ANI-MOVIES: Ninokuni

Ninokuni started out as a JRPG with character designs and some original animated segments done by none other than Studio Ghibli, so in 2019 when Warner Bros. Japan released a full-length anime movie acting as a modern-day sequel to the games, you'd think that Ghibli would be the ones behind its production. It was in fact handled by OLM and produced by Ghibli animator Yoshiyuki Momose who provided the animation for the first two video games, and he produced Studio Ponoc's The Imaginary, so the characters in both of these productions a heavily inspired by Ghibli's work. The movie was a separate entity from what the video games established, so it isn't necessary to have played the games to get the plot. One thing the games and the movie have in common is they are both isekai, but the games had a foot up upon most of the isekai-based anime that cropped up during the late 2010s.

In modern day Japan, Haru is an athletic boy who is best friends with Yu, a paraplegic he's known since he was little. Haru is dating Kotona who gets attacked by a hooded stranger that stabs her, but she's saved by Yu, but the two have an argument and are suddenly spirited away to a fantasy world of Evermore where they're dressed in medieval garb and anthropomorphic animals are normal there. Yu can also walk in this reality, and he along with Haru find out that the Princess Astrid is a dead ringer for Kotona and is suffering from a cursed wound. Yu manages to heal her as he can see the dagger which is the same as the one used on Kotona. After returning to the real world, Yu and Haru learn that Kotona has a tumor. Yu figures that she and Astrid are each other's counterpart in different worlds. This makes Haru furious and he plans to kill Astrid to save Kotona, so he and Yu go back to Evermore and Haru signs up with the enemy army of the Black Banner. This is where the story becomes convoluted and suddenly an entire extra subplot is brought up by the reveal of the mastermind behind all these crossed swords was Evermore's main mage Gnauss who has been planning this scheme for decades and is really the king's older brother who came back from the dead, but the important part is that he has to kill Astrid in order to gain even greater magic as she inherited it, although he can't kill her directly because she's protected by a spell. Despite this plot twist, Gnauss tries to slay Astrid, but Yu and Haru reunite to stop him. Haru goes back to Japan, while Yu stays in Evermore, plus there's another curveball the film throws in at the last minute is that Yu was Haru's counterpart from Evermore who somehow made it to our world and now Haru is the only one who remembers him. Yu however turns out fine as he marries Astrid and becomes a king.

Ninokuni is not bogged down with world building, at least in the beginning, so its first half allows viewers to get settled into a magical realm. What doesn't work for this movie is the second half becomes a condensed narrative where you're suddenly confronted with a nearly completely detached story that barely ties to the established scenario. Ninokuni didn't make gangbusters money when it was theatrically released in Japan, but it being acquired by Netflix for Western audiences helped, even though you can still tell it suffers from a rushed ending. Fans of the JRPG will probably find something to like here, but if you're looking for a decent iseaki you might want one where the hero has to score with a bunch of horny elves.

MISC. MANGA, *No Need For Tenchi!

Back where it all began, Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki was at first a 6-episode OVA series which has had about 2 other series which count as extra seasons that were also billed under the same title. Since then, there has been a stonking number of reboots, remakes, and spin-offs, each under various titles, but the core OVA series from 1992 is the one that still gets follow-up anime based on it made to this very day. After the initial first batch of OVA episodes, there was a manga that came out in 1994 written and drawn by Hitoshi Okuda titled No Need For Tenchi! which diverged into its own timeline, although there are elements from the second OVA series that reflected what went on in the manga, so both storylines are taking place at the same time just that each one is in a different continuity. The original manga went on for 12-volumes and then was followed up by The All-New Tenchi Muyo! a few years later that went on for 10 volumes. There was a 6-issue comic book mini-series that Tenchi distributor Pioneer specifically published for American fans that acted as sequel to Tenchi Universe written by Tall Tails author JD Calderon and drawn by Ninja High School artist Matt Lunsford, which was recently given a crowdfunded trade paperback collection, but No Need For Tenchi! was the original manga.

