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ANI-MOVIES, *My Oni Girl

Tomotaka Shibayama who directed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time once again does a solid job in this new film that premiered on Netflix, My Oni Girl. This urban fantasy borrows story elements you've probably seen in Spirited Away and Suzume. It was a joint production with Studio Colorido which created Penguin Highway, and Twin Engine that animated Zom 100. It has a great visual aesthetic similar to recent movies like Weathering With You, but the main attraction is the plot that drives the whole journey, co-written by Yuko Kakihara.

High schooler Hiiragi lacks any social gusto and acts as a doormat for anyone to dump their problems on. Even his father has little faith in his decision making as he gets him a tutor for the summer instead of allowing him to go to cram school. Hiiragi meets the pastel-haired oni named Tsumugi who he notices has a horn on her head. He can tell she's an oni because of his lack of being able to speak up for himself resulting in his negative feelings taking parts of his spirit away. If he loses too much of it, Hiiragi runs the risk of becoming an oni himself. Tsumugi has left her hidden oni village to find her mother which her father says went to a shrine years ago. Hiiragi decides to accompany her on this journey as he knows the way to the shrine. There are bizarre long spirits called "snow gods" who are following the two of them on their trek that threaten to devour Tsumugi. The first half of the movie becomes a road trip with the intrepid youngsters coming across various characters who help them on their way, as well as being helped by the teenage runaways in return. The second half unveils the true secret behind what happened to Tsumugi's mother and why the snow gods who normally hide the oni village are now attacking the horned humans as Hiiragi is slowly turning into an oni because he can't express his feelings for Tsumugi. The finale is very gratifying and ends on a post-credits scene you will want to stick around for.

My Oni Girl might sound like it's a sappy 90s supernatural romance, but truly breaks the mold by playing out as a young adult fantasy. The main message of the film is not to bottle up your emotions but to speak your mind otherwise these negative feelings will slowly eat you away. Those who suffer from introversion will see how opening up makes you more aware of the larger world and what place you can make for yourself in it. It's possible that this movie could have played out like a short anime TV series, the first part with the teenagers on their journey, and the concluding part delving a little more into the oni lore which gets a slapdash explanation near the end to wrap up the story. The soundtrack is admissible and helps capture the strange scenes when it starts snowing in the middle of summer. Despite the shuffled finale, this is a family-friendly picture that fits nicely next to your Ghibli library.

MISC. MANGA, *Disney Mirrorverse: Belle

Disney's Mirrorverse game takes place in a shared multiverse where the majority of Disney franchises are connected similar to Kingdom Hearts but in an alternate "What If?" timeline. In the realities that these stories happen in there was a divergence the set the plot on a darker path from the original. In so far, the only manga-styled graphic novel connected to the game, this one-shot graphic novel shows a much grimmer adaptation of Beauty And The Beast. The Belle special acts as a retelling of the original story, as well as a prequel to the video game. This was an OEL manga, having never run in Japan prior to this publication.

Once upon a time, instead of the nosy Enchantress cursing the Prince and everyone in his castle, the spell spreads to the surrounding forest and village. The Enchantress realizes her lifeforce is slipping away as the spell is sucking her dry and a wandering girl from the village named Belle finds her just before she vanishes. Belle is given a magic rose from the Enchantress and becomes the official guardian of the woods. A year passes and most of the villagers have turned into plants, animals, or creatures, including D'Aurque who ran the asylum who is now a creeping abomination. One of the few villagers to remain unchained was Gaston who is now the official royal huntsman. Gaston continues to act all alpha male around Belle, but she manages to talk him into taking him to the castle where the Prince is still in power and in his human form along with the rest of his staff. Belle discovers another rose similar to hers along with the Prince's magic mirror and that they are tied to the Enchantress' still-active spell. What proceeds from here is a long drawn-out philosophical debate about who is really to blame for this whole mess, until the corrupted D'Aurque enters and reveals that Gaston was in league with him all along. Belle uses the power of the roses to reset the spell to its intended effect where the Prince is now a Beast with all the surviving castle staff changed into common living objects. Mickey Mouse then shows up and tries to have Belle and Beast join his Mirrorverse version of The Avengers which leads into plot of the video game.

The Belle manga isn't bad, but much of the charm of the original Beauty And The Beast movie is completely lost in this void of entropy. Writer Alex Singer is suited for constructing this alternate timeline even though she was obligated into steer the plot in this direction to help sell the game. The actual graphic novel was withheld from release for half of a year, so it missed the window for promoting the game which came out two years prior. There is a prose novel prequel that also covers Snow White's intro into the Mirrorverse that came out at the same time the Belle manga was supposed to, which is why there hasn't been any big pull by fans towards that game. Disney continuously creates video game platforms combining all their characters into single narrative, so any media spinoff to them that isn't from the heyday of Kingdom Hearts just isn't going to catch the same lightning in a bottle.

