MISC. MANGA, *I'm In Love With The Villainess

Isekai has become the new standard for otaku, but regularly the protagonist ends up going to a world of high fantasy. I'm In Love With The Villainess does take place in a fantasy world but is slightly more up to date instead of taking place during the Middle Ages. Starting out as a light novel written by Inori and drawn by Hanagata, it was later developed into a manga in the pages of Comic Yuri Hime, a shojo-ai themed anthology mainly targeting older female readers, a market usually referred to as josei. There isn't a lot of isekai focused on sapphic relationships, so this was a refreshing change of pace, so much so that it even got an anime TV series that lasted for a single season.

Rei is an office drone whose only salvation from her dreary life is playing a dating video game for girls known as an otome game titled Revolution. After working to the point of lethal physical exhaustion, Rei is reborn in the magical world of Revolution as the 15-year-old main character, but instead of setting her sights on one of the male leads she targets the token villainess Claire, a stuck-up royal who constantly berates her for being a commoner. Despite the social abuse she receives, Rei continues to publicly make it clear that she flat out loves Claire much the hair drill schoolgirl's chagrin. The academy they both attend is a training ground for citizens to learn elemental magic in defense of their country, and Rei has proved that her MP is so immeasurable that she excels over the all the other students as far a potential is concerned, most of this was thanks to Rei playing the game this world takes place in countless times. Rei even gets a job working as Claire's maid just to be close to her which she managed by knowing her rich father's true backstory. From here Rei eventually begins to break down Claire's spoiled nature and even ends up marrying her and the two of them adopt two daughters which is pretty much the perfect outcome for a sapphic romance.

I'm In Love With The Villainess is a lesbian fangirl's dream come true, and writer Inori intended for this to represent the older shojo-ai audience, although this is still a teen-rated manga that doesn't give into fan service. The manga is very sweet and sincere in its commentary on societal issues not only for LGTBQ readers but also classism with how the elite treat the ordinary working population. The light novel story has concluded including a spinoff set in the same world, plus the anime seems to have wrapped up for now, but the manga is still ongoing, so seeing how a lesbian couple will thrive in a game-based fantasy world after they've already tied the knot should be incentive enough for any yuri fans.

MISC. MANGA, *Kaiju Kamui

Shintaro Arima created this new ongoing manga inspired by Toho monster movies and various mecha shows like Evangelion. Kaiju Kamui is almost like Kaiju No. 8 except with less humor and its more about someone actually piloting a giant monster instead of turning into one. You can see the look of recent kaiju designs in this from sources like Pacific Rim, Godzilla Minus One, and the Monsterverse franchise.

Large creatures labeled Mega-Organisms are ravaging Japan and the only main defense against them are special pilots called Link Operators who have a neural connection to their fighter jets. This new tech is called the Neural Connection Operating System and allows the user full mental control of their aircraft. After an attack by a Mega-Organism, all of the Link Operators are wiped out except for their leader, Yamato Shidou, and he is chosen by a kaiju countermeasures team to pilot their new weapon branded Kamui. The Kamui is the offspring of a former defeated kaiju that scientists had altered to be controlled by an operator placed inside a special cockpit from within the titanic body. It's now up to Yamato to use this prototype to prevent any upcoming monster attacks, even though he is still feeling the emotional loss of his squadron.

Kaiju Kamui is a refreshing idea in the kaiju genre where someone is given total control of a living monster instead of a giant mecha to fight other giants. Amira does a fine job with the mostly original creature designs so they don't just look like your average monster-of-the-week, although the author does need to work on the pacing of his story because a lot of first few chapters has an ace pilot living through one huge loss to becoming the chosen one destined to protect mankind withing in the first volume. If this ever gets adapted, it will hopefully be done in live action since tokusatsu has made some serious progress in the last few Godzilla productions.

