Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank(2022)

SHORT VERSION:
In a desperate attempt to get rid of Kakamucho once and for all, Ika Chu recruits a large army of vicious villains from around the world to lay waste to the town and its citizens in a single attack. When the citizens find out about his plan, they decide to give up and move away, but Hank encourages them to stay and fight by telling them that the best thing that ever happened to him was this town and that he is willing to lay down his life for them, plus they need to move away from judging each other on labels like “dog” and “cat” and become better people.

When the evil army – led by Ika Chu’s top henchman, Ohga – storms into Kakamucho, they quickly find out that the villagers had prepared for them when the town and its people turn out to be origami decoys. Soon after, Hank fires a flaming arrow from afar at one of several piles of explosives hidden around the town, which triggers a chain of explosions that destroys the fake town and knocks the entire evil army senseless. Hank and the rest of the townspeople then charge down from a nearby hill and do battle with the army, but the battle is soon brought to a halt when the Shogun suddenly shows up with his army to make his visit. Ika Chu appears soon after, and after telling the Shogun that all of this fighting is Hank’s fault, he immediately tries to have Ohga execute Hank. Thankfully, Jimbo appears and rescues Hank just in time, and he tells the Shogun that Hank was defending Kakamucho from Ika Chu because Ika Chu was trying to get rid of it. Confused, the Shogun asks for someone to explain all of this to him, so Ohga – without thinking – steps forward and tells the Shogun that Ika Chu has been trying to get rid of Hank because he was getting in the way of his plan to frighten the cats of Kakamucho away and then wipe out their town in order to make his palace absolutely perfect. Accepting that he has been caught, Ika Chu retreats back to his palace, and Hank and Jimbo follow after him.

Hank engages Ika Chu in a swordfight around the rim of the latter’s giant jade toilet, and this eventually leads to Ika Chu accidentally pulling the flush chain and then falling into the toilet. Ohga appears and jumps in to try to save him from going down the drain, and though he succeeds, he ends up plugging the drain hole with his girth. Seconds later, the plumbing backs up, causing copious amounts of water to start exploding out of the toilet, and the water flows through the palace until it bursts right out of it. When Hank and Jimbo notice that the water is heading down the mountain towards Kakamucho, they quickly return there using arrows with ropes tied to them and instruct all of its citizens to dig a trench around the town to divert the water. Through their combined efforts, Kakamucho is spared from a flood.

After the madness has died down, the Shogun tells the citizens of Kakamucho that they need a new town samurai, and he selects Jimbo to fill the position. Jimbo refuses, telling the Shogun that Kakamucho already has a samurai in Hank, and after he hears the townsfolk vouch for Hank, the Shogun decides to let him stay on as town samurai and gives him a new katana. However, Hank politely declines, saying that he has not yet finished his training with Jimbo, and he tells the Shogun that the position should really go to the headstrong kitten, Emiko, since she already possesses great skills and has always defended the town in times of need. With the Shogun’s approval, Emiko graciously accepts her new job and takes the katana. As the townsfolk walk off with the Shogun and Emiko to celebrate their victory over Ika Chu and his forces, Hank and Jimbo stay back and have another training session together.

After the credits, we see that Ika Chu is now a prisoner in his own palace dungeon. Though he is unhappy about what has become of him, he is grateful that he doesn’t have to do the sequel.

LONG VERSION:
In an attempt to get the cats of Kakamucho to leave their village so that he can demolish it before the Shogun visits his palace in three days, Ika Chu calls for the services of Sumo, an incredibly strong and huge sumo wrestling cat, and orders him to terrify the townsfolk (hoping that he will kill Hank and cause the cats to become so scared that they will readily abandon their village). After Sumo shows up in town and starts to tear up the local bar, the headstrong kitten Emiko goes to Hank’s house and alerts him to the situation. However, after she tells Hank that he has to do something about this, Jimbo refuses to let him take action, considering him to be far from ready to handle someone like Sumo. Jimbo also refuses to take care of the problem himself, claiming that it is not his fight. Frustrated, Emiko decides to face Sumo herself and goes with her three smaller friends to confront him.

