This is part of a series reviewing local AV productions highlighting the best of Filipino creativity. In adult animation Hayop Ka, it takes animals to hold a mirror up to our human, all-too-human selves
Since 1995, at least 10 Filipino feature-length animated films have been produced for film festivals, but it’s safe to say a dozen or more were made independently here and there. Among said 10 films, six were made in the last decade alone.
Many of these were targeted to a general audience, but 2020 saw the first Filipino animated adult movie.
I don’t have data from a quantitative study, but I’ll wager that my experiences at home are a good representative sample of how things are in the rest of the country when it comes to animation: My sister and I are gripped by the emotional buildup and cinematography of a more mature Miyazaki film, while Mom snores, having lost her commitment to the film 20 minutes ago.
I take in a gasp of air as a character’s head flies off. Sis takes a shot of soju, almost spilling the contents as she can’t look away from the screen. Curious at what’s captured us, our helper passes by and looks at our laptop screen.
“Cartoons lang pala.”
‘di lang cartoons, ‘te
Taking three years to produce, Hayop Ka! The Nimfa Dimaano Story, directed by Avid Liongoren and distributed by Netflix, features an anthropomorphic Philippines mirroring ours. Here, you can literally feel the claustrophobia of EDSA, smell the rust on corrugated steel as the humidity following a rain shower cloys on your skin (or fur). You dream of breathing the blessed air of the countryside.
Think BoJack Horseman sans humans with a komiks palette and a kundiman soundtrack.
The story follows a mall saleslady cat voiced by Angelica Panganiban while the men (er, dogs) vying for her loyalty are voiced by Sam Milby and Robin Padilla, rich dog, poor dog respectively. Filipinos are in love with being in love, and Nimfa has to choose between idealized love and someone with whom she can create a stable future.
It’s love story, yes, but one in a dog-eat-dog world. As far as mainstream Filipino films go, either they focus on love or entirely on social realities, but there is an emerging trend of staying faithful to what the Filipino experience really is like by not separating one from the other.
It ticks off the boxes: ’80s songs and breezy ballads timed to show Nimfa’s state-of-mind when caught in a moment of kilig, a rich family running a construction business, a sassy, lovesick, supporting bestie, a subplot involving a pregnant sibling still in school, and, of course, the Catfight (made literal).
Take these, but slap on some anime-inspired fight scenes, puns aplenty (if the titular character’s name isn’t a hint, then I don’t know what is), and sudden change in art style in one steamy scene.
This traditional 2D animation’s premise is the lovechild between the classic love triangle story and a cat-and-dog joke on crack with the volume knob broken.
One might point out that the love-triangle plot is over hashed in Philippine movies, that this Rocketsheep and Spring Films co-production is but another kabit story (albeit animated) among a hundred, and while that’s true, hear me out: Both studios are known for steady quality and an emerging vision.
Just look at their combined recent oeuvre: Saving Sally, Meet Me at St. Gallen, and Kita Kita.
And as it is, the animation industry remains to be a fledgling one, and Netflix’s gambit, with hope, elevates popular perception of animation all while enabling creators to not just feed themselves but get a proper vacation, too.
So I don’t blame the studios if they had to make a film with wider appeal if it means being able to play with other concepts and stories later.
Dog eat dog
Amid the raunchy humor, spoofed ads, and questionable pares ingredients, there are moments and sequences that highlight the rich-poor divide in a society that’s taking steps backward for every step that its upper 10 percent takes forward.
On the top most floor of a mall, the alta ciudad dine on steaks (cannibalism?) in a carpeted room, and the camera deftly pedestals down, past the mid-range restaurants, past the ground-floor, and well into the basement where mall staff hurriedly eat with posters all around saying “talk less, sell more,” in one motion highlighting what stares in the face yet also flies by many busy mallgoers.
Another brilliant take involves a callback, the same shot of Nimfa staring out the window of her boyfriend’s shanty in Sampaloc recreated many scenes later but this time from the window of her lover’s Batangas rest house.
There’s a nice detail too where Nimfa’s manner and voice changes upon returning to her childhood home in the countryside: here more polite, less the alaskador she became adapting to Manila.
Finally, there’s a conversation between Nimfa and her boyfriend, a janitor, that kicks off with economic concerns, the subtext hinting at a critique on why we look up to and down on certain jobs, asking “perhaps all this is enough, perhaps we don’t need the stress of having, getting, and maintaining more?”
It’s love story, yes, but one in a dog-eat-dog world. As far as mainstream Filipino films go, either they focus on love or entirely on social realities, but there is an emerging trend of staying faithful to what the Filipino experience really is like by not separating one from the other. Hayop Ka joins the ranks of recent films like Hello, Love Goodbye (2019), Alone/Together (2019), and Never Not Love You (2018) in this endeavor.
I’ll make another wager, and say with confidence that the team behind the film is hoping that we can just go back to focusing mainly on love, that the social realities depicted won’t be realities by the time the next animation comes around.
One can hope, right?