The Legend of Pipi is a 2D animated short film directed by Birgit Uhlig and Julia Schoel, the latter also serving as the writer. It was released on July 16, 2022 and can be found here
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The Cat Kingdom lived a peaceful and prosperous life for its citizens. That is until one night, a dragon attacked and kidnapped the king's daughter from her bedroom. The king immediately ordered his people to put up posters and search for heroes willing to risk their lives to save her.
Unfortunately for him, only one cat stepped up to the challenge: Pipi.
Tropes:
- Beast in the Maze: As to be expected of a minotaur, the bull-man that holds the sheep princess captive and antagonizes Pipi makes his home in a large hedge maze.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: An immense spider has the mole princess All Webbed Up in its lair, and was preparing to devour her right before Pipi set its net on fire, burning it to ash instantly.
- Black Comedy: In spades with Pipi's nonchalant attitude towards the other princesses and ending with the dragon burning the Cat Kingdom to the ground after Pipi brought it back.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Every single character has a unique design in the short, best shown when Pipi rides through the cat kingdom, and none of the townsfolk, all only seen for a second or two at most, look remotely similar.
- Coincidental Accidental Disguise: The dragon at the end of the short. After it killed the princess, the ensuing fight with Pipi results in it wearing her crown. Pipi, being Pipi buys it.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: A small cat versus a giant minotaur that easily stands ten to fifteen times his size. Pipi promptly gets his shit kicked in with only one stomp. He only manages to win thanks to his sword getting stuck in the minotaur's hoof by complete accident.
- Damsel in Distress: The Cat Princess, and it's later shown that there are other princesses that got kidnapped and in need of rescuing. Too bad Pipi doesn't care about the other princesses, though.
- Daydream Surprise: The opening sequence shows a tall, muscular knight rescuing the princess from the dragon. This turns out to be a daydream of the very short and unimpressive Pipi.
- The Ditz: The titular character. If it wasn't for him being Made of Iron and being outright lucky, he would've bit the bullet long before he manages to find the Cat Princess. He even believes the dragon wearing the Cat Princess's crown to be the real deal even though he fought it not five seconds ago and brings it back to the Cat Kingdom, with predictable results.
- Downer Ending: A Played for Laughs example. Pipi arrives too late to save the Cat Princess and mistakes the dragon for her instead, bringing it back to the Cat Kingdom. Chaos ensues when the dragon goes on a rampage and burns the kingdom to the ground, resulting in the two of them being put into the stocks. All while triumphant music plays in the background.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: A rat wizard summons a demon to attack Pipi, only for Pipi to point the wizard out to it, causing it to decide to attack him instead, pulling him kicking and screaming into a portal to hell while Pipi is left unharmed.
- The Great Serpent: A gigantic snake serves as the guardian of the captured bird princess, but it ends up snatched away by an equally massive bird before it can attack Pipi.
- High-Pressure Blood: Pipi's sword gets stuck in the minotaur's hoof after he stomps him, and when he pulls it out, a geyser of blood immediately shoots out of the wound, killing him near instantly.
- Horse of a Different Color: Pipi's steed is a large cat that has the proportions of a realistic cat instead of the Funny Animal townsfolk. And for all intents and purposes, though, it is a horse, to the point of having horseshoes, one of which it throws at Pipi as it abandons him.
- Made of Incendium: After somehow avoiding being incinerated with the rest of the spider web, the still tied up but safe mole princess is left behind by Pipi in the smoldering ashes... where she spontaneously bursts into fire.
- Made of Iron: Pipi gets stomped by the massive minotaur and later gets launched into a wall. Although the stomp is shown to have hurt him, he manages to walk it off like it's nothing.
- Pet the Dog: While Pipi is willing to leave the other three princesses for dead if they aren't the Cat Princess, he does manage to genuinely save the sheep princess's life by killing the minotaur, even if he slaps her away after the fact. It helps that she wasn't restrained like the others.
- Right Man in the Wrong Place: The King isn't exactly happy about relying on Pipi to rescue his daughter, but is nonetheless forced to accept his help since literally nobody else showed up.
- Stock Punishment: Both Pipi and the dragon suffer this at the end, being locked in stocks side by side for the chaos and destruction they brought to the cat kingdom.
- The Unintelligible: Pipi's one and only line said during the climax is audibly rapid, high-pitched gibberish, but is subtitled so the audience is able to understand it.Pipi: You're beautiful.
- Widely-Spaced Jail Bars: The cage holding the bird princess has gaps between its bars that look large enough for her to be able to squeeze through to escape on her own.
- You Are Too Late: It's unknown how long Pipi's journey lasted but by the time he reaches the tower where the Cat Princess was being held, she was already murdered by the dragon and reduced to a skeleton.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Pipi keeps rescuing princesses of other species from other monsters, but since none of them is the cat princess, he simply tosses them aside and continues his search. By the time he reaches the cat princess, she is long dead.
