You Animal!

Although the visuals looked so good, the story doesn't reach the Steven Spielberg storyline, but it could have some improvements

All that is good in this title is it's eye-catching art. Granted, I watched the English dub, so I could have missed a lot of untranslatable jokes throughout the movie, but it seemed that most of them are toilet humour and jokes for 12-year-olds anyway. The whole plot revolves around such trivial and beaten tropes that nothing in the movie strikes me as exciting or unexpected. This title could have tried to be anything else but the cheesy and unoriginal romcom that it is, and with the beautiful art direction it could be more mature and bring more to the table in terms of story and characters. The main plot doesn't grab any stars from the sky, nor does it even try to be original. My takeaway: I would love to see more projects by the animation team behind this movie, but in a title that will actually make me feel something.

During the first half of "Hayop Ka," tons of cliches from filipino teleseryes and movies were shown, including some funny jokes and references. But after an argument scene that features Robin Padilla's terrific voice acting, the film actually got better. Despite being quite annoying during the first half, the character of Nymfa won me over due to her journey and the ending wherein I realized that a lot of Filipinas end up with the same situation.

When I stumbled upon the 2020 Tagalog animated movie "Hayop Ka!", I had no idea what I was getting myself into here. But I read the synopsis for it, and have to say that I was somewhat intrigued, as "Hayop Ka!" sounded like something definitely aimed at a more mature audience.

And I will say that writers Manny Angeles, Avid Liongoren and Paulle Olivenza definitely managed to put together a story and plot that was every bit as entertaining as it was enjoyable. So yeah, "Hayop Ka!" was a wholesome animated feature for a mature audience. And when I say mature audience I don't mean that it is XXX-rated, but merely that there were references and hits towards lewd nature.

The art style in "Hayop Ka!" was strange, but enjoyably so. Initially I was a bit taken aback by the art style, but it quickly grew on me and I came to enjoy the art style that they used here because it was definitely complimenting the story and the message of the movie.

With "Hayop Ka!" being an animated movie, a proper voice cast ensemble is a must. And luckily they did have that here. While I am not familiar with Tagalog cinema, then I wasn't familiar with a single voice here. But I will say that the voice acting was good and definitely gave the characters life on the screen.

I found "Hayop Ka!" to be an enjoyable surprise of a movie, and definitely is an animated movie that I would recommend for a mature audience that enjoys light-hearted and funny stories. The fact that "Hayop Ka!" was told as an animation wasn't really a hindrance in any way.

My rating of director Avid Liongoren's "Hayop Ka!" lands on a six out of ten stars.

The animation was fun to watch specially that you don't see that much Filipino animation online.

The thing that I don't like about this movie is that it has too many dirty jokes that aren't that funny, and I think it would've been done better if the jokes were timed right. The story flow was messy, some parts were fast, some parts were slow. I actually found myself watching this movie with a straight face, i guess i was expecting too much since the teasers hyped me up?

Guess the way the story was written isn't my cup of tea. Kudos to those people who worked on this animation! hope to see more animation projects in the future