Little guys in a big world.
Minuscule is a French live-action series mixed with digital animation, using no spoken dialogue and set in a Mouse World of insects, spiders and other small creatures, depicting a cartoonish perspective of their daily lives. Created by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo, it's self-described by its creators as "an improbable blend of Tex Avery and Microcosmos".
Predominately presented in five-minute shorts, each episode depicts particular species of the minuscule world of creatures in amusing, often outlandish scenarios with rather anthropomorphic behavior. Due to the lack of dialogue, stories are only told through the actions and sound effects of the buggy stars themselves. Focus is entirely kept to the arthropods; humans are mostly treated as inadvertent manipulators at best by way of their houses and items and the interactions insects have on them, while other large animals merely provide large hazards.
The most recurring insects (and non-insects) include:
- Ladybugs - One of the fastest little guys around, and one of the cleverest. Often treated as the series mascot, many episodes feature one little ladybug in particular as the hero, outsmarting other bugs who are being mean to others, or just generally taunting groups of flies into high-speed chases where they can get knocked out by obstacles.
- Flies - Pretty much one-note little pests like in real life, but rather funny at that. Though they're a frequent nemesis to the ladybugs, they get to return the favor in their frequent encounters with spiders and outsmarting the attempts to snag them in a web.
- Ants - Organized and militaristic, black ants are a common sight, marching in formation to the tune of their leaders' whistles as they scavenge the area for useful leaves, food and the occasional relics that humans leave lying around. They frequently run up against colonies of their enemies, the mean and vicious red ants.
- Mosquitoes - The nagging, droopy-flying suckers of the insect world. The nature of the show means they spend little time sucking blood (though they enjoy sucking from other foods), merely flying around exploring the wild worlds in search of food.
- Spiders - Two variants: A big dandy-legged spider who desperately tries to catch flies with elaborate webs that are more often victims of fly chases than actually catching anyone, and a small ball-like black spider that more often has trouble trying to keep a form of peace around his web home.
The series is popular not only in France but multi-nationwide (it has been broadcasted by the Disney Channel in America and other countries), and has earned two movies expanding on the premise. For them, see Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants.
Minuscule provides examples of:
- The Ace: The Ladybug's flying skills come off as this. Not only outflying the flies, but also the more elite bugs like wasps and dragonflies.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Insects aren't too unlike humans with being jerks to each other over differences.
- A cicada who hatches to the tunes of a radio instead of their generic buzzing is treated as an outcast for trying to play said tunes. Cicadas also intrigue a black ant in another short who would rather join in cicada songs than be part of dreary ant marching.
- A group of fat caterpillars treat a rather hairy looking member of its group as one... until he turns into a unique, dazzling white-winged butterfly.
- Ant Assault: While black ants are presented mostly in the positive light, red ants on the other hand are always depicted as Always Chaotic Evil species of robbers who constantly attack the black ants to steal their goods.
- Anti-Hero: For all he does to one-up local insect bullies, the Ladybug has a mean streak of antagonizing flies with no provocation and laughing when they crash dramatically during their chases.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A little caterpillar has nightmares of giant snails (we're talking giant even by human standards) swarming and eating all of the food, traumatizing him when interacting with actual snails.
- Badass Adorable: Most of the cast considering their feats, but the Ladybug gets special mention.
- Build Like an Egyptian: The black ants have been known to arrange scavenged sugar cubes into pyramids.
- Christmas Episode: One of mosquitoes in shenanigans with holiday decor, a hot fireplace, and some chocolates.
- Dream Sequence: In a short where the Ladybug feuds with a cicada over making noises when the other is trying to nap, we see both of their dreams. The Ladybug dreams of relaxing in "giant" ice cream deserts, while the cicada dreams of attending an opera performance.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: The black ant's whistling and ordering style can come off as this, particularly when the other ant "troops" are less than enthused with their orders.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The 20-minute "Night of the Mandibles" short is a surprisingly dramatic and dark (by the show's standards) thriller where a scientist kidnaps the local insects through a hypnotic machine, leaving it up to the Ladybug alone to save them all.
- Gasshole: Ladybugs are often guilty of this. They tend to weaponize it to great effect.
- Glass Smack and Slide: Some of the dimmer characters fall victim to this, while others that better understand human items have better luck.
- Halloween Episode: Features the centipede wandering through the night scared out of his wits by the strange decor as he searches for food. A find with a sticky marshmallow and some leaves ends up accidentally giving him a costume.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: A common fate of mischievous antics.
- The scientist of "Night of the Mandibles" gets trapped by his own hypnosis machine by the Ladybug
- Humans Are Cthulhu: The usual treatment of humans in the series. The scientist of "Night of the Mandibles" is closer to the usual Humans Are Bastards situation.
