ANI-MOVIES, *Time Of Eve: The Movie

A compilation movie of an ONA series is a rarity among anime releases, but the 6-episode Time Of Eve created by Yasuhiro Yoshiura who prior to this only did independent shorts was a fan favorite. Animeigo did a stellar job putting this out with a fundraiser that made over 1000% their goal for its American Blu-Ray release. The ONA came out in 2008, and the collected film was put out in 2010 which won several animation awards. This sci-fi slice-of-life takes the humans + robots premise and brings it a little more down to Earth away from the cerebral themes of cyberpunk anime like Ghost In The Shell.

Taking place in the foreseeable future, people own the generic model robots along with the more human-like types that are largely similar to humans aside from a large glowing ring projecting over their head appearing as an electronic halo. There is a bias from an ethics council committed to stopping human reliance on robots and mistaking them for actual people. One place that tries to keep off the ethics council's radar is a cafe for humans and robots called Time Of Eve, which is such a ridiculous premise on its own as robots aren't capable of consuming coffee but nonetheless attracts robots during their time off from being servants and can hang out to be accepted as equals. The one rule the cafe has is not to treat any patron different from a person whether they are really a robot as their halo disappears when they enter the establishment. Two curious high school boys find out about this place after one of them checks his robot's activity log and that she happens to be a regular at Time Of Eve. This leads to both of them learning more about human/robot relations, and how their lives have been enriched by the robot they themselves own.

It's interesting to see a 21st Century anime still incorporating Isaac Asimov robot laws and put it in a post-modern setting which this anime does in spades. The cafe regulars are an eclectic bunch that will surprise you who actually are robots, and the dub cast is well done. The only thing that works against this compilation movie is that there is one segment that continues directly after the other where the two main characters are suddenly wearing completely different clothes in the same setting, like they quickly changed outfits during a commercial break. The film edition is currently available on streaming and an uncommon feature whose subject matter about artificial intelligence was seriously ahead of its time.

MISC. MANGA, *Flavor Girls

Loic Locatelli-Kournwsky had some of her work printed in English such as Persephone and Pocahontas: Princess Of The New World, but her Ghibli-styled artwork and storytelling was on full display in her original mini-series of Flavor Girls. With art assistance by Eros de Santiago, Loic's magical girl saga goes the route that certain sailor-themed superheroes never even dared to try. Boom Studios released this in three separate issues and then in a hardcover graphic novel about teenage girls whose mission is to literally defend the world against space invaders.

A race of aliens called the Argatha loom in their huge starship in Earth's orbit continuously attack the human population even though their main target is an enchanted piece of shrubbery known as the Mother Tree. To protect the tree and the planet, a trio of costumed girls called the Sacred Fruit Guardians is formed, although they are billed as the Flavor Girls. A fourth member of their group emerges after the latest alien assault, and she had to discover her potential as a superhero by getting some serious training. The team consists of Naoka the leader, the easy-going Camille, the reserved one called V, and the newbie Sara who all use their botanical powers to keep the Argatha at bay.

The first mini-series told a solid story of Sara's journey from normal girl to magical girl with a few surprising revelations regarding some of the secondary characters. The current series titled Flavor Girls: Return To The Mothership explores more of the aliens' background and an underwater expediion with Naoka's mother leads to a startling secret. The artwork is outstanding, even though the character interactions are sometimes hit-or-miss. If you want to wait for a complete series compilation or just collect each volume on their own, this mahou shoujo comic is worth considering.

ANI-MOVIES, *Abominable

During the span of a single year, three totally separate animated movies about sasquatch cryptids came out in 2018-19. One was Smallfoot by Warner Bros. with the other being Missing Link from Laika, but Abominable from Universal Studios was done as a joint production between DreamWorks and Pearl Studio who most Americans might know from later on making the Netflix original movies Over The Moon and The Monkey King. The Chinese-based animation studio helped DreamWorks on several other titles like Turbo, Home, Trolls, and The Croods, but has gone on to creating animated features of their own. The plot is original written by director Jill Culton, a former Pixar animator who became the first female director of a feature-length CGI movie in Sony's Open Season. The film is your standard kid-meets-creature story, except this one takes place in modern day China, so it was able to see the big country from the point of view of Gen-Z children. In some ways, this movie was able to represent the dynamics of a Chinese family better than Turning Red did.

Starting in downtown Shanghai, a young yeti has been captured by reclusive rich explorer, Mr. Burish, who spent most of his life trying to capture one of the big hairy fellows and proving it to the whole world. The yeti escapes and happens upon the rooftop getaway of Yi, a teenager who spends most of her time doing several odd jobs trying to earn money for a trip she was originally going to take with her late father. Yi has a talent for playing violin even though she only does it when thinking about her father. Yi takes care of the yeti she calls Everest after she figures the creature comes from the Himalayas when looking at a billboard photo. She vows to return Everest home, and her neighbors Peng and Jin get roped along after Burnish's men track them leaving town on a cargo ship. They reach a port and are carried off in a crate by truck, but end up on their own in a forest where Everest shows off his magical powers being able to manipulate nature by creating fruits appear out of nowhere, making the landscape move like a wave that they ride in a boat, and enlarging dandelions so that they can float across the mountains. Burnish and his crew eventually track Everest and his teen friends to a bridge leading back to the yeti home, even though Burnish suddenly has a change of heart and allows them all to go. At this point, the movie decides to pull a bait-and-switch villain which was a huge cliche of animated movies of the time as its revealed Burnish's zoologist Dr. Zara is really planning on taking Everest on her own and selling him off to the highest bidder. Yi's violin playing manages to indirectly free Everest and her friends causing Zara to drive off a cliff. The kids see Everest home and then plan for their possible next adventure thanks to some supplies from the reformed Mr. Burnish.

