A video game-themed
Funny Animal webcomic by Scott Ramsoomair. Rather than directly emulating the
Two Gamers on a Couch format that was popularized by
Penny Arcade, this comic instead does humorous parodies of video games and anime, with the comic's characters —
Cloud Cuckoo Lander Leo and
Snark Knight Aeris — via
Deep-Immersion Gaming.
Also includes subcomics
Adventure Log and
Super Effective (which starts
here
).
All of these comics have consistently good artwork (a few instances of re-used backgrounds not withstanding), but
not so much with the updating schedule. Recently
claimed to have finally settled on a
regular schedule. There were a grand total of nine strips in 2010. Add that in with Adventure Log being cancelled, you have some serious
Schedule Slip. Check
Schedule Slip in the Trivia section.
Can be seen at:
http://www.vgcats.com/Please note that the site
does not use a permanent URL system for its archives, and so the links used in examples may no longer lead to the intended page. Ideally, along with a link, also give the issue number and title.
Provides examples of:
- 20% More Awesome: Used very nearly by name in #294, They'll Fix You. They Fix Everything.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Crossing over with V for Vendetta, Leo comes to a house in a Guy Fawkes mask and does the same speech, only replacing V with H. #216 Aech
- Aerith and Bob: Or rather, Aeris and Leo. Both are named after real cats who were naturally named after Final Fantasy characters.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot / Artificial Stupidity: They don't call them "bots" for nothing. (#277 Cheeseburger Apocalypse)
- Affectionate Parody
- Alternate Universe: Years ago, Scott ran a brief (very brief - like, not even into double digits) comic called (VGKitties), exploring the notion that Leo and Aeris were ordinary housecats interacting in housecatty ways, rather than a pair of funny animals.
- Also used in one of the actual comics, which depicted an alternate universe where Sonic was more popular than Mario, Mortal Kombat (now "Minor Konflict") was family friendly, and the eponymous cats were now dogs with their roles in the comics swapped.
- Amusing Injuries: Oh so painfully Deconstructed here.
- And Zoidberg: Ashley Williams of Mass Effect is specifically mentioned over the other species as stuff Commander Shepard would have sex with (except in her case, not).
- Animated Adaptation: A flash toon attempt, but only one episode exists: check it.
- Animesque
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Early strips seemed to indicate that Aeris and Leo belonged to and lived with Scott, despite being anthropomorphic. Eventually it shifted to the two of them living independently as apparent college roommates, and in 2013-14 flashback strips showed them as children living in fully humanlike houses with their families.
- Arc Welding: #334 and #335 both take place in the same era (when Aeris and Leo were kids) but are unrelated. #336 ties them together and shows the aftermath of each story (Scott even says this was an arc weld as he hadn't set out to do a three-parter but changed his mind after writing the first comic).
- Art Evolution: Here is the earliest appearance of Aeris and Leo, back in 2001. And this is their early-2010 appearance. Yeah. Character style varies wildly from strip to strip.
- Ass Shove: No Snake, think harder.
- Atomic F-Bomb: Literally.
- Attack Backfire: Used in this comic for using fire as a weapon in cold weather; pleasant for obvious reasons. (Unless you were to set the clothes on fire... in which case you'd be setting yourself up to get arrested anyway.)
- Author Avatar: Pantsman.
- Pantsman hasn't shown up in quite a while, and increasingly, Aeris is becoming Ramsoomair's megaphone.
- Author Tract: "Nerd Rage", an entire strip consisting of a tirade on how casual gaming is ruining the industry. Lampshaded here where other characters point out that flat out explaining your points makes a shitty allegory, though that didn't stop him from dedicating seven panels to it.
- Aww, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Dawwwwwww.And again here.
- Bad Santa: Santa's Bad List is, but of course, written in the Death Note.
- Better by a Different Name: In some Author Tract, Pantsman declares his hate for InuYasha, saying it was better when it was Fushigi Yuugi, then calling it "Dragon Ball Z for girls".
- Beyond the Impossible: Aeris aborts Leo from time but that's not what qualifies for this. What qualifies for this is that he recovered from it.
- Bizarro Universe: In the aptly-titled "Bizarro!", where Sega won the Console Wars, and the protagonists are VG Dogs with flipped personalities. Damn you, Sliders!
- Black Comedy: Quite common.