- Lazy Bum: "Lazy bee" features one who's late to the start of the hive's flower harvesting. He gets around it by flying off to the flower shop of a nearby town, getting more than enough.
- One black ant is seen wanting to goof off and nap rather than work, getting chewed out by the other ants in the process. He strikes back at them with some massive sabotage to the anthill.
- Karma Houdini: Racer Ladybug usually suffers little fallout from taunting and getting the flies battered and beaten in their chases. Granted, they are dumb pests, but sometimes you feel bad for them when they're losing wings and legs.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Racer Ladybug's smugness came back to bite him in a few episodes
- In an episode where the Racer Ladybug / Fly chase is at a snowy ski slope, the Ladybug gets caught in a snowball with the rest of them, leaving them to lie injured together by a fireplace as they recover.
- Another episode had the Ladybug attempting to goad the flies into another race, only for them to brush him off, the episode ends with the flies sleeping peacefully while Racer Ladybug throws a tantrum.
- Racer Ladybug is challenged by a rival when attempting to show off for a female. He fails to notice her ditching the both of them for another ladybug.
- Racer Ladybug's biggest defeat came, ironically, in the episode titled "Ladybugs". Not only does one of the dragonflies he goaded manage to out-speed him, but when he tries to bully the dragonfly by summoning a gang of other ladybugs, the dragonfly has him beaten there too.
- Made of Iron: Even when insects crash into trash cans or pavement at tens of kilometers per hour or freefall all the way from orbit, they can end up crawling back up while only showing modest levels of injury.(although insects actually can survive falling from any height!)
- The Monolith: A cell phone some black ants at a beach recover gets this treatment. It's propped up in the center of the room and religiously catches everyone's attention each time it rings and takes a message. Up until the battery runs out, at least.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Everyone. Special mention to the honeybees and caterpillars.
- Road Trip Episode: One short sees a caterpillar adventuring off along the river to reach a beach he sees in a newspaper advertisement.
- Serial Escalation: Seeking to avoid noises and distractions, a colony of bees in "Beehive on a Troll" take to physically moving their hive to several different locations... culminating to carrying it all the way to Flordia (as the show ambiguously is normally set in France) to hitch a ride on the rocket booster of a space shuttle to move off into space.
- Signature Style: Almost every insect, arachnid, and the snails have cartoony bright-white eyes with black pupils. They don't change much to express emotion, but they do heighten the cute factor immensely.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Several.
- Ladybug to the flies.
- The fly to both the dandy-leg and small black spiders.
- Red ants to the black ants.
- Smelly Feet Gag: One short sees a mosquito curiously buzzing around a sleeping human, where he lands on their toes and gets a big whuff of their odor... and fainting to the floor. And we see he wasn't the only mosquito to do that.
- Space Episode: "Wasp Belle" features a determined wasp who chooses one day to fly straight up into the air to land on the moon. He actually breaks into the lowest levels of orbit, but the show stays slightly realistic in that he ends up losing momentum and falling all the way back down to the ground. Don't worry, he lives .
- Speedy Snail: We get to see one snail dream of this, having a jetpack in its shell.
- Strong Ants: Not limited to either ants or teams of insects. Pretty much every bug has been able to handle weights far beyond realistic limits. Individual flies and tiny spiders can handle television remotes, ladybugs can operate machine switches, and mosquitoes can push out from under a teacup they've been squashed under.
- There has to be no better example of the Herculean bugs' strengths than "Summer Hat", wherein the small black spider's attempts to catch a fly lead to a scene where the fly, carrying a wide-brim beach hat over its body, is managing to pull along the spider who webbed onto the hat while it's clinging to an umbrella, and still pulling said umbrella along.
- Toy Time: "Ladybugland" features a troop of ladybug kids being left on a playdate with the toys of a human bedroom, having a great time and easily outmatching the dandy-leg spider in the process.
- "Ants on The Train" also feature this.
- Wacky Sound Effect: With no speech and minimal music, this defines the insects in an audio scape.
- Insect flight frequently uses airplane/mechanical sounds, particularly for high-speed flying. The ladybug/fly chases sound straight out of The Phantom Menace (and in fact the creators cite this as inspiration)
- Caterpillars crawl to stretchy sounds, grasshopper legs sound like bending metal rods, mosquitoes constantly sound like violin strings as they twitch, butterflies coming out of their cocoons have the sound of zippers, the list goes on.
- POV shots from the insects sound like they're being recorded from inside their heads, and can indicate their appearant intelligence. The POV of the dandy-leg spiders is an empty, dripping sink faucet.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "Romeo & Antiet", as the title implies, doesn't hide at all what story it's homaging with a Star-Crossed Lovers tale between a black and red ant. It's actually rare to see any red ant in a sympathetic light like this.
