ANI-MOVIES, *Orion And The Dark

French studio Mikros Animation worked their magic to make DreamWorks' Orion And The Dark come to life. Based on Emma Yarlett's book, this was adapted by Charlie Kaufman who most would remember from writing Being John Malkovich. The plot is a mixture of Inside Out, The Princess Bride, and Inception as it leaves the viewer wondering if they're watching a dream or a story being narrated with numerous clues as to who was actually telling it. The film starts out seeming like a generic all-ages fantasy, but as it going on it totally beats subversion which you don't even realize until the conclusion. Even the character designs look like Pixar knockoffs, however by the end it helps push the believable logic used into the overall theme of imagination.

Orion has a crippling anxiety of nearly everything, mainly trying to fit in at school and working up the courage to talk to a girl he likes for their field trip to a planetarium. He's especially afraid of the dark, so that evening he gets visited by Dark itself which is a living spirit responsible for bringing darkness to the world to roll in the night along with the rest of his crew. The night entities consist of Quiet, Sleep, Insomnia, Sweet Dreams, and Unexplained Noises who all look like rejected Jim Henson creations, but they each play their parts helping humans operate in nighttime. Dark takes Orion on a tour of the world trying him to get over his fears of the dark and other sources of his anxiety which he slightly does, but his comparison of how good things are in the light make the other entities quit their jobs and Dark ultimately letting himself get extinguished by Light which is his sunny counterpart tasked with bringing light into the world. Along the way, we learn that this entire tale is being told by an adult Orion to his young daughter Hypatia looking for inspiration for writing a poem, so Hypatia resolves the story's bummer ending with a deux ex machina by having herself somehow go back in time to help her younger father. Hypatia gathers the other night entities and goes into Orion's mind to find what's left of Dark and restore darkness to the world. The snag in this is that now Hypatia is stuck in the past with her father as a boy with no way to get back to her own time, at least until the convenient time traveler Tycho comes to take her back to the future. This ends with Tycho turning out to be Hypatia's son from even further in the future who is being told the multi-generational story down from his grandfather to his mother and now to him. The older Orion thinks back to his days at school where we see his younger self finally getting the nerve to go on his field trip and talk to the girl he likes.

Orion And The Dark goes from a child dealing with anxiety, similar to Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, and then becomes a groundbreaking fairy tale shifting from one person's perspective to another throughout the ages. The perspective of who is telling the story and how it's being interpreted by the listener for once clearly defined for this who can keep up with its accounting. The narrative can get a little wonky, but if you're seeing it from the point of view a child being told a bedtime story from their parent allows a child's imagination to go into overdrive. Being told the typical "Happily Ever After" can become repetitive, so passing the story over to another generation is an inspired idea. The animation can seem like simple CGI at first, but as the story goes along the quality gets surprisingly better when Orion is off on his nocturnal adventure. The overall message of overcoming your fears and how you can still battle them into your adulthood makes it relatable and open to all ages.

ANI-MOVIES, *Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

As impossible as the idea of Nintendo and Sega working together might have seen after the turn of the century, Sega went to doing only video games while Nintendo remained a games publisher. In 2009, they collaborated on a new action game titled Bayonetta about a gun-toting witch in an alternate universe which took a few notes from Capcom's Devil My Cry, and it was such a hit that a feature-length anime adaptation of it came out in 2013. Bloody Fate was directed by Afro Samurai creator Fuminori Kizaki under Gonzo studio and was translated into English through Crunchyroll which is also one of a few anime movies they have on their streaming service. The movie diverges much from the video game's plot as it passed on taking the story verbatim and begins its own narrative with a two-minute exposition about the world this takes place in which might've worked for Star Wars even though concept is paper thin at this point. This came out a year before the official sequel game, so this was the only piece of Bayonetta media that was released after the original which was its main draw.