MISC. MANGA, *Fated Faeries

Garison Dunn premiered their one-shot in the often-overlooked section of fantasy fandom, the fae culture. Faeries, or "fairies" as they are usually branded, are a whole other form of storytelling lost somewhere between high fantasy and generic children's fairy tales. The black and white manga format harkens back to the Golden Age of indy comics in the 70s-80s. It's hard to say if Elfquest was a major influence in this story's creation, but you can recognize a few of the character designs and traits.

Freesia is a busty but short nymph and her faerie companion Ilithia have a random encounter with an underground monster which she easily dispatched. Reverend Alstro comes across this brief fight and invites Freesia back to his village where he is praised as their who think he is descended from genuine faeries. Freesia and Ilithia soon realize that the Reverend is really a huckster preaching a quack philosophy in order to resurrect an evil demoness. Once the Reverend's ruse is realized and Freesia sends him into the hungry limbs of a plant creature. The two heroines then go on to the next adventure with the possibility of further tales to tell.

Fated Faeries is a manga-styled special that first got its premiere on Web Toon and then later in print through Antarctic Press. No word yet if there is going to be any kind of continuation of this storyline, but it is an enticing read for fans of fae folk.

ANI-MOVIES, *Ultraman: Rising

After completing a made-for-streaming series adaptation of the historic live-action tokusatsu saga, Netflix put together an all-new take of the tall silver alien fresh off the heels of the recent Shin Ultraman revision. Ultraman: Rising can't completely be considered an anime as most of the production was handled by Industrial Light and Magic, but it takes great influence from anime such as Akira and Evangelion in its character, monster, and mecha layouts. This westernized version takes a Dreamworks approach by deconstucting the kaiju genre and changing it into a family bonding feature. Animator Shannon Tindle is a director and head writer on this production who formerly worked on Kubo And The Two Strings. Fans of the original Ultraman may not fully appreciate this total reboot as a great portion of the lore is abandonned for a fresh take on the lore such as where this brand of Ultraman actually comes from and how his legacy is passed on to the next generation.

For the last four decades, Japan has constantly been raided by giant monsters called kaiju who randomly show up and cause some damage leaving the whole thing to be cleaned up the tremendous hero known as Ultraman. The big metal monster fighter is actually Professor Sato whose somehow has access to futuristic technology that allows him to grow big and provides him with an underwater base but it doesn't take him away from having a family. Years later, Kenji Sato takes up the mantle of Ultraman from his dad after his mother goes missing, but instead of being a sentai hero Ken wants to be a professional baseball player. He comes back to Japan when his tour of duty in America is finished to join the ironically named team of the Giants, although the kaiju start showing up at the same time and Ken has to become Ultraman to keep the city safe. An old foe labled Gigantron attacks during Ken's opening game to retrieve its egg from the Kaiju Defense Force, a special anti-monster force lead by the main antagonist Dr Onda who has a major beef with giant monsters as they caused his family to be killed. Ken defeats Gigantron as Ultraman only to have its egg hatch on him with the baby kaiju, so now his has to act as newborn's surrogate parent. The bachelor ball player/superhero can't juggle both careers along with playing daddy to a young dragon-like creature, so Ken asks his own father to come in and help raise the little monster named Emi after Ken's missing mother. Dr. Onda has in the meantime been turning the surviving Gigantron into a cybernetic nightmare to hunt down Emi so he can find the illusive Kaiju Island where all the monsters supposedly come from. Ken as Ultraman along with his father as Ultraman, Emi, and a freed Gigantron all team up to stop Dr. Odna who gets into a final clash while operating a huge mecha that was clearly inspired by Pacific Rim.

Ultraman: Rising does commit a cardinal sin by using the word "Rise" in its title which never seems to work for any existing franchise branching out into a new media, although this is a welcome addition to the sentai series. You can tell that the conversion of this Japanese property into an American production was sticking to its guns when keeping it tied to its own continuity and not having be a sequel to any existing Ultraman titles. The entire film is CGI-animated, but you can see glimpses of startling American productions like the Spider-Verse and even Hasbin Hotel. This is a groovy throwback to the original Silver Age superhero era while still being a crisp viewing for younger audiences.