- Black Comedy Rape: Many examples. Here's one.
- Blatant Lies: "Updated every Monday!"
- Brain Bleach: Aeris hates Algorythms.
- Brick Joke: The rat flail. Starts as a "weapon" during a D&D strip. Becomes a plot point when they re-enact Bleach as Ichigo!Leo's weapon.
- Canada, Eh?: The special Canada Day strip.
- Cameo: Yahtzee. note Strip 292
- Cats Are Snarkers: Aeris the cat is easily the most sarcastic character in the webcomic.
- Cheeky Mouth: Intentionally invoked on Sonic the Hedgehog and some of Leo's expressions. Seen less on Aeris and some of the more exaggerated expressions.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Krug. His last appearance was between issues 269 & 270... which was a guest comic to parody Ghostbusters. For the record, it has nothing to do with the outraged response to the all-female remake as it came out years before that. Krug's been gone a long time.
- Cat Smile: From Aeris.
- Cluster F-Bomb:
- Continuity Nod: In the ever-popular "The Perfect Gift", Aeris owns figurines of the monstrosities Leo created in "Wright to Life". They sit just below her Haruhi Suzumiya girls Playboy Bunny poster and next to a Lucario figurine.
- Crate Expectations: Played with here.
- This is taken straight from the source game, where this happens with 90% of the crates you open.
- Cute and Psycho: Aeris
- Cute Little Fang: Aeris, most often.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory: The "First Comic" and "Last Comic" buttons are in the middle, between the "Previous Comic" and "Next Comic" buttons. This may be the only webcomic on the internet to do this.
- Darker and Edgier:
- Declarative Finger: Parodied here.
- Dead for Real: Doctor Hobo, mayherestinpeace.
- Deep-Immersion Gaming
- Spoofed in one issue (#311 "Dress Rehersal") where Aeris and Leo, who are already dressed as Princess Peach and Luigi, are asked to put on the cat suits from Super Mario 3D World over top their existing costumes.
- Defictionalisation: The "Wright for Life" comic led to the actual Spore team creating their own◊, replacing the drawn aliens with ingame ones, and later on physical models were made. Of course, Spore players can attempt something like this as well.
- Different World, Different Movies: This comic shows a world were Aeris and Leo are dogs with swapped personalities (Leo is now the exasperated straight-man and Aeris is the excitable simpleton) who play games such as Minor Konflict and the Shadow the Hedgehog-esque Yoshi the Dinosaur.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: Parodied here, at least before it disappears into complete incoherence.
- Distant Reaction Shot
- Don't Explain the Joke: Aeris's response to Leo when he makes an incredibly misogynistic joke about why girls like stories about vampires and feels the need to spell out what he's talking about. Leo does this a lot. "Recurring, if you will."
- And again in #367 (Moostache), rather than letting it speak for itself Leo has to make absolutely certain we understand that the gag is that the guy doesn't just milk female Pokémon, but males as well.
- Double Entendre: "That is the BIGGEST barrel I've ever seen, is it pump action?"
- Dumbass Has a Point: In #155, after Leo mocks Aeris for playing an online MMORPG:
Aeris: Online RPGs are about social interaction, damn it!
Leo: Yes, social interaction, of course.
Leo: "SPARE MONIES FOR A NEWB?"
Leo: "HEAL PLZ?"
Leo: "HOW I MINE FOR FISH?"
Leo: *turns to Aeris* "HAY A GRL LETS CYBER!"
- Easter Egg: That password in "Nerd Rage" really works for Mega Man 2, all bosses, full e-tanks.
- In the 100th Comic flash video, one can access a scene where Pantsman does a mockup of Strong Bad Email... and since he's actually using Strong Bad's Compy, Strong Bad himself appears and tells him to get out.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Trope namer and page image.
- Fantastic Racism: Turtle Power!
- Fingertip Drug Analysis: Parodied in a strip about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
- For Science!: Leo used it as an excuse to do what he did with Winnie-the-Pooh. And his past self.
- Fridge Horror: Their version of Tom and Jerry. invoked
- Funny Animal
- Furry Confusion: Lampshaded. Despite living in a house with a toilet Leo still does his business in a litter box much to the confusion of Areis.
- Gag Boobs: This strip.
- Geo Effects: Parodied in "High Ground".
