ANI-MOVIES, *Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths-Part Two

Where the first installment of the Crisis trilogy that is supposed to wrap up the Tomorrowverse was a rousing time-tripping event, Part Two is more of a character study of two of its main characters instead of an actual story. The second chapter leaps from different points of the prior Tomorrowverse titles while showing how the still remaining characters attempt to hold their realities together. The movie strays somewhat from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths comic book series of the 80s, even though it's trying to establish a new take on old characters who were first introduced in that same event. If there was a reason for buying this movie on its own as opposed to waiting for the compilation movie that Warner Bros. will do is if you're a profoundly compulsive DC fan who has to get everything related to comics as they are first released.

The state of things is that there are five remaining Earths being held together with a tower on each one keeping the anti-matter waves at bay. Joker tries to destroy one with Solomon Grundy and Killer Crock while Tomorrowverse Batman teams up with different members of the Bat-Family from various realities to stop this attack. The remaining heroes gathered by The Monitor are coordinating in an attempt to prevent being wiped from existence. The majority of the first half goes over the lives of Supergirl and Psycho-Pirate who was the main villain from Justice Society: World War II. We learn about Supergirl's life after Krypton exploded at the beginning of Legion Of Super-Heroes at how she ended up spending some years under the care of The Monitor and then eventually heading to Earth to reunite with her cousin. Psycho-Pirate's entire backstory is covered in his prior life on Earth-2 as Charles Halstead who can control emotions, how he gained the ability to travel to other worlds from Dr. Fate, and how he went from one reality to another when he would wear out his welcome just restarting his plan in a different universe. It turns out that Psycho-Pirate was also Doctor Spectro from the DC Showcase: Blue Beetle short, meaning that he has assumed different identities on other worlds, and finally gets a visit by Supergirl who is now Harbinger thanks to a power transfer by The Monitor. Pycho-Pirate gets The Monitor to also give him a portion of his cosmic power to enhance his own empathic abilities as the villain begins to make contact with The Monitor's opposite, the equally powerful Anti-Monitor. This mysterious new enemy sends hordes of shadow demons against the heroes who are defending the towers. Wonder Woman disappears along with the Amazons on their world, the Bat-Family fall prey to Psycho-Pirate's control, and John Stewart manages to finally awaken John Constantine from his centuries long haze of being Pariah but at the cost of the last remaining Green Lantern ring. Psycho-Pirate manipulates Supergirl into taking out her aggression on The Monitor, brutally attacking him. The Anti-Monitor coalesces all his shadow demons into a single huge giant about to destroy the final tower, ending on a cliffhanger.

Part Two carries on the story from Part One, but it all seems like the entire project could've just been split up into a longer double feature instead of a trilogy. Despite the Bat-Family showing up on a lot of the promotional material, there is little done with the characters, and Will Friedle as Batman Beyond only gets about two lines in the whole movie. The final chapter is supposed to feature the return of many former DCAU actors, including the final performance of Batman by Kevin Conroy, although it seems like it will be more of a sound bite. You would be better off waiting until the final chapter is released before bothering with this forgettable filler episode, or at least when they do the mandatory collected edition of all three movies.

Granamyr + Zubeia, The Ultimate Power Couple

 

ANI-MOVIES, *The Little Prince And The Eight-Headed Dragon

Columbia Pictures was really getting experimental with its release back in the day of the 1963 animated movie, The Little Prince And The Eight-Headed Dragon that was created by Toei Animation which back then was called Toei Doga. The color film was done in anamorphic widescreen format which works in its favor as there are several sprawling shots of flying fantasy and fiery fights. The story is inspired by the legend of Susanoo who was the Shinto equivalent of Thor but as a child. Yasuji Mori was one of the animation directors on this film who had previously worked on Toei Daga's Tale Of The White Serpent, and his style went on to have a huge effect on future artists like Genndy Tartakovsky and Tomm Moore. In fact, the design for this movie helped shape the style of The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker video game. Another big contributor to the film was the music by Akira Ifukube who is famous for creating the scores for the original Godzilla movies. The movie achieved a moderate success among other 60s anime productions dubbed into English at the time like Magic Boy and Alakazam The Great, even though it only recently got a Blu-ray release in both Japan and America featuring the original 60s dub.

Susanoo's story is he is the son of a pair of gods that fished out the islands from the ocean that eventually became the nation of Japan. His mother, the creation goddess Izanami, passes away off screen somehow, and Susanoo's father tells him to just get over it. The super-strong godling instead throws a big tantrum and wrecks half of the city. He builds a boat of his own to find his mother in the afterlife since his father forbids from giving him a vessel to travel in. Susanoo travels with his rabbit buddy Akahana and first fights a giant fish who the King of the Sea thanks by sending him to the realm of his brother, The Crystal Prince. The Little Prince is given a special elemental stone that comes in handy when he battles the temperamental God of Fire who can replicate himself which makes for an awesome spectacle. Our hero then gets another tagalong with the large Titanbo from the God of Fire's former country to look for a new land for his people. Susanoo continues to his sister, The Sun Goddess, who becomes so embarrassed by her younger brother's shenanigans that she seals herself up in a mountain and her followers spend several minutes trying to coax her from coming out, so they don't freeze to death in the darkness. After the Sub Goddess finally comes out of her hole, she banishes her brother to search for his mother. Susanoo meets a girl known only as the Little Princess who is the next to be sacrificed to an Orochi here referred to as the Eight-Headed Dragon. The Little Prince pledges to save the Little Princess by confronting the dragon after he gains the help of a flying horse which helps him finally slay the multi-headed kaiju. Susanoo then decides to stay in this newly reborn land and help the Little Princess rebuild her people's kingdom along with making it a home for the Fire refugees.

Despite the fact that this movie helped influence several future animators, you can tell that the film itself borrowed heavily from Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, especially in the duel against Maleficent as a dragon. The dubbing is very forgettable and doesn't fit the lip flaps at all, but altogether not the worse that made for a 60s anime dub. The movie is now finally on streaming and officially free on YouTube, so be sure to give it a look.

ANI-MOVIES, *Flavors Of Youth

Donghua is to China what anime is to Japan. Much of the anime produced of the anime gets outsourced to China, so it's about time that a crossover of donghua and anime was finally made. Not only that, but that the feature was done by Haoliners Animation League from China and none other than the anime studio of Comix Wave Films who took the world literally by storm with Makoto Shinkai films like Your Name and Weathering With You. Shinkai isn't involved in this production at all, but combined project titled Flavors Of Youth shows traces of his influence. This is also a rarity among anime as it an anthology film which haven't had much exposure in the 21st Century with titles like Short Peace. The movie broken up into three segments that show their connection at the beginning and post-credits ending as all the characters from each segment converge at an airport, everyone going on their own chosen path. All three stories take place in China and show how life there isn't too different from any other highly populated parts of the world, in fact if they didn't mention it was China-based then most international viewers would probably think it all happens in Japan.

The Rice Noodles opens up with Xiao Ming remembering his youth when he his grandmother was living with his family and usually takes care of the boy as the parents are off working. Xiao Ming has fond memories about the noodle shop near his family home that he loved the food from. The rest of the story has the lad growing up and moving around sampling noodles from different parts of China that never seem to have the same delicious taste he did when he was a boy. Xiao Ming eventually called back to his old home as his grandmother passes away and is happy to find that the old noodle shop is still there and recalls his golden days.

