ANI-MOVIES, *I Am Frankelda

For being Mexico's first full-length stop motion animated film, I Am Frankelda was still a little rough around the edges in terms of production quality. The brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz had worked under Guillermo del Toro and started their own production company called Cinema Fantasma, and put their talents into the original TV series Frankelda's Book Of Spooks which played on HBO Max. The series only lasted 5 episodes and was an anthology of gothic fantasy stories told by the ghostly Frankelda who is trapped inside a castle along with her talking book Hemeval, plus each episode was only 15 minutes long, so we didn't get to find out much about our horror hosts that are still imprisoned at the end of the series. The Ambriz brothers planned on doing a half-hour special to act as an origin story for Frankelda, but it was instead decided to turn it into a complete motion picture which was picked up by Netflix. The movie is given an English and Spanish dub, with the talented Mireya Mendoza performing the voice of Frankelda in both languages. The surprise of this film is that it's also a musical with grand sweeping numbers that completely capture the audience's heart, and they are amazing in both English and Spanish. Similar to the works of Henry Selick and Laika Studios, I Am Frankelda was painstakingly done in stop motion which is a long process, and even though not totally up to the high standards of Kubo And The Two Strings or The Nightmare Before Christmas, you can still see the time and heart that were put into it, especially with the detail that was brought to the camera as it captures each frame like a work of art. The film was originally intended be shown in Mexico, but since del Toro had gotten his version of Pinocchio picked up by Netflix, he convinced the streaming service to add this movie on their platform as well, which already had benefited from taking risks with animated films such as Nimona and K-Pop Demon Hunters. I Am Frankelda went on to win several animation awards and became a modest hit on Netflix.

Spider Jerusalem and Isaiah "Krash" have the same optician.

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Night Of The Zoopocalypse

He who was once claimed as "the future of horror" happened to make a story fit for a nice family film. Hellraiser creator Clive Barker had written a story called Zoombies (no connection to the unfunny franchise from The Asylum) and had planned for it to be a graphic novel, but instead screenwriters Steven Hobab and James Kee revamped it for an animated movie titled Night Of The Zoopocalypse which of course was borrowed from George Romero's groundbreaking undead movie. Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis both directed this film intended to act as a gateway horror for kids, and it did in fact pass with flying colors. The plot involves animals in a zoo succumbing to an alien virus which turns them into zombie-like creatures, but instead of rotting flesh and actually eating each other, the animals are more like they were put through a Willy Wonka machine and ended up as mindless mutants made of gummy candy. The film had a total of seven production companies behind it, but it all comes together with cartoonish character designs and the right kind of mood that makes for a great scary movie. There's wonderful homages to horror flicks while incorporating the level of fear that have made hit modern-day creepypastas whereas most movies actually based on creepypastas completely miss the mark, and there is a fantastic musical score that leaves anything Disney has done for the films they intended to be "spooky".

Set in a Canadian zoo, Gracie the timber wolf lives with her pack but doesn't take things too seriously. A small bit of space debris crashes into the zoo's farm and infects a rabbit that starts turning the other animals into mutated freaks who aren't specifically zombies as they can lose their body parts and reattach them, even if it's not their own, so you've got bizarre creatures combined like a giraffe-gorilla beast right out a G-rated Cronenberg concoction. Gracie is one of the few animals to not get infected along the zoo's newest recruit, a mountain lion named Dan, and the two of them work with an odd assortment of survivors. There is a way to cure the zombie critters, although it turns out to be something else other than just washing it out with soap and water, but Gracie and the others stop the plague after dealing with a kaiju-sized gestalt abomination comprised of all the animals that would even irk Lovecraft.