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Or rather, Bad Angel and Clown.
- Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Leo's eyes are wide and somewhat goofy. Aeris, while not evil per se, is deeply cynical and dangerously unstable, and has narrower, unconnected eyes.
- Grammar Nazi: Yes.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Aeris often resorts to rather extreme methods when dealing with idiots.
- High-Class Glass
- High-Pressure Blood: This comic shows a Worms game going on... normal, right? Well, when part of the ground was destroyed by a rocket, we cut to... Leo in pain and blood stains behind him. Take a wild guess what happened. Also counts as Bowel-Breaking Bricks when you think about it.
- Homage: Leo's reaction to Dr. Hobo's death is an homage to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
- Hulk Speak: Anything said by Krug.
- Human-Focused Adaptation: Discussed in this comic.
Starring a cast of two-dimensional characters no one cares about! With special guest stars the Transformers.
- Hypocrisy Nod
Yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy!
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Oh god, this strip. And worse, Pooh begs piglet to kill him!
- Identical Panel Gag: Very frequent, usually doubled as Beat Panels. Notably used just before Aeris's Atomic F-Bomb.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Lampshaded.
- In-Name-Only: At times. Some comics have only gaming, others have only cats, and still others have neither. Lampshaded in #77 (I'm gonna get sued for this..), at least as far as it not being relevant to gaming goes.
- Jackass Genie: What happens when you ask the Monkey's Paw for Duke Nukem Forever. Three wishes left...
- Two if you include Leo's wish for a large wiener.
- Just One More Level: This strip has Aeris getting in a "quick" game of Civilization. By the time she's reached the Bronze Age, she's not only gotten ridiculously old, but an apocalypse happened that involves soldiers fighting a giant mutant version of Leo.
- Lampshade Hanging: Why are you a cat?
- Let's Mock The Monsters: You know, maybe we shouldn't be jamming the helpless critters into airtight balls and hemorrhoids.
- Light-Flicker Teleportation: Here.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Funny animals, regular animals, and humans exist together in this webcomic.
- Magic Skirt: Leo as Link apparently doesn't have one.
- Man-Eating Plant: Fullpetal Botanist.
- Mundane Solution: When playing Five Nights at Freddy's, Aeris pokes holes in the whole scenario, and rattles off several simple ways to counter the robots: dressing up in animal costumes to fool the robots, which is redundant as Aeris and Leo are furry animals to begin with, turning off some of the extra equipment to save power, or guarding the building from outside.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Aeris rants about how characters in Fire Emblem Awakening are making out on the battlefield and asks if anyone wants to die having sex. Tharja does.
- N-Word Privileges: Taking "pretending to be racist" just a little bit too far.
- No Dead Body Poops: Averted.
- Not Rare Over There: Used as part of a rant by Ash, here.
- Not What It Looks Like: Good game, Leo.
- Of Corset Hurts: Parodied.
Ms.Dipshits: You don't need oxygen when you look
this good...
- Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Strip #304, parodying Slender, has the Slender Man accidentally take one of the creepy pages to the supermarket and leave his shopping list pinned to a tree instead, where Aeris and Leo find it.
- Orphaned Series: Not the main strip, but Adventure Log stopped at eleven strips and was deadlinked over a year later. According to Ramsoomair, the Adventure Log update schedule was directly tied to each release of the official Final Fantasy XI newsletter (which included the comic as an insert). The game always had rather shaky support from Square, and when they stopped making new newsletters, Scott stopped making new comics.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Aeris is literally pink. Leo is gray, but his preferred color of clothing is blue. Possibly a Genius Bonus, as there are certain breeds of cats - thanks to specific recessive genes - that have grey fur, and the technical term for this is a 'Blue' cat.
- Poe's Law: It's really, really hard to tell if "Nerd Rage" is an Author Filibuster or a Stealth Parody, as people have voiced every one of those complaints without irony.
- Pooled Funds: Meanwhile, at Valve...
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: 300 is parodied here.
- Quintessential British Gentleman: Leo's dad, Leo Leonardo The Second.
- Rapid-Fire Comedy: A rare webcomic example.
- Self-Deprecation: He's fond of this, typically with a heaping helping of Hypocritical Humor.
- Serious Business: "Waiting", for one. "Nerd Rage"◊, for another. And don't even ask about this guy...