The second part is A Little Fashion Show is slightly forgettable as it deals with a tall model named Yu Lin who is left to take care of her younger sister Lulu after their parents die. Yu Lin became a model to stand out for Lulu and provide a living for her, but she now begins to question if she isn't getting too old for her profession as a young upstart rival starts making things rocky for her. Lulu makes things easier for her as she starts designing her own line of clothes that she made specifically for her big sister.

The final chapter is Love In Shanghai that flashes back between 1999 and a few years later with Li Mo carrying on a more than friendly relationship with his classmate Xiao Yu. The two of them confess their feelings for each other in the teenage days over a shared audio tape they use as a sort of dating journal. Xiao Yu says she's planning on going to a school for academic achievers while Li Mo would probably go to a regular nearby school. Li Mo secretly tries to enter this advanced school which he actually manages to get accepted to, but Xiao Yu fails to enter it much to the violent disapproval of her parents. Li Mo decides to be stubborn in his decision to go forward and becomes an architect who designs his own hotel that Xaio Yu visits him when they're both adults to rekindle their friendship.

Flavors Of Youth is a major boost for the slice-of-life genre with no supernatural or sci-fi elements that anime normally inhabits. Even though it takes place in China, there isn't much emphasis on living or growing up in that specific nation, so despite the sharp imagery of Chinese landmarks, it doesn't really become a pretentious travel guide. Each of the stories is significant as they all recall the characters' own pasts and the sense of nostalgia that those bring about. The dub is fair with Jona Xiao and Crispin Freeman standing out, but Ross Butler was totally miscast as Li Mo who has as much range as voice actor as a mute frog. There is no physical release of this anthology as it is streaming exclusively on Netflix, even though it is worth a watch if you're already a subscriber.

R.I.P. Trina Robbins

 

It's 2, 3, 4, Or 5 Anime Shows In 1!

The 1980s were a time of experimenting with entertainment, plus trying to find something that fit the post-Star Wars juggernaut of media. One of these was from the wizards at Mattel in a line-up called Shogun Warriors which refurbished toys from the Japanese company Popy. The eastern import founded by Bandai had a wide selection of giant robots and giant monsters from various anime and tokusatsu titles that were rewritten for the American market as being all part of the same brand. It got an official comic book set in the Marvel Universe with a trio of their mechas. This got the ball rolling for incorporating anime with American toy shelves that of course lead to product lines like Transformers and Gobots, both of which combined different Japanese toy properties under a single label. For the better part of the early to mid-80s, there were five different TV shows that saw the light of day on American tubes, some of which had toy lines of their own. Whereas Mighty Orbots was an original creation for network Saturday morning television, these other shows were anime titles that were repackaged for English audiences. The theme all of them shared is that they were more than one separate series spliced with another to make for an entirely different but still slightly similar show. Here are five shows that could not beat the actual "robots in disguise".

Macron-1 came out in 1986 by Saban Entertainment as a two-hit combo of the anime titles, Go Shogun from 1981 and Subspace Operation Srungle from 1984. The only one of these to get any exposure outside of this show was a movie sequel to Go Shogun: Time Stranger which was so far removed from the original story that it becomes totally unnecessary to watch one after the other. Macron-1 took place simultaneously in parallel universes with two different groups of heroes fighting a pair of villains from the opposite reality. In the year 2525(no, really!), pilot David Chance enters another dimension plagued by the evil organization called GRIP lead by the big bad Darkstar and his cyborg ally Orion. Darkstar enters the universe Earth is in, leaving Chance behind in the other one. GRIP now plans to attack both realities with Darkstar invading Earth and Orion heading up their campaign back home. The scientist Dr. Shegall leads a unit with the mission to repel Darkstar while Chance forms a rebellion against Orion and the remaning GRIP forces which the collected name for this multiversal defense team is Macron-1. Shegall's team had a giant robot to handle Darkstar whereas Chance's rebels had their own mechas. Most of the series was from redubbed footage of Go Shogun, and in some countries the entire Srungle anime was completely left out. A total of 26 episodes were produced for America with only 20 of them ever getting a home video release. The most intriguing thing about the series was it featured pop songs of the time by Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Bananarama, and Tears For Fears, even though none of this soundtrack ever got used on the VHS release. Macron-1 was one of the biggest oddities in English dubs despite its cast going on to become veterans in the field.

Harmony Gold was a distributor that began in 1976 with controversial releases like the Shaka Zulu miniseries. They got Carl Macek in the early 80s to produce some of the booming new anime programming to be broadcast on American television. They wrangled together three unattached anime series, two of which were part of Tatsunoko’s Super Dimension trilogy. This consisted of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada which was another Tatsunoko sci-fi mecha series. Each series made up its own story arc taking place sometime after the other with an intermediary time skip in between. The name Robotech was first used by the model kit makers at Revell as Robotech Defenders which got its own short DC Comics series that was made up of mechas from Macross and Orguss. Since Revell had the rights to the Macross mechas, they formed a co-license of the name Robotech and some of the merchandising rights. Matchbox was responsible for the initial wave of Robotech toys which included mechas, action figures, and fashion dolls that was picked up by Playmates in the 90s and added to their line of Exosquad which was an unrelated American property. The literal storyline for the Robotech TV series itself was one long ongoing saga that had several different retcons throughout its chronicles. This included a planned midquel series called The Sentinels which only got a compilation movie of the leftover footage, plus a pair American-original sequels titled The Shadow Chronicles and Love Live Alive. One other property added to the Robotech roster was “The Movie” from 1986 that was really the first Megazone 23 OVA rescripted into having a small connection to the Robotech TV series much to the regret of Carl Macek who called it one of the worst experiences of his career, which includes Heavy Metal 2000. The basic story of Robotech follows the original Macross series while picking up about a generation later with Southern Cross and Mospeada. In it, humankind encounters its first alien race of giants called the Zentradi while fighting back in transforming mecha. The two races unite and confront their original creators, the Robotech Masters. This leads to another invasion of Earth by the Invid race where a ragtag group of survivors defend the world while most of humanity’s military takes up arms in deep space. The Robotech legacy is probably one of the longest running in American history roping anime fans and even anime-haters into its ongoing epic.

After Robotech, Carl Macek tried to give the Leiji Matsumoto universe(or “Leijiverse”)another chance on American television since Star Blazers dazzled sci-fi fans in the 70s. In 1985, Harmony Gold took two completely unrelated titles and Cronenberged them into a single form. One show was Space Pirate Captain Harlock from 1978 with the other being Queen Millennia from 1981. Unlike Robotech with each series being given its own story arc, Captain Harlock And The Queen Of A Thousand Years splices material from both shows. They wanted to just do one of Captain Harlock, but with his first TV series having 41 episodes, it wouldn’t fit the necessary slot of 65 episodes, and Toei was asking too much for the Harlock sequel series. To resolve this, they spliced footage from Queen Millenia in with the first Harlock series to make for this two-headed beast. Harlock wasn’t adjacent to Millennia’s timeline when these series first came out, although this was later retconned in the Leijiverse as being slightly related to each other. Harmony Gold wasn’t given the luxurious amount of time they did for Robotech when it came to writing the storyline into any kind of unified coherence. The characters from one series would almost never be in the same shot as the other that gave viewers whiplash. The plot for the American series was Harlock being a renegade freedom fighter that sailed the skyways in his space bound pirate ship that was solely responsible for protecting the Earth from a race of living plant women called the Mazones. Harlock keeps taking the blame for all the Mazones attacks while trying to help the outcast Princess Olivia from regaining her throne of Millenia from the Mazones’ allies. Nothing of the American cut ever made the transfer to home media, largely because it got way less exposure than Robotech did, so unless you saw it while it was running, you’ll have to settle for bootleg copies on internet archives.

