It's basically Happy Tree Friends, but Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier. Yes, you read that right. It literally makes Happy Tree Friends look like an un-Subverted Kids' Show. It also parodies Animal Crossing, Pokémon, and Sanrio a lot. It's set in a cutesy Sugar Bowl named Malino Land, which is preyed upon by an evil company called Pretty Blood.
There's also Technical, a more cathartic and action-oriented spin-off series that focuses a war against Pretty Blood. There are also a lot of human characters, unlike its home series.
Pretty Blood provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: There's normal names like "Carl", "Lilly", "Ron", "Andy"... then we got the unusual names like "Nappy", "Mangy", "Dede and Dada", "Elma", "Nono", and "Kling", to name a few examples.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The episode "Space Blubby" is about all of the service robots on a space station turning evil thanks to a computer virus.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Pretty Blood's underground base is disguised as Malino Land's Amusement Park.
- And I Must Scream:
- This series is Torture Porn taken to its further possible extreme. Special mention goes to Rina Pompom in the appropriately named "Living Hell" episode, who is being endlessly thrashed and shocked by a machine. The machine doesn't allow her to Mercy Kill herself.
- There's also the appropriately named "Stress Generator", a product sold by Pretty Blood that puts victims in a machine similar to Pompom's.
- Lilly also suffers a more psychological version of this. She's implanted with a mind control device and remotely forced to kill her own family by Rinny, totally conscious but unable to resist.
- Animesque: LittleCuteCorpse is clearly inspired by anime. They use a lot of stock anime sound effects, similar facial expressions and comedy styles, etc.
- Art-Style Dissonance: Don't let the artstyle fool you, because while It looks cute, colorful and bright, The whole plot is actually a disturbing bloody horror and can easily traumatize you, especially when you're a child or you're just scared of blood and gore.
- Badass Adorable: Nono, a cute purple bear with an M4 carbine.
- Bears Are Bad News: Rinny is basically the combination of a Care Bear and Ted Bundy.
- Big Good: Sadny Bin and Nono, who singlehandedly take down Pretty Blood and rescue its prisoners.
- Bittersweet Ending: Near the end of "Dream Terror", Ron is still alive, even with her new tongue. However, Berry still committed suicide, Supa still lost his legs, and Miny still had her eyes gouged out.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The subtitles are so badly translated from Thai to English that some of the video's plots are completely incomprehensible.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Carl is a sweet pink bunny rabbit with Innocent Blue Eyes, Ron is a white popstar rabbit with bows, sparkly eyes and a teal dress, and Rina PomPom is another pink rabbit, but this time she has a resemblance to Cream the Rabbit. Unsurprisingly, this is Subverted with Bunchy and RabBot.
- The Cameo: Nappy and Luny appear as ghosts in the non-canon Halloween Episode. Rinny, in a witch costume, promptly swats them away with her broom.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Batric. He wears business suits, eats lobsters at restaurants, and buys slaves from Pretty Blood to torture.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Eluca wears a black trenchcoat, which makes him look like a Funny Animal Columbine shooter.
- Crapsaccharine World: Malino Land used to be a Sugar Bowl ala Teletubbyland, but Pretty Blood turned it into the worst dystopia imaginable.
- Cute Is Evil: All of the Malino villains, except Eluca.
- Cute Kittens: Lilly from "Toy Lilly", and the twins from "Living Hell" and "Necro Worm".
- The Cutie: Sadny Bin has giant eyes that make him seem adorable, plus his occasional Cloudcuckoolander personality helps as well... when he's not giving Pretty Blood members their Laser-Guided Karma.
- Downer Ending: Every ending is a Shoot the Shaggy Dog ending.
- In "Living Hell", Pompom almost succeeds in killing herself and ending her suffering, but she survives at the last moment.
- In "Space Blubby", Viccy hijacks the system with a computer worm. But Rabbot catches her and punishes her dearly anyways.
- In "Necro Worm", NO.4/Gummy is the sole survivor of the Necro Worm contest. His reward? Being slowly tortured to death, of course.
- In "Red Snow", it seems Rinny is finally going to get a taste of her own medicine when her victims break out and tie her up. Ultimately she escapes and painfully slaughters them all, except for Elma, who is left to pass out in the snow with all of her friends dead.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: However, the Technical series finally rectifies the endless stream of bad endings. Pretty Blood is at last destroyed and its victims are all freed.
- Empty Shell: When Pompom is finally rescued from her "Living Hell" in the Technical series, it's already too late. Her trauma has reduced her to a catatonic state, likely unable to recover.
- Enfant Terrible: Rinny's first murder happened when she was 4 years old, where she skinned the family cat.
