Cartooned!

**Cartooned!** is the fifteenth Season 2 episode of Leeko: The Beginning trilogy, and the forty-ninth episode overall.

## Summary

Inspired by Milly’s flipbook, Leo opens an animation studio in order to produce a TV program that stars himself as the main character and Leeko as the villain.

## Characters

### Primary

* Leeko
* Milly
* King Leonardo
* Tommy

### Secondary

* Beatrice
* Bubbles (*no dialogue*)
* Chef Peppermint
* Chief Gordy
* Daisy
* Dr. Medico
* Felix (*no dialogue*)
* Gamba
* Gene
* Hover
* Lady Chanter
* Madeline
* Manny
* Marvin
* Mayor Bay Brittleton
* Miss Yuubin
* Moonlight Man
* Parker
* Princess Rain (*flashback; no dialogue*)
* Professor Antico
* Sir Chanter
* Sir Pathogen
* Slammer (*no dialogue*)
* Snowdrop
* Whitehead
* Viruses (*no dialogue*)
* Various unnamed Puffy villagers

## Episode summary

The episode begins in the Castle Leonardo courtyard, where Milly is showing Leeko and the kids her flip-book, and how rapidly flipping the pages makes a sequential series of drawings look like an animated image. While spying on the proceedings, King Leonardo and Tommy get the idea to make their own animation. They pitch the idea for a cartoon series to Nebula Enterprises in order to help pay their crippling debt to the company, and after a small protest, Gene agrees to lend them a small amount of start-up capital under the condition that if the show flops or is not completed in time, that money will be owed back with interest. From there, want ads for an animation team are placed around Puffy Town, and the Puffies gather to talk about the idea, mainly out of curiosity. Soon, many of them arrive at Castle Leonardo to participate in the making of the cartoon and King Leonardo gives each of them their assignments while appointing himself as the producer and Tommy as the director. Despite these appointments, Milly is deferred to for advice on making the cartoon, as she is the only one among them with any experience in the matter.

Milly begins by arranging a production meeting to flesh out the details of what they will be working on. King Leonardo pulls out his "concept art" for a character called "Lion Man", and Milly immediately rejects it, instead suggesting they make the cartoon about Leeko. This idea is warmly approved by the others present, and seeing this, Tommy agrees to let Milly come up with the script and act as assistant director while in the meantime conspiring with Leonardo to go around her back and insert Lion Man into the story instead. That night, Milly struggles to come up with a good script, and her family helps her by sharing ideas to spice up the plot. The next day, Milly presents her completed script which reads more-or-less like the plot of Leeko Comes To Puffy Town to the animation team. King Leonardo tries to protest, but Tommy insists he keep his temper for the moment. Milly then reveals the next step of the animation process by going over the storyboards. From there, the animation team gets to work by drawing the characters, but their variable level of talent becomes apparent (particularly in Leeko's case). King Leonardo becomes appalled when he sees each artist's impression of Lion Man, and Tommy appoints Milly as the animation supervisor to help improve their sloppy work.

Later on, the team are at work trying to produce animation strips and color them in, as Milly struggles to maintain quality control. Tommy shows King Leonardo in to see the work in progress, and Leonardo becomes furious when he sees they are drawing Leeko instead of him, but Tommy once again insists he calm down and wait. Meanwhile, in the background drawing area, Chef Peppermint helps supply extra paint by bringing in ketchup and mustard. In the filming room, Madeline and Professor Antico attempt to capture each frame one-by-one, but King Leonardo and Leeko interrupt the process. As Milly and Marvin try to work through which film strip goes where, they notice the shabby work on display, and the two brush it off due to the inexperience of the team. That night, as all the animators sleep at their desks, King Leonardo and Tommy sneak in some of their own drafts and replace the drawings of Leeko in order to reclaim their cartoon. Leonardo and Tommy then report to Gene that they need more time to finish the cartoon, but Gene insists that they should have it on time, otherwise Leonardo will owe the money back regardless. Leonardo tells Milly and her team that the cartoon most be finished in two days, but she insists that it won't be ready then, and the rest of the team complain about having already worked three nights straight on it, but Leonardo orders them to keep working.

