ANI-MOVIES, *The Wonderful World Of Puss 'N Boots

Charles Perrault had adapted numerous children's stories such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, both of which had a young girl getting help from an outsourced miracle worker, but when it came time for Puss 'N Boots instead of it being a divine fairy it is a clever fast-talking cat with impressive attire who assists a young boy get the girl of his dreams. Toei Animation released their own musical adaptation in 1969 titled The Wonderful World Of Puss 'N Boots that was so successful that they turned the title character into the official company mascot. Directed by Kimio Yabuki who a year before did The World Of Hans Christian Andersen for Toei, the film stays fairly true to the original book up until a point but then the finale has a long chase sequence that went on to inspire numerous animators, including some of the movie's animation crew which was made up of Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. The film spawned a few extra anime features starring the fashionable cat, but this movie was the start of the whole craze, and its cartoonish style became a source of innovation for future Japanese productions including anime and video games.

In this version of beloved fairy tale, the puss in question is named Pero who lives in a kingdom of cats, and he becomes an outlaw after sparing the life of a young mouse which the film never bothers to show. Now on the run from a trio of henchcats, Pero teams up with the young Pierre who is cast out by his two older brothers after they cheat him out his inheritance. Pero hears that the King is looking for a rich man to marry the Princess, so he gets the idea to have Pierre appear as a prince so they can live the high life. Conscripting some help from a family of bandit mice, Pero arranges for Pierre to gain an audience with the Princess Rosa, although she already had another suitor stop by before him named Lucifer who turns out to be an ogre that uses a skull-shaped pendant to do magic and take on any form he wants including a rip-off of King Ghidorah. Unlike his fairy tale counterpart, Pierre decides to tell Rosa the truth that he's not really a rich prince, which works out okay for him as Rosa already had feelings for him. However, Lucifer appears and kidnaps Rosa turning the film into a "save the princess" story that the Mario Bros. made a career out of. The story gets to the point where Pero cons Lucifer into taking on the form of a mouse where in the source material Puss eats the mouse, but instead Lucifer changes back to his tall ogre form and the last 20 minutes are a huge pursuit around Lucifer's castle with all its various traps and revolving towers. Pierre catches up to Rosa and the expose Lucifer's pendant to sunlight which destroys the lusty ogre, and then the couple get married and live happily ever after while Pero is still being chased by the three henchcats sent to kill him.

Unlike the Shreck spinoff movie, Toei's take on Puss 'N Boots is more faithful to the original story with the addition of more swashbuckling and some familiar cat and mouse shenanigans. Either due to the bumbling henchcats or the mouse family, the plot is constantly in motion, and even the English-translated catchy music numbers are competent enough to keep up with Disney's quality. This is a confirmed all-ages feature that's good enough to entertain even the kids of today with dynamic movement and thrilling cartoon action.

Batman Yells At Cloud

ANI-MOVIES, *Mulan

From the 17th Century book of Wu Shuang Pu, the story of Hua Mulan has endured for centuries, so since Disney was looking to making their next features more appealing to Eastern audiences, they thought this story willed fit the bill. Former Hanna-Barbera animator Barry Cook and one-time Ralph Bakshi assistant Tony Bancroft both directed Mulan in 1998. For a saga that spans over a decade, the film tightens it up to an 88-minute-long feature too overloaded with comedy to be considered an epic adventure. Not winning any Oscars, Mulan did become a big hit with Millennials and eventually Gen-Z children. Despite the gender-bending qualities of the story, it didn't exactly become the pinnacle of trans representation you would expect, even though Donny Osmond's contribution to the soundtrack practically became an LGBTQ battle cry. The success of it went on to a made-for-video sequel plus a completely irrelevant live-action remake that nobody asked for. Mulan herself was of course drafted into the unconnected Once Upon A Time series, as well as being added to the Disney Princess line-up even though she's not a princess, this was despite the fact that the title character is rarely the focus of the story, similar to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. A good portion of the plot is enraptured with the comic relief and side characters, so the comedy distracts from the coming-of-age war story it could have been.

Taking place during the 4th-6th Century in China, the Hun army led by the ruthless Shan Yu invade mostly because he hated the fact that they put of the Great Wall just to keep him out. All the active males are to be enlisted into the Imperial Army, but the head of the Fa family is still suffering from an old wound, so his rebellious daughter Mulan takes his armor and pretends to be his son Ping. This doesn't set well with the Fa family ancestors who plan to send a powerful dragon spirit to help her, but the demoted jive-talking minor dragon Mushu uses this as a chance to earn his spot back among the guardian spirits. Mushu and a lucky cricket eventually catch up to Mulan and help her blend in with the other men, especially with the Captain Li Shang and three of the more stooge-like soldiers. Mulan manages to keep her secret up until an encounter with the Huns on a mountaintop has her burying the entire enemy army under an avalanche, and her wound caused her comrades to discover her feminine side, so she is sent home by Li Shang without being reprimanded. Shan Yu and a few of his stronger men survive the snowslide and plan on sneaking into the imperial palace and kidnap the emperor which Mulan notices. She tries to get her former comrades in arms to believe her about the incoming danger, but they brush her off, so Mulan stops the remaining Huns and blows up Shan Yu in an explosion of fireworks. Mulan is praised by the emperor and has Li Shang follow her home because they never really set up a romance between the two of them.