Night Of The Zoopocalypse was largely animated by the French production company Mac Guff who also worked on A Monster In Paris, although this one is an English-language film so there's quite a few American voice actors in it. Gabbi Kosmidis from Unicorn Academy is the voice of Gracie with an odd southern drawl, David Harbor is the strait-laced Dan, and Scott Thompson from Kids In The Hall plays a stuffy ostrich. This is a fine entry-level horror for little hellhounds without being too frightening, and the neon lighting used for it really gives it a creepy vibe. The character designs are also unique appearing like it was a blend of an old Garfield episode and a psychedelic cartoon from the 70s. It might become a regular in your children's rotating movie catalog, although it still holds up for a family feature and a decent pick for a kids Halloween party.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Nightmare Before Christmas

Considering that there hadn't been another feature-length theatrically released American stop-motion animated movie since 1984's The Adventures Of Mark Twain, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas from 1993 brought the nearly lost art back into the spotlight. Considering that fully CGI-animated films were still on the horizon, there was still time for this underused craft to make a significant comeback. Starting out as a children's book Burton wrote in the 80s, he combined this with his own stop-motion short titled Vincent (narrated by Vincent Prince himself!) which caught Hollywood's attention. Disney produced this under their Touchstone Pictures label and directed by inbetweener animator Henry Selick who went on to help start up Laika Studios by directing Coraline, plus the screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson and adapted by Michael McDowell. The film was first seen as being a long animated short about 40+ minutes and modeled after all those Rankin-Bass holiday TV one-shots combined with their forgotten Halloween hit Mad Monster Party, but it was deemed a little too dark to be another annual cartoon special, so it was instead prolonged into a single feature. It made a big splash upon its premiere and continued to be a larger cult clash. Over the years, it became a gothic masterpiece that made Spencer's Gifts a cool mint, not to mention gaining its own aisle in every department store during both the Halloween and Christmas season. The phenomenon is more owed to its clashing of cheery Noel and scary-but-harmless monsters which made for one of the most unique cinematic experiences of its time, plus making it into a jumpy musical done by Oingo Boing's Danny Elfman which made it a tentpole in marketing and merchandise.

Turns out the major American holidays each have their own little world such as Easter and Thanksgiving, while Halloween Town is run by Jack Skelington, a living skeleton with panache for dropping a musical number for any situation. After another year's successful Halloween by him and the other townsfolk made entirely of monsters, Jack feels unfulfilled with the same routine, and a trip through a special door takes him to Christmas Town. He falls head over heels for this newly discovered holiday and plans on doing his own version of Christmas. He sends three children with the task of capturing Santa Claus which actually takes them several weeks while Jack and the other scary citizens create creepy versions of beloved old-time toys. Helping Jack is the stitchpunk girl Sally who is the Frankenstein's monster of this world, and for some reason has a psychic vision of Jack's plan which is destined to end in flames, but despite her best efforts she fails to stop his resolve to take over Christmas. Santa is taken to the lair of Oogie Boogie, an outcasted boogeyman who is introduced in the third act as the movie's only genuine villain if you leave out Jack's whole "ransacking another guy's holiday" scheme, and Oogie wants to bump off Santa just for kicks. Using flying reindeer skeletons, Jack begins his Christmas Eve caper only to get the military riled up enough to shoot him out of the sky, which finally knocks some sense into him, and he rescues Santa from Oogie. Santa pulls a lightspeed rescue on Christmas while Jack and Sally finally realize their feelings for each other.

Tim Burton didn't direct or produce this but did get his name put above the title so everyone would believe he was the Bob Kane to this Bill Finger production. Danny Elfman's score played a big part in the movie's impact, and Elfman himself also performed the singing voice of Jack, while the speaking voice was done by Chris Saradon after he slayed it in Fright Night. Aside from an all-star ensemble cast, the best is the dearly departed Catherine O'Hara as Sally, plus Shock who was one of Oogie's crew. The movie does suffer from some profoundly weak dialogue, and a concept that was intended to be barely an hour long has plenty of filler material to pad it out to feature-length. For a stop-motion production, there were over a hundred artists working on this on several different sound stages, so you can imagine that this took up a lot of studio space to pull all the different worlds together, plus crafting it to Burton's vision along with a Dr. Seuss style is a miracle onto itself. Aside from the insane amount of merch that this film rakes in every holiday season, there's also several sequels, prequels, spinoffs, and of course the obligatory Kingdom Hearts crossovers. This movie led to other Tim Burton stop-motion movies like Corpse Bride and the Frankenweenie remake, plus the animated scenes in James And The Giant Peach, but to truly get the magic of the original then you owe it to yourself in theatrical screening.