After spending further long hours on the cartoon, the animation team becomes more and more exhausted, resulting in their work dropping even further in quality. As the day of the air date approaches, King Leonardo and Tommy barge in and berate the team, accusing them of laziness. Despite this, Tommy insists they air what they have against Milly's protest, and King Leonardo announces to N.L.E that they are ready to premiere the show. The broadcast begins on Channel Lion Out Loud as Puffies who did not participate tune in. The main cast of voice actors prepare in the studio for their lines to come up, and Moonlight Man takes part in this with them. As the film starts, a Leonardo-ified version of the opening theme plays, and Milly realizes her plans have been sabotaged. After a short commercial break and scrambling by the staff to get the right film reels in place, the show proceeds through crudely-drawn versions of scene from the episode "Leeko Comes To Puffy Town", but with Leonardo replacing Leeko in all of his scenes. Later, it is shown that Leeko has been playing the role of Octogiant, having been made much larger in the cartoon for this purpose. For the sake of completing the project, Milly and the others continue to provide voice support, but at the same time openly criticize Leonardo's alterations while on set.

As the cartoon proceeds to the fight sequence, it suddenly stops to allow King Leonardo and Tommy to exchange flattering banter at each other as the drawing quality drops dramatically. The cast comments on the lack of creativity of the new script, as well as the inadequacy of King Leonardo and Tommy's substituted drawings and animation techniques. As the cartoon reaches the point where King Leonardo gains the Fire Copy Ability from Leeko's fire breath, the cartoon's incompleteness starts to show, as scenes without coloring or backgrounds appear. Towards the end, Tommy reveals they did not finish the script either, and King Leonardo is left to bemoan his financial fate as Leeko's own doodles show up at the end of the cartoon and the film strip burns up. After the premiere, Gene informs King Leonardo that since the show was not of "professional quality", he now owes N.L.E the money. To get out of this payment, King Leonardo and Tommy insist they will do twenty more episodes for free, and Gene accepts this. Later on, after reflecting on the whole experience, the people of Puffy Town watch as King Leonardo and Tommy try desperately to produce their cartoons by themselves. The episode ends as the town laughs at Leonardo's misfortune broadcast on Channel Lion Out Loud, and as the end wipe focuses on Leeko, he briefly loses his coloring and has to be re-painted in a fourth wall-breaking gag.

## Trivia

* Although Leeko didn't physically use the Fire Copy Ability, it is seen as a drawing and referenced in the cartoon when King Leonardo takes on the role as Leeko and mimics his vacuum-mouth ability and dubs himself "Fire Leonardo" when getting the ability.
	+ This would make it the ninth episode in *The Beginning* series to feature the Fire ability.
* This episode is likely based off of the scrapped idea of the series being an animated show before it went with CGI instead.
* The scrapped theme song was also used, which is used in Leonardo's cartoon.
* This is the sixth episode to have a one-word title; first being Blockbusters, second being Pillowed!, third being Snowed!, fourth being Trashed!, and fifth being Monsweeper.
* Leonardo’s show is based off of the first episode of the series Leeko Comes To Puffy Town.
	+ As hinted, Milly’s script is actually the same script for the first episode.
* There are two instances in this episode where a character breaks the fourth wall:
	+ When Moonlight Man says: “Look, it’s Fire Leonardo, our hero!”, he looks at the audience, shakes his head and explains that he “would never say that”.
	+ At the end of the episode, Leeko’s colors disappear, leaving him just as a line sketch. After turning to the audience, a giant paintbrush appears from off-screen and paints him back on, to which he reacts positively.
* Cartoon counterparts:
	+ Leonardo = Leeko
	+ Leeko = Leonardo/Octogiant
	+ Puffy Town residents = Themselves
	+ Chef Peppermint = Mr. Mage
	+ Tommy = Milly and Manny, as he told Leonardo to inhale Leeko’s fire and called for the Shooting Star.
* This is the only episode, at least in *The Beginning* trilogy, where Leonardo actually uses Leeko’s vacuum-mouth ability, although he does it in the cartoon.
* This is one the few episodes where Leeko draws.
* It is shown that Leonardo knows that Mr. Mage hides the Shooting Star, as a scene in Leonardo: Comin’ at Ya! (cheaply) mirrors it. This caused a plot hole, as in a later episode (the two-part Air Ridin’!), Leonardo doesn’t know where the Shooting Star is.
* During the entire process of creating Leonardo’s cartoon, there was no one shown to be working on sound production, nor creating music. It can be assumed that the Viruses took care of the job though.
* Even though Leonardo can’t read, he is able to read the script. It’s likely possible that he had learned to read before the events of this episode.