R.I.P. Ben Potter, "Comicstorian"

 

ANI-MOVIES, *eX-Driver: The Movie

A year after the OVA series completed, eX-Driver got a movie sequel. The movie itself is only about an hour long, but there is also a shorter prequel special that got shown with it, along with a trio of animated shorts that you could only see in theaters. Kosuke Fujishima's bizarre future story of a world where all cars are run by AI has the occasional crossed wire where the car goes nuts and the only ones who can stop them are a specialized unit called eX-Drivers to safely chase them down. There are plenty of plot holes in this idealist view of technological things to come, but it filled in the void for fans of Initial D when they were waiting for the next season.

The prequel short titled Danger Zone takes place a few years before the OVA series with the veteran eX-Drivers Nina and Rei in their early days before Rei became an eX-Rider. Here they have to deal with an obsessive stalker of Nina who is really just a pawn of eX-Driver technician Toma who set the whole thing up to make a big getaway with secret plans. The animation in it isn't up to the same bar what was done for the full-length movie and seems more of a throwback to 90s action girl anime.

The main feature happens sometime after the OVA and takes place entirely in America where the Japanese eX-Driver team are taking part in an international race. A former mafia boss is suspected of betting on the event, and his over caring daughter plots to stop the race to save his business. It turns out that the ex-mobster was setting up a charity fund for the eX-Driver organization which a rogue member of his crew uses as an opportunity to steal a bunch of cold cash. Our heroic trio of Lorna, Lisa, and Soichi get involved in a prolonged final chase that has a decent flow to it. Even though it's only an hour long, this premise was still stretched out longer than was totally necessary.

eX-Driver: The Movie makes for a fair continuation of the original anime, but if you hadn't watched the 6-episode series then you would be largely lost on the whole premise as it doesn't lean into the main premise of what the eX-Driver organization was created for in the first place. You can catch this double-feature on most streaming services with the prequel short playing after the main one. It has some interesting action sequences but is ultimately a retread of tired car chase cliches.

ANI-MOVIES, *The King's Avatar: For The Glory

A donghua based on The King's Avatar novel by Hu Die lan came out in 2017, followed by a live-action TV series in 2019. The same year also premiered a theatrical animated release which acts as a prequel titled For The Glory. The movie takes place before the anime series, but acts as its own separate entity, especially since it is one of the few titles from this franchise that actually got an English dub. This was entirely animated in China, so it;s not totally considered anime, despite the strong anime influence on it. The movie tries to bring interest into the field of electronic sports but fails miserably in its execution.

A hit fantasy MMORPG titled Glory has gained enough fame for it to be considered a professional esport. Two friends, Ye Qiu and Su Muqiu, decide to go pro for the upcoming team trials when they're not working at an internet cafe. Ye Qiu comes from a rich family, and he wants to keep his esports prospects secret otherwise they would kick him out of the business. Su Muqiu on the other hand lives with his sister, no parents, and his uncle Tao Xuan who owns the cafe he works at. The two friends decide to form their own pro team called Team Excellent Era made up of other players, but Su Muqiu gets killed just as the team is assembled. The film tries to make this cinderblock of tragedy to act as the players' motivation for the rest of the movie. False sentiment fuels the last two-thirds of the movie which is just one long session of Let's Play as the characters fight each other in a virtual death battle.

The movie does contain some impressive animation, notably in the battle sequences, although this is all done on PCs with no VR hook up at all, so there isn't the usual "if you die in the game, you die for real!" malarky. The dub is bland with an unmotivated cast, even though there is also a Spanish dub available. With there being no actual real version of the Glory game, the whole story is just a bunch of gamers playing with the unfounded incentive of trying to honor their dead colleague's dream to be trophy-winning player for something that is in all reality just a pop culture phase.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Great Adventure Of Horus, Prince Of The Sun

Way back in 1968, Studio Ghibli founder Isao Takahata worked on his first full-length movie as a director. Also called Horus, Prince Of The Sun, the Toei anime film was brought over to America by Fred Ladd who had already westernized Astro Boy, Gigantor, and Kimba. Ladd released it in English as The Little Norse Prince, and sometimes with the name "Valiant" added to the title in some releases which must have been confusing to a bunch of comic strip fans. This movie marks the first time that Takahata collaborated with Hayao Miyazaki on a movie which eventually led into their forming Studio Ghibli, making Horus the first unofficial Ghibli production. Takahata specialized in character designs, although a good portion of the animation was handled by Yasuo Otsuka who went on to work on Toei Animation's headliner version of Puss N' Boots. It took about three years to finally complete this feature, something that shows as there is at least one major battle scene is done all in still shots, but there are some amazing sequences of humans fighting beasts.

