The Underwater Tyrant: A Grumpy Fish Ruins Everyone's Day

Should you watch The Underwater Tyrant? If you like your animation short, strange, and mostly focused on two animals having a bad time in the snow, then absolutely. If you need high-stakes drama or clear-cut heroes, you'll probably spend the whole runtime wondering why a monkey and a tanuki are out on a frozen lake in the first place. ❄️

The pacing is honestly all over the place. It starts with this cozy, quiet atmosphere that makes you feel the chill of the ice right through your screen. Then, suddenly, it shifts into this frantic slapstick mess that caught me totally off guard. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in A Slip at the Switch, though with way more scales and shivering.

The Fish Is the Real Star

The catfish isn't just a fish. He’s a jerk. The way he just stares them down from under the ice is legitimately unsettling for something that’s supposed to be a lighthearted cartoon. 🐟

I noticed the background textures on the ice look surprisingly crisp, but then the characters occasionally just slide around like they forgot how to walk. It’s charming in that slightly broken way old shorts often are. You can tell they were trying to do a lot with not much.

• The monkey’s hat is comically large.
• The tanuki looks stressed, which is honestly a mood.
• The sound design for the ice cracking is way louder than it has any right to be.

There is this one moment where the line goes taut and the monkey just stands there, bug-eyed, for an eternity. It lingers for so long I started to wonder if my internet cut out or if the movie was just daring me to look away. It’s weirdly hypnotic.

If you’ve seen Alimony, you know how hard it is to make a simple situation feel genuinely tense. This short manages to do that with nothing but a fishing pole and a very pissed-off underwater creature. It isn't a masterpiece, but it’s definitely something you won't forget the next time you see a frozen pond.

Just don't go into this expecting a moral lesson. Sometimes you catch a fish, and sometimes the fish decides that your day is over. Simple as that.