Taking place sometime after the 7th episode of the OVA, a duplicate of Ryoko named Minagi shows up to challenge Tenchi, but during the battle she loses her memory. Later, her boss Yakage arrives to get Tenchi's sword in a fight leading to Princess Ayeka's capture. Tenchi has to do some serious grinding to match Yakage who it turns out is from Jurai which is the planet Ayeka comes from, plus he was also a student of Washu who was in league with the previous OVA villain Kagato. From this point on, the manga branches out into different limited stories including Mihoshi going some of her previous space police cases, and even a dip into the Pretty Sammy universe where Sasami is a magical girl.

No Need For Tenchi! is a fine continuation of the 90s anime, although you would have had to have seen the first chapter of the OVA series in order to comprehend what was going on. The story and art are on the same level that the anime creators Masaki Kajishima and Hiroki Hayash had when they first conceived Tenchi Muyo! as an homage to I Dream Of Jeannie. I haven't read The All-New Tenchi Muyu! manga as of yet, but if it's as good as the original manga then it should be worth a look. Viz Manga did an exemplary job translating this, and they first printed it in American left-to-right format, but for the reprint it changed to the traditional right-to-left format as it was intended to be in Japan.

ANI-MOVIES, *Miraculous: Ladybug And Cat Noir-The Movie

The French series that was first conceived in 2015 as a 2D anime series, Miraculous: Ladybug And Cat Noir instead went on to be 3D CGI TV show done with several production companies including Toei Animation. The animated series is a superhero and sometimes magical girl story about a teenage superhero named Ladybug who partners with her love interest Cat Noir to protect the world from chaos, most of which is caused by the well-meaning villain Hawk Moth. The plot is usually stuck in rotation with the "monster of the week" routine where some innocent person gets corrupted by evil and the masked heroes show up to purify them, some of these victims go on to become anime-themed superheroes on their own. This idea was used as constant filler material for several episodes of anime like Sailor Moon, so it can become infuriatingly repetitive. In 2023, it was decided to create a stand-alone remake taking place in its own continuity, but this time as a movie, plus the added bonus of being a musical. The project was directed and written by the series developer Jeremy Zag and animated by The Awakening Production. The movie gets the chance to focus more on the main characters, their relationships, and is given a certain finality to it instead stretching the recycled premise of fighting a new villain every episode. This brings up the difference between a TV series and a movie where there's a "will they, won't they" premise can go on indefinitely for a series, but in a movie the shortened runtime speeds a romance along to where the main characters eventually become a couple by the end, even if there was a post-credit stinger setting up a possible sequel.

Taking place in Paris, a girl named Marinette is starting her first day at a new school, but despite most anime cliches the girl with blue hair isn't fawned over as you'd expect and has trouble fitting in. She encounters fellow student Adrien at the library, and both slowly become attracted to each other. This budding romance is of course interrupted when Adrien's father Gabriel uses an enchanted piece of jewelry called a Miraculous to become the villain Hawk Moth who can possess other people to go on a rampage with their own distinct superpowers. To counter this, an old man named Master Fu releases two other Miraculous to find a duo worthy of possessing their powers of creation and destruction. Marinette becomes the spotted Ladybug with a magical yoyo and Adrien transforms into the sleek Cat Noir which is a little strange seeing a young man wearing the Julie Newmar costume cat ears. The two teenage heroes team up and Marinette falls for Adrien, but Adrien falls for Ladybug, and the two of them don't reveal their secret identities to each other for reasons the plot doesn't get into. Hawk Moth finally unleashes a swarm of destructive butterflies upon Paris which completely wreck the town but stops his campaign when he discovers Cat Noir is really his son and surrenders to the police. Marinette and Adrien eventually come together at the end when they reveal their alter egos to each other which is something they didn't officially do in the series until the end of its fifth season.

