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ANI-MOVIES, *Tarzan

Disney finally got around to tackling the interconnected worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs with its Hollywood blockbusting title character, Tarzan. Seeing as how there's probably more films about the Lord of the Jungle than there are of Dracula and Santa Claus combined, Disney wasn't exactly taking on a property that was unkown to movie fans, like The Rescuers. Directed by A Goofy Movie's Kevin Lima and Frozen II's Chris Buck, it was Disney's priciest film to date, and seriously blended traditional 2D animation with CGI graphics more than any prior production. There was also a major collaboration with Phil Collins as he handled the soundtrack, but turned out better than Sting's final outcome with The Emporer's New Groove, although its pretty obvious that Collins is trying to measure up to former bandmate Peter Gabriel with his experimental approach to music. The movie was successful enough to produce two sequals, one of which was really the pilot for a TV series, an approach that Disney failed in other attempts like Cinderella II, plus a "midqual" in the style of Bambi II.

Starting out in the mid 19th Century, a young couple shipwreck off the coast of a secluded part of Africa along with their newborn son. For some reason, instead of simply puting repairng their boat, the instead build a fully-furnished treehouse, supposedly with cargo from their sunken ship. This wasn't exactly the best idea as both parents get eaten alive by ravenous leopards, leaving their young son to get adopted by a troop of gorillas, under the care of their leader's wife, Kala. Named "Tarzan", the animalistic human learns the ways of the jungle, and can communicate with most of the animals, some of which happen to know what piranhas are which don't even exist in Africa but have no idea what human beings are. A now grown up Tarzan befriends explorer Prof. Porter, and his daughter Jane who are looking for the local gorilla band. Their guide, the dubious Clayton, was in fact planning on capturing the gorillas to sell to upper class British twits. Jane teaches Tarzan about human customs and how to speak English, but their relationship is jeapordized by Clayton's scheme, and Tarzan has to choose between the world he grew up in or the one his parents came from.

Tarzan is up to the date it was released in 1999 as probably Disney's highest quality production to date. The animation is very fluid, especially the jungle chase scenes where Tarzan is sliding on trees, something that would later be redone for the sky surfing in Treasure Planet. Some of Phil Collins' musical choices seem a little shoved down your neck and could be more subtle. The casting is okay, especially Brian Blessed doing an awesome job as Clayton, although I don't understand why a gorilla indigenous to Africa would have a New York accent. The movie is ultimately mostly faithful to the original source material, although more of the Tarzan saga would be covered in the Legend Of Tarzan TV series.

There's no way you're not getting laid wearing one of these!

These dern robot farmers 'r taking jobs away from real Americans!

ANI-MOVIES, *Superman: Man Of Tomorrow

Meant to act as the possible beginning of a brand new continuity as the post-Flashpoint DC Animated Movie Universe, Superman: Man Of Tomorrow(one of the Man of Steel's earlier monikers)is a fresh retake of the Kryptonian Crusader's origin. A brand new crew of animators and creators seems a little genrebreaking considering the asthetic set by the previous 15 movies, but does craft a cool experience for anyone wanting to get into the DC Universe.

Kansas farmboy Clark Kent is really a superpowered human-looking alien who spent his youth keeping his abilities secret, known only to his adopted Earth parents. Clark moves to the big city of Metropolis, and gets a job working at the Daily Planet paper, but hints his secret identity to the public as the "Flying Man" as he stops an exploding rocket from crashing into the city. This gets the attention of the cigar-chomping Kiss Army reject alien bounty hunter, Lobo, who manages to be a physical match of Clark in his currently masked persona. Lobo claims that there is bounty on Clark for being the last of the Kryptonian race, and their fight goes to the STAR Labs, exposing the kind-hearted janitor Rudy to alien chemicals. Clark gets help from a shapechanging Martian that had been ghosting him for days, ultimately allowing Clark the chance to knockout Lobo. The Martian named J'onn tracks Clark back to the Kent farm and reveals his extraterrestrial background of being the last known survivor of Mars, and helps Clark unlock a piece of Kryptonian tech that informs him of own heritage. Rudy awakens from his accident with the power of sucking off energy from people and electricity, which causes him to go on a rampage, resulting in this "Parasite" sucking the powers from Clark, now going under the name Superman. J'onn, who Superman calls the Martian Manhunter, is seemingly fried by Parasite, so now Clark has to ask help from the imprisoned genius, Lex Luthor. Luthor managed to hire Lobo after he broke out of STAR Labs, and hopes that a Kryptonite ring that was used against Superman could be used to stop the now gigantic Parasite.

