Popee the Performer is a CGI anime kids series created by Ryuji Masuda, which is a comedy that also happens to have blood, dirty jokes and nightmare fuel in it. I believe even for Japanese kids show standards, this has been seen as too much by even the Japanese actually.
This show relys on expressions and action to convey its stories, which gives it a broad international appeal despite never officially being released outside of Japan. The majority of the series is episodic, in-part of how it's common for episodes to end with at least one major character dead by the end, only for them to reappear alive and well by the next. All this is a reason why many people compare this to Happy Tree Friends. The show has an unique, distinct soundtrack that will get stuck in your head (literally they play the theme song about every episode), sureal humor, borderline PS1 cutscene visuals, insane characters and more. What can you not love about this show? The characters themselves include:
Popee is a clown bunny-thing boy who's determined to be the greatest performer, at any cost. He's typically uncaring at best and angry and vicious at worst, often trying to attack Kedamono and sometimes Papi whenever he needs to take out his frustration. He is a fun character though, as his cruelity is too comical and out of reality to really find him hateable, and he's always seen as the bad guy, despite being the protagonist, which is really telling.
Kedamono is a blue wolf wearing orange boxers and a mask that constantly drops off to another expression to emote what he's feeling. Unlike Popee, he is much kinder and typically the down-to-earth character of the show... Unless it involves food that he loves so much he'd do anything for it, even literal murder, though this aspect of him only comes up around thrice in the series. He is often the victim of abuse from Popee and sometimes other characters, but he tends to get off lighter than them in the end.
Papi is Popee's father, a man wearing an outfit modelled after the sun who is the owner of the circus and somebody who's insane enough to give Popee a run for his yen. He doesn't appear until the second series, and he was indeed a welcome addition. He is a skilled performer, to the point he can take his head off like it was nothing and put it back on again and even send the moon crashing into the Earth. He is kinder than Popee but crueler than Kedamono, as he sometimes does rather questionable things, like as I said, crashing the moon down into Earth.
There are some more, like a frog, an alien and Papi's elephant with a cart for a body named Paola, but these are the main three for the majority of the series.
Check out this series if you are into weirdness of the following sort: Japanese CGI, death with inexplicable recovery, show that was somehow for kids, niche show with an equally solid niche Tumblr fanbase and more. Ryuji also went onto make two similar shows, Mr. Stain on Junk Alley, which while isn't exactly the same, has a similar style, and Funny Pets, which is honestly this show but kind of worse, but it has it's good spots.
