, his Number Two, into a frustrated rage. As for Prince himself, he believes that Murder Is the Best Solution, in part because he doesn't want the prisoner to waste supplies and resources that he and his other teammates need. He's very practical and by-the-book, as well as a hotheaded Jerkass, but his goal is just to win the war and make sure he and his fellow soldiers survive it, making him the most pragmatic of all the soldiers.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Mable and Ashes are on trial and likely to be executed, when Ashes admits to being pregnant. This means she wasn't only pregnant when threatened with death, but also when she and Mable were forced to flee their town and get lost in the woods.
• Ghost Town: Set in a tiny town with only one remaining inhabitant, surrounded by dense forests, in a sector that may not even be controlled by the government.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Gravesite tells the prisoner if that if they answer his questions, everything will go smoothly...but otherwise, "this whole show will go south".
  • When trying to bring things back into order, Prince says:
  Now this has been a ridiculous show, so far...
• Lured into a Trap: Vid attempts to lure Durkin into a trap by making him help him at the church. While Durkin was actually willing to go, he attempted to go and inform the other soldiers first... so Vid just got impatient and KO'd him, instead.
• Kangaroo Court: When Prince puts Mabel and Ashes on trial, he already believes them to be guilty of the crimes he's accusing them of- and even decides to claim they mass-murdered a town, to which Mabel protests they'd never be able to do, anyway. Granted, it's hardly a court of law, what with Prince as the judge and it taking place at the train-station in an abandoned town, but there's very little attempt to actually hear the girls' side.
• Meaningful Echo: "Now I remember that being a soldier is the most important thing" is a line said early on by a caller, as just a cool line said in an action movie. Later, it's the line that snaps Gravesite out of his funk and convinces him to be the leader again.
• No Animosity in the Afterlife: The series ended with multiple characters dead, several of whom had spent their last few days fighting or killing each other. Despite this, they all teamed up to help Ashes and save the day, and then proceeded to have a picnic with Ghost Lady, sharing food and enjoying each-other's company without concern for what happened in life.
• Riddle for the Ages: We never do learn who fathered Ashes' unborn baby, as her attempts to tell us got cut off each time. It's heavily implied to be Jouglat Mann, however.
• Sdrawkcab Name: In naming the evil priest character, Prisoner Sarah said it should be "definitely Vid", referring to the actual evil priest in the show's universe. Gravesite wanted "Definitely Tim", so they settled on "Definitely Div".
• Sinister Minister: Inspired by Vid, the villains of "Undercover Soldier" are a group of evil priests with an evil church.
• Self-Insert Fic: In-universe, "Undercover Soldier" is one for Gravesite and Sarah, who wrote the script and play the two main characters.
• Sleepwalking: Sarah's Priest friend discovers he's actually a soldier when Sarah sleepwalks, in their soldier uniform, and sleepily reveals their secret- with evidence supplied!
• Stuff Blowing Up: The first scene of "Undercover Soldier" ends with the soldiers blowing up criminals on a train and on the tracks...with an explosive lemon muffin.
• Stylistic Suck: Gravesite's script for "Undercover Soldier" is full of cheesy and stilted dialogue, awkward title-drops, and easily resolved plot-threads, along other silliness.
• Title Drop: In-Universe: the first scene of the "Undercover Soldier" script ends with the line "And we're...Undercover Soldiers".
• Training Montage: "Undercover Soldier" features one... of Gravesite teaching Durkle to properly use a mop. And then one of Sarah learning to spin two basketballs at once.
• Word Association Test: One of Gravesite's investigation tactics includes playing a game of Word Association with Prisoner Sarah. It doesn't go anywhere, and Prince protests that it isn't helping.
• Write Who You Know: The in-universe "Undercover Soldier" script has characters based heavily on the people Gravesite knows- such as an "idiot" character named Glin-Derry, an "excitable" character named Durkle, and a grumpy "royal boss" based on Prince.

"Tanking Mann":

• Meta Fiction: A fictionalized series about an after-show for The Cry Of Mann, complete with Actors acting "As Themselves", and fake drama between the Tanking Mann cast and Wham City.
• Product Placement: In-Universe; The set eventually becomes filled with cans of "La Colombe" coffee.

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