Man Of Tomorrow is a fairly stilted new approach to doing Superman's origin story. The main fault was alot of story points were left out, like who hired Lobo to catch Superman, or Martian Manhunter's background on being secretly being an Earthling for years. This might meant to be explored in future DC Animated releases, but aside from a hint of Batman existing in this, nothing else about the broader DC Universe, like the Green Lanterns just neglecting all the superpowered alien battles that keep popping up on Earth. It's nice to finally see Lobo in one of these direct-to-video DC titles, and cool to seem him go a little more blue in a production outside network television. This is one of the weaker Superman origin stories, more interested in delivering a message of social acceptance instead of compelling superhero epic.

Darkseid has BEAMS!

ANI-MOVIES, *The Emperor's New Groove

What was originally supposed to be a musical epic titled Kingdom In The Sun put together by animation directors Roger Allers and Matthew Jacobs(infamously documented in the film The Sweatbox)was later totally rewritten into a family comedy film that was Disney's first full-length animated movie of the new millenium. This made for a strange reception as most Disney toon movies were regularly based on an existing fairy tale or childrens book, plus the original billing of Kingdom Of The Sun synced with its comedic rebranding didn't leave alot of confidence to initial theatrical releases who weren't sure what to make of it. If the movie was based on some centuries old Grimm Bros. story, audiences would know what they were getting into, so The Emporer's New Groove gained real success after its home video release, becoming a hit with its video rental premiere. Cats Don't Dance director Mark Dindal was given the reigns of the movie, although seemed to trip a little later on with Disney's underated Chicken Little which he also directed, although his helming the Kringle holiday special worked out better for him. However, this departure from Disney's average formula seemed to pan out for them in the long run.

Set sometime during the height of the Incan Empire, or at least in some alternate reality where the Incans never went out of business because the film is filled with up-to-date cultural references, Kuzco is a spoiled teenage emporer who has a compulsary need to have things go a certain way, otherwise it would upset his "groove", leading him to fits of selfish rage. One such upset makes him fire his royal advisor Yzmna, a creepy elderly lady who along with her bumbling but good-hearted sidekick Kronk happens to be a part-time mad scientist who plans to poison he Kuzco, but because of Kronk's nincompoopery is instead turned into a talking llama. The now llama-ized emporer is accidently taken away by a Pacha, a village leader that Kuzco planned to kick off his land to make room for an amusement park. Pacha rescues Kuzco from turning into a jaguar snack, and agrees to help take him back to the palace if he doesn't bulldoze his home. Yzma and Kronk are on the trail for Kuzco after getting some help from a bi-polar squirrel, which has the two parties continuously missing each other in an Incan "diner". The chase leads back to the palace where a mixup of potions has several guards also turning into animals, but Kuzco manages to become human again after several tries, while Yzma is turned into a menacing fluffy kitten. Kuzco is restored to the throne, and builds his getaway on an empty neighboring hill next to Pacha's.

Despite being out of the feature-length non-musical comedy for several years, Disney did turn out a quality production on the level of classic Looney Tunes humor. The animation itself is very above reproach, but not the engaging way that prior landmarks like Beauty And The Beast did. The thing that really sells this movie is the witty performances by the cast. David Spade makes a great recovery into movies after the loss of his former partner Chris Farley as Kuzco, Patrick Warburton cemented himself as a voice over gold mine, and Eartha Kitt plays one of the most bombasticly cartoonish Disney villains of all time. As one of the best buddy comedy films of recent memory, The Emperor's New Groove achieved its place as a fan favorite despite its shaky history.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S: *Ogre Slayer

Curse Of The Undead Yoma creator Kei Kusunoki later made a modern day Japanese horror series, Ogre Slayer. This manga went on for 20 volumes, and was popular enough to get its own 4-episode OVA series. Final Fantasy writer Kenji Terada handled the anime adaptation, which is sort of like a more terrifying version of Blade Of The Immortal.

In Japan, ogres are usually referred to as "oni", demonic man-eating monsters that feast on human suffering. Some centuries ago, an ogre mother gave birth to a human looking son born not with a horn but an enchanted sword. Both the boy and the sword are called Onikirimaru(aka: Ogre Slayer). The humanish youth believes that if he uses his sword to rid the Earth of all ogres, he will be free of his supernatural past. Fast forward to 1990s where Onikirimaru travels through Japan, getting involved with several cases where ogres prey on innocent humans. One is a schoolgirl infected with ogre twins that spring out of her body whenever she's in trouble, while another has a deceased ogre trying to reform himself after being cut to pieces sometime in feudal Japan. Onikirimaru appears like a Japanese schoolgirl as he goes on his seemingly never-ending quest.

There's some outright gore in this anime, plus some violently sexual situations, so really not for kids. Viz released the anime on VHS only in both dubbed and subtitled, but they only put out the first 2 volumes of the manga series, so you might have to dig around a little to get the complete story.