Mulan seems like it should fit into Disney's blockbuster roster, but even the famed Szechuan Sauce can't erase many of its blatant faults. The soundtrack is limited with only 4 songs for a picture that is billed as a musical, and only one of those is remembered for Disney fans to sing loudly at convention karaoke sessions. The characters are interesting, but the main character is drowned out by the extended cast, so since this is Disney heroine that already had two animal sidekicks, the addition of her knucklehead trio of army buddies and the bickering bureaucrat outweigh any potential that Mulan might have earned on her own, but at least she didn't have magic powers in this version. The cast is decent with regular voice actors such as James Hong, George Takei, and June Foray, plus Ming-Na Wen makes her animated premiere here as Mulan, but the outplaced Eddie Murphy and several other Chinese characters being played by white actors doesn't help. The breakout of the film is the animation which was the first movie to be completed in the Walt Disney World studio as opposed to in Hollywood. Mulan on its own works as a single feature but trying to make a cheap sequel and a flimsy remake stretched its credulity.

Everything's better with Skeletor!

 

Batman-Caped Crusader: Back To The Past

It was well passed the time that we got a new animated series of Batman, especially if it’s being spearheaded by B:TAS forerunner Bruce Timm. For the new show titled Batman: Caped Crusader, it was made to premiere on Amazon Prime instead of a service connected to Warner Bros, plus this was produced by Bad Robot Productions in their first animated TV series. It maintains the dark deco style from the 90s show, but this time it takes place in the 1940s whereas B:TAS had a retro noir motif set in modern day. Instead of focusing on Batman himself, this new show targets the time it’s set in and makes it more mature with a psychological approach and how corruption plays a major part in people’s motivations.

First airing in 2024, the original season went on for a mere 10 episodes like My Adventures With Superman, with plans for the second season to have the same number of episodes. Caped Crusader came out a few months after Disney premiered their X-Men 97 series which also called back to a 90s animated series, but between the two of them X-Men seemed to score more fans partially because there are less people subscribed to Amazon. The saving grace for this was it took place prior to David Zaslav’s striking several Warner productions off for tax purposes, plus Amazon had already signed on for the second season.

Taking place during Batman’s first year, the show is period piece taking place probably prior to America’s entering WWII. This world this takes place in is an alternate reality where there’s less racism and same-sex relationships are more socially accepted. Gotham City here is one of the darkest it’s ever been, particularly with crime and how it depraves the citizens one way or another. The Batman shown here is still a little wet behind his pointy ears and not the seasoned crimefighter most fans are used to, however he still has the same ambition and drive even if some of the technology he used didn’t exist like wireless microphones and personal submarines.

There are a few of Batman’s regular rouges’ gallery here, but with a new twist. Catwoman isn’t the total pro cat burglar we’re used to, Rupert Thorne is the main crime boss, Clayface is Basil Carlo who can only change the shape of his face and not a full shapeshifter, plus a less ambitious Firebug. We’re also graced with the animation premiere of Nocturna and her brother Night-Slayer, although Nocturna is a kind of vampire and much younger than her Dark Knight boyfriend from the 80s. Penguin is the first criminal we meet, except here the character is gender-swapped with two sons. Another change is Harley Quinn who has no connection to the Joker who only shows up at the end of season one, plus here she is Asian American and openly a lesbian. We get a few guest villains who are normally the archenemies of other DC superheroes like Gentlemen’s Ghost and Onomatopia. Harvey Dent eventually becomes Two-Face by the end of the first season, although you can see his ego slowly leading him down the dark path even before his little acid bath. King Tut and Killer Croc make brief appearances, plus detectives Bullock and Flass show that dirty cops are also villains.

Some of the other cast is remade for this Batman incarnation. Alfred is slightly stockier, Jim and Barbara Gordon are both black with Barbara being a public lawyer, and all the potential Robin candidates are younger than they usually are. There are also appearances by other extend DC Universe characters such as Papa Midnite, The Spectre, Plastic Man, The Creeper, and even a Fleischer Studios’ take on Lois Lane who is regularly working out of Gotham instead of Metropolis.

The cast is exemplary with sitcom actor Hamish Linklater taking on the title role, John DiMaggio trading in Joker for Bullock, Tom Kenny as Firebug and as Eel O’Brien (aka: Plastic Man), Krystal Jay Brown as Barbara Gordon: Attorney at Law, Christina Ricci as the rookie Catwoman, Hayley Joel Osment as Night-Slayer, and former-Batman Diedrich Bader now playing Harvey Dent and totally sells it as a more unscrupulous take on the character. Cedric Yarbrough takes on the part of four villains as Rupert Thorne, Killer Croc, Papa Midnite, and Joker.