Abominable was a big enough hit for DreamWorks that they managed to continue the story in a sequel TV series on Netflix. The movie has some fair characters in it, even though Pearl Studio recycled the annoying little kid Peng for their film Over The Moon as the main character's bratty stepbrother. The cast is equally acceptable, especially Eddie Izzard as Burnish who makes a career of playing well-meaning antagonists, and of course James Hong makes a quick but memorable cameo. My only real complaint about this film is it's guilty of the same crime that numerous movie trailers do of having a great cover version of a pop song like Go Your Own Way that doesn't appear at all on the soundtrack. The violin take on this great song never showed up in the movie at all, and that's a real shame.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Boy And The Heron

Even though The Wind Rises from 2013 was supposed to be the absolute final movie by the godlike Hayao Miyazaki(for reals this time!), that didn't stop the living legend from doing yet another swansong a decade later in The Boy And The Heron. Loosely based on the 1937 book of How Do You Live?, this Studio Ghibli release was set to coincide with the 2020 Olympics that was delayed because of the coronavirus, but the majority of the film featured hand-drawn animation, so it was extended until 2023 produced by Ghibli veteran Toshio Suzuki. Toho initially released it and went to be one of the biggest selling Japanese movies in the history of cinema. This otherwordly epic harkens back to Miyazaki's earlier fantasy works like Spirited Away and Ponyo which presents a sprawling story that is very unclear on exactly how the magic in this unearthly setting works.

In the throes of the Pacific War, Tokyo is attacked and young Mahito's mother dies in a hospital fire. His father runs a munitions factory and later marries his deceased wife's younger sister Natsuko who is going to give birth to their own child. Mahito and his father move into Natsuko's family estate where a mysterious tower has been closed off for decades. Despite not fitting in with the new kids in the neighborhood, Mahito bashes a rock into his head making a large scar which we learn later on that he did to cope with the loss of his mother and getting used to his new surroundings. The boy now has a scar on him with the right part of his hair shaved off and is recovering at home while being harassed by a gray heron bird. Natsuko goes missing, so Mahito goes to the tower where he believes she has gone to. Along with the old maid Kiriko, Mahito journeys into the tower but fades away when he falls for an illusion of his deceased mother. The boy is sent to a world filled with oceans and islands where the heron is revealed to be a person called the Birdman who wears the heron body like a suit. Despite their frustration with each other, the two of them agree to work together for find Natsuko currently being imprisoned by a kingdom of huge parakeets. They get help from a girl named Hime with pyrokinetic abilities and a younger version of Kiriko. The entire world is held together by the will of Hime's granduncle, and the firestarter is also the youthful version of Mahito's mother from another point in the past, so the younger Hime is encountering her future son at the same time that he is discovering this mystic realm. The Granduncle offers Mahito the chance to take his place and keep this hidden world stable and be free of the harshness of real life. Mahito rejects this deciding to go back to his family along with Natsuko, leaving the younger Hime and Kiriko to go back to their time. The door to the magical land is permanently shut off as Mahito and his aunt/stepmother greet his father when the story cuts to two years after WWII where his new family moves back to Tokyo with the Birdman just leaving and not heard from again.

The Boy And The Heron can be a struggle to sit through at some points while watching it as is another story of a child being sent to an isekai world, except that Miyazaki regularly declines to explain how the laws of physics behave in this dream realm. It's visually the greatest one Miyazaki has worked on since Spirited Away, but the lush animation unfortunately takes away from the character motivations and what drives them. The film is more interested in underlining the look of a fantasy world than focusing attention on the rich cast. The dub is unusual but effective starring child actor Luca Padovan as Mahito, plus two different Batmans with Christian Bale as Mahito's father and Robert Pattison as the cryptic Birdman. If you're looking for another feature from Studio Ghibli to show your kids like My Neighbor Totoro, you might want to hold off on playing this one for them as it's a bit more for those who liked Howl's Moving Castle because of its mature themes.

Aaravos greets his fellow humans

ANI-MOVIES, *Wallace And Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

After 31 years, Feathers McGraw finally returns in this second full-length Wallace And Gromit stop-motion animated movie. Acting as the sixth film in the franchise, Vengeance Most Fowl has Nick Park's eccentric inventor and his faithful canine companion in their latest escapade. Since the last movie was 16 years ago, longtime fans of Aardman Animations were given a serious treat since first watching the cartoon duo's debut in 1989. The art of claymation is still alive and kicking in the newest chapter of the international hit.

Wallace owes a bunch of money to collectors for all his crackpot creations, so the fully automated robot gnome he made called Norbot to help Gromit in their garden gets the attention of the neighbors to hire Norbot out for lawn maintenance. The criminal penguin Feathers McGraw is still imprisioned in the nearby zoo, but manages to hack into Norbot's system to create an entire army of mechanical gnomes that he secretly plans to use for his jailbreak and get back the diamond he first stole in The Wrong Trousers. Wallace gets the blame for all of the burglaries that have hit the small English town, so he and Gromit get into an even greater chase sequence to stop Feathers and his army of clockworks along with his submarine which of course has an organ in it like the Nautilus.

Vengeance Most Foul is a complete return to form from this long overdue sequel. Not since The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit has Aardman had a feature film as up to specs as this one. The gags are corny but so welcome, the animation is fluid and Nick Park is free to do this without production notes from DreamWorks, and the voice acting is cracking with Ben Whitehead being a fine replacement for Peter Sallis as the original Wallace. You will be surprised at how splendidly Aardman bounced back after their Chicken Run follow up didn't fly as high as they wanted to. This is something for the entire family to enjoy for generations to come and a new standard classic.

As if 2025 wasn't bad enough, Wallace had to go ahead and make Skynet.