This version of Earth had a balance between sages and angels of Heaven with witches and demons from Hell. A sage and a witch got together 500 years ago and gave birth to a child who was taken in by the witches and then banished to a box at the bottom of a lake. Cut to modern day when the child wakes up with amnesia and spends the few years training to be a slayer of both angels and demons while part-timing as a nun under the name Bayonetta. Her methods of dispensing any attackers usually consist of her using four separate guns for each appendage specifically built for monster busting. Bayonetta also has the odd talent using her hair in ways Rapunzel never dreamed of like forming new clothing, creating hand weapons, and opening up portals that she can summon eldritch horrors. The gun-witch befriends a familiar looking girl named Cereza that an evil cult is looking for, so Bayonetta along with her would-be love interest Luka who keeps blaming her for the death of his father years ago. After running a huge gauntlet getting Cereza back to her father, it's revealed that the girl is really young Bayonetta from the past that was set up for no reason. You'd think if the main villain had time travel capabilities that there would be no way to defeat him as he could just go back and time and correct any mistakes he made, but Bayonetta gets help from her fellow ex-witch Jeanne to a galactic clash that seriously tries to keep up with Gurren Lagann's finale. Bayonetta goes into hiding after the battle but plans on returning to the human realm after she and Jeanne kill a few more straggling monsters.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate uses music from the first video game which is one of the few good things it has, along with over-the-top fight sequences. There are numerous bits where the characters are just sitting around and they barely show them talking to save on animation, so it's easy to see that the movie was operating on a tight budget. Even though the film is Rated R, there isn't that much in the way of undressed ladies aside from the obligatory shower scene, nor is there any huge amounts of gore that you would expect from a demon hunter story. The dub is fair with Hellena Taylor replaying her role as the title character, as well as Grey DeLisle and Yuri Lowenthal giving impressive performances. It's not the best representation of the Bayonetta franchise but is one of the few sources outside of the games to check out.

R.I.P. Terence Stamp

 

Love, Death & Robots: The OTHER Heavy Metal

Love, Death And Robots was first conceived by Deadpool director Tim Miller as a mature animated anthology consisting of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. Miller and Alien 3 director David Fincher first pitched this as a reboot of the Heavy Metal movie that lingered in limbo for over a decade. So, like many abandoned ideas, they pitched it to Netflix to be a series. The video game creators at Blur Studio handle most of the production even though each installment is regularly animated by various studios from all over the globe. The series went on for four seasons from 2019-2025 with most episodes usually being a one-shot film with no connection to each other. This mixed bag of monsters and outer space were met with mixed results, even though it peeked during its initial season, so here’s a quick review of every episode from all four seasons.

SEASON ONE
*Sonnie’s Edge: Based on space opera author Peter Hamilton’s story, this features the most freaked out Pokemon matches ever. The owner of a genetically engineered monster that’s used in underground matches against other mutants but secretly uses this monster as a means of revenge on her former rapists. The skeevy bastards get what they had coming in this violent escapade.

*Three Robots: Satirist John Scalzi wrote this tale of a trio of different robots that take a tour on the remains of Earth after mankind died out after an apocalyptic event. The true reason behind this is revealed in a later episode, but the snarky robots are absolute gold with their criticisms on humans and what lead to their destruction.

*The Witness: A killer chases after a witness who looks like the woman he just murdered, and she manages to get the better of him, even though she notices a witness in a nearby building who looks like her pursuer. The Groundhog’s Day time loop is somewhat effective even though you do see it coming.

*Suits: “Rednecks in Robots” is what’s in store when farmers use mechas to protect their fields from invading giant insects. There is some amazing action, even though the character models are mediocre.

*Sucker Of Souls: An archeologist along with a team of mercenaries are attacked by none other than Dracula in an underground series of tunnels. They manage to defeat the vampire king via his fear of cats but reach a dead end as they go into a cavern full of more vampires. Decent monster hunt inspired by survival horror video games.

*When The Yogurt Took Over: Yogurt all over the Earth becomes sentient and slowly begins to influence its way over the world’s governments. Eventually, world peace is achieved with the yogurt overlords reaching out into space while leaving the humans behind. Interesting DreamWorks’ character designs and sardonic view of mass consumerism.

*Beyond The Aquila Drift: Dipping heavily into Ridley Scott territory, space captain Thom awakens from cryogenics and is reunited with his old girlfriend, although it's revealed that he’s really in a simulation while inside a huge alien hive. The animation is convincingly realistic, although not too far above that of your average current video game cutscenes.

