"Let's do some proper judo today."
A quaint, obscure British animated webseries about anthropomorphic dogs trying to do "proper Judo". More specifically, the long-running series primarily follows a pair of dysfunctional housemates, Roy and Rexley - Roy is a dedicated "judoist" whose efforts to spar seriously are constantly undermined by Rexley's extreme pranks. The show's most distinguishing visual feature is that all of the characters have real dog heads of differing breeds superimposed onto animated bodies.
Despite the channel barely scraping a thousand subscribers, Dog Judo has acquired notable celebrity talent for recurring voice roles, including the late great Rik Mayall as Roy's thrifty father Robert, and Joe Pantoliano (best known for his role as Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos) as violent New York mobster Joey Gagglio. Can be found here.
Tropes featured in this series
- Ascended Extra: The antics of Rexley's pub mates - Bloodbag, Peaches and Naked Reg - gradually took over the whole show as it started to move away from Judo. Not that it was ever really about Judo to begin with.
- Ax-Crazy: He usually hides it well behind relatively harmless pranks, but Rexley is genuinely unhinged. While caught in a headlock, he fantasises about brutally killing Roy, and his increasingly extreme japes often turn violent.
- Joey Gagglio's answer to any perceived or imagined slight is a gratuitous death threat. And there's zero doubt in anybody's mind that he has murdered people in the past for much less.
- Peaches, while not physically threatening in the slightest, is also quite eager to threaten to maim people. Either that or tickle their feet.
- Butt-Monkey: Roy is Rexley's perpetual victim.
- Catchphrase: Peaches tries to force "Rainbows!" as his, but it doesn't really stick or make sense in any context. "War's no game" is his true catchphrase, if anything.
- Rexley's Noisebox generates catchphrases so he doesn't have to.
- The Comically Serious: Downplayed, as it's only in comparison to the comical weirdos around him, but Roy's single-minded dedication to proper Judo makes him often come across as this.
- Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Joey Gagglio's speciality, often clearly improvised on the spot. The grand prize has to go to this absolute gem:"The last man who accused me of threatening him ended up playing in a rock band full of complete idiots, using his own leg bones instead of a regular drumstick, DO YOU HEAR ME!?"
- Dumb Muscle: Rexley's massive brother Rexford is monstrously strong but totally deferential to Rexley and seemingly unable to speak. Rexley often takes advantage of Rexford's strength to intimidate others.
- Extreme Doormat: Despite presumably having much higher skill in Judo than Rexley, Roy almost never thinks to actually use his techniques against Rexley in retaliation to his pranks. Joey Gagglio also bullies him into doing the dishes for him.
- Face of a Thug: Bloodbag. Aside from his compulsive meat-thievery, he's a fairly amiable bloke, though.
- Family Theme Naming: All of Rexley's family members have names beginning with "Rex".
- Fluffy the Terrible: The dishonourably discharged, war-obsessed soldier that lives in Roy and Rexley's basement is named... Peaches. And he's an adorable Yorkshire terrier.
- The Gadfly: There's seemingly nothing that Rexley won't do to amuse himself at the expense of others, even if it means seriously injuring himself in the process, such as that one time he brought radioactive plutonium rods to Judo practice.
- Genius Ditz: Rexley can design quite elaborate contraptions and has even managed to harness the power of plutonium rods, but he's incapable of using his gifts for anything useful.
- Gimmick Matches: The most recurring episode set-up involves Rexley inventing some silly new variant of judo, often requiring illegal weapons. Examples include Lobster Judo, Magnet Judo, Gun Judo, etc.
- Likes Older Women: It's not commented on, but Roy's on-off girlfriend Florence is clearly much older than him judging by her voice and fashion sense.
- The London Underground: Several episodes take place on the Tube.
- Loony Fan: Rexley tries to paint Roy as one during a birthday Skype call with real life (albeit dogified) Olympic gold medal-winning judoka Neil Adams, but it's all made-up rubbish. Afterwards, Roy is disgusted to find out that Rexley stole Neil's medals but still asks to try them on.
- The Mafia: Joey Gagglio is a stereotypical mobster, but he claims to be unrelated to the Mafia ("We don't know that word"). Which could be somewhat convincing if it weren't for the large "MAFIA" tattoo on his left arm...
- Motor Mouth: Roy's cousin Roly, whose dialogue consists entirely of terrible rapping. Even Roy can't stand him.
- Naked People Are Funny: Naked Reg. I mean, dogs are usually naked in real life anyway, so I guess "Clothed Dogs Are Funny" is more accurate here.
- Noble Shoplifter: Bloodbag makes a living stealing and reselling meat from shops, farms and butchers, but he believes that he's at least gotten his shit together in life, which is more than can be said for Rexley. He even has his own theme tune and computer game (only on ZX Spectrum though).
- Potty Failure: Peaches' go-to defensive mechanism which he learned in the army is to lag himself in fear and fall unconscious.
- The Quiet One: Rexley's brother Rexford never speaks.
- Really Gets Around: Rexley's sister Rexanne. Referring to it in any way is one of the only known insults that truly gets under Rexley's skin.
- Running Gag: Rexley's Noisebox. Rexley eventually upgrades it to a Video Noisebox which is powered by plutonium rods.
- The Scrooge: When on the receiving end of a prank phone call from Rexley claiming that Roy has been jailed for "recreational dirty stuff" offences, Roy's Dad bristles at the idea of the bail costing a whopping ten pounds and hangs up immediately.
- Show Within a Show: The Bloody Belt, a Judo-themed horror comic book.
- Also, ''Frog Ludo''.
- Single-Issue Wonk: Roy's entire personality revolves around Judo and he is seemingly incapable of talking about anything else, even during romantic dinners. He does have some other hobbies, but they usually relate back to his love of Judo in some way or other.
- Straw Loser: In one episode, the pub lads gang up on Rexley to boast about how much better they have it in life than him thanks to their careers, saying that all he does is scrounge off Roy and drop giant toy spiders on people's heads. It's more than a little hypocritical when you consider that Peaches, who lives in Rexley's basement, hosts a low-rate underground call-in show as his only source of income, and Bloodbag does nothing but steal meat. The only one who could be considered remotely successful out of all of them would be Naked Reg, who does modelling work.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Meat Sprinkles with corn is the favourite meal of both Roy and Rexley.
- Thief Bag: Bloodbag always carries around a blood-soaked bag full of freshly stolen meat.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: While Roy is usually sympathetic, the occasional episodes that focus more on him often have him make cringeworthy social faux pas, making Rexley's trolling feel a bit more satisfying than usual.