Emiko doesn’t do badly against Sumo, but when Sumo throws a shield at her, Hank appears and tackles her out of its trajectory. She doesn’t appreciate his interference and tells him that she can take Sumo, but Hank explains that it is HIS job to deal with this guy before handing her over to her mother. Moments later, Sumo whacks Hank into a gong, and when the gong falls down, it breaks a table and launches a bowl of edamame beans at Sumo, one of which sticks to his right cheek. His cheek swells up immediately, and after Hank points out that he has a bean on his face, Sumo quickly gets it off of him and then dunks his face in a bucket of water, then tells Hank that he is very allergic to edamame beans. He then hits Hank with another big slap that sends him into a newspaper being held by Jimbo, who showed up to witness the confrontation and offer his support. As Sumo continues to dominate the fight, Jimbo informs Hank that Sumo has already told him what his weakness is, so he needs to take advantage of it and beat strength with smart. Unfortunately, Hank fails to understand that Jimbo is referring to Sumo’s allergy, so Jimbo decides to get involved in the proceedings and uses his katana to fling another edamame bean right into Sumo’s open mouth without Hank noticing. Sumo starts to gag, giving Hank a chance to start attacking him, and he keeps it up until Sumo falls face-first to the floor unconscious. Thinking that he took down Sumo without any help, Hank becomes very pleased with himself about his “victory,” and then he and Jimbo arrange for Sumo to be treated by the town doctor. Later on, Hank pays Sumo a visit at the doctor’s residence and tells him that he has decided that he has learned his lesson and is thus free to go, but Sumo tells him that no one has ever beaten him before or even been nice to him before, so now he wants to live here in Kakamucho with him. Meanwhile, Ika Chu finds out about Sumo’s defeat from his top henchman, Ohga, and after Ohga adds that his ninja are now too afraid to face Hank, Ika Chu decides to take care of Hank himself.

Hank quickly lets his “victory” go to his head, and when he begins to neglect his training with Jimbo, Jimbo confronts him about it. He sternly tells Hank that, despite this little bit of success, he is still not a samurai, so what he should be doing now is training harder than he was before. He then sends Hank off to their training ground for another session, but before Hank can start, Ika Chu pulls up in front of him in his limousine-style litter and tells him that, to celebrate his “win” over Sumo, they are going to the most exclusive club in the country tonight to party the night away. Hank initially tells him that he can’t go because he had promised his teacher that he would stay focused on his training, but Ika Chu easily persuades him to come and party with him instead. That night, when Hank tells Jimbo that he is going out partying with Ika Chu, Jimbo is firmly against it, pointing out to Hank that, by foregoing his training for this, he is violating his samurai oath and therefore their teacher/student contract. However, Hank doesn’t care because he wants to have some fun, and he accuses Jimbo of being an unhappy person who just wants everyone else to be as unhappy as he is. After Hank departs, Jimbo starts drinking catnip again, and he angrily throws his katana into the framed copy of his and Hank’s contract, tearing it in two.

Hank and Ika Chu go to the club, and Hank parties all night long and is treated like a celebrity there, with many of the staff and patrons coming up to him to ask for an autograph from or a picture with “the Hero of Kakamucho.” However, it turns out that Ika Chu had secretly paid off the staff and patrons to treat Hank like a superstar, and what’s worse, this night of partying was just meant to keep Hank away from Kakamucho so Ohga and his ninja army could attack the town and its citizens unopposed. By the time the attack is over, most of the town has been set ablaze and the citizens have been badly beaten up, and Sumo ends up getting overwhelmed, captured, taken back to Ika Chu’s palace, and thrown in the dungeon. Jimbo is unable to help at any point during this, having gotten himself too intoxicated on catnip to do anything.

