ANI-MOVIES, *Johnny Destiny: Space Ninja

Often sighted as being the very first anime knockoff movie, Space Black Knight was a Korean production released during the same year that the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Despite some of the character designs being blatant Xeroxes of various Gundam characters, the only connection to existing other anime might be some similar starship designs to various Leiji Matsumoto anime. The film was released on dubbed VHS titled Johnny Destiny, Space Ranger, but labeled Johnny Destiny, Space Ninja for retail, then years later redubbed and relabeled Captain Of Cosmos. The later dub is currently available online titled Ronin Mecha 1, which is weird considering there's no real giant robots involved, especially since its a Gundam ripoff.

Set in the distant year of 2021, the film follows your standard cheesy Silver Age comic book about a space "ranger" who has to stop an evil space queen and her army of blue centaurs from taking over the galaxy. The opposing force has little in the way of armaments, even though everyone here seems to have the ability to breath in space. Aside from a lazy spaceship battle near the end, the title character's chasing the queen into the bowels of her exploding planet takes up a good portion of rest of the film.

The original Johnny Destiny dub is slightly more tolerable than the Captain Of Cosmos take, althought it sounds like George C. Scott is doing a few voice overs in the first take. Johnny Destiny himself is a simplistic rip on Amuro dressed as Char from Mobile Suit Gundam, which might be a novel idea for old school otaku to seek it out, your better off at least probably watching the second dub which is available free online.

MISC. MANGA, *Space Pirate Captain Harlock

Similar to them taking on the continuing saga of Robert E. Howard's shared universe in The Cimmerian, Ablaze Publishing worked in tandem with anime legend Leiji Matsumoto to do a new take on his "Leijiverse". The new English-language Captain Harlock comic has artist Jerome Alquie coordinating with the creator of the first anime space opera to combine both the original Captain Harlock TV series, as well as the Queen Millennia. This might sound familiar to old school American otaku as one of the several gestalt anime shows where more than one show was fused into a single title like Robotech or Voltron, and was the basis for Captain Harlock And The Queen Of A Thousand Years which brough together two seperate titles into a single narrative due to similar animation and a heavily edited chronology.

In the year 2977, outlaw defender of human freedom, Captain Harlock and his crew of the starship Arcadia continue their crusade when a new alien menace known as the Mazon plot their invasion of the Earth. The Mazon were a race of females that settled down on Earth even before humanity evolved, and they now want to reclaim our world after using all the resources on their own planet. Unfortunately, Earth's government has depleted its own natural treasures. So, the crew of the Arcadia has to maintain an uneasy balance between to conflicting forces which seek to eventually exterminate each other.

This new comic is the first Americanized adaptation of Captain Harlock in over thirty years, the original of which came out in the 80s by Eternity Comics, a subsidiary of Malibu Comics, that eventually was swallowed up by Marvel in the mid-90s. Jerome Alquie's style is reminiscent of motion picture comics where they make an entire comic using screenshots from an existing material like animation. Space Pirate Captain Harlock is a worthy intro into sprawling saga of the Leijiverse by tying several timelines together into a shared plot.

Happy Father's Day

 

ANI-MOVIES, *The Tale Of Princess Kaguya

The Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter has been adapted for various anime media, including Sailor Moon S: The Movie, but aside a live-action film from the late 80s it didn't have its own animated feature production dedicated to it. Studio Ghibli regular Isao Takahata made his last anime movie this 2013 Oscar nominated movie, whose superb creation landed him his own behind the scenes full-length documentary chronicling the directors etherial swan song. The Tale Of Princess Kaguya takes one of Japan's pinnacle folk tales and makes it open to Western audiences, originally through Disney, and then again after it was requisited by GKids.

A middle-aged bamboo cutter lives in the Japanese mountains. One day, he discovers a tiny Thumbelina-like sprite in the woods which immeadiately turns into a human baby girl after being touched by the bamboo cutter's wife. The baby keeps growing older at an accelerated rate, and is hinted to be a princess as her parents keep finding blessings from heaven to raise the child. With their newfound wealth, the family moves into a stately manor in the capital where the now young lady is officially named Kaguya. Her beauty gets the ears of all the eligible members of the royal court, each of which are sent on their own impossible quest to win her hand in marriage. After every one of the suitors ends up either going broke or flat out dying, the emperor himself tries to claim Kaguya, but this ends up backfiring as Kaguya finally realizes she comes from the moon, and accidently wished to be sent back to her celestial realm. Kaguya was a resident of the lunar kingdom who learned about the romantic Earth from a lady who had lost her magical robe on her trip there, and the young princess wished to be reborn on the mortal world to experience what love is. Her hasteful wish to return comes true as Buhdda himself and his entourage puts everyone guarding Kaguya to sleep, and is ascended back to the moon, but maintains her Earthly memories on her voyage home where its hinted she is reborn again.

Possibly taking a hint from the Ayashi No Ceres legend of a heavenly figure her divinity while growing a family in the human world, Isao Takahata's take on the bamboo cutter tale tries to bridge the seperate sagas into the same continuity. Most of The Tale Of Princess Kaguya movie covers the plotpoints of the source material, but greatly expands on it from the point of view of Kaguya herself and how she wanted to lead a simple life instead of maintaining her position as a rich noble, and how her decisions impact the lives of her adopted family. The entire film is more of an exploration of the title character's perspective on the world around her, despite she the fact she wishes to be merely a mortal instead of a divine being. The style of animation fluxuates during some of Kaguya's more spirited dream sequences which has her interacting with others on a spiritual level. The dub is acceptable, but seems to miss the charm of the previous Ghibli English adaptations. The movie altogether does show Isao Takahata's lifetime of quality as one of the premiere anime legends.

ANI-MOVIES, *Spirited Away

As winner of the first anime to get Best Animated Feature from the Oscars, Spirited Away has gone down as Hayao Miyazaka's masterpiece and the single highest selling anime movie of all time, at least until the recent Demon Slayer film. Studio Ghibli's production was in fact an original idea by Miyazaki, and not based on a prior source like a book series or manga. The film carries the message of Japanese myths, western commerce, and environmental issues without being like an old Captain Planet episode. This modern fairy tale carries young viewers into a scary but stunning world worthy of Wonderland.

Young girl Chihiro is with her parents as they get lost while on their move to a new city, and the family crosses over to a vacation spot in the spirit world. The parents get turned into pigs after dining on the local cuisine, so Chihiro now has to make a deal working for Yubaba, the enterprising elderly witch who runs the resort. Our heroine is befriended by Yubaba's dragon assistant Haku who can take on the form of a young boy, and secretly saved Chihiro's life from drowning in a river when she was younger. Chihiro's time at Yubaba's bathhouse has her catering to a myriad of gods, spirits, ghosts, and other monsters, including a strange creature called No-Face who becomes corrupted by the resort's consumerism. A trip to Yubaba's twin sister witch helps Chihiro break free of her contract and restoring her parents, although they return to the human world realizing that a considerable amount of time had passed during their spiritual encounter.

Following up his success in Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki came out of semi-retirement to create this original production. As far as animation quality is concerned, this features various realistic designs while still taking influence from Japanese folklore, including taking time to dwell on the mystical background. This can work against it though as some scenes tend to go on longer than necessary, and mostly for those who appreciate the aesthetics of quality animation. Spirited Away succeeds in telling a fantasy tale set in the 21st Century, although it does make it difficult to always tell where the narrative is going with the creator's need to add a new piece of lore to the story with minimal explanation to its relevancy. It's a lengthy film that carries audiences into a completely new realm of imagination, and making them long for more from Ghibli's visual genius.