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ANI-MOVIES, *Alakazam The Great

Saiyuki, also known as Journey To The West, has been frequently adapted into anime, including a little something called Dragonball! One of the first anime takes on this ancient Chinese tale was a 1960 movie, which a year later was released in English under the title Alakazam The Great. God of Manga, Osamu Tezuka, worked as an animator on the Toei produced film, even though he was billed as a being a director in the U.S. release, which is largely due to the fact that Tezuka had created his own take on the Monkey King as a manga, and then later on as its own TV series. The English dub featured regular voice actors like Johnathon Winters and Arnold Stang, including the anime premiere of Peter Fernandez who later went on to voice Speed Racer, even though Frankie Avalon was billed as Alakazam's voice instead of really just during the music numbers.

The movie follows an extremely streamlined take on Saiyuki, Alakazam is a monkey that is made the king of his kind after finding them a divine palace. He then sets out to learn magic by "Merlin", and afterwards goes the heavenly Majutsu Land to challenge the gods, including "Hercules". The divine King Amo sentences Alakazam to imprisoned inside a mountain until his son Amat(the real star of Saiyuki!)comes to release him. Amat gets the rebellious Alakazam into his service after fitting him with a magic crown, and the two set out on a pilgrimage, which has them gaining allies like the shapeshifting pigman Quigley, and the scavenger Maz. Their journey has them getting captured by the evil King Gruesome, who in the original story was the Ox King. They eventually defeat Gruesome and his hellish forces, which eventually leads to the off-screen end of their pilgrimage.

Even though there was a bountiful amount of promotion done for it's American release, Alakazam didn't really sync with Western audiences at the time. Upon watching it at least once, you can see the numerous translation horrors it had to suffer, like musical legend Les Baxter having to completely redo the soundtrack, but mostly due to alot of the plot points being shoelaced together, as well as a good portion of the dialogue being improvised in the style of later dubs like Samurai Pizza Cats and Duel Masters. Quality-wise, the film has excellent animation to it on the same level that Disney had at the time. Tezuka's influence is shown throughout the movie too, including a cameo by his Phoenix character. The movie has seen release on VHS in the 80s, but most Western otaku have probably watched it on streaming services like Amazon. It's worth a watch as its place in the history of anime, but possibly as a rental or viewing it on a friend's cable system.

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ANI-MOVIES, *Kubo And The Two Strings

After ParaNorman, Laika's next movie digs deep into Japanese mythology with Kubo and the Two Strings. Keeping up the rare art of stop-motion animation, the former team behind A Nightmare Before Christmas crafted together an eye-catching masterpiece that appeals to fans of old samurai opera, as well as some anime.

During the age of samurai, Kubo is a young boy with a missing eye who lives with his estranged mother in a cave near a village where he spends his days working as a storyteller, using his supernatural skill to manipulate paper(similar to Read Or Die)to move pieces of origami while playing a Japanese guitar. Kubo is told by his mother to always come home by sundown, because his grandfather the Moon King wants to steal his other eye, although he does get late one night with his two aunts being sent down to capture him. Kubo's mother manages to rescue him, but at the cost of her own life, magically sending Kubo to an escape. He is awakened by a talking snow monkey(called "Monkey")who was sent to him by his mother using the last of her magic. Monkey tells him they need to find the three pieces of a mystical armor that is the only thing that can protect Kubo from the Moon King. Along their journey, they add to their ranks a large beetle(called "Beetle")who believes he was formally a samurai working for Kubo's father, a shogun that fell in love with a moon goddess. Their quest has them battling a giant skeleton, sea monsters, and Kubo's relentless ninja aunts. The final battle between Kubo and his grandfather doesn't end the way you would see in your standard samurai epic!

This was a true modern day fantasy feast! It is heavily into feudal Japan folklore, featuring rarely used creatures like the boney Gashadokuro, and deities from the moon seen in stories like Princess Kaguya. Bumblebee director Travis Knight started out on this production, and this shows why the Transformers looked so much better as he proves his prestige quality towards animation. Arianne Sutner co-produced Kubo went on to direct Laika's next project, Missing Link. Most of the cast is good like Charlize Theron, plus an unusually tolerable Matthew McConaughey. Kubo And The Two Strings is an engaging Tolkien-esque quest that shows how the ties of family can bind and break a person's life, and the people around them.