Hank returns to Kakamucho the next morning and sees the ruin that it has become. Hank then goes to check on Jimbo, who informs him that the ninjas attacked the town last night while he was out partying with Ika Chu and that Sumo has been taken to the palace dungeon. He tells Hank that he has failed his samurai oath for the last time and is now going to the palace to get Sumo back, and Hank replies that he will go with him because they are both samurai. However, Jimbo yells to Hank that he is not a samurai; last night, he was a selfish idiot, and today, he is nothing. Hank accuses him of not wanting to admit that he defeated Sumo, but Jimbo informs him that edamame was responsible for that victory. After telling Hank that he has failed to teach and Hank has failed to learn, he heads to the palace on horseback alone. Then, when Hank gets chewed out by Chuck and Ichiro for not being there for them and the other townsfolk, Hank decides to give up on everything and return home. Shortly afterwards, Emiko speaks to him privately, and disappointed with him for quitting, she tells him to just go home before adding that maybe her mother was right when she told her that dogs cannot be samurai. The dejected Hank heads back to the seaside town where the nightclub is located in order to catch the first boat back to his homeland, but just as he reaches the outskirts of the town, he decides to take a seat on a rock for a few moments. When he puts down his duffel bag, the origami figure of him that Emiko had made for him falls out onto the ground, and when he picks it up and looks at it, he remembers when Emiko told him that this figure will always remind him of who he is.

Jimbo is then shown standing in one of the higher sections of Ika Chu’s palace and scoping out the grounds below, trying to figure out a way to get past the guards and into the dungeon. However, he suddenly hears somebody approaching him from behind, and thinking that it is an enemy, he surprises the person by grabbing them first. However, he discovers that the person he grabbed is Hank, and Hank explains to him that he came back here both because of his natural sense of loyalty as a dog and because he wants to make things right. Jimbo is not interested in having him around and tells him that he might as well turn around and go back where he came from, but Hank refuses, telling Jimbo that Sumo is in that dungeon and that he is not leaving until they get him out. Just then, the duo are surrounded by a bunch of guards, but after Jimbo gives Hank a katana, the two of them quickly subdue their enemies. They then sneak inside the prison, and through using his sense of smell, Hank quickly locates the cell that Sumo is being held in. After Jimbo uses his katana to cut a hole in the door big enough for Hank to fit through, Hank goes in and tells Sumo that they are here to free him, but the downhearted Sumo is not interested in being saved, considering himself just “a prawn in the ocean of life.” However, after Hank tells him that he and Jimbo have to save him because they are his friends, Sumo – delighted that he has friends – easily breaks free of his bindings and gives Hank and Jimbo a big hug. After the trio get out of the prison and into the courtyard, Hank alerts all the guards to their presence when he accidentally wakes a sleeping guard by stepping on his tail, and the entire palace guard soon position themselves between the trio and the main doors. Thankfully, Sumo easily clears a path right out past the main doors using his strength and bulk, and when a guard tries to lower a heavy metal gate down to the ground to prevent Hank and Jimbo from joining him outside, Sumo catches it. Hank slides under the gate to freedom, but rather than following after him, Jimbo opts to bring the gate down the rest of the way before drawing his katana and turning around to face the guards. He tells Hank and Sumo that they must get back to Kakamucho and not worry about him, but Hank is against this, thinking that Jimbo will surely die taking on so many foes, plus they have some issues that have not been resolved yet. However, Jimbo fearlessly charges at the guards, and Sumo grabs Hank and flees. Ohga reports Sumo’s escape to Ika Chu, but Ika Chu tells him that he already has a much bigger plan progressing nicely that has even more deadly consequences.