*Good Hunting: One of the few steampunk episodes in the series, set in early 1900s China, a shape-changing fox spirit befriends a boy who years later she calls on his services as he provides her with a new mechanical body to get protect young women from being molested. This was a splendid blend of automation and the supernatural.

*The Dump: Bubba Ho-Tep author Jon Lansdale wrote this gross out short about an old coot who lives in a junkyard inhabited by a living mound of muck that comes in handy for devouring pesky city inspectors. Gorehounds will get a kick out this splatter punk special.

*Shape Shifters: Before the Creature Commandos got animated, this story has werewolves working with the US Marines in the Middle East fighting against the Taliban army which also has lycanthrope soldiers. Dog Soldiers meets Call Of Duty in a story that shows discrimination on both sides of a war.

*Helping Hand: More of a realist drama than straight sci-fi, an astronaut repairs a faulty satellite in orbit over the Earth who must make a quick decision or die alone in space. An impactful survival thriller.

*Fish Night: A pair of travelling salesmen get stuck in the middle of the desert after their car breaks down and remark how there was sea life millions of years ago where the stand. They are later visited by the ghosts of prehistoric fish as one of them gets eaten by a huge shark. A weird west story straight out of Twilight Zone.

*Lucky 13: A space military adventure sees a squad of grunts get transported by an old transport which on its last mission ends up saving its crew and killing the enemy forces. Michael Bay die-hards will find it appealing.

*Zima Blue: Wonder Woman animator Robert Valley created the most stylized episode of this season about a cybernetic artist who became renown throughout the universe when he retires and goes back to his original form, that of an automatic pool cleaner. A showcase of how simplicity can be more satisfying than fame.

*Blindspot: A heist flick in the spirit of 80s cyberpunk anime sees a quartet of criminals trying to get an important microchip from a moving convoy that gives off some major Mega Man vibes. Even though nearly everyone dies in it, it turns out they have backup bodies, so an impressive fun romp.

*Ice Age: Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Topher Grace star in this mostly live-action short discover their fridge contains a micronation that quickly evolves in a matter of minutes and eventually become pure energy. Despite the big-name actors, the main draw is the sped-up animation.

*Alternate Histories: In what seems like something out of Hitchhiker's Guide, a simulation app shows what the world would be like if Adolf Hitler was killed in various Looney Tunes fashion even though each death cause even weirder results. A fine spoof of instructional videos.

*The Secret War: This epic war story is right up Mike Mignola’s alley. Animated by a Hungarian studio, this is a story of Russian soldiers who are tracking down unholy ghouls that were intended to help the Red Army but get out of control and slaughter their hunters resulting in the entire area getting bombed by the military. Blood, guts, and gore help end this season on a bang.

SEASON TWO
*Automated Customer Service: One of the first “Rise Of The Machines” themed episodes when an elderly lady orders a new vacuum robot that becomes self-aware and gets aggressive, and calling up customer service only results in having it go into purge mode blasting anything in its path with lasers. This nonsensical spin on how we’re slowly becoming more dependent on AI is laughable but true.

*Ice: Another Robert Valley winner, the brothers Fletcher and Sedgewick move to an ice planet named New Greenland where everyone except Sedgewick has been genetically modified to survive on an alien world. One night, the brothers along with some new friends try to catch a ride on humongous frost whales, but Fletcher apparently fakes breaking his ankle to help boost Sedgewick’s moral after he carries him back home despite not being modded. This shows that blood is thicker than artificial enhancements.

*Pop Squad: Probably this season’s grimmest chapter, biopunk author Paolo Bacigalupi wrote this Blade Runner-inspired story, children are hunted down by special police to maintain population control while the rich can be rejuvenated. A detective comes upon a poor woman secretly raising her child but spares them only to be shot by his partner for neglecting his duty. There’s a definitive color scheme throughout the feature indicating a distinct mood for each setting.

*Snow In The Desert: Neal Asher wrote this space western about an albino man named Snow who is being chased across a desert world for his power to regenerate. Bounty hunters track him down while a female cyborg helps him even as the two bond over their mutual immortality. Brilliant creature designs and fascinating world-building.

