Alien Cat Comedy 'Operation Maomao' Pitches Its Way Into the Animation Market
An animated sci-fi comedy about a cat-loving alien is looking for backers. Operation Maomao was presented at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei, where creators pitch projects to potential partners, Variety reported on 6 November.
The story follows Agent 19 of the Meowtocracy. Agent 19 is sent from a home world that is running short on catnip, with a mission to seize Earth's supply. The series is planned as 26 episodes, each about seven minutes long. That is a short run time, the kind built for quick viewing on a phone or tablet.
The show comes from Shaogao, an animation brand that Jonathan Yu launched in 2017. Yu was born in Taiwan and moved to Canada at age 10. Shaogao describes itself as Taiwan's original IP studio, meaning it creates its own characters and worlds rather than adapting existing ones. Maomao is one of those characters, part of what the company calls the wider Shaogao Universe. The studio says it has 1.8 million followers.
Operation Maomao is still in development, which means the show is in its early making and has not yet been ordered for production. Season 1 has an outline, and the characters and setting have been designed. A trailer is finished. The producing partners are Terris Ko, Jonathan Yu and Mike Huang.
The Taiwan Creative Content Fest is organised by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, known as TAICCA. The event runs from 6 to 9 November at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center. According to Shaogao's website, the series is also being taken to the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, one of the largest gatherings for animated projects.
For a show at this stage, the pitch is the next step. Projects like this one are shown to buyers, co-producers and funders, who decide whether to put money into a full season. The work ahead is to turn the outline and trailer into finished episodes.