When Hank and Sumo return to Kakamucho, they find its residents preparing to leave the town for good. When Hank asks what is going on, Chuck shows him a recruitment poster that Ika Chu has put up everywhere asking for vicious killers for the destruction of Kakamucho. Hank points out that this is just the last act of a desperate cat, but Ichiro informs him that he and everyone else have already decided that they need to leave this place before that terrible army gets here. Hank proceeds to gather Sumo and all of the townsfolk together in the center of Kakamucho in order to have a talk with all of them, and after first informing them about how Jimbo (supposedly) died in a heroic effort to protect this town, he tells them that the best thing that ever happened to him in his life was this town. They had faith in him and trusted him, and he wants to earn their trust back so badly that he is willing to lay down his life for them. He then adds that, if they are all going to save this town, they have to find a way beyond judging each other strictly on labels like “dog” and “cat”, and together, they can get past all of that and become better people. The cats initially don’t understand the meaning of his speech, but then Sumo clears up any misunderstandings by telling the others that Hank is using a metaphor that states that they are all the same, and though we look different on the outside, we can choose for ourselves what our “insides” look like. When asked by Chuck what they will do now, Hank tells everyone that they need to destroy the enemy’s lines of communication (which Chuck quickly takes care of), and then he points to Emiko while holding out his origami figure and says that someone taught him that we can make anything out of folded paper. Meanwhile, at the aforementioned seaside town, there is a major turnout of criminals from all around the world answering Ika Chu’s poster, and Ika Chu has them all brought to his palace so they can prepare for the final attack on Kakamucho. At the crack of dawn the next day, Ika Chu orders for the attack to commence, and with Ohga commanding the troops, the army heads for Kakamucho.

The army storms into the town, but they soon discover that the entire town and all of its citizens are nothing but perfectly-crafted origami decoys. Shortly after they find this out, Hank fires a flaming arrow from afar at one of several piles of explosives hidden around the town, triggering a chain reaction of explosions that annihilate the fake town and knock the entire evil army senseless. Hank, Sumo, and the villagers then charge down from a nearby hill and engage the army in combat, and as the two sides do battle, the Shogun appears from another hillside with his own soldiers to make his visit. This brings a halt to the action, and Ika Chu soon shows up (having watched the events unfold from a spot high up on the nearest mountainside) and tells the Shogun that all of this fighting is Hank’s fault. The Shogun orders his arrest, and after two of his soldiers seize Hank, Ika Chu orders Ohga to finish him. Fortunately, before Ohga can nail Hank with an axe, Jimbo suddenly appears, blocks the shot, and disarms Ohga.

The Shogun approaches Jimbo and expresses surprise in seeing him, and Jimbo recognizes the Shogun as Toshiro Tyfune, the government official he used to be chief bodyguard for years ago until he quit his job out of shame for breaking his samurai oath when he mistook a surprise birthday party for Toshiro for an ambush and beat up all of the partygoers. He apologizes to the Shogun for ruining his birthday, but the Shogun informs him that that was the best birthday party he ever had because Jimbo gave him a real surprise, as he finds most standard surprise parties to be boring, and he likes to tell others about the incident all the time. He then puts Jimbo’s guilty conscience to rest by telling him that he is his friend and that all is forgiven and forgotten. The Shogun then asks what Hank is doing here, and Jimbo replies that Hank was defending Kakamucho from Ika Chu because Ika Chu was trying to get rid of it. Ika Chu denies this and claims that he was only trying to get rid of Hank, but Jimbo counters by telling the Shogun that Hank is not what he thinks he is. Confused, the Shogun asks for someone else to explain all of this to him, so Ohga – without thinking – steps forward and tells him that Ika Chu has been trying to get rid of Hank because he was getting in the way of his plan to frighten the cats of Kakamucho away and then wipe out their town in order to make his palace absolutely perfect (the Shogun was supposed to make the palace his new home, and Ika Chu thought that, by making the place look as beautiful as possible, the Shogun would be so impressed with him that he would name him his successor). When the Shogun asks for Ika Chu to explain himself, Ika Chu responds by fleeing back to the palace, prompting Hank and Jimbo to give chase.