- Ship Tease: This comic.◊ It also counts as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
- Shock Site: A pixellated Goatse appears on a TV in this comic.
- Shout-Out:
- Remember Elcor's ramblings in this strip? "To which he replied... I'm not left-handed... either. Pointless narration... and then..."
- Ditto: This.
- Oh, and the main characters are named Aeris and Leo... both of which are Final Fantasy characters who are killed by the main villain of their respective games.
- In this strip:◊ Fullfillith Thine Fight.
- Aeris's shelf in this strip is home to Gurren Lagann, Lucario, and Spore creature figurines. On the wall is a Haruhi Suzumiya poster.
- One of the update lines says the world ends with Update, if you want to enjoy life, expand your update.
- To Friendship Is Magic in this strip, this one, and most obviously this one.
- To 300, here.
- To Zero Punctuation in this Pawn Stars parody strip.
- Aeris is wearing a BMO shirt while Leo is clearly seen playing FTL: Faster Than Light in this strip.
- Conglaturation has Dot Matrix and Phong with a bunch of nulls, two of which used to be Bob and Enzo.
- This strip features a wanted poster that looks directly like one from One Piece, complete with the Marine inscription.
- Shower of Angst: Samus after realizing she slept with Master Chief.
- Skyward Scream: MONKEY PAAAAAW!
- Squick: Hunter and Boomer's reaction to Smoker's new girlfriend.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Get back to cooking, Mama
- Take That: To InuYasha here.
- Take That, Critics!: In response to complaints over an abortion joke, we got this.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics:
- Aeris's color and "hair" style are the only real indicators that she's female. There was one comic, years ago, where both she and Leo were more humanly proportioned. This is the only recorded incidence of Aeris having breasts of any sort.
- These days, it shows better that she's just 'small'. There's even a one-strip fancomic on-site that shows her as a bit self-conscious about it when she hears that a fictional Japanese adaptation gives her character a bigger bust. So much so that she tells Leo to bring his Pyro suit.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks: An in-universe subversion here. Leo starts to do this, but then decides it's for the best.
- Thick-Line Animation: Especially prominent during 2004-2006. Almost nowhere to be seen in later comics.
- Too Awesome to Use: Parodied here.
- Too Dumb to Live: Leo is this very, very often. Or maybe Leo is too stupid to die.
- Trolling: Spy Leo does this to Scout Aeris.
- Tsundere: Aeris, if this strip can be considered indicative of a deredere side.
- Unexplained Recovery: Leo, after Aeris "Aborted [him]... from time". Blatantly lampshaded, to boot.
- Doctor Hobo as well. (Strip 327 That Show that's not Bob's Burgers)
- And just in case you think this was just a one-off to spoof Family Guy, Dr. Hobo reappears in #316.
- Unsound Effect: FACE!
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody in-universe seems to notice Leo and Aeris are walking, talking cats until the three-hundredth strip.
- Vague Age:
- Aeris's ID in the (very brief) Animated Adaptation simply reads "Legal".
- She looks like she's going to college, given this strip.
- The first published version of this strip indicated that Leo was 21 years old; Ramsoomair later edited the figure to the less precise "many years earlier", as Leo himself has yet to reach that age to begin with.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The subject of many comics, as seen in this strip about The Sims.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Aeris and Leo, for all her antagonism and his dim-bulb moments, do care for each other. Doubtful? Look and see.
- Walking Techbane: This strip has Leo bragging about how he not only red ringed Aeris's Xbox 360, but that they just die when he touches them.
- Wanted: Leo Leonardo, dead or alive. Reward: 90,000,000 dollars.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: This strip. Entrusting unfathomable power to a bunch of kids. What could possibly go wrong?
- What Did I Do Last Night??: Samus Aran gets this after a Christmas party. The answer is "Master Chief."
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: This strip spoofing Captain Planet inspired the meme.
- X Meets Y: [1] Inglourious Basterds meets Team Fortress 2
- Yaoi Fangirl:
- Your Mom: One of Leo's favourite forms of joke. He suffered for it in the end.
- You Have Researched Breathing: The trope article's picture.
- You Monster!:
Aeris: You're a MONSTER, and you're going straight to hell.
Aeris: Did you just feed him his
parents? ... Yeah, I'm taking this for a
while.