Ghost In The Shell: The Remake God Intended!

After several prior takes on the manga, someone finally made a story-accurate anime of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost In The Shell. Originally printed in 1989, it took a few years for the first anime which was Mamoru Oshii’s which helped keep the whole cyberpunk trend running into the 90s, and there are at least three different editions of the film. This went on to a sequel, video games, OVAS, TV shows, and a forgettable American live-action movie. Out of all of them, this new 2026 TV anime is the only one that follows the plot and the style of the original one-volume manga which was more colorful, funnier, and finally some gratuitous 90s fan service. Oshii’s adaptation took the original manga and removed anything lively and presented it with a dark dystopian future like all post-Blade Runner cyberpunk films. Writer Toh EnJoe who might’ve played fast and loose with the original lore shown in Godzilla: Singular Point, but here he knew the source material and applied it to the script while still telling this from the point of view of futurists in the 90s. Ride Your Wave director Mokochan managed to put together an anime that captures the bright imagery of the initial manga and presents it as something that was just recently conceived. The TV series doesn’t take much any cues from the prior GITS anime productions and sticks to Shirow’s original vision, and Science Saru was the incredible studio behind it.

The one thing that this series borrows from another GITS title is that the story takes place in 2029 like the original motion picture. In this fictional future, the world is populated with regular humans, cyborgs, plus AI units in prosthetic bodies called shells, and the term used for a person’s mind/soul is a ghost. The line between the genuinely born humans and completely artificial lifeforms has gotten seriously blurred, and this has opened a new type of cybercrime where people with a ghost can be hacked and forced into acts of terrorism.

In Tokyo, female security agent Motoko Kusinagi helps start up a new task force called Section 9 to handle this new advanced brand of security. Along with her partner Batou and the rookie Togusa, Motoko is promoted to Major under the leadership of the elder Chief Aramaki who plans to use Section 9 to weed out traitors and insurrections within their own government. All this is going on while a rogue AI called the Puppet Master is pitting forces against each other to preserve its programming and achieve its own autonomy.

The new GITS anime series encompasses the entire original manga story whereas the first movie was the only other production to adapt the manga and not create its own interpretation such as in Stand-Alone Complex. There’s a similar opening narration crawl about what the world of 2029 is like and goes all the way to the final line about how the net is vast. The character designs look like they’re ripped right from manga page with everyone’s profile looking as cartoonish as the original did and not as aesthetically particular as what Ooshi had in mind for the ‘95 movie which is due to Science Saru’s incredible production.

Comparing this GITS anime with the others isn’t too difficult. Ooshi’s movie was deeply philosophical with expressionless characters and not a lot of distinction between the characters which can work if you’re trying to get all cerebral that the Wachowskis vacuumed all that when they were first churning out The Matrix. Stand-Alone Complex had an episodic approach to its storytelling and took itself too seriously. GITS: Arise was a pseudo-prequel OVA that had Motoko being a brash young officer who still had ownership over her prosthetic body, so it wasn’t owned by the government, and it gets lost in its own story resolving a criminal conspiracy.

The new anime painstakingly takes every frame and little nugget of dialogue from the manga and animates it with quick moving action. It doesn’t get bogged down in technobabble and political intrigue such as both of Ooshi’s GITS movies and doesn’t stray away from the main cast with one-shot characters having an entire episode dedicated to them and being non-sequential to the overall plot. The main take of the Puppet Master doesn’t really affect anything until the last two episodes, and then there’s a lengthy epilogue to the event that none of the other adaptions. We get to learn more about the reborn Motoko and why all these extra factions were out to get the Puppet Master in the first place.

This series has gained acceptance from new fans and die-hard old school anime purists. Some of the dialogue does go by at lightning speed making it a little hard to keep up with some of the context getting lost upon first watch. Fortunately, the story is all on point with little pointless filler material. If you still have a battered paperback of the original manga, you can put it back in the vault because this anime is the fresh standard that hopefully future cyberpunk anime will be measured by.

