By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

The last few weeks have been a bit rough. We ended up taking an unexpected hiatus—because of me—mainly because I didn’t have anything prepared for the first time in a long while, didn’t have time to edit other submissions to fill the gap, and was juggling midterms for almost all but two of the eight classes I’m teaching this semester. So… yeah—sorry, y’all.

After catching up on a lot of sleep over the break, which happened to coincide with midterms this semester, the hiatus is (hopefully) over! To kick things back off, I’d love to recommend one of the best animated short series that carried me through my recovery last week.

If you enjoy offbeat humor, slightly unhinged characters, and animation created by a hamster (watch the Q&A; it’ll make sense), let me introduce you to Animal Partner by JJALTOON. It’s absolutely worth your time and is a charming series of short episodes that build on one another in really satisfying ways.

Animal Partner is an indie animated series from South Korea, released on YouTube. The premise centers around animal-people living alongside human “partners,” whose personalities often lean into familiar tropes found in romantic comedies, young adult shows/behaviors, and animal-stereotyping. What makes the series stand out, though, isn’t just its character’s designs as the studio’s more cutesy, anime-inspired work, but it’s romantic, slice-of-life storytelling.

I actually discovered the series through the Fox Husband (part 1) / Fox Dad (part 2) storyline a few years ago. The fox dad quickly became a favorite of mine, and when I originally watched it back then, the series was still new with only a handful of episodes available.

Recently, I stumbled across it again on YouTube and ended up watching the entire series in between sleeping, laundry, and other lifestyle recovery. (While I’ve come to appreciate all the different characters, fox dad is still my favorite!)

While Fox Husband was my entry point, Animal Partner has much more going on. It builds a shared world of interconnected human-animal relationships, with storylines that occasionally overlap. The episodes are short and easy to binge, but there’s an evolving continuity that rewards returning viewers. For example, one of the Dolphin episodes ends with a dramatic moment involving fox daughter, her ex, and her current partner crossing paths—no spoilers, but it’s worth watching.

Like many of the pairings, the stories often start with setups that feel very typical of K-dramas. However, then the humor deepens into something more sincere, and before you know it, you’re genuinely invested!

Now that short-form content is more widely embraced, and with so many more episodes available, it feels like the perfect time to recommend this romcom series.

Part of what makes Animal Partner so interesting to me too is that I feel it deserves more attention. JJALTOON has grown to over 3 million subscribers since I first saw the beginnings of this series, and continues to expand, including launching an English-focused channel with some dubbing and improved subtitles. It’s always exciting to discover smaller studios carving out space online and watch them grow.

Produced primarily for YouTube, the series shows how creators outside traditional studio systems can build large international audiences through strong characters and distinctive humor, much like other now-mainstream creators who started small.

All that to say: I highly recommend checking out Animal Partner and other works from JJALTOONs on YouTube. It’s one of my favorites, and there’s so much to enjoy!

To watch the full series, please click here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn8dko-2oD0-nSHMqWCiUX8-QU0ANHBHO&si=-i_VJbIzeHjckpZt

For short extras of Animal Partner, please click here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn8dko-2oD09Jwuczy7CKBg5Yors1lSpg&si=InpKhr-IwQJrYLrB

For the Q&A mentioned about, please click here: https://youtu.be/i4wnaymzH0o?si=waoodWHLgQlGx5Ni

Finally, to view the JJALTOON YouTube channel, please click here: https://www.youtube.com/@jjaltoon

Thank you for reading!