Not having any connection to the Shogun Warriors toys which helped fuel the fandom for the shows they came from, Force Five was a collection of five different mecha series. Force Five played weekdays for a single season from 1980-81 on select stations mostly in the northeast by Jim Terry Productions. A different title played on each weekday for a total of 26 weeks, making 130 episodes overall. All five of the series had a total of 39-74 episodes, meaning that several episodes were either left out completely or some edited into single screening. Three of the anime titles were created by Go Nagai, including Gaiking, Getter Robo G, and Grendizer which was originally supposed to be Mazinger Z that didn’t see an American release on its own until years later under the label Tranzor Z. The other two titles that made the lineup were by Leiji Matsumoto consisting of Starzinger and Danguard Ace, neither of which are fully connected to the established Leijiverse. There was no merchandise bearing the label of Force Five, even though there were some VHS collections of the series in their own compilation film, as well as the Getter Robo G dub gratuitously renamed Robo Formers by FB Productions. There was no crossover with any of these titles, so it wasn’t necessary to watch every one of the series if you only had a liking for one or two of them. Aside from Starzinger, all the rest featured giant robots, so it would have been simple to just tag one of the numerous mecha knockoff toys that plagued stores in the 80s with the Force Five logo.

The most popular of all the gestalt 80s American anime releases was of course Voltron, also known as Defender Of The Universe. This was shown in syndication in 1984 by World Events Productions which integrated unrelated anime shows dealing with combiner robots, a concept that Power Rangers made a cool mint over. The main anime series that most everyone is aware of was Beast King Go Lion usually referred to as the Lion Voltron where five pilots from Earth find their world decimated and then captured by the wicked Gaira Empire. The five of them escape and become the pilots of the giant mecha Go Lion which is made of a quintet of huge robot lions. The henshin-themed anime broke tradition by killing off one of the main team members in the first few episodes and replaced him with the standard space princess character. The Lion Voltron is the one most Americans are familiar with, but at least one other anime series made up for the second half of it, Armored Fleet Dairugger XV that out here was known as the Vehicle Voltron series about a space battleship of explorers whose main defense against the evil Galveston Empire was a huge robot comprised of fifteen vehicles, some which were cars, but all of them were capable of flight and surviving in space. A good portion of America never even received the Vehicle Voltron chunk of the series even though both Voltrons made 52 episodes each. Over a year after both series were completed an original TV special was animated specifically for American audiences which finally united both teams titled Voltron: Fleet Of Doom. There was a third anime series planned to add to the franchise was Lightspeed Electroid Albegas that most Americans are aware of because it was always the Voltron toys left over in retail stores, but the series never made western airwaves. The Lion Voltron hit a serious groove among 80s pop culture, so much so that there were two separate sequels created specifically for U.S. fans, as well as a lengthy hit remake done decades later for Netflix. When most otaku think of early Super Sentai shows, Voltron has inaccurately but securely set its place in the backdrop of the Japanese superhero genre.

Marvel's Biggest Mistakes

ANI-MOVIES, *Suzume

Originally titled Suzume Looking Up, Makoto Shinkai's latest addition to his international winning list Suzume follows up the success of Your Name and Weathering With You, even though this feature doesn't take place in the same universe of The Garden Of Words like the past two releases. Suzume is another fantasy romance about doomed lovers who keep having everything in the world working against them to get together. There is of course the average amount of Shinkai's selling out to McDonald's, even though decidedly less than usual. Comix Wave Films once again was the production company behind a visually arousing film by Shinkai, even though it does have some problems with pacing and knowing exactly where to end. Shinkai does keep adding more and more plot points on as it already had enough going on after all that happens in just the first act, which did work against Shinkai slightly in Weathering With You as he was compelled to pile further story elements into an already rich storyline. It is in fact one long road trip between two strangers that are trying to avoid natural disasters which is interchangeable from Shinkai's previous two outlets.

Suzume is a high school girl under the care of her aunt Tamaki in the countryside since her mother passed away a decade ago after the disasters that plagued real-life Japan in 2011. On her way to school one day, Suzume encounters a handsome young man named Souta who asked her where any nearby ruins might be. Suzume points out an abandoned resort and then goes to school but notices a dark plume of energy coming from the uninhabited park. She ditches school and finds a single doorway sitting in the middle of an empty area that the energy comes out of. The doors are portals to a realm called the Ever-After where a titanic spiritual worm exists and unless these portals are periodically sealed off by otherworldly specialists called Closers of which Shouta is the last one. Shouta manages to close the door with Suzume's help, although Suzume finds a small cat statue that turns into a real cat. She takes Shouta back to her place to nurse an injury he got from the experience and the cat appears surprisingly talks to them. The enchanted kitty changes Shouta into a child's chair Suzume's mother made for her, and then the cat named Daijin quickly runs off. Suzume and her newly transformed comrade follow the cat across the Japanese islands as Daijin goes from one portal after another seemingly to release the giant worm. Suzume makes a lot of comrades along her journey in trying to finally track down this troublemaking tabby and its campaign that leads to Tokyo where the head of the worm resides which could cause a massive earthquake. Suzume and Shouta have been under the impression that Daijin is one of the two keystones that hold the worm in place, but there's a shocking reveal that Shouta has been given that task instead, even as an animated small chair. Shouta sacrifices himself, leaving Suzume heartbroken thinking that her would-be love interest is now dead. The title heroine gets new hope from Shouta's grandfather who tells her that she might be able to bring him back if she goes to where she first entered into the Ever-After. This whole thing turns out to be a causality loop where Suzume's present-day self meets with her past self just after her mother's death and gives her the chair after Souta is free from the curse. Suzume heads back home as she eventually runs into Shouta again hinting that the two of them will begin a romance together.

There is a ton of unexplained lore behind this story, like what started the whole ritual of Closers in the first place, and why Daijin changed Shouta into a chair in the first place. Shouta's curse was an excuse for the plot to have a teenage girl travelling on a mystic quest around Japan with a man in his early 20s without it being totally suspicious. Makoto Shinkai's story can get slightly cringey at times with the main characters' age difference, plus the legendarium not being all fleshed out. There are several nods to the works of Hayao Miyazaki in this like the worm being a stand-in for the demonic curse from Princess Mononoke, or background characters confusing Daijin for the baron cat from Whispers Of The Heart. Suzume might seem like the third part of a themed trilogy that Shinkai started with his last two theatrical creations, even though it leaves out the romantic overtones of either Your Name or Weathering With You. The visual look of the film is wondrous and makes you want to visit all the places in Japan that it covers. The stratagem of Suzume does work even though the plot seems stretched on longer than it turned out. It's not a masterpiece, but still a must see for fans of Shinkai's library of works.

R.I.P. Joe Flaherty

 

Professor X says "Relax"!