*The Tall Grass: How To Train Your Dragon’s animator Simon Otto did this eerie tale set in 1901 where a train stops in the middle of a grassy field which a passenger wanders into and encounters faceless monsters who according to the train conductor were former passengers that got lost in the grass. There’s no given reason to this phenomenon, but the layer of mysteries is salivating.

*All Through The House: Animated by Blink who did Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared, this apparently innocent holiday story is derailed as a brother and sister discover that the real Santa Claus visiting them on Christmas Eve is a hideous monster capable of determining whose naughty and nice while spitting out presents for the good kids from his stomach. This would be pure nightmare fuel for any kid.

*Life Hutch: Based on a Harlan Ellison short story, Michael B. Jordan voices the character of Terence who is a space pilot that crash lands on an alien world and finds an automated shelter called a Life Hutch run by a robot gone haywire. The CGI is very convincing with little uncanny valley effect as Terence looks exactly like Jordan.

*The Drowned Giant: Written by new wave author JG Ballard, the body of a naked giant shows up on a beach and a scholar tries to make sense of this spectacle. Despite the appearance of this unexplained occurrence, life goes on with everyone eventually forgetting all about it. An exemplary example of how even a miracle can give way to mundanity.

SEASON THREE
*Three Robots-Exit Strategies: Being the only sequel chapter in the entire series, the robotic trio continue their tour of the post-apocalyptic Earth while stopping by a survival camp, an oil platform turned into a resort, and a rocket station where they ride up to Mars and find the mega-rich's efforts were futile as their own greed is what caused their downfall, or at least that’s the message without giving the ending away. This was a strong message about wasting resources while still being hilarious.

*Bad Travelling: A tremendous man-eating crab holds a crew of fishermen hostage and demands that they take him to a nearby island to feast on the many people there. The devious captain kills the remaining crew because they weren’t willing to sacrifice themselves and then leaves the crab to go down with the exploding ship. Profoundly dark and moody with an explosively colorful ending.

*The Very Pulse Of The Machine: Authored by sci-fi scribe Michael Swanwick, Martha is an astronaut exploring the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io with her partner Burton who apparently dies when their rover crashes. Martha carries Burton’s unconscious body across the moon mostly to feed off her oxygen, but she also starts hallucinating after taking some morphine and follows trails of energy, so Martha’s perspective is off kilter which causes her to sink into the ground which somehow sends an audio message back to Earth. The animation by anime studio Polygon Pictures is exceptionally trippy.

*Night Of The Mini Dead: Done holistically with fast forwarded miniatures by Buck studio, this quick but humorous take on a zombie apocalypse escalates out of control after a couple make out in a graveyard causing the dead to rise leading to the zombies mutating into giants. All the world’s governments launch their nukes as the Earth farts out of existence. This is like World War Z taken all the way to Ludicrous Speed.

*Kill Team Kill: Cartoon Network animation regulars Titmouse handled the production of a survival horror case where a task force must track down a killer cyber-bear in Afghanistan. The soldiers lure it into a trap at an abandoned base, but the minigun-toting machine succeeds in blowing up everything around them. A crazy callback to the insane action movies of the 80s with outdated meme references.

*Swarm: Rosario Dawson stars in this twisted space oddity is about two doctors researching another world inhabited by insect beings called the Swarm. The doctor Galina is there to study the alien race, but her partner Simon wants to exploit them for humanity’s benefit. The Swarm had already replaced Galina with a hybrid clone and let Simon decide if he wanted the same treatment which he agrees to as he only cared about himself. A profound dive into what someone will do to stay alive is displayed here in grotesque glory.

*Mason’s Rats: Set in futuristic Scotland, old farmer Mason has a rat problem as they’ve evolved to walking on two legs and building their own tech. Mason orders a special scorpion robot to exterminate the rats, but the android arachnid barely keeps up the waves of weapons the rats come up with. The prime lesson is how life can adapt to its surrounding whether it be man or mouse.