With animation covered by Studio Grida and Studio IAM, Batman: Caped Crusaders managed to capture the essence of the 90s cartoon series while paying homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood and pulp fiction magazines. Critics appreciated the darker tone that the show took with Batman and his extended cast, plus its open-minded approach to representation. Hopefully the upcoming second season will give the series a significant boost to justify another season, and at least Bruce Timm was able to keep his fanboy impulses down enough so Batgirl did end up sleeping with Batman again.

ANI-MOVIES: *Goat

For Sony Pictures Animation's first theatrical release after the second Spider-Verse installment, Goat had a lot to live up to, especially when they passed on originally putting out K-Pop Demon Hunters before they proceed with this one. It's also a rarity to see an animated feature done as a sports film, so it was a little hard to make skeptical audiences not see this as a ripoff of Animalympics and Zootopia. It takes place in a world of anthropomorphic animals, and like most cartoon worlds similar to this they never address the whole prey/predator dichotomy, somehow all the animals get along with no explanation of why the talking wolves aren't eating the talking chickens. Based on an unpublished book by Chris Tougas, former Venture Bros. artist Tyree Dillihay debuted as a director in this hit that made twice its money back at the box office. The story is a little lacking in plot, but the movie makes up for it in incredible lighting and texture with fine movements making the animation itself the true star of the show.

Set in an animal world, a sport called roarball is their version of basketball, the basic difference is that the court can spontaneously change its landscape. Will is a goat who grew up in the town of Vineland hoping to join the roarball team of the Thorns, and due to a chance match with the out-of-town team captain Mane Attraction, he gets added to the Thorns as their sixth player. The team's star player Jett doesn't like the idea of a smaller animal on the team, but the rest of the players eventually warm up to him after he finally gets a chance to play in the game. Jett also appreciates Will after she sees the impact her career had on her hometown, and the Thorns are on their way to winning the finals. However, the team's greedy owner trades them over to another city before the end of the season, thus deflating the Thorns' chances, but of course they all find their inner-strength and win the championship, plus the team's new owner turns out to be the team's crazy reptile who won it in a game of Uno which deflates the stakes of the whole story.

Since the movie is literally titled after a sports term, Goat doesn't carry much weight as far as even a sports flick is concerned. The characters are very by the numbers, and the film had a total of five producers, but the animation team behind it went all out to make this an astounding visual feast. No idea if this film will be remembered when the next Oscars come around, but Goat's 2D animation rendered in 3D is what made the Spider-Verse movies a hit.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Monkey King

The story of Sun Wukong has been adapted more times than nearly any other character in the world. Journey To The West was turned into dozens of movie and TV shows both live action and animated, plus video games, some of the most popular being Saiyuki, Alakazam The Great, and a little something called Dragonball. The Monkey King is the latest interpretation of the Chinese legend produced by Netflix Animation and Pearl Studio in their follow up to Abominable and Over The Moon. Both studios pushed to make this a mainstream animated family adventure, although it didn't get the kind of reception that Netlix got a year later when they screened Sony's theatrically-rejected K-Pop Demon Hunters. Even though this takes place in ancient China, this was written to be a snappy comedy hoping to appeal to Generation Z which does work against it at times. The film is CGI, although there is an impressive 2D sequence that you wish got its own full movie. The computer animation is pretty fluid with some electrifying fighting scenes and fast-paced magic duels.

A monkey is hatched from a rock and immediately starts ticking off the other monkeys since he doesn't have any parental figure. A tiger demon has been feasting on the younger monkeys, so this unnatural monkey spends the next few years training himself to fight, and then swims to the underwater palace of the Dragon King to take the prized magical staff that our monkey hero can talk to. After using the staff he calls Stick to defeat the demon, he is proclaimed Monkey King by the other monkeys, he however doesn't want to just rule some simians and sets his sights on the heavenly palace and taking his place among the gods. In order to get their attention, Monkey King goes out and kills 99 more demons for an even 100, but his efforts go unnoticed by the gods, so he sets out to become immortal, and takes on a young girl named Lin as his assistant as they go to the underworld to erase his name on Scroll of Life giving himself no expiration date. This only makes him half-immortal, so he and Lin go to the heavens to get a special elixir to make him fully-immortal, but what Monkey King doesn't know is that Lin is secretly working for the Dragon King to get Stick so he can cover the world in water. Once he gets Stick back, Dragon King does a memorable evil villain song and grows to kaiju-size, but he is defeated by Monkey King who feeds of magic lightning and turns into a titan himself. After defeating Dragon King, Monkey King goes a little mad with power, so Buddha shows up and uses Lin as a speaker to get him to calm down and imprisons him inside a mountain for 500 years where he begins his quest to the West.

The Monkey King does grab your attention for most of the run time, although this can get tiresome after a while. After watching this the one time, it takes a sturdy frame to be able keep up with the unrelenting pace. There is too much ego-driven dialogue and situations that instantly escalate into world-shattering threats to keep a bead on any character progression. There is currently a huge amount of movies bearing Monkey King in their total, although this version of Sun Wukong can be slightly intolerable, he's no more narcissistic than any of the other revamp of the hairy hero.