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Ghost Messenger

"What was the point?!" is probably what most American viewers thought when the first saw this Korean animated feature. Ghost Messenger was supposed to be a 3-part OVA series with serious homages to existing anime like Evangelion and Fate, but only two episodes were ever completed. The final one has been in production limbo for over a decade with no sight of it finishing up anytime soon. So, streaming companies like RetroCrush decided to make urine out of lemons and just combine the existing episodes into a single feature with no dub and a translated that is critically below professional standards. Most of the dialogue reads like it was an AI script written by another AI program while tripping acid. The timing for the subtitles is atrocious with several words glued together making for incomprehensible compound words. This and the whole thing ends with a hugely unresolved conclusion makes it one of the most meaningless releases on the western market.

Set in Seoul, the spirits of the departed get caught in the world of the living that feed off other spirits. To ferry these spirits along, there is a special network of agents called Ghost Messengers that hunt down rogue ghosts. Kanglim is one of these agents and uses a special cell phone to wrangle the stray ghosts by taking pictures of them. Kanglim goes missing from work and his girlfriend Bari is covering for him while keeping an eye out for him, at least when she isn't going on excessive shopping sprees. A young human psychic boy also called Kanglim finds the GM Kanglim's phone after he got caught in his own phone that the "Little Kanglim" uses for his own selfish needs while keeping the "Big Kanglim" a prisoner that he lets out every so often to help him fight ghosts, as if the Ghost Messenger was his own personal Pokemon. A senior officer among the Ghost Messenger agency named Sara gets called to find out what was really going on, and we learn that Little Kanglim was keeping his grandfather's deceased spirit tied to his family's store since his mother who was also psychic got killed by spirits. Sara also uncovers that regular Kanglim has been missing because he is under a curse that makes him a potential abomination. The dueling Ghost Messengers take their battle to epic heights while Little Kanglim enters the spirit world looking for his grandfather's ghost. The feature ends on a severe cliffhanger of Bari leading the charge of an army of Ghost Messengers riding on chimeras launching an assault on an unseen enemy.

Ghost Messenger is insanely difficult to navigate the plot to and only those who have seen bad fansubs could even have the most remote chance of figuring it out. The animation and fight choreography are somewhat impressive, but considering that the production never reached its ending, you really have to wonder why someone bothered to do an English adaptation of it, and with such inferior subtitles to boot.

MISC. MANGA, *Devilman

Shin Devilman was an early 80s spinoff of the original 70s Devilman manga by Go Nagai and was one of the first pieces of printed material from the franchise that got an English release. Glenn Danzig of The Misfits started his own comic book company specializing in adult titles, one of which was this manga relabeled as just Devilman which confused people when it was released in the mid-90s that confused it with the storyline established in the OVA series from Manga Entertainment. Shin Devilman was a self-contained story that only tangentially connects the with original manga. The plan was to release it as separate comics book issues and then in a collected edition later on, but only three issues actually got released it with Nagai being displeased on how the coloring of it was handled with a shaky translation.

Taking place sometime after Akira had already bonded with the demon Amon to become Devilman, but his friend Ryo secretly being Satan the whole time has yet to be revealed. Akira visits Ryo's mansion when they both conveniently fall into a time warp that the spend the rest of the series in, making Devilman into a remake of Quantum Leap. They're first stop is none other than Adolf Hitler when he was a young artist and the devilish duo cause the future-genocider from making his first being commission and swears vengeance on all Jewish people. Akira and Ryo then travel to a time when Joan of Arc is under trial by the lords of Hell for causing the Hundred's Year War, but Devilman acts as the ultimate defense lawyer and calls the demonic court on their double-standard dung. The last issue has Devilman stopping a demon disguised as an angel who is handing out shotguns to people several centuries before they logically should have existed in the first place. Apparently, Hell can just rev up their own Tardis and use time travel to screw up human history even further than it already was.

Danzig's attempt to bring early mature manga to American readers in the 90s was a noble effort as Danzig himself was a huge fan of Devilman, so much so that he created his own female counterpart in a series titled Satanika that was slated to have its own genuine anime along with a fully produced trailer by a professional Japanese studio. Go Nagai was seriously not impressed with how Verotik handled his work causing the American Devilman comic book series getting cut short. Nagai's artwork is still impactful and highlights the maturity missing from most other manga getting an English release at the time. The idea of taking a horror-based superhero and having them go travel through time and causing the events that they tried to prevent is an original idea, but it just doesn't work well here for someone not familiar with the previous versions of Devilman. It would be like introducing Godzilla for the first time as being a Time Lord instead of a mutated dinosaur. The 3-issue run has been long out of print, even though its is still available directly through the Veroitk website. If you want to see how to do a lousy job of given a coveted manga series an English release than Danzig's Devilman should help your masochistic machinations.

You dense motherbat!

MISC. MANGA, *I Heart Skull-Crusher

Josie Campbell already revolutionized the old He-Man spinoff of She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power for Netflix and then went on to specialize in stories featuring the character's Golden Age counterpart Mary Marvel for DC Comics, she also brought a new anime aspect to the Man Of Steel mythos in My Adventures With Superman. Campbell now has an anime-themed mini-series for Boom! Studios taking a spin on Battle Angel Alita, although minus the man/machine overtones. I Heart Skull-Crusher is a post-apocalyptic lesbian roller derby sports manga not seen in anything since the wild west days of 90s anime.

After your standard cataclysm where water is the most valuable resource, civilization has calmed down a little with most of the survivors becoming huge fans of the new sport called Screaming Pain Ball. The most boisterous of any of these sports fans is the energetic teenager Trini who has spent her whole sad life training to be a player in the game. Her existence is so decrepit that she has no friends and pours out all her dreams to the skulls of her deceased parents. Trini gets wind of a tournament coming up where she can get a spot on the winning team with her longtime idol, the notorious player known as Skull-Crusher. Our plucky wannabe gets help from a washed-up ex-player plus a pair of thieving twins to set out across the desert and earn her place next to her hero who she has a major crush on.

The series is set for only five issues but looks like they might be able to cover quite a lot of territory in their limited run. Alessio Zonno does a great job as the artist in this what appears to be her premiere in professional comics. The first issue establishes the world quite well and gets you in tune to their vibe right away. This anime-styled American comic has some familiar cliches for average otaku, although it appears to have some surprises in store before the conclusion. While being a little campy for a wasteland fantasy, the sci-fi shojo-ai action more than makes up for it.

R.I.P. Akira Toriyama

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Zone Of Enders: Idolo

While the video game series managed to find its nook in the early 2000s, the two anime tie-ins didn't fare as well. The original game installment had an OVA one-shot titled Idolo prequel that was followed by the Zone Of Enders: Delores, I anime TV series which takes place just prior and after the first game. Idolo was the lead-in to a multi-media franchise with hopes of becoming the next great mecha series for the new millennium, however with limp animation, delusional characters, and a giant robot design that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "cockpit", it didn't gain much traction.