*In Vaulted Halls Entombed: We finally get to some Lovecraft as dark fantasy writer Alan Baxter concocts a military horror animated with a dynamic unreal engine. Some marines must rescue a hostage being held in a cave where they encounter corpses being eaten by large spider creatures. They discover an underground temple holding none other than Cthulhu being held in a confined chamber which causes the surviving soldiers to either go mad or killing themselves. This is another example of sacrificing one’s life for the sake of the many.

*Jibaro: Tron art director Alberto Mielgo directed this, and you’ll swear some of it is live action. Spanish colonizers are lured in by a siren totally decorated in gold and jewels that compels them to kill themselves, all except for one deaf soldier named Jibaro. Even though he couldn’t hear her song, Jibaro’s greed gets the better of him as he thinks he kills the creature, steals her gold, and after drinking some of the siren’s river water allowing him to hear which seals his doom.

SEASON FOUR
*Can’t Stop: The first clue that this series was circling the drain as it just a music video of Red Hot Chili Peppers performing a live concert but as marionettes. Fans of this show waited three whole years for the next season, and they open with this crappy MTV reject.

*Close Encounters Of The Mini Kind: Buck returns with another take on old alien invasion blockbusters where a mishap between visitors from space becomes a full-blown War Of The Worlds with hints of Mad Max and Independence Day. Earth’s attempts to reverse engineer the alien weapons results in a singularity taking the planet and part of the galaxy with it once again which seems like an insignificant poof in the grand scheme of things.

*Spider Rose: Even though it's supposed to be set in the same universe as the Swarm chapter, this might as well have been in its own separate reality. A solitary cyborg in space named Lydia plans to get revenge against the criminal lord Jade and his many clones. Hoping to gain a weapon against Jade, Lydia works out a trade a race of machinists who instead allow her to take care of their pet creature she calls Nosey that can begin to mirror their owners. Lydia bonds with Nosey and wants to give up on vengeance, but an attack by Jade left her in shambles, so she allowed Nosey to absorb some of her DNA and goes back the machinists now appearing more like Lydia. This had particularly realistic designs to the humans and alien making for stunning and harsh visuals.

*400 Boys: John Boyega stars in one last great tale by Robert Miller which is a ballistic blend of The Warriors and Akira. In yet another post-apocalyptic world, a psychic gang lead by Slash must protect their turf in Fun City from giant monster babies that are dubbed the 400 Boys because that’s the street they appeared at. Slash unites with some roller-skating amazons along with some other gangs and use their mental powers against the titanic toddlers. Some seriously uncanny X-Men action in this telekinetic thriller.

*The Other Large Thing: Want to know what started the end of the world from the Three Robots shorts? Before humans became extinct, a cunning Persian housecat has cartoonish plans for world domination, but with no way to implement them. The cat’s lazy owners get a new helper robot voiced by John Oliver that the cat takes advantage of and talks into helping him kill off his owners and lead a cat revolution against mankind via the helper robots’ online capabilities. An immensely entertaining look at how relying too much on computerization can lead to a dead end.

*Golgotha: The most peculiar of all this season’s entries as it is largely done in live action, author Dave Hutchison wrote this short about an ambassador from the squid like alien race called the Lupo who visits Earth to negotiate with the priest Donal on a beach. The father witnessed the resurrection of a dolphin after an oil spill who in the Lupo’s eyes is their Messiah. The Lupo interpret the dolphin’s message as mankind being the scourge of the planet, so the aliens begin their campaign to wipe out humanity. An impressive view of conservation from an outside perspective.

*The Screaming Of The Tyrannosaur: Dinos in spaaaace! Taking place on one of Jupiter’s moon, interstellar plutocrats hold gladiator matches between enhanced humans and trained triceratopses. One of these fighters is the mostly naked Mei who uses his opportunity to get revenge against the elitists who use people as slaves fighting monsters. The cherry on top is Mei wrangling a T-Rex to literally eat the rich! An extreme thrill ride of nearly every possible kind of sci-fi/action trope.

*How Zeke Got Religion: Taking a hint from the Heavy Metal fighter pilot segment, this weird war rarity right out of a Mike Mignola comic. During WWII, the crew of a B-17 are assigned to drop a bomb in French territory that is currently under Nazi occupation where they plan to summon a demon. The bombing succeeds, but the demon emerges and flies off to attack the plane tearing through the crew. The atheist Zeke is one of the few survivors and uses a crucifix against the demon. This nail-biting occult action was executed perfectly.