- Fog Feet: Nappy and Luny appear to have these as ghosts in the Halloween Episode.
- Frame-Up: Rinny gets away with murdering her family by pinning it on Bunchy. Unlike most cases, where the victim is totally innocent, Bunchy is actually a depraved lunatic like Rinny, so it was easy to frame him.
- The Good Kingdom: It turns out Malino Land is a monarchy ruled by King Lele and Queen Lolo.
- Greater-Scope Villain: General Altha, the leader of Pretty Blood. He doesn't actually appear in the Pretty Blood series itself, but he is the Big Bad of Technical.
- Hair-Raising Hare:
- Bunchy in Episode 1. He only makes a normal Malino face once throughout that entire episode, and the rest of his facial expressions are just a bunch of terrifying facial expressions.
- Rabbot, the leader of the evil robots in Space Blubby.
- Hate Sink: Rinny. She killed her husband and child, and blamed someone else for it, forced another child to kill their own parents, got sexually aroused to her own friend getting tortured, and caused the whole entire mess that happened in the Red Snow series. We're sure Rinny was made to be hated at this point.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Pretty Blood has their own necro worm virus unleashed against them.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Malino Land was a perfect utopia until they made contact with humans, leading them to being tortured and enslaved.
- Industrialized Evil: A common motif. Almost all killers in the series are having dozens of victims tortured at once with automated machines. Special mention goes to the Space Blubby station, where hundreds of blubbies are tortured on assembly lines since their suffering generates power.
- Karma Houdini: Rinny has Joker Immunity. Even when the tables are turned on her and she's tortured by one of her victims, she eventually breaks out and gets her revenge.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: After being untouchable for years, Pretty Blood is finally destroyed. All of its members are killed... except for Rinny, who gets away to continue their work.
- Luminescent Blush: In one scene from the first episode, Rinny is deeply blushing and breathing heavily with half-lidded eyes and a relaxed smile as she watches her own child suffer in agony. In case you're unaware, this is a common cartoon trope to illustrate intense sexual arousal.
- Mood Whiplash: "Dream Terror" begins with a bunch of Malinos in a classroom discussing what they want to be when they grow up, and the sequence ends with Ele grabbing a syringe... which cuts to him loudly crying over his dead mother in a hospital.
- Offing the Offspring: Rinny specifically had Nappy to kill her.
And she plans on having another kid. - Older Than They Look: The kittens Lilly and the twins seem like children at first. Lilly was confirmed to be a teenager
possibly around 14-15 years old, while the twins were both confirmed to be 14 years old. - Perky Goth: As it turns out, from an official post Little Cute Thing made, Ron is actually this, which explains why she fell for Eluca so quickly. However, in public, she has to be a popstar since the Malino society does not like goth stuff; they prefer cute stuff instead.
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: Throughout the Space Blubby episode.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Necro Worm, apparently engineered by Dr. Andy, violently kills its victim then infects their body.
- Psycho for Hire: Rinny is technically an employee of Pretty Blood, but she's definitely not in it for the money.
- Mad Doctor:
- Dr. Andy, a scientist who conducts sadistic experiments on cute animals.
- There's also Dr. Exfeq, the Blubby who reprogrammed the robots to be evil.
- murder.com: Pretty Blood's website, which is basically an online Black Market for snuff films and torture devices.
- Murder, Inc.: The titular Pretty Blood. It's a company that creates snuff films and traffics organs.
- Nightmare Face: Whenever Rinny removes her Mask of Sanity, she has an utterly horrifying Slasher Smile.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Almost every Malino in the seriesnote have giant eyes, high-pitched voices, and ever-so adorable Super-Deformed proportions in their designs.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Every single episode ends like this. The victim is captured and tortured, given a Hope Spot, and then has it cruelly yanked away from them.
- Snuff Film: Rinny films a lot of her killings and publishes them on The Deep Web.
- The Sociopath: Rinny. She's a serial killer who specifically targets her close friends and family after convincing them she's a normal Nice Gal. And her sole motivation is For the Evulz.
- Sudden Anatomy: Malinos do not have visible fingers in their default designs. However, mainly in the classic episodes, Malinos will gain fingers at times, usually whenever they are getting tortured.
- Token Mini-Moe: Nappy, Lilly, and the twins are the only Malinos in the series that have been implied to be minors. Most of the other Malinos are implied to be adults.
- Torture Porn: YOU DON'T SAY?
- The Virus: The Necro Worm seizes control of the victim's body after killing them.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Whenever Rinny is at a disadvantage, she insists she's the helpless victim of a Demonic Possession. It never works.