Set in 2167, a human colony had been established some time Mars for some time. The Martian colony wants gain independence from Earth, but all humans born on Mars are physically weaker than humans for Earth, similar to the Warlords Of Mars books. The mecha pilot Radium is with the Earth/Mars allied forces but is secretly helping the Martian military test a new robot with a cockpit literally sticking out from the model's groin area making it look like the mecha is very excited to meet you. Radium becomes the pilot for the Orbital Frame mecha called Idolo which slowly begins to rise his aggression mostly because of a new element used in the machine's design. Radium and his fellow pilot Viola are both set to test the mecha, but it only seems to respond to Radium's control. The Earth forces get wind of the Martians plot, and they attack the testing base during which Radium's fiance Dolores is kidnapped along with the head scientist. Radium chases after them in the Orbital Frame with the Martian military planning on killing him for going rogue and so the mecha won't end up under Earth's control. Our rescuer fails to save Dolores and ends up getting blasted by Viola and the other Martian mecha, although it appears that some trait of Dolores might have ended up in the Orbit Frame's programming. The epilogue shoots ahead to five years later where Viola is helping the resistance forces fight Earth's forces on the moons of Jupiter.

Zone Of Enders: Idolo has an unmotivated plot with a stale cast and fails to get anyone prepped for a hack-and-slash video game with its total downer ending. This was released in English through ADV Films at first on his own and then as part of a collected edition with the TV series, but its short runtime of only 55 minutes doesn't justify getting the singular OVA volume.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Illusionist

Comics writer Sylvain Chomet already completed the innovative animated film The Triplets Of Belleville before he began an adaptation on the unproduced script of the late mime, actor, and writer, Jacques Tati. The deceased entertainer wrote this as a way of trying to make amends with his eldest daughter whom he ignored during the height of his busier years with the main character being inspired from his movie character, Monsieur Hulot, who was inspirational for Rowan Atkinson when he created Mr. Bean. The French-produced film was released in 2010 and was nominated for Best Animated Feature. Like many eastern-European animated productions, this was made largely free of dialogue, even though there is some English said throughout the film, but most of the narrative is self-expressive not needing any spoken lines.

Taking place in France during 1959, a French illusionist moves to England to find more work after his act in Paris become stale. He gets a gig working at a pub for parties and is befriended by the cleaning girl Alice. She decides to follow him when he gives her a new pair of shoes he earned with his wages. It's hinted in the advertisement for the movie that from this point in the movie that Alice trails around with the Illusionist because she believes he can work real magic, although nothing really hinting at that ever shows up during the rest of the film. The Illusionist and Alice stay at a hotel made up of former circus performers, including a suicidal clown, a depressed ventriloquist, and a trio of trapeze artists, while the hotel itself is run by a pair of short persons. The Illusionist tries to lift up Alice's spirits by using his meager income to give her new clothes to which she is grateful for, but it's not a romantic relationship, instead it's a parent-child dynamic. The Illusionist gets odd jobs working in a garage, acting as a window performer for a department store, and as a billboard painter, all while Alice starts a relationship with a man her age. Our protagonist eventually sells the remainder of his conjuring gear to set Alice off on her own with her new love interest while the Illusionist sets off on his own unknown path.

The Illusionist is largely traditional animated reminiscent of the later productions of Walt Disney and the films that Disney did following his death. This is certainly one of the most charming animated movies of the new millennium, and there is nothing offensive or racy involved so it's perfect for the whole family to enjoy.

You Came To The Wrong Neighborhood

ANI-MOVIES, *Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

In one of the few original Dreamworks animated films, it's easy to see this as a slight rip-off of Pixar's Luca and Turning Red which combines a girl's coming-of-age story with sea monsters. Dreamworks' head honcho Jeffrey Katzenburg had okayed the project just before he stepped down in 2016, so it was in development limbo for a while. Croods creator Kirk DeMicco directed it along with former South Park writer Pam Brady. The movie's theatrical release didn't break even from its overall production value, but it has gained a secondary success after debuting on streaming.

Ruby is an average, blue-skinned girl with her blue-skinned family living in the town of Oceanside which is of course near the ocean. She knew she and her family were not necessarily human since her mother Agatha is vehemently against them ever going in the ocean, but Ruby finds she's going through changes. Instead of becoming a giant red panda, Ruby is a kraken capable of achieving kaiju-sized proportions and breathing water. Agatha manages to calm Ruby down after she goes full-Godzilla after failing to ask her crush to the prom and spills the majority of her family's history, which involves the arrival of her uncle Brill who takes Ruby to her Grandmamah. Ruby is the heir to the ocean kingdom where krakens are the defenders against other sea monsters, including mermaids which are deceptive shapeshifters that masquerade as attractive humans, one of whom is the new popular girl at school, the cheerful redhead Chelsea. The mermaid cons Ruby into being her friend and tries to free a magic trident(it's always a magic trident!)from the underwater volcano that Agatha sealed it up in. Chelsea is revealed to be the kraken's ancient enemy Nerissa, queen of the mermaids who hasn't aged at all during the last time she fought Agatha. Taking a new spin on the finale to Disney's The Little Mermaid, Nerissa grows to titan size, and the combined forces of all three generations of female krakens are the only thing that saves the day. There's a subplot with Ruby's father and brother trying to decoy a local sailor in his attempts to prove the krakens exists, but this mostly acts as padding to make the film feature-length.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is a decent enough movie with Dr. Seuss-inspired character designs, even though it is pretty plain to see that Dreamworks was borrowing quite a bit from Pixar's most recent movies. The movie tries to accomplish too much into its 90-minute running time, like attempting to make us care about Ruby's friends from school even though they are more just background noise. The side-story of the crazy sea captain trying to capture is like a bad cereal commercial drawn out through the movie. It's an up-to-scratch animated film for all ages and doesn't drag down the whole story with yet another reminder of how important family is supposed to be. It might not seem enticing as prior Pixar installments, even though it is an entertaining watch.

ANI-MOVIES, *Gundress

The fact that the character designs for this anime film were done by Masamune Shirow of Ghost In The Shell infamy is the single selling point of this cyberpunk title. Orca had already botched things up with their previous blunder of Landlock, but the anime studio went even further with their debacle of Gundress. The franchise did have a little more success with the titles having its own manga and video game, despite the fact that Gundress didn't have a strong footing when it came to reusing Shirow's abandoned designs for some of his former projects. The main draw is "girls in mechas" which worked fine for anime like Bubblegum Crisis, even though that series had its own developed plot where Gundress was all whistles and bells with no substance.

Taking place at the beginning of the 22nd Century, the new metropolis Bayside City is under the protection of the Angel Arms Company under the command of the ex-cop Takako which is an all-female strike team. The members of Angel Arms each have their own set of skills that comprise the group that gets disrupted because of new recruit Alisa. The rebellious new addition has a dark past involving the leader of a terrorist group bent on drowning the city in chaos.

Gundress was finished in 1999 but didn't see an American release through Media Blasters until 2006 because there was so much speculation regarding its potential for new millennium otaku who were finally getting wise to not spend all their cash on an unheard of anime. Despite it getting an American theatrical release, Gundress was a bomb from start to finish. The animation clumsily adapts Masamune Shirow designs, the plot is shoddy, and the dub is bad that is almost laughable. Even hardcore cyberpunk fanatics would want to skip this stale slice of bread.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Otaku No Video

In an early experiment in self-parody, Gainax's Otaku No Video was a 2-episode OVA from 1991 that takes a satirical look at the studio's history. The OVA also is a mockumentary of the lifestyles of anime fans in Japan. Vandread director Takeshi Mori helmed this multi-media project that was written by Gunbuster author Toshio Okada. The anime itself has been available in several formats through Animeigo with to date no English dub, even though that might be for the better considering the niche market this fits into.