Hank ends up chasing Ika Chu right up onto the rim of the latter’s giant jade toilet, the Super Bowl, where the two of them have a swordfight. Eventually, thanks to a distraction from Ika Chu, Hank finds himself without his katana and hanging on to the rim of the Super Bowl, and Ika Chu gloats about how he was able to distract him before telling him that he is not going to be outwitted by a stupid dog who is not even a real samurai. Hank counters that he IS a real samurai because he has a cup that says so, after which he takes out his mug with “samurai” scratched into it (which Ika Chu had given him as a meaningless token when he first appointed him as Kakamucho’s samurai) and throws it at Ika Chu’s head. This dazes Ika Chu and causes his feet to become unsteady, and when he grabs the toilet’s flush chain to try to regain his composure, he pulls it down hard enough to get the toilet to start flushing and subsequently falls into the swirling water. As Hank gets back up on the rim, Ohga appears and jumps into the toilet to try to save Ika Chu from going down the drain, and though he succeeds, his girth completely plugs up the drain hole. Seconds later, the plumbing backs up, causing copious amounts of water to start exploding out of the toilet, and the water flows through the palace until it bursts right out of it. Hank and Jimbo notice that all of the water is heading straight down the mountain towards Kakamucho, and knowing that the entire town will be flooded, they quickly return there using arrows with ropes tied to them. After pointing out the approaching flood to the townsfolk, Hank ultimately instructs them to start digging a trench around the left side of the town so the water will flow into that and get diverted in behind the town. The citizens and the Shogun’s army do just that, but unfortunately, Emiko’s three friends are unable to get out of the trench in time and get swept away by the water. Hank and all of the cats chase after them, and when Emiko herself tries to save her friends by grabbing them and pulling them out of the water as they pass by her, the force of the water pulls her in, too. Hank and the cats then jump in and swim after them, and they all end up grabbing hold of each other to form a chain, with Sumo on shore acting as the anchor by holding onto a tree. After Emiko and her friends are pulled underwater, Emiko grabs hold of a tree root sticking up from the bottom of the trench to anchor herself, then she and her friends grab hold of each other to form a chain themselves. Just as Hank starts to reach for them, Sumo starts to lose his grip on the tree due to the strain of holding all of the cats plus the force of the water current, but thankfully, Ohga appears and grabs hold of him, officially turning against Ika Chu. Hank then gets a hold of Emiko and her friends, and Sumo and Ohga pull everybody back up onto the shore.

Once the madness has died down, the Shogun tells everyone that he must now appoint a new samurai for Kakamucho, and he selects Jimbo to fill the position. Jimbo tells him that Kakamucho already has a samurai and gestures to Hank, but the Shogun tells him that Hank can’t be a samurai here because no dogs are allowed in their land. However, Jimbo, Emiko, and the townsfolk come to Hank’s defense, telling the Shogun that they see Hank not as a dog, but as a samurai, and a great one at that. Accepting their decision, the Shogun allows Hank to keep his post as the town samurai, and he hands him a new katana. Surprisingly, Hank politely refuses the honor, telling the Shogun and everyone else present that he still has a contract with his teacher that says that he hasn’t yet finished his training. He then declares that Emiko is much more deserving of this honor, and as he turns over his new katana to her, he tells her that she is a true samurai. The Shogun is surprised by Hank’s choice, but Jimbo backs up Hank by pointing out to the Shogun that Emiko has always defended this town. Emiko graciously accepts her new position, and as she goes for a ride with the Shogun on his horse, she tells him that she plans on becoming the Shogun someday. The townsfolk follow behind the two of them and start to celebrate their victory over Ika Chu and his forces, and Emiko’s friends follow after them after they take some red spray paint and cover up the “no” on the entrance gate’s “No Dogs Allowed” sign. Hank and Jimbo stay back and have another training session together.

After the credits, we see that Ika Chu is now a prisoner in his own palace dungeon. Though he is unhappy about what has become of him, he is grateful that he doesn’t have to do the sequel.