Web Animation / Twelve (2016)

Twelve is a thirteen-episode animatic series written, produced, and directed by a youtuber named PetPyves starting on May 8th, 2016, and ending on December 30th, 2017. It follows a cat named May, who after a heated argument with her mother runs outside of her home and finds herself having to make a deal with Imp because she was apparently struck by lightning and thus killed. Supposedly what's happening is that she is tasked with living the days of twelve different cats and dogs for a day each, and to an extent improving them.

For a while, the finale was taken down by a copyright strike, because YouTube. However, PetPyves has since announced a new website to compensate. The finale was eventually re-uploaded to YouTube on August 1st, 2019.

There is also a Sequel Series of sorts that delves into the backstories of the vessels and wraps up several significant plot events called Origins. Production on the series silently came to a halt on 2020 for several personal reasons, and in a livestream on June 25th, 2021, Holly announced that continuing the story the way she did is unhealthy for her, so she did a spoiler Q&A and plans to get the voice actors to read the script of the rest of the series together.

Twelve contains examples of the following tropes:

• Arc Number: 12. Twelve vessels, Twelve days, Twelve lives.
• Big "NO!": May at the end of Episode 7 after Cypress dies and she realized she actually failed for once.
• Breather Episode: After the Downer Ending in Episode 7 and the whole shebang with May being encountered by reapers in Episode 8, 9 feels quite a bit like this.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Willow, as a young ditz who doesn't often pay attention to his own surroundings.
• Dead Guy Junior: May names her children Heather and Sai, after the vessels who died under her care.
• Domestic Abuse: In Episode 2, it's revealed rather quickly that Ivy is at least physically abused by Reed, her housemate, and her goal is to give her the proper motivation to get the hell out of there.
  • Chapter II of Orgins implies that Reed is scared of being alone, which leads to false assumptions and hints of emotional abuse as well.
• Double Entendre: In Episode 11, while Rosemary is giving Mallow some advice for impressing Ginger- (bonus points in that all three characters are dogs-)
  Rosemary: But if you wanna hit it home, you gotta be a 'bit' more confident. More assertive, you know? Your body language should say, "Hey, babe. I got a bone for ya."
• Downer Ending: Not the whole series (thank god), but Episode 7 ends this way with Cypress being put down and almost immediately chewing may out for failing him.
• Good Parents:
  • Ebony is a kind and caring father to Daisy in spite of the situation they're stuck in. May latches on to their relationship pretty quickly.
  • Of course, Rue is also this type of parent. Despite having lost her mate, Oak, she's still raising her children as best she can.
• La Résistance: Imp is revealed to be part of this in episode 8, and it's why he's in the pocket watch in the first place.
• Lyrical Dissonance: In episode 12, Willow appears to be singing something along the lines of a classic playground rhyme or something while going down a flight of stairs. It gets faster.
  Down we go, down we go, down into the sea,
  Down we go, oh-down we go, you're goin' down with me!
  Down we go, down we go, down with the ship,
  Down we go, oh-down we go, we're goin' down with it!
  Down we go, down we go, down into the sea,
  Down we go, oh-down we go, you're goin' down with me!
• Mood Whiplash: In episode 12, after a long discussion between Imp and Hallow, his fellow reaper colleague, about the imbalance of the rift and what is bound to follow, the conversation basically ends like this:
  Hallow: Please be careful, Onehkeend. We're counting on you.
  Willow: [very enthusiastically-sounding] I have to go to the bathroom!!
• Please Wake Up: Done quite heartwrenchingly when May's parents slowly start to realize she's dead in the finale.
• Pungeon Master: Imp fits this trope quite well. May is regularly displeased, of course.
• Secret Test of Character: In the finale, Imp gives may a choice after the end of the days: either she comes back to life and everything she did for the vessels is completely negated, or she stays dead and everything she did for them would stick. May decided to let Imp keep her dead, but he brought her back anyway, gravely upsetting her until he revealed it as a test.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Mallow and Ginger are both complete dorks who both had the idea to attempt to be the formal type to impress each other.
• Wham Episode: Episode 8. Imp turns out to be a rebel from the rift. He's apparently in the pocket watch in the first place because Shiva put him there after she found out. May is less than enthused by this and ALMOST gives Morven the pocket watch but not quite. Nonetheless, they still stop being on speaking terms for a bit.
• Wham Line: Since every episode is somewhat self-contained, This probably happens quite a bit.
  • For example, in Episode 8:
  Morven: (Referring to Imp) Are you aware that you are harboring a criminal of the rift, little kit?

Origins also contains the following tropes: (Twelve spoilers below.)

• Abusive Parents: Reed's father forces his son to hunt in a setting they clearly don't have to, and will not take no for an answer, to the point of him hitting him when they argue early on. The influence on Reed made him grow up to be a bitter, attention-seeking cat who wound up abusing his roommate later on.
• Ambiguous Ending: Chapter II on Reed's front. He runs off into the road at the end of the episode, but it's never stated where he'll go, at least in the show itself.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Downplayed. Thistle mentions in a heated argument with his father that he doesn't believe in god. And while there are no gods in a traditional sense, the universe was previously established to contain reapers who decide the individual's eternal fate based on their memories, and keepers, at least one of which is worshiped as a goddess, all of which are rarely seen by living creatures.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In Chapter IV, Thistle and Zinnia start a gang whose main purpose is to combat oppression. However, their methods send them down a path that Thistle didn't like, which of course led to the fight with Zinnia in episode 4 of Twelve.
• Troubled Abuser: Reed from chapter II of Origins is an example of this. He is physically and emotionally abusive to his housemate, Ivy, and the cause is clearly grounded in his own psychological issues- He was abused by his own father at a young age and is still working through the trauma, he's struggling with his self-worth, and it's heavily implied he's scared of being alone. After Ivy runs away, he begins to reflect on his past mistakes, and in his last scene he decides to run off on his own.