ANI-MOVIES, *Fear(s) Of The Dark

Not related to the Canadian horror movie, Fear(s) Of The Dark is an animated horror anthology done entirely in black-and-white by Prima Linea Productions who also helped produce The Red Turtle film from Studio Ghibli. This was done as the brainchild of a select group of cartoonists and designers that pulled their talents to create a study of fear in everything from social anxiety to full-blown horror. The major problem with the film is the sequence it is presented in, as it is has several different segments that don't chronologically play out one after the other. There are wraparound intervals between each chapter which are all narrated pieces of a woman going over her everyday woes with a constantly shifting graphic backdrop. The interior components are their own separate installments, even though a few of them break to backup to a previous story that hadn't completed yet, so it's the horror anthology equivalent of channel surfing while you're watching something on one TV network.

The first and opening story is four chapters of a nobleman walking around town with his quartet of violent dogs that each hunt down an innocent victim who is powerless to fight back which ends with the final canine turning on his sadistic master. The next tale is by comic artist Charles Burns who created Black Hole about a shy young man who begins a relationship with a girl he knows from college that turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare with insect/human hybrids. Following that is one that also gets brought back througout different points in the movie about a Japanese girl plagued by the ghost of a samurai. After this is a particularly creepy story where a boy in rural France witnesses his neighbors getting slaughtered by a crocodile, which is odd enough considering there aren't any crocodiles native to that area, but the victims it left behind are forever changed into creatures of the night. The finale is the longest where a large man seeks shelter from a snowstorm in an old, abandoned house and finds himself going through the memories of a former occupant as he slowly gets trapped in the dark confines of the haunted mansion.

Fear(s) Of The Dark blends in traditional and CGI animation in their own segments, and still looks good since it was made in 2007. There is no English dub so that might put off a few potential American viewers, but it maintains the tradition of horror anthology movies like Creepshow even if half the material is about everyday fears and not just supernatural. The eerie imagery puts you in the mood for dark tales of one of our deepest emotions.

ANI-MOVIES, *Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths-Part Two

Where the first installment of the Crisis trilogy that is supposed to wrap up the Tomorrowverse was a rousing time-tripping event, Part Two is more of a character study of two of its main characters instead of an actual story. The second chapter leaps from different points of the prior Tomorrowverse titles while showing how the still remaining characters attempt to hold their realities together. The movie strays somewhat from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths comic book series of the 80s, even though it's trying to establish a new take on old characters who were first introduced in that same event. If there was a reason for buying this movie on its own as opposed to waiting for the compilation movie that Warner Bros. will do is if you're a profoundly compulsive DC fan who has to get everything related to comics as they are first released.

The state of things is that there are five remaining Earths being held together with a tower on each one keeping the anti-matter waves at bay. Joker tries to destroy one with Solomon Grundy and Killer Crock while Tomorrowverse Batman teams up with different members of the Bat-Family from various realities to stop this attack. The remaining heroes gathered by The Monitor are coordinating in an attempt to prevent being wiped from existence. The majority of the first half goes over the lives of Supergirl and Psycho-Pirate who was the main villain from Justice Society: World War II. We learn about Supergirl's life after Krypton exploded at the beginning of Legion Of Super-Heroes at how she ended up spending some years under the care of The Monitor and then eventually heading to Earth to reunite with her cousin. Psycho-Pirate's entire backstory is covered in his prior life on Earth-2 as Charles Halstead who can control emotions, how he gained the ability to travel to other worlds from Dr. Fate, and how he went from one reality to another when he would wear out his welcome just restarting his plan in a different universe. It turns out that Psycho-Pirate was also Doctor Spectro from the DC Showcase: Blue Beetle short, meaning that he has assumed different identities on other worlds, and finally gets a visit by Supergirl who is now Harbinger thanks to a power transfer by The Monitor. Pycho-Pirate gets The Monitor to also give him a portion of his cosmic power to enhance his own empathic abilities as the villain begins to make contact with The Monitor's opposite, the equally powerful Anti-Monitor. This mysterious new enemy sends hordes of shadow demons against the heroes who are defending the towers. Wonder Woman disappears along with the Amazons on their world, the Bat-Family fall prey to Psycho-Pirate's control, and John Stewart manages to finally awaken John Constantine from his centuries long haze of being Pariah but at the cost of the last remaining Green Lantern ring. Psycho-Pirate manipulates Supergirl into taking out her aggression on The Monitor, brutally attacking him. The Anti-Monitor coalesces all his shadow demons into a single huge giant about to destroy the final tower, ending on a cliffhanger.