Centuries ago in Norway, lone young warrior Horus is chased by silver wolves which wakes up a sleeping stone giant. Horus pulls a stone sword out of the big boulder man's shoulder that gives him the title of "Prince of the Sun". The new prince returns home to his father as he is about to pass away in his sleep, but parts the true origins of their family to his son that they escaped from a village that was decimated by the evil sorcerer Grunwald. Horus sets out with his talking bear to find his old village, and then confronts Grunwald who wants to make him his ward which is rejected. Horus comes across the current village that he pledges to defend as it is facing Grunwald's wrath with his nearly endless army of wolves. The valiant prince visits his old village and meets another survivor, the mysterious but beautiful Hilda. The strange girl is secretly Grunwald's sister sent to lull the villagers into being more placid with the power of her enchanted singing. A good portion of the rest of the film contends with Hilda's conflict between being a good person or living up to her evil brother's expectations. This does turn the second half into a tale of morality slowing down the action, at least until Grunwald finally attacks the village with a giant mammoth where the rock monster returns to help in one of the first kaiju fights in an anime movie.

Horus, Prince Of The Sun managed to get made despite the animators' strike that plagued the film's production. Takahata wanted the story to originally be set in northern Japan, but that wasn't permitted at the time, so the plot was instead changed into a Viking epic. Toei wasn't pleased with how the film finally turned out, and only ran it in for ten days in Japanese theaters. Fortunately, Fred Ladd's American distribution helped make it a cult hit among mid-20th Century animation fans. The designs made for this greatly show up again in future Ghibli animation, especially in Hilda's inner struggle. Horus is claimed as being one of the first "adult" anime movies, even though that correctly goes to A Thousand And One Nights which was released a year later. The movie is considered part of the criterion that classic anime is founded by, despite the number of notable flaws its production had.

ANI-MOVIES, *The House Of The Lost On The Cape

Eleven Arts has a good track record at taking non-Ghibli anime movies and giving them a professional English release. While some of their releases are connected to existing franchises like Boruto and Gintama, others such as Penguin Highway and the heartbreaking A Silent Voice manage to pull their own weight among the more well-known titles. Based on Sachiko Kashiwaba's novel, The House Of The Lost On The Cape first came out in 2014 as a book for children about the 2011 disasters that hit Japan which was also the inspiration for Shin Godzilla, although this anime film came out in 2021 as part of a project to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the disaster. The actual book didn't get an English release until fall of last year, but the anime was released in American theaters a year prior to that. The anime film was done by Davis Production who also animated some of the Jojo series, Fire Force, and the recent Urusei Yatsura remake. The best way to describe the film upfront is that it is a less whimsical version of My Neighbor Tortoro where youngsters encounter spirits for the first time.

Just after the Tohoku tsunami, runaway teenager Yui finds her way to a shelter while coming across Hiyori, a little girl whose parents were previously killed in an auto accident and was sent to live with some extended family that perished in the tsunami leaving the poor lass psychologically mute. The two estranged girls get tagged by the elderly Kiwa claiming to be their grandmother. The three then head across the devastated landscape to Kiwa's place known as a mayoiga which is an abandoned house where most of the basic needs of its inhabitants are provided for by helpful spirits which Kiwa calls Fushigitto, or yokai to the less-seasoned otaku. Yui seems skeptical at first to the house's supernatural hospitality, even though Hiyori begins to open up to spirits. Yui does grow to like living in the small town off the coast, especially since she gets a part-time job and a free scooter out of the whole deal. Kiwa introduces the girls to their first physical spirits, a friendly clan of kappa that she has investigate an underwater shrine that was broken open from the tsunami unleashing an evil snake demon called Red Eyes. The sinister spirit was sealed away long ago with the help of the local Fushigitto, but now its loose again and slowly feeding off the townsfolk's latent negative feelings that were building up from the disaster. The Fushigitto from all over combine their resources to stop Red-Eyes' return, even though it might lead to a horrible sacrifice.

The House Of The Lost On The Cape is already a mouthful of a title for your average American viewer to swallow, but what really kept the film from gaining more success is how Eleven Arts might have billed it as a family feature. There is some serious character trauma, especially Yui and Hiyori's dire family background which prevents the film from ending up next to Hello Kitty in a children's movie lineup. The dub is surprisingly good, with the drawback being that there is no subtitle track given in the streaming edition that lets you what Hiyori is saying when she writes down her dialogue due to her muteness. Davis Production did a commendable job on the animation, despite the fact that some panning shots go on longer than they needed to, and the entire design of the film completely shifts whenever Kiwa starts a flashback sequence treating it like a dark fairy tale. If you have to watch this film, you would be better off possibly with the physical release of it as you have more of a choice in seeing all the subtitles making for a better viewing experience.