The movie's animation is far above that from the TV series and are nearly at Disney levels of quality. Turning the film into a musical was an evolution from the series and most of the songs work in the characters' favor while still making for a memorable soundtrack. The film actually shows some redemption for the villain too whereas as in the series he's just constantly plotting and scheming, and the viewer becomes sympathetic in his attempts to bring his deceased wife back to life. The film didn't perform too well in theaters, however it did gain a larger crowd when it came to streaming. The most positive aspect of this movie is that you don't need to have seen the cartoon series in order to enjoy it since it's a fine retelling.

ANI-MOVIES, *Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

Being the fourth animated TV series based on the 80s underground comic that was turned into blockbuster franchise, Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Turtles was Nickelodeon's turn at bat with the half-shell heroes. This time, the animation went back to 2D but cranked up the fighting spirit to Gurren Lagann levels. The Turtles are now all different types of turtles, and they all have mystical superpowers in this for some reason. The TV series went on for two seasons, but Season 2 was cut short by half because of low ratings, even though plans for the direct-to-streaming movie was already in the works. Netflix aired it in 2022, two years after the series ended to act as the big finale. The ROTTMNT show had the Turtles fighting and eventually defeating Shredder, who this time was a haunted suit of armor, plus a few other mutant animal bad guys, although the Foot Clan still remained active. The animation was largely done by Flying Bark Studios, but production of the movie was shared between them and Top Draw Animation, and the joint development worked in Nickelodeon's favor as the quality was vastly improved from what was done for the TV series.

Starting out two decades in the future, the Earth has been taken over by the alien brain menaces called the Krang, so Michaelangelo is a sorcerer supreme in this timeline and opens up a door to send teenage wasteland survivor Casey Jones to the past and stop the Foot Clan from unleashing the Krang from their dimension sealed off from the rest of the universe. Because of Leo's bragging, the Turtles failed to stop the Foot from obtaining the key to free the Krang who in this ain't your daddy's Krang. These Krang turn people into grody zombies, spawning their icky biopunk gunk all over everything taking control of machines, and xenoforming everywhere around them, so these aliens aren't just whiny brain monsters but full-tilt Lovecraftian nightmares. Casey along with April, Splinter, and the Turtles manage to get their fighting spirit back after many losses, including temporarily losing their powers, and stop the Krangs invasion by locking them away in another dimension.

Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie raised the stakes and set the tone for a much more serious tone than how the TV series operated. It isn't totally necessary for you to have watched the show in order to enjoy this, although you will need to have seen some bit of TMNT lore to get the whole idea of mutated reptile ninjas as masked superheroes in New York City. Casey Jones is a good addition, but he's not the hotheaded vigilante you might be familiar with, plus the Krang are for once a genuine threat. They upped the ante for the animation, and the fight scenes look like they're out of Bleach or Jujutsu Kaisen, so anime fans will see this as the shonen epic that you've always wished you could get from TMNT.

ANI-MOVIES, *Megamind

Must have been a big trend for this in 2010 as just a few months after Illumination released Despicable Me, an animated movie about a reformed supervillain, DreamWorks did their own movie, Megamind which was another animated movie about a reformed supervillain. Conceived by Madagascar co-creator Tom McGrath, Paramount seemed to plan this at the exact same time that Universal was starting their Despicable Me franchise, but unlike the overwhelming longevity of that and the Minions spinoffs, Megamind took 14 years to finally do a sequel to it, and only for directly on streaming to act as pilot for a TV series spinoff which most fans seemed to despise. There was already enough working against this when the movie premiered with it seeming like a cash grab of another studio's concept, plus it was at the height of the 2010's 3D craze so it was done in CGI with only a subtle understanding how the theatrical experience worked for someone not used to the format (Thanks again, James Cameron!). Megamind also had much backlash on the character designs as if they were ripped off from Pixar's The Incredibles but with even bigger eyeballs, plus the movie recycled a lot of plots and ideas from other sources like all the needledrop moments and cartoon gags that had already been run into the ground by this point.