Part Two carries on the story from Part One, but it all seems like the entire project could've just been split up into a longer double feature instead of a trilogy. Despite the Bat-Family showing up on a lot of the promotional material, there is little done with the characters, and Will Friedle as Batman Beyond only gets about two lines in the whole movie. The final chapter is supposed to feature the return of many former DCAU actors, including the final performance of Batman by Kevin Conroy, although it seems like it will be more of a sound bite. You would be better off waiting until the final chapter is released before bothering with this forgettable filler episode, or at least when they do the mandatory collected edition of all three movies.

Granamyr + Zubeia, The Ultimate Power Couple

 

ANI-MOVIES, *The Little Prince And The Eight-Headed Dragon

Columbia Pictures was really getting experimental with its release back in the day of the 1963 animated movie, The Little Prince And The Eight-Headed Dragon that was created by Toei Animation which back then was called Toei Doga. The color film was done in anamorphic widescreen format which works in its favor as there are several sprawling shots of flying fantasy and fiery fights. The story is inspired by the legend of Susanoo who was the Shinto equivalent of Thor but as a child. Yasuji Mori was one of the animation directors on this film who had previously worked on Toei Daga's Tale Of The White Serpent, and his style went on to have a huge effect on future artists like Genndy Tartakovsky and Tomm Moore. In fact, the design for this movie helped shape the style of The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker video game. Another big contributor to the film was the music by Akira Ifukube who is famous for creating the scores for the original Godzilla movies. The movie achieved a moderate success among other 60s anime productions dubbed into English at the time like Magic Boy and Alakazam The Great, even though it only recently got a Blu-ray release in both Japan and America featuring the original 60s dub.

Susanoo's story is he is the son of a pair of gods that fished out the islands from the ocean that eventually became the nation of Japan. His mother, the creation goddess Izanami, passes away off screen somehow, and Susanoo's father tells him to just get over it. The super-strong godling instead throws a big tantrum and wrecks half of the city. He builds a boat of his own to find his mother in the afterlife since his father forbids from giving him a vessel to travel in. Susanoo travels with his rabbit buddy Akahana and first fights a giant fish who the King of the Sea thanks by sending him to the realm of his brother, The Crystal Prince. The Little Prince is given a special elemental stone that comes in handy when he battles the temperamental God of Fire who can replicate himself which makes for an awesome spectacle. Our hero then gets another tagalong with the large Titanbo from the God of Fire's former country to look for a new land for his people. Susanoo continues to his sister, The Sun Goddess, who becomes so embarrassed by her younger brother's shenanigans that she seals herself up in a mountain and her followers spend several minutes trying to coax her from coming out, so they don't freeze to death in the darkness. After the Sub Goddess finally comes out of her hole, she banishes her brother to search for his mother. Susanoo meets a girl known only as the Little Princess who is the next to be sacrificed to an Orochi here referred to as the Eight-Headed Dragon. The Little Prince pledges to save the Little Princess by confronting the dragon after he gains the help of a flying horse which helps him finally slay the multi-headed kaiju. Susanoo then decides to stay in this newly reborn land and help the Little Princess rebuild her people's kingdom along with making it a home for the Fire refugees.

Despite the fact that this movie helped influence several future animators, you can tell that the film itself borrowed heavily from Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, especially in the duel against Maleficent as a dragon. The dubbing is very forgettable and doesn't fit the lip flaps at all, but altogether not the worse that made for a 60s anime dub. The movie is now finally on streaming and officially free on YouTube, so be sure to give it a look.

ANI-MOVIES, *Flavors Of Youth

Donghua is to China what anime is to Japan. Much of the anime produced of the anime gets outsourced to China, so it's about time that a crossover of donghua and anime was finally made. Not only that, but that the feature was done by Haoliners Animation League from China and none other than the anime studio of Comix Wave Films who took the world literally by storm with Makoto Shinkai films like Your Name and Weathering With You. Shinkai isn't involved in this production at all, but the combined project titled Flavors Of Youth shows traces of his influence. This is also a rarity among anime as it's an anthology film which haven't had much exposure in the 21st Century with titles like Short Peace. The movie is broken up into three segments that show their connection at the beginning and post-credits ending as all the characters from each segment converge at an airport, everyone going on their own chosen path. All three stories take place in China and show how life there isn't too different from any other highly populated parts of the world, in fact if they didn't mention it was China-based then most international viewers would probably think it all happens in Japan.

The Rice Noodles opens up with Xiao Ming remembering his youth when his grandmother was living with his family and usually takes care of the him as the parents are off working. Xiao Ming has fond memories about the noodle shop near his family home that he loved the food from. The rest of the story has the lad growing up and moving around sampling noodles from different parts of China that never seem to have the same delicious taste he did when he was a boy. Xiao Ming is eventually called back to his old home as his grandmother passes away and is happy to find that the old noodle shop is still there and recalls his golden days.