The first episode takes place in 1982 where young man Ken has a prosperous life with a nice girlfriend as well as being a decent tennis player. This all seems to go down a very different path when he reunites with his old school chum Tanaka who makes him part of his anime fan club that covers a variety of geek connoisseurs. Ken begins to struggle finding a job and loses his girlfriend, so he and Tanaka decide to dedicate themselves fully to being captains in the anime industry as "Otakings". The final episode jumps to 1986 where our team of devoted otaku open a model kit company that branches into other merchandise and its own media empire, including the creation of a mature magical girl mascot. They eventually create their own amusement park at the turn of the century. Years later, there was some sort of apocalypse and they all managed to survive and return to the park to launch their space battleship homage to Yamato. All this is occasionally interrupted by live-action segments doing fictional interviews with various anime fans and who being an otaku can consume a person's lifestyle.

Otaku No Video was groundbreaking as it set the stage for future anime titles that reflected on the fandom such as Lucky Star and Genshiken. Gainax put their all into this with the stunning character designs of Kenichi Sonoda of Gunsmith Cats fame. Despite its short runtime, the OVA excellently demonstrates the life of an otaku in the 80s and how they had trouble fitting into mundane society. Its abrupt take on fan culture might be uncomfortable for some viewers, but you owe it to yourself to give this piece of history a look.

ANI-MOVIES, *Red Hawk

Being one of the first full-length Korean animated movies to get an English release, Red Hawk does like several cartoons from Korea and borrows heavily from anime. Whether it is Johnny Destiny: Space Ninja or Defenders Of Space, quite a number of them are just strait up rip-offs of Japanese properties. Red Hawk is more inspired by Chinese folklore while spilling in elements from anime such as Dragonball. Red Hawk came out of South Korea in 1995 and was given a release by Manga Entertainment in 2002 starring most of the regular 90s English voice actors like Steve Blum, Wendee Lee, and Bridget Hoffman. As far as information that was given, Red Hawk was an original idea, but still appropriates from several sources, including some American pulp fiction and comics with a masked hero.

Set in Chungwon, an evil organization known as Camellian Blossom plan to take over the country with counterfeit coins. Jan Chung teams up with the green-haired warrior woman Lunyung to solve the murder of a friend's father, all while a mysterious stranger in bird-themed outfit called Red Hawk is causing problems for the counterfeiters. Jan Chung fails to conceal his identity as the superhero as he attacks the bad guys' fortress and encounters his missing brother who has been possessed by demonic spirits. Red Hawk defeats all those who stand in his way, all while his hair keeps changing color and shape similar to a certain Super-Saiyan. It all turns out to be for naught as this was just one branch of an even larger shadow conspiracy that only lost one of its ten toes.

Red Hawk does contain some decent chop-socky fights, most of which are directly copying the Street Fighter II anime movie. The film tries to befuddle the watcher with insane amounts of pointless details bringing up lore that doesn't apply to the story at all, as if you were forming your own wiki page for it. It's largely a string of trite anime cliches with the occasional bland attempts at comedy where the title hero tries to cover up his obvious double-identity. You aren't missing out on anything by giving this a miss, especially since it's been out of print for over a decade.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Leda: The Fantastic Adventure Of Yohko

Possibly being the first isekai OVA ever made, Leda came out in 1985. It features character designs by Mutsomi Inomata who eventually did the same for the Birth, so you will notice an abundance of shifting models as far as how the cast appears. Kunihiko Yuyama directed this anime just after his work on Minky Mono, so he was a good enough authority on the magical girl genre. However, this time the magical girl goes from Earth to an enchanted world instead of the other way around. This was an original idea as it wasn't based on any existing material, even though the novelization of the anime was written by Hideyuki Kikuchi who also created Vampire Hunter D, and you will notice some familiar designs from each title in the final layout of the OVA. It's rumored that Leda was based on the Valis video game series starring similar character. The dub for this was made in England featuring most of the same actors from the cast of Macross: Do You Remember Love movie, and it was the first original dub released in America by Right Stuf International.

Yoko (as she is called in the dub) is a lovestruck teenager who composes a song for the boy she's hot over, but she can't summon up enough courage to play for demo tape she made for him. Yoko listens to her song on her tape player which somehow opens a portal to the other world of Ashanti. She runs across a talking dog called Ringamu and a young girl named Yoki when she is eaten by a giant plant which transforms her into a sword-wielding warrior princess in a metal bikini. Yoko is given the power of that world's former heroine Leda which involves fighting skills and access to a giant robot. Ashanti's evil wizard warlord Zell knows that Yoko's song is the key to opening the portal to Earth which he plans to take over, even though he is probably overwhelmingly outmatched with just the Japanese military. Yoko battles Zell and his forces, afterwards she makes her way back home with newfound courage to confess her love.

Kaname Productions cut their teeth on Leda just as the OVA market got started with the success of Dallos from the year prior, even though Kaname closed their doors in 1988. The anime has only been released in America on dubbed and subtitled VHS back in the 90s, so it hasn't gotten much traction since then, despite the fact that the OVA was recently given a 4K re-release in Japan which became a bestseller at the height of this new era of isekai. The animation is above expectations for its time, and substantial detail is displayed for what is revealed to be another fantasy world. The creatures and mecha designs are matched to those of early Ghibli productions even though more emphasis is given to the emerging video games that were currently on the rise. Leda is more than just an excuse to have a cute anime girl in a Frazetta outfit going all Red Sonja on a high fantasy realm. There is serious depth to the mark it made on 80s otaku culture, in spite of this, Leda is a remarkable feat of animation that set the standard for several role-playing games.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge

Named after the second installment of Capcom's fighting video game franchise, Night Warriors was given this name as opposed to the regular Darkstalkers to separate it from the American animated series which was geared more towards Saturday Morning cartoon viewing. The OVA series was strewn through a quartet of 40-minute episodes. Ronin Warriors director Masashi Ikeda was in charge of this Madhouse production. The anime came out at the same time of Darkstalkers 3, so none of the characters that premiered in that game have showed up in any anime adaptations since then, even though Night Warriors goes out of its way to highlight the characters original to the second game which few people cared for.

The entire anime has several conflicting segments that sometimes coincide with each other, but most of them are unrelated throughout the course of the series. There's a feud going on between vampire lord Demitri and succubus Morrigan as the bloodsucking count was booted from the demon world long ago and the sexy bat-lady stands in his way. While this is happening, Felicia is a catwoman trying to put on a circus for kids to have them not be afraid of her kind referred to as The Dark. Bulky priest Donovan is a dhampir with an agenda to hunt down all of The Dark and its related monster spawn, one of which is a cursed set of living samurai armor, and along his journey he becomes the caretaker of another half-breed, the psychic orphan Anita. The Chinese vampire sisters of Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling are also on their own crusade, but it seems closer to the focal point of the whole OVA, a demonic alien named Pyron who invades Earth in order to duel its most powerful fighters. Most of these other characters are only briefly shown in some of the opening titles like Sasquatch, so they never get a real part in the overall story. Lord Raptor does get a decent team-up with Felicia as he was voiced by Scott McNeil who was the only returning voice actor from the American Darkstalkers cartoon as both shows were dubbed by the same studio.