*Stupid Appliances, Stupid Owners: The most unoriginal episode in the series shamelessly rips off Aardman’s old Creature Comforts shorts and does a mockumentary of modern-day household appliances giving interviews. Everything from anthropomorphic smart toilets to electric toothbrushes. Exceedingly lacking in subtlety and humor.

*For He Can Creep: Inspired by the Siobhan Carroll novel, a poet in 1700s London is locked in an insane asylum and forced by Satan to create a poem that would bring about the end of the world. Luckily, a council of mystical alley cats who were descended from angels are there to stop them lead by the noble Jeoffry who eats the final manuscript. A suitably dark fantasy to end the series out on.

ANI-MOVIES, *Black Fox

What was originally supposed to be an anime TV series, Black Fox was instead turned into a full-length animated movie, along with a live-action prequel titled Black Fox: Age Of The Ninja which both premiered in theaters on the same day, although apparently not as a double-feature. In 2019, this superhero origin story was headed by Ghost In The Shell director Kazuya Nomura which was produced by the now defunct Studio 3Hz. Despite the one-two punch of an anime movie and a tokusatsu ninja drama getting a simultaneous release, the franchise didn't go much further than that. If you saw Disney's Bolt, this film is like the fictional TV show that takes place in the movie.

Rikka Isuragi is the last of a long line of ninjas taught by her grandfather whose son skipped the shinobi life to create robot animals. However, an evil organization lead by her father's old partners kill him and her grandfather while she gets away with a trio of her dad's mechanical pets including an eagle, dog, and flying squirrel all capable of turning invisible. Rikka spends the next few years using the remnants of her father's research to act as a masked vigilante with her robot friends, plus handy gadgets like a rocket-powered grappling gun and an invisible camouflage suit. While part-timing as a junior detective, Rikku shares a ramshackle apartment with her roommate Melissa. As she was scoping out the criminal's industry facilities at the Gradsheim company, Rikku befriends the lonely Mia, but after she attacks the headquarters later that night, Mia is revealed to be a psychic under the control of her mad scientist father. Mia's crazy pop sends a giant robot dog to hunt her down that wrecks Rikku's apartment building. Rikku gets help from Mia to take down her now psychically powered father after she finds a new jet-powered armored ninja outfit, and also learn somehow in-between the lead up to the concluding battle with Gradsheim group and its boss that Rikku's roomie Melissa is a prototype android that went missing who joins Rikku and Mia in their upcoming fight. The fact that this movie didn't get a sequel and the main heroine was going to take on the main villain in a continuing installment of the franchise is a letdown that fans of the Alita film can connect with.

Black Fox never got a physical release in the States and is only available in subtitled Japanese on Crunchyroll fits it into a real niche category. The live-action prequel is available dubbed on multiple streaming sites, although that's more of a Super Sentai story set in feudal Japan, so the anime movie was not given any real promotion to American otaku. As the studio behind it is now closed, there doesn't seem to be any chance of a sequel, even though it still operates well as a stand-alone feature. The animation is above the average TV series quality although not totally up to theatrical standards. Any fan of Marvel should enjoy this hi-tech masked superhero sensation!

ANI-MOVIES, *Sin: The Movie

The 1990s were an eternal wellspring of testosterone-fueled cyberpunk action and anime based on video games. Sin: The Movie is a combination of both which was one of the few original anime productions that was partially headed by American distributor, ADV Films. Sin was a shoot 'em up game from the 90s using the Quake game engine, and even though it was a modest hit, somebody at ADV thought it would be a great idea to fund a production turning this into a single anime feature. Phoenix Entertainment was the studio that animated it and had some decent character/monster designs with cringy-looking CGI. This anime has been regarded as a dud by most anime and gaming fans, largely because the gross body horror mutations genre had kind of worn down when this was finally released in the year 2000, plus video game-based anime was a sinking ship at the time it came out unless it had something to do with cute monsters like Pokemon. This release came and went with out any real fanfare despite ADV building up publicity on their own for over a whole year.

