Harbour City Furcon, based out of Sydney, Australia is a healthy yet small furry gathering of 300 people. However, despite the smaller size, over the weekend of its operation it created quite a media stir. One article by the Daily Mail’s Holly Hales shows a quite embarrassing blunder in its haste to attract an audience utilizing a hyper-sexualized headline. In the midst of orgy allegations, they destroyed any credibility of expertise on the matter being discussed by stating that the Sydney furry convention was the largest gathering of the fandom down under.

Innocent cosplayers who love dressing up as animals or deviant sex cult? 'Furries' in colourful costumes defend their pastime while gathering at Harbour City Fur Con

• Furry fanatics have descended on Sydney as part of the fan culture's largest annual gathering down under
• The Harbour City Fur Con convention sees people splash thousands on cartoon-inspired animal suits
• However, the fandom has often drawn criticism for its sexual component which includes allegations of orgies

[Warning, link goes to source for documentation/evidence purposes, do not click if you do not wish to support this behavior via viewership.]

Do you read German? I don’t.

I have been occasionally checking to see whether any more of the German murder mysteries featuring animal private detectives have been translated into English. Sadly, all we’ve gotten is three of Akif Pirinçci’s eight hard-boiled cat murder mysteries (Felidae and two of its sequels featuring Francis – you’ve probably seen the German “Felidae” animated feature), and the first of Leonie Swann’s Agatha Christie-like sheep murder mysteries (“Three Bags Full” featuring Miss Maple, the cleverest sheep in Glenkill, maybe in all Ireland, maybe in the world). There have not been any translations of the murder mysteries investigated by dog detectives, pig detectives, goose detectives, parrot detectives, and more. Now it looks like the series by Moritz Matthies starring Ray and Rufus, the meerkat detectives from the Berlin Zoo, has reached its final volume with “Letzte Runde” (“Last Round”) from Fischer Verlag (March 2017, 304 pages).

So, okay, there's a dozen or so iconic movies out there that furries like to claim as our own, whose characters are held up as examples of what an anthropomorphic animal is, and why we like them so much. But it's not often we get a movie with a premise that seems birthed from something on SoFurry. Zootopia is a film in which all mammals (excluding primates) have evolved. Kinda. They still look the same, including some species having eyes on either side of their head, or being friggin' tiny, but they can walk on two legs, and as children helpfully explain, don't eat each other anymore, and that's what's important.

Spoiler warning: This review does dwell a bit more into later plot developments than previous reviews.

This is the third review of Zootopia on Flayrah; please check out reviews by crossaffliction and Mister Twister! We invite all of our regular contributors (and maybe a few first timers) to share their opinions on this movie during the following month!

An Ode to Saturday Mornings Past, by JessKat

I'm not quite sure how to explain this… especially to younger viewers who grew up in the 500-channel universe of cable television and satellite services and Netflix streaming… but for those of us old enough (or geeky enough) to watch cartoons over-the-air with a rabbit-ears antenna, Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons after school were the only times when animation fans could watch their favourite shows… especially where cable channels such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, YTV or Toon Disney weren't available.
 
September 28, 2014 was the day the animation died - ending a long and painful decline on broadcast television in the United States, with The CW (the newest broadcast network) being the final holdout… the last man standing, as it were.  This was the final Saturday morning with cartoons in America.
 
From here on out, animation fans in the United States will have to follow the path their Canadian counterparts took in 2001 to get their animation fix: a cable television or satellite subscription. If there is any consolation, it is that the ecosystem of Saturday morning cartoons seems healthier in Australia and Mexico.
 
To understand how we got to this point, we'll need to review the chain of events leading to the demise of animation on over-the-air television.