Night Warriors is a passable adaptation of the video games, but it usually fails to have the level of fun that the games had which is what made the underrated American animated series tolerable. The spurious fighting scenes appear like they are right out of the game, however the entire plot is drawn out over four episodes which should have been at best 30 minutes long each. Night Warriors takes itself too seriously to be enjoyable regardless of the fact it's from a game where popular movie monsters are beating each other up.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor

From 1989-1992, Visual 80 and Studio Kikan did this second anime adaptation of the manga series a few years after the Guyver: Out Of Control one-shot. The 12-episode OVA series got further infamy. than the original anime mostly because U.S. Renditions provided a dub for the series that was later picked up by Manga Entertainment. This was probably the version of the anime that you saw in video rental stores instead of the prior one, as well as being the anime that more inspired the American live-action movie franchise. Being split into two distinct parts between two separate studios, Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor had three different directors and adapted the first five volumes of the manga. Manga Entertainment really knew how to milk this series by releasing only one episode per VHS, making for a dozen rentals if you wanted to see the entire series. It was of course later bundled on DVD, but has been long out of print, even though it is currently available through streaming.

Sho Fukamachi comes across the Guyver unit stolen from the Chronos Organization to become the armored warrior called Guyver I. Chronos sends numerous Zoanoid monsters out to take retrieve the unit, including sending their agent in the Guyver II suit. Sho gets help from his comrade Tetsuro, as well as the occasional team-up from the reclusive Guyver III. The OVA does have various edits and tweaks between the VHS and DVD releases, so your experience watching it may vary.

Being one of the first anime titles to get be made public after the cultural impact that Akira made on American fans, this Guyver anime got much exposure, and recruited many into the tokusatsu genre since it featured superheroes battling monsters. The animation is peculiar but effective, and the designs for the inhuman characters are engrossing, if not just plain gross. The dub has some noteworthy actors getting their premiere in the English dub, including Steve Blum as Guyver III. The majority of this OVA's appeal comes from its violence ante getting upped over other anime titles of the time.

ANI-MOVIES, *Short Peace

It's been a dog's age since the last authentic anime anthology motion picture. Sunrise helmed this scrumptious broth of talent featuring four different segments, each by its own director, including Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. This literal animated omnibus picked up where other classic anthology films like Robot Carnival left off, even though there is no consistent theme to it. The movie opens with a fantastic sequence by Studio 4C founder Koji Morimoto where a little girl plays hide-and-seek with a mischievous rabbit that leads her into a Wonderland-like multiverse where her appearance changes like going through characters choices in a video game.

The first part is Possessions by Tokyo Ghoul director Shuhei Morita about a wandering craftsman who gets caught in a storm while journeying through the woods. He seeks refuge in a vacated shrine which happens to be overrun by tsukumogami that are a kind of yokai but of old objects. The spirits each put on a small show for the traveller and he quickly starts to mend and repair each one including umbrellas and rows of silk. The remaining objects assemble into a huge jumbled dragon made of junk which the craftsman does a brief prayer for freeing them from the earthly realm. This entire short was CGI-animated similar to the some of the Baki anime, yet it does stand well enough on its own creative merit making you see it as a flowing puppet show.

Combustible is the second installment was done by Katsuhiro Otomo based on a manga he created in the mid-90s. It's starts out with the pull out of a long woodcut of a city during the Edo period. A young girl named Okawa carries out a friendship with her neighbor Matsukichi who aspires to be a firefighter. As time goes on, Matsukichi gets tossed out by his family for getting tattoos while Okawa is raised to be married off to a rich lord. She accidently sets fire to her wedding gifts and spreads further that Matsukichi gets called in and tries to rescue her, even though she climbs to her supposed death up a burning tower which could be seen as a metaphor for social segregation.

Next is Gambo directed by Hiroaki Ando that seems more condensed that it should be. The altogether story has a red oni marauding through the mountains with samurai hunting for the lumbering monster. However, of all things a polar bear is apparently sent by the gods to finally end the oni's rampage. The last remaining girl of the nearby village befriends the bear who gets into an epic fight to the death with the oni. It ends on a slightly sad note, but you come to realize that this is how the story was destined to fold out.

The finale is A Farewell To Weapons directed by Gundam animator Hajime Katoki. Like Combustible, it was also based on an Otomo manga. Happening during a new world war where humans fight against machines, a special team of soldiers are in an apocalyptic Tokyo where an abandoned warhead lies for them to retrieve. The soldiers are systematically taken out by an all-terrain robot called a Gronk leaving only one remaining soldier who is left in nothing but his birthday suit when the machine leaves him a pamphlet on how futile mankind's efforts are in fighting back. The short ends with the surviving soldier running after the Gronk with the actual warhead making you wonder he managed to get some final revenge against the cold calculating machine.

Short Peace brings back nostalgic visions of other anthology anime films like Memories and Neo Tokyo that makes you long for future endeavors to carry in this honored tradition. This was a multimedia project as well as a side-scrolling video game that was unrelated to any of the four chapters in the film, so it's almost like it could have just been its own entity with no connection to the movie at all. For non-anime fans, Short Peace is an enticing gateway drug for future otaku as the compressed status of segment makes them like an assortment of candies that you can't just eat one of.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Big Wars

Big Wars is yet another military space adventure in the spirt of Starship Troopers, even though this feature-length anime out before the American take on book. The OVA special came out in 1993 by Magic Bus and is inherently "Earth Vs. Flying Saucers". Yoshio Aramaki who also created the Kantai series wrote the novel this anime is based on. Aramaki specialized in alternative history, so it's not too hard to look at Big Wars as being in an alternate future.

After a whopping text crawl explaining how humans first colonized Mars, the story shifts ahead to the early 25th Century where an unseen race of aliens have appeared to claim the planet as their own and refer to themselves as The Gods. Whether these Gods are genuine divine beings isn't ever revealed in the story, but they attack with flying saucers and can brainwash humans into acting as agents for them. Captain Akuh leads an assault against the God's main mobile base known as Hell in his own submersible warcraft, the Aoba, which is similar to Space Battleship Yamato as it's an old military wreck that was rebuilt for a new generation. Akuh has to deal with a corrupted government and a mind-controlled girlfriend, but in the long run he leads a suicide mission inside the alien fortress in heavy gear armored suits to sabotage their engine. It's unknown whether this permanently stopped the Gods or if there was further fighting, even though it does culminate in a psychologically stressful event with the aliens using telepathy to nearly drive the Aoba's crew mad.

Big Wars has bold visuals and vigorous battle sequences, even if most of it is tanks shooting down fast flying saucers. The story is fairly bland and nothing you haven't probably seen before, but the characters are still better than anything you would see in a Michael Bay blockbuster. You won't miss anything by skipping over this, nonetheless it is an interesting view at 90s anime.