Two alien babies from separate worlds that were both on the brink of destruction are sent to Earth, one a handsome human-looking boy with superpowers, and the other with blue skin and a large head. The two begin a lifelong rivalry with the good-looking one becoming the hero Metro Man and the blue one calling himself Megamind for his superior intellect. Megamind thinks he finally killed Metro Man in his latest scheme, so the villain now takes over Metro City, although he soon regrets not having a hero to duel with. After taking on the appearance of Bernard, curator of the Metro Man museum, he comes across Roxanne, a TV reporter that was always acting as the damsel-in-distress who gives the disguised Megamind the idea of creating a new superhero. Along with his partner Minion (yes, there was actually another film where the supervillain's assistant was called that!) they plan to give Metro Man's powers to someone who turns out to be Hal, a loser cameraman whose had a thing for Roxanne for a while now. Megamind convinces Hal to use his powers and become the hero Tighten, while at the same time moonlighting as Bernard who is Roxanne's new love interest, even though she eventually finds him out. Tighten knocks Megamind out in their first bout which causes the would-be hero want to become a villain and takes over the town, so Megamind and Roxanne try to find a weakness to Tighten by looking in Metro Man's lair only to discover that the dead hero isn't actually dead and just faked his death just so he could retire. Tighten kidnaps Roxanne and calls out Megamind who gets his stuff together and depowers his mistake, so Megamind becomes the hero of the city while all the citizens are a little too quick to forget all his previous criminal actions.

Megamind is guilty of retreading comic book cliches that have been parodied several times before, so upon first watch you can see quite a few of the punchlines coming. There is some snappy dialogue that is a little above the average cringy MCU quips, plus the comedic cast of Will Farrell, David Cross, and Tina Fey might hold your interest until the end of the movie which of course caps off with a dance number. However, this is another jukebox movie with replayed pop songs and very little originality. The biggest distraction is the soulless look in all the character's eyes and their misshaped facial proportions.

Castlevania Nocturne: The New Blood

There are very few good TV shows based on Nintendo games, Netflix however managed to put together a great animated series with their original Castlevania show created mostly with American studios that did give it a serious anime style not unlike the early works of Yoshitaka Amano, plus it had the benefit of being conceived by Marvel Anime writer Warren Ellis. The series ran for four seasons with the first two providing a killer story arc about vampire hunters uniting to kill Dracula, but the last two seasons which were several episodes long seriously dragged the plot out too long which is a trait several Netflix have a habit of doing. Two years after the show’s conclusion, it was decided to start a generational sequel titled Castlevania Nocturne which adapted a 1993 game that wasn’t released in America until 2007, Castlevania: Rondo Of Blood. First premiering in 2023, Nocturne was two seasons long, each one composed of eight episodes, but this time largely created by Clive Bradley who up until then was a screenwriter for British television with no prior experience at handling an animated project, and most of the production being done by Powerhouse Entertainment who had also worked on the first Castlevania as well as Masters Of The Universe: Revelation, plus additional animation was provided by DR Movie.

Castlevania Nocturne received more accolades than the final two seasons of the previous series, although there was a great deal of classic Castlevania fans who thought the series shoved too many plots from various games into a single narrative. Although Nocturne managed to gain many LGBTQ viewers because of its diverse cast, plus despite having this story taking place during the French Revolution it managed to have black and indigenous Latin American characters back when slavery was still active in France at the time. Some accused the series of being too woke, although it’s best to keep in mind that this takes place during an alternate history with vampires and isn’t trying to be accurate.