Where the game took place in the 2030s, Sin: The Movie happens in the 2070s with the technology being upgraded like having rocket-powered 3-wheel police cars. Col. John Blade is fighting time in a future time as a New York City cop whose partner was attacked by a marauding mutant leaving Blade no choice but to kill his partner as he was also mutated. The cybernetic Blade is part of a police team called HardCorps who specialize in extraordinary cases, and he's trying to find out where these mutants are spawning from. After getting help from armed forces agent Jennifer and learns the sinister SinTEK corporation is behind all this. After getting some help from his local old mafia contacts, Blade launches an attack on SinTEK's building which is a dead ringer for Genom Tower from Bubblegum Crisis. The merry mutant makers are lead by the femme fatale Elexis who unleashes a horde of monsters after Blade as he an Jennifer fight their way up to the top to face an abomination put together from the remains of her dead father who created the mutation process, plus Blade has to free a little girl who Elexis is using for her experiments making her the token damsel in distress. There wasn't any real final boss battle as the bad guys are dispatched mostly by circumstance.

Sin: The Movie is a mismatched flow of action movie tropes and fanservice cliches that is only held together by the "plot" that the creators totally rewrote from that in the original video game. There's reused footage, stupidly-long opening credits, and an outdated obligatory shower scene which might have worked for an anime release in the early 90s, but since it came out just after the turn of the century, the whole routine is absolute trash. The dub is fair, even though the subtitles are off-track, and the only thing good about it is that it's a classic case of how not to do a video game adaptation.

MISC. MANGA, *Gizmo

Sometime before Gremlins came out, a different character with the same name of the movie's mascot came out in underground comics by Michael Dooney. Gizmo was a reoccurring segment in various independent comics, specifically under Mirage Studios who most will know as the company that premiered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In fact, his adventures take place in the same universe as the TNMT, sometimes in the background, but mainly in a 2-issue crossover with Turtles regular Fugitoid. The black-and-white comic was a sci-fi comedy which in retrospect is similar to certain 80s manga.

Gizmo Sprocket is a shiny robot that cruises through the stars in his spacebound coupe with its snappy onboard computer Soto. In the first issue of his 6-issue mini-series, Gizmo has a fateful reunion with his longtime buddy Fluffy Brockleton, a fluffy canine-humanoid looking more like a polar bear than a dog. Their galactic tours has them coming across a multitude of enigmatic strangers including a ghostly stellar goddess, a world modeled after Wizard Of Oz, and a thinly veiled tribute to Space Ghost. These escapades can go from slapstick comedy to stylish space operas, and its non-colored format adds even more to the underground comics of the 80s.

Gizmo is a fine example of counterculture media which still resonated after the 70s during the later half of the Bronze Age of comics. There were quite a number of other space humor titles of the time such as Albedo, but Gizmo was a tad cleverer with amazing character designs. Creator Michael Dooney went on to design toys as well as doing artwork for nose cones on military aircraft. There is a paperback titled The Collected Gizmo which assembles the entire mini-series along with a few other back-up stories from various publications, so keep your eyes peeled for this elusive treasure.

Get In Loser, We're Doing Science!

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

Four years before Ufotable did their extended take on the second route of the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel, Studio Deen first did a feature-length but highly condensed anime movie in 2010. The TV series adaptation did cover more of the game's content, even though it's possible that it covered more than it needed to as some of the 26-episodes were prolonged to a full hour. Deen's theatrical take on the Unlimited Blade Works arc is different than what they did on the Fate arc as it greatly abridges the plot. Similar to what eventually happened in the Heaven's Feel movie trilogy, Unlimited Blade Works fast forwards through a good portion of the opening chapters and picks up just after Shirou first summons Saber and learns of the Holy Grail War from the false priest Kotomine who was a major player in the Fate/Zero prequel but is largely unused here, along with Sakura who was the main love interest in Heaven's Feel. This route focuses more on Sakura's older sister Rin, even though their family bond is also never brought up in this version.