Blood Of Zeus: A New Epic

Originally titled Gods and Heroes, Blood Of Zeus was conceived by the brothers Charley and Vlas Parlapanides who had previously written the screenplay for Immortals and the Americanized Death Note movie, neither of which were successful. Since the Immortals film bombed and was about Greek mythology, you’d think they wouldn’t try it again, but somehow they managed to talk Netflix into doing an original animated series inspired by it. This was produced by Powerhouse Animation Studios who had already did the excellent Castlevania adaptation, and it was animated by two South Korean studios, Hanho Heung-Up and Mua Film. It was originally pitched as being a 5-season long project, but because of a low performance only 3 seasons were ultimately created. Season 1 premiered in 2020, with a long break in between until Season 2 came out in 2024, followed by the slightly rushed last season in 2025.

Blood Of Zeus is set during an unknown piece of Greek history taking place during the reign of the Olympian gods after they won their war with the Titans, and then a race of giants that rose from the remains of their carcasses. The gods convinced two of the giants to switch sides, and the Olympians became victorious from it under the rule of Zeus. Zeus spent a lot of his time philandering with human women and spawning several demigods. One of these is Heron, the son of the outcasted Queen Electra who takes refuge in a small town to keep Heron away from the gaze of Zeus’ jealous wife Hera. A race of people referred have eaten the flesh of the fallen giants transforming them into demons lead by Seraphim who it turns out is Heron’s mortal twin brother who was nearly killed as an infant by his greedy uncle. Hera finds out about Heron’s existence and wages a civil war between the gods along with rising the bodies of the fallen giants to back her. Heron has gathered a band of heroes to help him stop the war, even though Seraphim ultimately kills their mother and joins Hera’s side. Zeus sacrifices himself to save Hera during the final battle after the giants turn on her, Heron slays Seraphim and is left to inherit the lightning powers of Zeus.

The second season came out four years later which is something Netflix has a habit of doing when it comes to picking up the next season of some of their series, especially animated ones. This season went more into creation stories than the prior, and explores the wider world that this new mythology is supposed to take place in. Seraphim is given a second life by Hades, lord of the Underworld, who wants to defeat the ruling gods so he can be with his wife Persephone during the whole year and not half of it as she must return to her mother Demeter. Hades sends Seraphim to bring him the Eleusinian Stone which Seraphim can access since it lies in the realm of Gaea, and since he has giant blood in him, he can enter there. It’s also where all the other gods head to claim the Stone and rule Olympus. This is all part of Gaea’s plan to teach the gods forgiveness and has Heron acting as her player in her game. Zeus is locked away in the Underworld during all this, as well as Gorgo, a lost love of Seraphim that Hades promised to free if he obtains the Stone. All the forces clash on Gaea’s island which angers the Earth goddess and declares that none of them are worthy and frees the gigantic Typhon entity who is pretty much the Greek version of Godzilla.

Season 3 came out a year later with Typhon ripping through the Underworld to free Kronos, the father of the Olympians that Zeus had banished centuries ago. Kronos takes over the Underworld and awakens the fallen Titans to help him revert the world back to primordial order. Seraphim forms a truce with Heron if he helps him send Gorgo to the Elysian Fields, but Kronos gets her beforehand and uses her as a bargaining chip against the two brothers. Gaes who set all this up just ditches the scene altogether leaving everyone to fend for themselves and leaving them to their fates. Heron is told by the Fates that his web of destiny has been cut, so this war will be his final act.

Much of the mythology that Blood Of Zeus derives its story elements from is not directly lifted from Greek lore but some secret societies and esoteric institutions. Freemasonry plays a large foundation in the show’s personal world-building, especially with its ties to Egyptian myths. The focus is largely on destiny, and how everyone’s death is inevitable, even though some of the gods manage to come back to life on a regular basis in this take on the pantheon. There is takes on Christian dogma as well with all the resurrection of various divine characters. Nearly every civilized culture had their own theogony, to which Greek myth is essential to as the Greeks would incorporate different cultures and religion into their own world history. Heron is in fact the true hero here, which is where the term hero is supposed to come from as he was willing to give up his own life to help others.

