Due to its length, the short film will have all spoilers unmarked in its folder.
"Say Hi to Pencil!" ("Xin Chào Bút Chì!") is a 2011 Vietnamese short film that was later adapted into a television show.
The original short was produced by the company SleepingCatFilm and is about the pens Blue, Yellow, and Red living in peace and harmony within a girl's bedroom until she brings along a pencil, who gets used more often than them and leads them to jealousy over how much attention he's getting.
The TV show - also titled Say Hi to Pencil! - premiered in 2012, has the company Hi Pencil Studio as its main producer, and airs on HTV7. It's about Pencil and his pen friends going about their daily lives. Certain versions of the show are hosted by a pair of human girls (who are also claymation), Ping and Pa, who talk about the situations they've run into in their life that usually foreshadow the premise of the episode. After the episode ends, the pair tells how the story can be compared to the behavior of an animal of sorts.
In addition to the claymation series, Say Hi to Pencil! has 2D animated episodes, designated Hoạt Hình Xin Chào Bút Chì ("Say Hi to Pencil Cartoon").
An English version of the short film can be found here
. Hi Pencil Studio has uploaded the 2012 series and Hoạt Hình Xin Chào Bút Chì to YouTube for free viewing in both Vietnamese and English (at least where the 2012 series is concerned). The original Vietnamese-dubbed episodes of the 2012 series have English subtitles.
Say Hi to Pencil! provides examples of:
- Animate Inanimate Object: Sentient pencils and pens, specifically.
- Chromatic Arrangement: The pens are each themed after one of the three primary colors - red, blue, and yellow - and named after their respective colors.
- Colorful Theme Naming: Doesn't get any more blatant than the characters literally being named Red, Blue, and Yellow.
- A Dog Named "Dog": The pencil is named Pencil.
- Non-Mammalian Hair: The pens have full heads of hair.
- Super-Deformed: The Hoạt Hình Xin Chào Bút Chì versions of the characters, who are also seen on uploads of the claymation show, are in a simplified 2D art style with shorter bodies and sparkly eyes, anime style.
- Blanket Tug O' War: The pens are at one point seen sharing a blanket, with each pen pulling the blanket to themselves before having it pulled from them by another pen.
- Fantastic Racism: The pens don't get along well with Pencil not only because the Master uses him more than the pens, but simply because they believe pencils can't live with pens.
- Group Picture Ending: The short ends with Pencil, Blue, Yellow, and Red all taking a picture with each other.
- No Name Given: The girl who uses the pens and pencil is only ever referred to as "the Master", with her actual name never being stated.
- Speaking Simlish: The pencil and pens speak in incoherent gibberish rather than any comprehensible words, with subtitles accompanying them so that we can understand what they're saying. They speak normally in the shows that follow the short film.
- All Just a Dream: "The Giant Red" primarily takes place inside Red's dream, ending with him waking up and realizing his mistake.
- Art Shift: The art shifts from claymation to 2D imagery when Ping and/or Pa tells a short story about how a randomly-chosen animal's behavior can be compared to the lesson of the day.
- Big Ball of Violence: In "Radish Picking", Red accidentally gets dirt all over Blue when he tries to dig the giant radish out of the ground. Blue throws some of this dirt back at him, prompting the two to attack each other. The outburst of violence produces a cloud of smoke that obscures the characters from sight.
- Big Budget Beef-Up: The TV show has much slicker animation than the short film that spawned it.
- Birthday Episode: One episode has Yellow help Red bake a cake for Pink's birthday. The episode is cleverly titled "Pink's Birthday" and everything.
- Blind Without 'Em:
- Pa needs to wear glasses to see clearly.
- Blue ends up needing to wear glasses in the episode "Blue Cannot See Clearly", and can't see clearly without them as the title implies.
- Bookends: The Ping and Pa segments appear at both the beginning and the end of any episodes they appear in.
- Burning with Anger: In "Angry Red", Red bursts into purple flames during his anger scene. A god of destruction had given him the power of anger earlier on in the episode, hence their being purple flames.
- Fishing Episode: "Fishing Day", which features Pencil attempting to catch one particular fish in the ocean but constantly being outsmarted by it.
- Flowers of Romance: A variant. In "The Giant Red", Red gives his giant girlfriend a tree as a gift, in place of a flower.
- Hypno Pendulum: Pencil buys one in "Hypnotism", which has him fall under the spell of his own hypno-stone (or at least, it looks like a stone based on color) when Red inquires what it is. This causes Pencil to be used by the pens for their own personal gain.
- Never Trust a Title: The episode "Sueing Mr. God" does not have Pencil actually suing God or otherwise getting angry at him for not stopping it from raining so that his plant can grow.
- Recycled Title: The show is titled Say Hi to Pencil! like the short film is.
- Technicolor Fire: In "Angry Red", a god of anger gives Red the power of anger. Red's resulting Burning with Anger creates purple flames rather than the more traditional red/orange.
- Token Human: Ping and Pa are the only human characters in the show.
- Tooth Fairy: The first episode, "Tooth Fairy", has Red dressing up (at Yellow's suggestion, which he clearly doesn't enjoy) as the Tooth Fairy to tell Blue that he'll get a gift if he puts his cavitied tooth under his pillow after getting it removed at the dentist. Blue doesn't realize it's Red and thinks he looks pretty.
- Tyop on the Cover: The episode title "Sueing Mr. God". The word should be spelled "suing", without the extra "e".
- Verbing Nouny: The episode "Sueing Mr. God".
- X-Ray Sparks: In "Sueing Mr. God", Blue is struck by lightning as the Pen family is climbing a ladder to the sky. His skeleton becomes visible for a split second when this happens.
- Eating Machine: Pencil's robotic counterpart in episode 21 is shown drinking juice and eating popcorn.
- Robot Me: In episode 21, Pencil builds a mechanical version of himself to help and play with the pens while the real Pencil works on a machine for a creativity competition.
- Versus Character Splash: In episode 21, the text "VS." shows up in a splash between robotic Pencil and the real Pencil before the competition to determine who's the real Pencil.