The story is set in 1792 when village in France is striving to liberate itself from the local royal lord who has allied himself with a vampire clan, plus the church is making night creatures from the corpses of their enemies to add to the vampire ranks. The main leader of the revolutionaries is Maria who can summon spirit animals like her own personal Pokemon, and she is helped by her adopted brother Richter Belmont who is the latest inheritor of the monster hunter line who saw his mother killed by the vampire Orlox that has joined the vampire faction. Richter and Maria get aid from a former slave named Annette who has earth-bending powers, along with her partner Edouard who eventually changes into a night creature. The vampires are ruled by Elizabeth Bathory who was a Hungarian noble that was imprisoned in her own mansion for being one of the biggest serial killers in history. Elizabeth was turned into a vampire by Drolta, an Egyptian priestess of Sekhmet that uses Elizabeth as the reincarnation of her goddess. Things seem bleak until Dracula’s son Alucard finally shows up at the end of Season 1 to help the revolutionaries. Things get darker from then on with characters getting killed off just to advance the plot, while other gain insane power-ups as if they were in Dragonball. Ultimately, Richter, Annette, and Maria defeated the juiced-up vampire goddess and her acolytes with the possibility of a continuation with Richter still having a score to settle with Orlox and Edouard now adjusting to his new life as a night creature.

Castlevania Nocturne was well animated with shifts in styles for some flashbacks and battle scenes, so it lives up to being considered as a real anime. The soundtrack music was equally epic, but that pales in comparison to how rushed the story was and how they tried to stuff it with more forgettable secondary characters, side quests, limp deaths, and the cast constantly reflecting on their past instead of just doing some solid wholesome vampire hunting. The fight scenes are at the same level as the previous Castlevania series but doesn’t appear to be physically possible for most of the average humans who might be able to do magic, least of all going up against a final boss in total god mode.

There is some comfort that Castlevania Nocturne managed to keep the IP active new additions to the game franchise have gotten stuck in the mud over the last few decades. However, Netflix’s middle-managing and corporate mandates toward episode lengths seriously bring the show down from what it might have achieved. The story and dialogue are also weak as it was largely handled by someone with no experience doing an animated adaptation of a video game. It’s possible that this might help give further Nintendo properties a chance to gain notoriety as the only one Castlevania had before this was in the horrible Captain N cartoon, but it’s not likely that we’ll get a more serious take on any of the brand video games without Link rehashing outdated Steve Martin jokes.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: A Great Adaptation

Beginning in 2004, Bryan Lee O’Malley began a 6-volume anime and video game-based graphic novel saga titled Scott Pilgrim. The character’s name came from a single by the rock band Plumtree, and O’Malley took the idea of a guy who “fights you for a thousand years” and turned it into a manga-styled comic set in Toronto, Canada. The book series gradually gained great success over the years and as it continued word of mouth helped it became a cult phenomenon. Then in 2010, a live-action movie based on the comic was released by Edgar Wright, the mastermind behind the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy, featuring an all-star cast with Michael Cera as the title character. The film wasn’t the blockbuster most people wished it was, but if did become a sleeper hit over the next few years, which included a hit video game incorporating elements from the movie and comic as the two storylines are moderately different from each other since the movie came out a month after the comic had concluded. Zoom to 2023, and Netflix airs a genuine anime series of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off that most thought was going to be a straight up adaptation of the comic, but in fact it diverges from the original path and goes in a totally separate direction which seriously split fans down the middle. The production was largely crafted by Dandadan’s studio Science Saru and featured dazzling animation that honors the original comic style plus acts as a reflection of early-2000s pop culture.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was a limited series of just 8 episodes which slightly works against it as it would have benefited from having an extra episode or so. The original story has Canadian youth Scott dating the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers from America, and he must defeat Ramona’s seven former lovers called The League Of Evil Exes, although this is happening while Scott is also quasi-dating a teenager named Knives. Scott fights against one or two in each volume of the comic and eventually wins the right to be her lover. The anime starts out retelling the original story and then takes a sharp turn from the source material and has Scott losing the fight to Matthew, Ramona’s first boyfriend, but Ramona doesn’t believe Scott is dead, so she tracks down all her exes to see who was behind Scott’s disappearance. This highlights the background of the League and how Ramona was partially at fault for them eventually becoming a supervillain team, plus it gives the other supporting characters time to expand their horizons and find out what kind of world they would live in if this key role in their lives were removed. It all comes together in the last 2 episodes where we learn that Scott was really taken into the future by his older self and we are given a lot of exposition behind Scott’s disappearance, so Scott himself is largely left out of his own anime if you’re not counting Even Older Scott who levels up to Dragonball Z status and can defeat the Evil Exes at once, and still keep up with his younger self. The series could’ve used at least one more episode to give the main character a little more time to shine and to make the anime somewhat appealing to anyone who hadn’t come across the comic or movie first.

