Comic Review: Bee & Puppycat #6

 

Spoilers Below

Right off the bat, this issue is different. Instead of being read in the “regular” left-to-right way, it is read in the “Japanese” right-to-left way. Just like a manga. That makes me squee a little.

The first story we get is called “Book Quest.” Bee has lost a library book. She needs to find and return it in order to continue borrowing manga and CDs. Of course, they tear apart Bee’s messy apartment but can’t find the book anywhere. The pair decide to go through their old jobs until they find the book. However, they only get as far as Temp-Bot. Apparently, Bee lent the book to the bot and completely forgot about it. When Bee goes to return the book to the library, the librarian tells them that they got a new edition of the book and Bee is welcome to keep the old edition. Win!

A Bee & Puppycat comic isn’t complete without a story about food. Appropriately, this story is titled “Food.” The pair has completed their most recent temp job. Instead of being paid with money, they are given a green squishy blobby thing. According to the instructions, you place a hand on the ball and think of whatever food you desire. Bee does this and a ton of sweets appear. When Puppycat does it to his half of the blob, he gets a strange but delicious food from his childhood. It may look like ramen but it is flavored with the souls of ten thousand innocents, among other weird things.

“Served” is a very strange story. There is no dialog at all. And the animation style is super weird. The people have these strange, huge, blank eyes. Basically, the plot is that Bee has been eating Deckard’s cooking all week so she decides to make something for him. She goes to the store, gets the ingredients, kicks Deckard out of his apartment, and cooks him a meal. He doesn’t actually eat it in the story so it’s difficult to tell if the food is actually edible but it looks very burnt.

The next four one-page stories are a series called “Bee and Puppycat in.” None of the stories are related beyond having the same writer. In “Improvisation,” plants are taking over the planet the duo is on. They start to run away but are quickly cornered. Puppycat gets Bee to pat his back, resulting in a hairball ejecting from his stomach. The hairball explodes, freeing them from their plant prison. In “Yes. Yes, It Is,” Bee and Puppycat have a special job – filling out review paperwork. Bee’s pile of paperwork is huge, while Puppycat’s consists of just one sheet. “Who’s a good Puppycat? Is it you?” In “5-Star Spot,” Bee calls Deckard over to a new food truck that Puppycat has found. It turns out to be an abandoned pickup truck with tacos in the back. Despite the grossness, they shove a taco into Deckard’s mouth. He claims that is the best taco he will ever have. The final story is “Magically Delicious?” Temp-Bot has sent Puppycat to get some books about the history of Bee’s profession for her to read. However, there was a typo on the list. Puppycat got books about magical grills instead of magical girls.

Once again, none of these stories has advanced the plot of previous stories. This time, I am OK with that. All of these stories were interesting to read and super cute to look at. For the first time, all of the animation was really good. Usually, there is at least one story that looks horrible. I would still like to see an ending to some of the previous stories but this was a good place to go. If the comic is going to go with the “stand alone” type of issues instead of “story line” issues, I hope they are more like this in the future. But the story line issues are way more interesting.