Nuriko “Nuri”

(SOME SPOILERS AHEAD?!) Before giving my take on the entire show, let me just say about how I came to be aware of it. Me being a young kid (and I still am a young kid, no idea why I mentioned that...), I binge watched this show when it first aired in 2019. It had a span of 3 months and 19 days, so really just came to be a quickly-produced show.. but there's not much to rush since, at its core, Pup Academy is a simple and lighthearted concept. Then, skip to 2020, and I found myself binge watching it for the second time. Without any ulterior motive to write a full-blown review on it, I do remember it being much more entertaining back then than it is 4 years later. The plot's pretty campy and flat but definitely has a heartwarming tone to it. Charlie (played by actor and writer Don Lake, who starred in not just Dumb and Dumber To but also in Terminator 2... talk about a rift) is a man who, in a parallel universe, has set up a covert academy for puppies to learn how to become man's best friend. As the Canis Primus constellation begins to weaken the link between humans and dogs, his grandson Morgan (played by Christian Convery, who later starred in Sweet Tooth) moves into his neighborhood, and he enlists him to assist in educating the puppies, Spark, Corazon, and Whiz. This is related to a prophecy about a child and a stray puppy, where the Dean of Graduates, or D.O.G. for short, must locate that particular stray in order to rescue Pup Academy and mend the rift between people and dogs. Easy to digest... Pup Academy makes itself clear on the first episode that it's just a popcorn show, and who knows, maybe Disney Channel just wanted to make profit over people's nostalgia with Air Buds. But now here's the unfortunate part... it does it poorly. With not much substance and a storyline that's more often than not repetitive (I mean, was Air Buds not enough? I swear sometimes,) how can it not be forgettable? Sure, it's entertaining while it lasts, but are you seriously going to call 19 episodes of just talking dogs a proper show? The biggest question here is, couldn't they have just animated the entire thing? Even I need to agree with Mr. Ricky Walker, who seems to get terrified very easily as seen by his review on Alvinnn!!! and The Chipmunks, that maybe moving jaws that don't add up with a canine's skeletal structure isn't the best look on actual dogs. There are times where the plot does take a deeper turn, such as when we learn about King's abandonment by his late owner or D.O.G.'s frayed relationship with his brother, Wolf, but it's all overshadowed by the meandering plot and filler content. But every bad side has a catch, and I'll admit that the characters are quite distinct, each adhering to their own archetypes. All in all, however, Pup Academy does well even as a show with not much substance. CGI: 4/10. Story: 6.5/10. Cast: 8/10. Acting: 8.5/10. Climax: 5/10. Average: 6.4