This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.
My Little Goat is a
Darker and Edgier take on
The Brothers Grimm fairy tale
The Wolf And The Seven Young Kids. This short tackles some very heavy subject matter alongside making a heartbreaking twist of the story. As a result,
My Little Goat manages to stick out more compared to
other Grimmer takes on beloved fairy tales.
- The prologue where Mother Goat manages to save five of her own children. Sadly unlike the original story, she isn't able to find Toruku (her firstborn child). Mother Goat starts getting extremely anxious, eyes slowly tearing up, when she isn't able to find his body. Meanwhile, we get a POV shot of deep inside The Wolf's stomach where we see Toruku's skeletal remains (such as his hooves).
- As Natsuki attempts to leave the house that Mother Goat and her surviving goat children live in, he finds an opened window and tries to reach it by standing on top of a mirror. When he falls, the mirror flips over to show Lecon's own reflection, which quickly horrifies her as she sees how scarred and disfigured she is. She then starts breaking down over the sight of her almost mutilated body and runs under a desk. While Natsuki still tries escaping, he quickly notices the surviving goat kids are bleating sadly while watching Lecon crying.
- While also heartwarming, Mother Goat giving Natsuki a comforting hug after preventing Natsuki's father from raping him. Natsuki is naked and visibly stunned, but immediately hugs Mother Goat as he starts crying into her arms and chest. Besides yelling "Mama", him crying is the only audible noises he makes in the short. Then there's Mother Goat's reaction to saving Natsuki. She's overwhelmed with disgust for what the father was doing, and compassion for the child, dropping to her knees to hug him.
- The entire situation from Mother Goat's perspective is heartbreaking. The short opens with her rescuing her children from the wolf's stomach, but she quickly realizes to her horror that her eldest child Toruku is missing. The scene then cuts to her taking Natsuki to her home and not only calling him "Toruku", but appearing to still be in denial at his death since she says that she's glad she "found him again" and decides to pick strawberries since they're "Toruku's" favorite. She also has to deal with helping her six surviving children recover both physically and emotionally from almost being eaten by the wolf. It's implied she's also extremely paranoid after the events of the original story since she leaves sticky notes telling her children what not to play with. This is all topped off by her coming back from picking strawberries and witnessing Natsuki almost getting raped by his own father, with the rest of her children having been thrown around the room after trying to stop him. Thankfully she made it just in time to prevent Natsuki's father from causing any more harm.
- One in hindsight is that Natsuki didn't want to flee immediately after Mother Goat gave him a loving Cooldown Hug. Given the later reveal, it's clearly the first in a long while that he's received any kind of real care or affection from a parental figure, whereas his real father never did so without abusing him afterwards. He had more love from a stranger calling him "Toruku" than from his own flesh and blood calling him by his real name.
