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ANI-MOVIES, *Luca

Before Turning Red, Pixar created a totally different tale of maturity with fantasy elements to it in 2021. Luca was the first full-length picture directed by animator Enrico Casarosa who previously worked on Pixar productions like Up, Onward, and Coco. The whole concept is somewhat of a successor to Casarosa's short that he did for Pixar in 2011, La Luna which was about a fisher family off the coast of Italy, except this time a supernatural twist has been added. Dreamworks would take the concept of Luca along with Turning Red into their own "original" idea for Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, even though it took on its own unique style. Luca was not a regular Pixar story delving into social commentary or emotional inner peace, but merely a tale of growth in an otherworldly setting.

The movie is set in 1959 at the fictional Italian fishing town of Portorosso where a family of sea monsters live nearby underwater. Their only son Luca shepherds dim fish for some reason, while his parents warn him to stay away from boats, even though he gets interested in the things humans drop from their boats. He meets another young sea monster named Alberto who lives alone on a small island in a desolate lighthouse, and he shows Luca that when sea monsters go on dry land they turn into humans. This gets Luca in trouble with his parents who want him to go the depths to with his see-through uncle, so he'll be safe from humans. Luca runs away from home and teams up with Alfredo with the goal of getting their own vespa scooter which they believe will help them see the world on their own. They meet local girl Giulia who tells them about an upcoming multisport race where they can win the prize money to get their own vespa. The boys spend the next week living with Giulia and her one-armed fisher father training for the race while trying to keep their sea monster identities secret, all while avoiding Luca's parents who have come up to the surface to look for their son. There is of course the standard cartoon villain involved whose sole motivation was to win the race along with his two henchboys just to flaunt his ego. Not to give away the ending, but it doesn't have what you normally expect to see in a Pixar flick.

Luca is an endearing movie which is more of a slice-of-life story than a modern-day fairy tale. The animation style has an obvious influence on the works of Hayao Miyazaki, especially Ponyo. There is a strong sense of innocence and fairness to each of the character's motivations, except of course for the villain. Even though it is a Pixar production, Luca is a little lacking in visual dynamics, at least outside of Luca's dream sequences which is most of the film. The moderate tone of this film works at least as a change of pace from all the Cars movies Pixar keeps turning out. It's more of a pleasant inoffensive feature for the whole family, even though it could stand be more decisive about whether they want to stick with either spoken English or Italian.

No matter what they say on Mandalore...this is the only true way!

ANI-MOVIES, *Blue Thermal

Kana Ozawa created the five-volume manga series of Blue Thermal in 2015 that was popular enough to not only get a prequel manga, but a full-length anime movie in 2022. The studio behind it was Telecom Animation Film who has a long lists of credits in several American productions like Real Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, and Mighty Orbots. It's a slice-of-life story with some melodrama added to pad out the film's 103-minute run time. There is resplendent designs and flying sequences, although some of the characters are obvious generic anime stock.

Tamaki Tsuru is a freshman on her own in her new college and accidently causes the aviation club's glider to be damaged. The team captain Kuramochi talks her into paying the debt off by joining their club, and later discovers that she has a natural talent for operating a glider and all the aeronautics involved with it. The majority of the middle of the story has Tamaki contending with rival gliders and her big sister from the competing school who has been holding a grudge against her since they were young, so the plot is lengthened with customary anime cliches. The film wraps with Tamaki working out her feelings for Kuramochi who has gone missing in Germany while the aviation club is going through its finals. There's never any confirmed romance, although greatly hinted at between the male and female leads.

As a movie, Blue Thermal better here than it might have as a TV series which it was first conceived as, even though it can seem lackluster at points. Eleven Arts decided to save even further money in their English release of this by not providing a dub or even bothering with a U.S. theatrical run. You can find this on Blu-ray through Shout Factory but could save some cash just catching it for free on numerous streaming channels.