Taking place a decade after the disastrous events of the Fourth Holy Grail War, this Fifth one begins with young mage Rin Toksaka summoning up her own Heroic Spirit to act as her servant against six other mages for the Holy Grail. Rin was hoping for the Saber class servant but ends up with Archer instead. She later forms an alliance with Shirou Emiya, a boy from her school who lucked out by being Saber's master, and they immediately get into their first couple of battles with other servants including Hercules. Sakura's adopted brother Shinji is revealed to be the master of Medusa, but Shirou and Rin thwart his plans to absorb the spiritual energy from everyone at their school. As he's such a sore loser, Shinji goes to wine to the war's mediator Kotomine who offers him another servant, Gilgamesh who was the Archer from the previous war. Meanwhile, the wicked sorceress Caster has her own agenda as she uses her spells to bind Saber to her leaving Shirou out of the race, which also convinces Archer to seemingly join her but only to betray her, resulting in Rin replacing him with Saber. Archer is revealed to be Shirou from a future where he became a Heroic Spirit for the living spirit of humanity known as Alaya where he would go back and forth in time to assassinate those who would hamper mankind's survival, but after a few centuries of this Archer got tired of it, so he travelled back in time to kill his past self. Shirou and Archer have an epic duel which is interrupted by Gilgamesh who unleashes the Holy Grail which is one big monkey's paw and would destroy the world instead of granting a wish. Shirou ultimately slays Gilgamesh with help to Archer, causing Saber to disappear leaving Shirou and Rin to start their romantic relationship.

The entirety of the Unlimited Blade Works movie is a stand-alone from the prior Fate/Stay Night TV series but cut down to nothing but a series of bullet points that shifts the plot from one segment to the other with no breathing room. Studio Deen did provide better animation than they did in the prior series and does rise above the quality the Ufotable adaptation on occasion. Deen's improved production is the only real thing that brings it up over the TV series version, even though Ufotable did stretch out the plot longer than it needed to considering Deen was able to do the game's first route in fewer episodes than in Unlimited Blade Works. This entire movie cost more money for Studio Deen than the entire Fate/Stay Night series and wasn't given the time it needed to tell the whole story which is why the Heaven's Feel trilogy got a better deal with each of its three movies being well over two hours each.

ANI-MOVIES, *Deep Sea

After doing yet another one of the infinite animated adaptions of Journey To The West, Monkey King: Hero Is Back director Tian Xiaopeng wrote this CGI-animated movie that he co-produced with his own studio of October Media and Coloroom Pictures that was released in 2023. Deep Sea is an explosion of 3D art and colors that does a fantastic job of telling a tale worthy of Studio Ghibli. This film is literally "Spirited Away meets Spider-Verse" as the Miyazaki-inspired story and characters are mixed in a broth of contrasting animation styles that flow together beautifully. The Chinese movie didn't exactly reach Ne Zha levels of success but was a large foot-forward for Chinese animation.

Shenxiu is a young girl whose is gone, afterwards her father remarried and had a son. The family goes on an ocean cruise leading to Shenxiu apparently falling overboard during a storm. The rest of the film is either told from the point of view of a dream, a near death experience, or a real magical journey where she goes underwater to a submersible restaurant where walruses and otters serve fish eccentric dishes. The only other human here is Nanhe, the strange clownish owner of the eatery under the sea who captures a strange blob creature called the Hijinks that could lead Shenxiu to her mother. All this while a mysterious entity called the Red Phantom stalks the crew which is later revealed to be Shenxiu's repressed feelings. How the story ultimately unfolds is up to the perspective of the viewer as the movie itself tells you it's time to wake up as it comes to an end.

Deep Sea can be a hard movie to understand with the constant movement of the entire picture including the background. To watch this is like watching a 3D oil painting continuously changing with bizarre character designs that move back and forth with topsy-turvy friction where the forces of gravity are regularly out to lunch. The dub is acceptable, even though you'll probably get a better feel for the intended dialogue if you see in the original Chinese language. At 105 minutes long, there are some scenes that get drawn out longer than needed, so that can be frustrating from time to time. Despite the Studio Ghibli influences, this is not something your children would probably enjoy until they're a little older as there are heavy themes of death and child neglect throughout the film. Chinese animation has advanced to the next level with this new digital phenomenon.