The "Newer" Odd Couple

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths-Part One

Being the first in an ambitious trilogy, Crisis On Infinite Earths-Part One takes the existing Tomorrowverse which only got started three years ago and merges it into its own multiverse. The second Tomorrowverse film, Justice Society: World War II already established that parallel universes were as commonplace as sliced bread, so the fact that there were other realities in this shared timeline isn't hard to grasp. The original maxi-series from 1985 was meant to set up an entirely new status quo for DC Comice merging all the universe into a single one, of which there has already been a take on within the Arrowverse to most credits succeeded in its version. This is the first time that the original Crisis has been done in animated format offering no limit to which licensed characters could star in the sprawling saga. As part of the Tomorrowverse, this happens right after Justice League: Warworld where Earth-1 Superman and Batman along with Earth-2 Wonder Woman are taken in by a mysterious girl called Harbinger after Martian Manhunter sacrifices himself to save the heroes. Each part of this trilogy is longer than the average DC Universe animated movies, so there is more room to focus on some of the individual characters, most specifically on the Flash going back and forth to moments in his life.

John Constantine fresh from his DC Showcase limbo in the House of Mystery has spent several lifetimes acting as the Pariah for this version of Crisis, going from one Earth to another witnessing them being destroyed by a wave of anti-matter. The main target of the story is Barry Allen as the Flash at different points in his own timeline from when he helps form the Justice League to thwart Lex Luthor's attempt to take down metahumans with the power-stealing android Amazo, to his trips to other realities like Earth-3 run by evil superheroes that he sees getting wiped out by the anti-matter wave. A being known as the Monitor sends his agent Harbinger(who it turns out is really Supergirl from the Legion of Super-Heroes future)to collect heroes and other people with the skills and smarts to discover how to counter the anti-matter from covering all the remaining universes. The heroic eggheads come to the conclusion that setting up a special giant tuning fork on each of the still-existing Earths would save them, even though Flash gets caught up in his own Earth's destruction just as the anti-matter hits it. Barry grabs his wife Iris and seals themselves off in a time envelope while the rest of the world is slowed down to a near stop as the two of them spend the next few decades perfecting their own tuning fork along with help from the head of Amazo that Flash befriended. Flash finishes his project just after Iris dies of old age to sync up the other heroes' efforts and save their universes. This act somehow effects the future as Supergirl finds out that the Legion of Super-Heroes history comes to a premature end leaving the Monitor to consult with the mysterious Spectre.

The first chapter of Crisis enters a whole new world that only occasionally goes back to incidents in the Tomorrowverse, so you don't necessarily need to see the other installments to watch this trilogy. In fact, the movie goes between so many realities and timelines that brushing up on other DC titles is almost irrelevant. The animation style matches those of the current Tomorrowverse movies, nevertheless you still feel nostalgic for the style of the Bruce Timm animated productions. As far as adapting the original comic book story, Part One covers most of the subplots, even though it leaves out original characters like Alexander Luthor or Lady Quark who might get featured in the sequels. There is also no reveal of the mastermind behind the whole universal termination scheme, meaning that the animated trilogy might takes a different approach to the original comic's villain. It is difficult to see how the entire story arc with fold out in the next two movies, but Part One is enticing enough to at least begin with.

You came to the wrong neighborhood!

 

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Geobreeders

Akihiro Ito has a thing for girls and guns in the same way Kenichi Sonoda did for Gunsmith Cats with an aesthetic influenced by American movies. Ito created a supernatural action manga titled Geobreeders that builds on the "babes and bullets" trend that was abound in the 90s. The manga got two OVA series, a 3-episode one directed by Yuji Moriyama who helmed Project A-ko, and then a 4-episode sequel titled Geobreeders: Breakthrough by Initial D director Shin Misawa. Both of these along with the original manga got an English release from Central Park Media with varying degrees of success with the first OVA series having a little more traction than the sequel since they did little advertising for it. Each version of the story in anime and manga contains hardcore gun action and gratuitous portions of fanservice along with some impressive character development. Chaos Project was the studio behind both OVA series which also worked on fan favorites such as Comic Party and To Heart. The main downside to the anime adaptation is that it doesn't explain much of the plot if you hadn't already scoped out the manga.

Kagura Total Security Inc. is team of five females in Ayagane City who hire their services specifically for the task of hunting down a terrorist group of cat people called the Phantom Cats. The evil were-cats use their shapeshifting abilities to cause instability, mainly with the government whose agencies regularly conflict with the Kagura girls. The Phantom Cats also have the power to spiritually take over various electronic devices, making them more like gremlins than lycanthropes. Kagura's only male member Taba in constantly struggling to have the other ladies stay on point while he goes further into debt to them, partially to help protect the stray Phantom Cat named Maya that he took in that the others a searching for. Kagura can use technological charms to send the cats back to the ether, the particularity involves cornering the cats into four-sided space with parchments. This leads to an abundance of destruction in Kagura's efforts to catch their prey that are up to screwball comedy levels of absurdity.

Both pistol-packing OVA series are winsome in their own way, even though Breakthrough drags the premise further than it needed to with an extra episode. Unless you bothered to check out at least the first two volumes of the manga then you will be at a loss trying to comprehend the whole plot. It might seem inviting with its gun-toting ecchi girls regardless of the lack of explanations concerning its inner lore.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Genocyber

Tony Takezaki created a giant one-shot manga in the early 90s titled Genocyber that went on to form a 5-episode OVA series with plot lines that reach far into the future that weren't even covered in the original story. You can see some of Takzaki's biopunk theme in his work on the A.D. Police Files OVA, this however is just a sampling of the carnage that followed in Genocyber. The anime is an anthology with a trio of story arcs set in the same timeline. Cybernetics Guardian director Koichi Ohata helmed this project and was also the head writer meaning he had both feet on the wheel in driving this train off the tracks. Artmic and Artland animated this unwonted production that was splattered with scenes of evisceration and computer animation. Body horror that makes John Carpenter's The Thing look tame is used to pad out the bulk of this heavy metal violence fetish brought to life.

The first chapter of this is one long episode where the research company, The Kuryu Group, is on the verge of building the ultimate weapon just as a new world government is being formed. Their test subjects for this Frankenstein experiment are two sisters, the psychic Elaine and the crippled Diana who has her body modified into a cyborg. Elaine escapes and gets abused by street urchins while avoiding Kuryu hunters, only to eventually be tracked down by Diana in her new robot form who merges her consciousness with Elaine to fuse into the monster known as Genocyber who wrecks the entire city of Hong Kong. The second chapter takes up the next two episodes with Genocyber cutting a swath through the country of Karain which the U.N. and American military fail to stop. The Kuryu Group sends another version of their weapon called Vajra to counter Genocyber who currently looks like a young blonde girl with a bionic torso with Elaine being the dominant personality, the downside to which is Diana mentality slowly driving her insane. The Vajra infects an entire aircraft carrier that morphs it into a fleshy metal abomination but Genocyber counters it as it destroys the entire country. The last two episodes conclude the series after Genocyber has devastated the majority of the Earth further in the future with humans having retreated into the sanctuary called Grand Ark. The remaining population is under the thumb of a religious order that worships Genocyber like a deity that have found the husk of its body as the sisters spirited off long ago. A psychic lady named Mei rekindles the sisters' souls within Genocyber as it ascends to waste nearly all of Grand Ark's citizens.

The entire slaughterhouse tour that is Genocyber was just a sadistic saga of graphic violence. The story is nigh impossible to follow with it transitioning from one arc to another giving the viewer motion sickness with the rapidly shifting plot. The beginning episode had the hint of a decent futuristic horror story, but it just keeps chewing up everything including any human interest as each cast member just gets shoved through a meatgrinder. This whole enchilada is completely skippable and one long meaningless exercise.