Science Saru combined their fast-paced hand-drawn animation with CGI for this anime. For better examples of this watch either the movies Riding Your Wave, Inu-Oh, or The Colors Within, all of which utilize various styles of animation that will remind you how groundbreaking anime like FLCL earned its mark, even better than the other FLCL remakes. A few other TV series that Science Saru also applied this special technique to are Devilman Crybaby, Adventure Time, Star Wars: Visions, and the recent Ghost In The Shell remake. Their idiom works like peanut butter and jelly when bringing Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art style to life. This was another attraction to the production as the original character designs from the comics were united with Science Saru’s sensibilities resulting in a winner combo. There is no doubt that Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a legitimate anime as it was specifically produced first for Japanese language as the dub doesn’t totally fit the mouth movements of the English cast. The anime also managed to get all the original actors from the movie to reprise their roles for the English dub, and these are not smalltime names like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, and Aubrey Plaza, so it shows how devoted the cast was to this project.

The anime also had a new story by O’Malley along with screenwriter BenDavid Grabinski. For a long time, O'Malley didn’t just want to do a soulless remake of the comic, so instead he borrowed an idea from Marvel with their What If stories by taking the basics of both the comic and movie and diverted it into a literal alternative timeline. Scott’s older self brings his younger self into the future, so he won’t eventually get married to Ramona and separating years later which sends him into a spiral of depression. O’Malley did update a few things to the script, most of which involve completely rewriting the backstories of some of the Evil Exes, specifically Gideon Graves who was really an old schoolmate of Scott’s antagonist Julie. Plus, the turn of taking the lowest member of the Evil Exes and having him defeat Gideon in the second episode and getting his entire corporate empire. The Exes also get their roles expanded and are not just level bosses, and along with way we learn that Ramona wasn’t totally free of being kind of evil herself when it came to handling her exes. When Ramona can detach herself from the rut her life had become and confront her past lovers she learns more about herself. This redoes Ramona from being the manic pixie dream girl the movie painted her out to be as she takes responsibility for her actions and finds a new purpose as a stunt girl.

Like the movie, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off hosts an awesome soundtrack, most of which was performed by Anamanaguchi, an 8-bit rock band that provided the music for the video game based on the movie, plus its recent sequel game, Scott Pilgrim Ex which acts as a follow-up to the anime. The soundtrack also houses great covers of geek songs like Konya Wa Hurricane from Bubblegum Crisis, and the Mortal Kombat theme with new lyrics to fit the anime cast. The best are the new songs by Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb with his former girlfriend Knives turning out to be a musical genius and joins the band as a keyboardist. This helped the show become the first anime to be nominated and win the Critic’s Choice Award for Best Animated Series.

Speaking as a fan of Scott Pilgrim whose been reading this since the first volume was released in paperback, the anime was the best possible detour that proves that a premise can be stretched across several formats. If you include the video games, this is a multimedia saga that still has room for more. Hopefully it won’t get too excessively pointless reboots like “Lil’ Scott Pilgrim” or “Scott Pilgrim In Space”. This anime though lives up to all expectations for any other fans of the comic or movie, plus a brilliant throwback to garage band music and underground comics that spawned in the late 90s. Oh, and if you’re a retro-gamer, you’ll find far more treasures here than in Ready Player One or any of the Tron sequels. So, if you can put your inner bickering fanboy on hold for a few hours and just sit down and enjoy a great Netflix binge, then you’ll find it was all really worth it.