From left to right: Kouka and Bibi. Or is it Bibi and Kouka? Who knows?
A 16-minute animated short film by webcartoonist Dan Variano, Kouka and Bibi note is an Affectionate Parody of the Silent Zany Cartoon, set in a Film Noir universe and starring the titular characters — one a tall, lanky fox, the other a short, stout raccoon. (It's never shown which one has which name.)While taking pictures of each other in the city, Kouka and Bibi stumble across a murder victim in an alleyway. They don't know why he was killed, and the cops are no help — they've got to find out whodunnit by themselves! Plenty of hilarity, classic animation tropes, and subversion ensues.
You can watch the cartoon here.
Kouka and Bibi contains examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: No shortage of these!
- Anti-Sneeze Finger: Used on the fox to stop from alerting the gang of mice to the duo's presence: surprisingly, it works. But not for long...
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The cop that the fox consults immediately draws a gun on her and tries to frame her by placing assorted illegal objects at her feet before she manages to escape.
- He also turns out to have been the one who attacked the victim in the first place.
- Bag of Holding: The fox keeps a jackhammer—several times thicker than she is—in her pants pockets.
- Be the Ball: To defeat the gang, the fox decides to play bowling with them — using the raccoon as the bowling ball.
- Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: The mouse gangster whose fingerprints are all over the murder weapons? He wasn't the actual killer. He just happened to be walking by the crime scene, tripped onto the body, and accidentally grabbed all the weapons as he went.
- Bilingual Bonus: In the opening scene, Kouka and Bibi walk past a four-star restaurant named Chez Hors de Votre Gammes de Prix, or "House of Out of Your Price Range".
- Body Pocket: The fox is wearing pants, but they're almost the same color as her fur coat. So when she pulls a massive jackhammer out of her pants pocket, it looks like the pocket spontaneously appeared in her fur.
- Chased Off into the Sunset: Kouka and Bibi are chased off into the distance by the police in the final scene.
- Chalk Outline: When the raccoon starts investigating the crime scene, the murder victim suddenly gains a chalk outline around his body.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: The gang of mice all wear these.
- Delayed Reaction: The wayward photograph lands right in a dead dog's hand. The fox picks up the photo, turns to leave... and pauses as she slowly realizes that's a dead body in the alley with her.
- Depth Perplexion: The fox poses for a photo as if she's leaning against a distant skyscraper. When that photo blows away in the wind, the fox tries to catch it—by climbing up that same skyscraper, which now supports her weight as if it were in the foreground with her.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted as a funny background detail. The gangster mice have a portrait labeled "Mother" hanging in their meeting place. It's riddled with darts.
- Fat and Skinny: The main duo.
- Forcibly Formed Physique: The fox jackhammers a hole in a wall, in the exact shape of her silhouette—tall and skinny—and steps through it with no issue. Then she pulls the raccoon (who's shorter and much stouter) through the hole after her—stretching the raccoon into a palette-swapped duplicate of the herself. This gets flipped on its head much later in the cartoon: the next time they need to get through a wall, the raccoon insists on making the hole, obviously not wanting a repeat of last time. She jackhammers a hole in her exact shape—but when she goes through it inexplicably stretches her into the shape of the fox again.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: All of the mice smoke during their card game, and their increasingly elaborate tobacco products are a visual Escalating Punchline. In contrast, the raccoon has a pipe to go with her Hyperspace Holmes Hat, but she just uses it as a prop and doesn't actually smoke.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Played with. The characters are all fully clothed, but the fox's pants are nearly the same color as her fur, so at first glance she appears to be wearing the classic shirt-with-no-pants ensemble.
- Hyperspace Holmes Hat: Pulled out by the raccoon as she prepares to start her investigation. (Though later thrown in the trash by the fox when she decides to simply go to the police.)
- Hyperspace Wardrobe: When the fox uses the raccoon as a bowling ball, her ensemble instantly transforms into a professional bowler uniform.
- Impact Silhouette: When the fox uses her jackhammer to make an impromptu entrance to the building, the hole she drills is her exact size and shape. She has no trouble stepping through—the raccoon, not so much. It happens again later, with the raccoon drilling her exact silhouette through a wall. Somehow, she still has trouble passing through this hole, while the fox still steps through easily.
- Jerkass: The cop, who seems like his main purpose in life is to inflict misery and frame people for carrying drugs.
- Knife Outline: Inverted, when all six mouse gangsters get the drop on the raccoon. She runs away, just before the mice riddle the space she'd been standing with bullet holes, filling in her exact silhouette (rather than just the outline).
- Metaphoric Metamorphosis: When Kouka convinces her to track the murderer by smell, Bibi rushes across the city to arrive at a several-store building. There, her body is shaped like an arrow with the head pointing to said building.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: With the occasional exception (such as the very English "GTFO" on a doormat).
- No Name Given: While we know what names the main characters could technically have, whether each character is named Bibi or Kouka is anybody's guess —
even the creator's. Their names are a play on the 'bouba/kiki' effect, which illustrates that people universally give similar names to shapes and forms simply from their appearance. How's that for Fridge Brilliance? - Not Quite Dead: The murder victim, who simply wakes up at the end and reveals what really happened.
- Overly Long Gag: The raccoon waiting for her instant camera to develop the photo.
- Portable Hole: After taking refuge from the mouse gangsters in a room, the fox slams the door, locks it several times—then pulls the entire doorway off the wall, leaving a completely solid wall behind.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Kouka and Bibi trap themselves in one, when the fox removes the room's only door. Fortunately, the fox has her jackhammer to make a new exit.
- Squashed Flat:
- When the fox gets yanked away from the cop, she slams into the pavement so hard that she briefly becomes just a fox-colored puddle on the ground.
- The gang of mice leave their apartment and slam the door into Kouka and Bibi, flattening them against the wall.
- The raccoon accidentally squashes three mice when she slams into a wall, reducing them to folded paper dolls.
- The fox turns her feet into steam rollers and tries to flatten the gang of mice, but rolls over the raccoon instead. Then she uses the flattened raccoon as a parachute in the next scene.
- They Have the Scent!: The fox picks up a scent from the fingerprints on the murder weapons, and she zooms all over the city searching for its source.
- Toon Physics: Characters regularly change shape and stature or morph into entirely different objects for visual gags - these jokes become more and more extreme as time goes on.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: The raccoon pulls several important items out from... in there.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Happens with the fox after discovering the murder victim.
- Wheel o' Feet: The mice gain these as they flee from the fox's steamroller feet. And as the raccoon flees from the police at the very end, her legs spin so fast they transform into rubber tires.
- Wild Take: The fox's reaction when she notices the dead body, complete with her eyes popping out and growing several times larger than her whole body.
- Wingding Eyes: The radiator turns on while Kouka and Bibi are hiding inside it, and their pupils turn into X's from the extreme heat. Then the fox grows tiny windshield wipers to clean the steam off her pupils.
- World of Funny Animals: In keeping with Variano's other creations.