ANI-MOVIES, *Meet The Robinsons

Unless your movie has Feebles in it, any film titled Meet The...." should be avoided at all costs, and yes that includes any Robert De Niro outing. Meet The Robinsons was Disney's 47th full-length animated theatrical release, as well as only the third one to be fully CGI that wasn't done by Pixar, and even though their previous 3D animated movie Chicken Little made twice of its budget back, this film only broke two million making it a serious dud by Disney standards. Based on William Joyce's children's book, A Day With Wilbur Robinson, this is almost a spiritual spinoff to Joyce's previous work on Fox's Robots movie as it involves atompunk elements which you might find in titles like Astro Boy or The Jetsons. For a mid-2000s all CGI production, Meet The Robinsons suffers from seriously dated graphics which Pixar had on its own perfected with their first release of Toy Story. Even Mainframe's work on Reboot and Beast Wars had better animation than this movie, and they came out over a decade before this. Another thing is that the story is stupefyingly sporadic going from one cliched cartoon gag after another following a paper-thin plot, so it's more like a tilt-a-whirl of cartoon gags sewed together in a time travel tale. The best way to describe this is that it is like watching Back To The Future: Part II without ever seeing the original chapter, but even lovers of non-linear narration won't appreciate it.

An orphaned boy named Lewis has been living in the orphanage for 12 years and still never got an adopted family, mostly because he's obsessed with learning who his real mother was and why she abandoned him. This fixation has Lewis diving into science and cobbling together whatever kind of contraption he can get from everyday objects, all of which seriously ticks off his roommate Goob who he keeps up every night with his constant tinkering. Lewis makes a memory scanner to see what his mother originally looked like from within his own memories as a baby and decides to premiere this at a school science fair, although a strange man with a bowler hat sabotages his efforts. A boy Lewis' age named Wilbur claims he's from the future and they journey several years to meet Wilbur's extensively bizarre family of the Robinsons most of which were also orphans and profoundly eccentric. Without getting into spoilers, it becomes obvious how each of these characters are relative to another across the past and the future, even though you don't have to be a Time Lord to realize that time travel doesn't work that way.

Meet The Robinsons is a mismanaged mess of a film that strings together a succession of unfunny non-sequitur cliches. The animation is rank and it's like the Mouse Mansion really didn't give a darn about making anything of genuine quality which is why Disney bought up Pixar just so they could have some type of decent 3D production. Aside from the extensive star-studded cast who make up the whole of the Robinson family which includes everyone from Tom Selleck to Adam West, there isn't any major pull for this as a large portion of the cast is made of different Disney animators and staff. Even with a time travel plot, this disorganized feature isn't worth of being a major Disney cinematic release, so don't even bother.

Rest In Power: Roger Sweet, Co-Creator of He-Man

ANI-MOVIES, *The Croods

The only way they could get Nicholas "effing" Cage to be even more Nicholas "effing" Cage was if they had him play a cartoon caveman version of himself! Directors and screenwriters Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders came up with this update on The Flinstones, but this modern stone age family don't live in a stonepunk civilization and are in constant danger of going extinct. The Croods from Dreamworks went on to make theatrical sequel, plus two separate animated TV series, one a prequel to the first and the other a continuation of the sequel movie. The 2013 film released with a booming success making more than three times its budget back from box office sales. The plan at first was to make The Croods a stop motion production with Aardman Animations at the helm and even featuring John Cleese and based it on a Roald Dahl book titled The Twits, although this wouldn't get its own animated movie until 2025 when it premiered on Netflix. Aardman instead went on to make Early Man about cavemen meeting civilized humans and starting the game of soccer, all this while Dreamworks rewrote the original pitch into their own distinct movie. Instead of ex-Monty Pythoners, the cast features Nicholas Cage as the caveman dad, Emma Stone as the rebellious older daughter, Ryan Reynolds as a lone teenager who has been surviving on his own, plus Cloris Leachman voicing yet again another grandma character which she practically made a career out of.

A prehistoric family living in the time that the continents were drifting apart, the Croods are the only remaining humans in their neighborhood as the rest of the humans were either killed by the local wildlife or died of infection. The ever-shifting landscape causes the Crood's cave collapsing, so they head out into the open world to find a new cave. The elder daughter Eep comes across the slightly more informed boy called Guy who told her about upcoming natural disasters, and gains the rest of the Crood's trust when he shows them he can make fire as well as crafting shoes out of dead animals so they can walk on bumpy terrain. The father Grug realizes he has been holding back his family by having them constantly hiding in caves instead of actually living and eventually comes around to Guy's way of thinking. The whole crew of Croods find a safe sanctuary near a tall mountain and end up adopted several different animals as pets.