Gaea is the key player in this series, even though she doesn’t become relevant to the story until Season 2. She has Zeus raised in secret to ultimately defeat Kronos as he kept eating all their children because of a prophecy that said his offspring would one day replace him as ruler over the world. This plays into the creation myths of certain histories when obtaining ultimate power, which the Eleusinian Stone is the ultimate prize to get. Most of the mystery schools that Blood Of Zeus borrowed this idea from someone being initiated into each group’s particular beliefs such as the Masons. Gaea ultimately set everything in place hoping the Olympians would learn forgiveness or just letting the world be destroyed to restart everything, even if that meant going back to people dabbling in living sacrifices. This shows that anyone trying to work against a prophecy is usually doomed to succumb to it.

The animation in Blood Of Zeus is not genuinely anime, although its production was inspired by Japanese animation like how both Castlevania TV series were labeled as being under the Netflix Anime brand. The production is gorgeous with literally electrifying effects and each of the characters having their own distinct ability or superpower. There isn’t any major anime that this is derived from, although you will see sparks of Dragonball Z and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, although titles like One Piece and My Hero Academia would appear to be the better sources of influence, but since they’re both more comedic adventures instead of hardcore supernatural battles.

Despite each season getting 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, Blood Of Zeus was cut two seasons short. This comes up a lot during Season 3 with the rushed plot, specifically how early Heron and Seraphim seemed to forgive each other. It does all come together in the end with a climatic duel between the brothers and Krono with the giant Typhon. The series on its own is worth checking out all 24 episodes for, but you can be satisfied with just watching Season 1 which concludes on a good enough note to not require watching the other two seasons.

MISC. MANGA, *The Long-Lived King

After being given a forced early retirement by Disney+, Dana Terrace's The Owl House went on for two full seasons and an abbreviated final season. Over three years after the finale, the fans are given this one-shot manga-styled graphic novel to fill in a gap taking place before the show's epilogue. Terrace wrote this along with Mikki Crisostomo who also wrote for The Owl House and is writing for Josie Campbell's upcoming Starfire animated series, and it was drawn by Daun Han who also worked on the original show and is part of Terrace's production team on Knights Of Guinevere. The story doesn't fill in a lot of the missing lore from the show as it's more of the characters self-reflecting on what lies ahead in their future, specifically King and him realizing how long his life span is. The manga design works for it making the world seem darker than it is even after defeating the final boss. In fact, the main message the story gives is relating how death is a natural part of life and not to be feared. This is why Terrace emphasized that this was a graphic novel intended for mature readers.

Taking place two years after Emporer Bellos was vanquished, the Boiling Isles has slowly been rebuilding their new tyrant-free civilization and turning the Collector's old crown-shaped playhouse into a museum as the locals start to relearn the ways of their forgotten past that Bellos phased out when he established the Covens. Luz now has a new haircut with odango buns and is helping to set up the museum when one of the Collector's toys goes on a rampage. A runaway giant jack-in-the-box causes Eda to get hurt which results in her learning that her curse is preventing her from being healed by magic, so the Owl Lady spends the rest of this story with a broken leg. This event makes King worry more about how he'll outlive all his friends as a titan, so he's been using a memory-erasing device modeled after an old Etch-A-Sketch to remove bad memories. Luz accidently comes into contact with this device making her forget a good portion of her life, so Eda and King take her to the Collector's home where he helps them go through Luz's mind to reclaim her memories. The book concludes with King and Collector discussing how scared they are of what the future might bring but a willing to tough it out all the way.

The Long-Lived King on the surface looks like it's just a missing chapter from The Owl House odyssey, but it's more of a look back on what one would do with their life after the main adventure has ended. We get some more world-building with the Boiled Isles citizens discovering more about their hidden history. There isn't much from the secondary characters, so anyone hoping to see more of Luz and Amity's relationship will be slightly disappointed. The black and white manga really adds a new layer to the usually colorful backdrop of The Owl House, even in some of its murkier scenes which helps direct the reader's attention more on to the main characters as the camera is focused on them instead of the enchanted realm they all live in. This is a profoundly somber note to finish The Owl House on, but it acts as a perfect interlude leading into the epilogue of the series finale and shows how the characters are still recovering from a major ordeal with what doors to the future were opened because of it.