Reviews Webcomic / Lackadaisy

Pilot cartoon: The Cat's Pyjamas!

I come to Lackadaisy in complete ignorance. I've never seen the webcomic (held in high regard by tropers), but I happened across a pilot episode for a prospective cartoon based on the series. And what a cartoon! A 20 minute odd, fully and professionally animated feature that looks like it could have come out of a mainstream studio.

Lackadaisy tells the story of feuding Prohibition era gangs, as represented by anthropomorphised cat people. I am tempted to compare it to the similarly aspirational web cartoon pilot for Hazbin Hotel. Of the two, Lackadaisy better appreciates its audience doesn't consist primarily of devoted fans who have digesting every last bit of fan art out of the project, and as such is a much more accessible bit of viewing. I can easily understand the relationships in Lackadaisy, what the problems are, where the story is going and why I should care.

The reason I compared it to Hazbin Hotel is that it also runs into a similar problems with its characters. In Hazbin Hotel, death seems cheap and easily avoidable, with everyone being too cocksure and quick to resort to comedy violence, undermining the stakes established within its demon world. Meanwhile, in Lackadaisy, three separate characters within the space of the pilot all go bug nuts insane during a firefight, and each have their moment of cackling and shooting and bombing like they haven't a care in the world. You get diminishing returns when too many of your characters act in the exact same manic and reckless manner. Is everyone going to act like this at some point?

The dialogue veers between an appropriate and fun pastiché of the Noir wise-guy speak, and being plain annoying. We get an opening monologue from a violin playing cat who waxes lyrical about the Mississippi, and it quickly becomes apparent he's never going to give us a break from the smug, wacky running commentary. I'd enjoy the cartoon more if his he just wasn't there. Everyone else is much more engaging!

This review so far reads pretty negatively, but to be clear, this wasn't a bad experience, and at 20 minutes long it's hardly a major time investment. I liked a lot of what Lackadaisy offers, I like the gangsters, the jazz, and the action sequences. I like even more what it promises. The greatest strength of the cartoon is making me want to go and read the comic. It introduces a World and a lore and a group of people I do want to know more about, and I would like to see a full syndicated series out of it.