The Croods is both an entertaining animated film while also being an enchanting visual experience. The character designs are standard cartoon types you would expect from a Dreamworks production from the 2010sm, but the landscape, backgrounds, and bizarre Seuss-like creatures seem like they come from a holistically different movie. The film won several animation awards, but 20th Century Fox failed to bother genuine merchandising to draw any real attention to its initial release which has made the movie a hidden gem despite all of its animated spinoffs. On its own, the original movie is an uncanny family adventure that is rewatchable.

ANI-MOVIES, *How To Train Your Dragon 2

Taking place after the first theatrical movie, a few shorts, and a series on Cartoon Network, How To Train Your Dragon 2 got released four years after the original and seriously veering off the source material. Based on the book series of the same name, the sequel goes its own route once again written and directed by Dean DeBlois who made it with the intention of turning the franchise into a trilogy. It was so popular that Dreamworks is of course doing a live-action remake similar to the original. The fact there's an entire section of it in Epic Universe proves that the sequel helped add to the brand's stalwart position in family entertainment.

Set five years after the first movie, Hiccup and Toothless uncover new lands and entire islands covered in green ice. These uncovered territories are inhabited by dragon trappers who are collecting for their warlord, Drago Bludvist. Hiccup is certain he can talk Drago into giving up his tyrannical ways despite everything his father Stoick's advises him about. Along the way, Hiccup finds his mother Valka who has been hiding away in a sealed off sanctuary of dragons watched over by an alpha dragon. Valka has spent the last two decades keeping the dragons safe from Drago who wants to add them to his dragon army. After a brief reunion with Hiccup and Stoick, Drago's army attacks and takes control of the refugee dragons via his own alpha. The alpha has the ability to control other dragons and temporarily causes Toothless to kill Stoick. Hiccup and the rest of his crew make it back to Berk to stop Drago and defeating his alpha, although Drago's fate is never revealed, even in any of the expanded media.

Having Hiccup go from being the shame of his village to following in his father's footsteps as the new chief is a good direction to take the main character as he and the others have grown up. The supporting teenage characters are mostly just sort of there hanging around and not adding much to the plot, although you can see how Astrid and Hiccup's relationship has strengthened over the years. Dreamworks really upped the ante with their production which is a serious evolution from not only the original film but the animated TV series as well which was lacking int the usual Dreamworks quality. The stakes a higher here and there is a darker presence for the heroes to struggle and suffer through. The only downside is that just like the first one is that they never actually explain "how to train your dragon".

MISC. MANGA, *D'orc

With Dungeons And Dragons churning out more animated content, and the rise of isekai being a driving force in anime and manga, then D'orc might be right up your alley. Creator Brett Bean who had previously worked on I Hate Fairyland plus Rocket And Groot came up with this parody of fantasy tropes. Fans of The Dragon Prince will recognize quite a few familiar plot points and story similarities.

In the mystical realm of the Sunderaine, there lies an extended border separating the good side from the bad side of the lands. This area is known as The Scar where there is no good or evil, just ongoing fighting between various factions. However, among the rabble of different races that exist within The Scar is a half-dwarf, half-orc referred to as D'orc. This half-breed wanders the desolate landscape who is constantly trying to avoid either good warriors or bad who want him to join their side. D'orc has a living shield with a large durable eye in the center who keep trying to have him get into fights. This isn't helpful as there's a prophecy which states that the half-and-half is said to bring about the end of the world. Word of D'orc's existence come to light as the kingdoms of light and dark each send their own personal assassin to nip the prophecy in the bud.

D'orc has a modern animation design to it with the numerous other races like humans, goblins, giants, and golems dreamt up by Brett Bean's imagination. The comic has become such an underground hit that some issues are going for hundreds on Ebay and it's already up to its third printing in just a little over a month, plus it had a crossover with I Hate Fairyland. If you ever wondered what a formidable version of Gollum might be up to in Middle Earth, then you should give this romp a read.