The second part is A Little Fashion Show is slightly forgettable as it deals with a tall model named Yu Lin who is left to take care of her younger sister Lulu after their parents die. Yu Lin became a model to stand out for Lulu and provide a living for her, but she now begins to question if she isn't getting too old for her profession as a young upstart rival starts making things rocky for her. Lulu makes things easier for her as she starts designing her own line of clothes that she made specifically for her big sister.

The final chapter is Love In Shanghai that flashes back between 1999 and a few years later with Li Mo carrying on a more than friendly relationship with his classmate Xiao Yu. The two of them confess their feelings for each other in the teenage days over a shared audio tape they use as a sort of dating journal. Xiao Yu says she's planning on going to a school for academic achievers while Li Mo would probably go to a regular nearby school. Li Mo secretly tries to enter this advanced school which he actually manages to get accepted to, but Xiao Yu fails to enter it much to the violent disapproval of her parents. Li Mo decides to be stubborn in his decision to go forward and becomes an architect who designs his own hotel that Xaio Yu visits him when they're both adults to rekindle their friendship.

Flavors Of Youth is a major boost for the slice-of-life genre with no supernatural or sci-fi elements that anime normally inhabits. Even though it takes place in China, there isn't much emphasis on living or growing up in that specific nation, so despite the sharp imagery of Chinese landmarks, it doesn't become a pretentious travel guide. Each of the stories is significant as they all recall the characters' own pasts and the sense of nostalgia that those bring about. The dub is fair with Jona Xiao and Crispin Freeman standing out, but Ross Butler was totally miscast as Li Mo who has as much range as voice actor as a mute frog. There is no physical release of this anthology as it is streaming exclusively on Netflix, even though it is worth a watch if you're already a subscriber.

R.I.P. Trina Robbins

 

It's 2, 3, 4, Or 5 Anime Shows In 1!

The 1980s were a time of experimenting with entertainment, plus trying to find something that fit the post-Star Wars juggernaut of media. One of these was from the wizards at Mattel in a line-up called Shogun Warriors which refurbished toys from the Japanese company Popy. The eastern import founded by Bandai had a wide selection of giant robots and giant monsters from various anime and tokusatsu titles that were rewritten for the American market as being all part of the same brand. It got an official comic book set in the Marvel Universe with a trio of their mechas. This got the ball rolling for incorporating anime with American toy shelves that of course lead to product lines like Transformers and Gobots, both of which combined different Japanese toy properties under a single label. For the better part of the early to mid-80s, there were five different TV shows that saw the light of day on American tubes, some of which had toy lines of their own. Whereas Mighty Orbots was an original creation for network Saturday morning television, these other shows were anime titles that were repackaged for English audiences. The theme all of them shared is that they were more than one separate series spliced with another to make for an entirely different but still slightly similar show. Here are five shows that could not beat the actual "robots in disguise".

Macron-1 came out in 1986 by Saban Entertainment as a two-hit combo of the anime titles, Go Shogun from 1981 and Subspace Operation Srungle from 1984. The only one of these to get any exposure outside of this show was a movie sequel to Go Shogun: Time Stranger which was so far removed from the original story that it becomes totally unnecessary to watch one after the other. Macron-1 took place simultaneously in parallel universes with two different groups of heroes fighting a pair of villains from the opposite reality. In the year 2525(no, really!), pilot David Chance enters another dimension plagued by the evil organization called GRIP lead by the big bad Darkstar and his cyborg ally Orion. Darkstar enters the universe Earth is in, leaving Chance behind in the other one. GRIP now plans to attack both realities with Darkstar invading Earth and Orion heading up their campaign back home. The scientist Dr. Shegall leads a unit with the mission to repel Darkstar while Chance forms a rebellion against Orion and the remaning GRIP forces which the collected name for this multiversal defense team is Macron-1. Shegall's team had a giant robot to handle Darkstar whereas Chance's rebels had their own mechas. Most of the series was from redubbed footage of Go Shogun, and in some countries the entire Srungle anime was completely left out. A total of 26 episodes were produced for America with only 20 of them ever getting a home video release. The most intriguing thing about the series was it featured pop songs of the time by Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Bananarama, and Tears For Fears, even though none of this soundtrack ever got used on the VHS release. Macron-1 was one of the biggest oddities in English dubs despite its cast going on to become veterans in the field.

Harmony Gold was a distributor that began in 1976 with controversial releases like the Shaka Zulu miniseries. They got Carl Macek in the early 80s to produce some of the booming new anime programming to be broadcast on American television. They wrangled together three unattached anime series, two of which were part of Tatsunoko’s Super Dimension trilogy. This consisted of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada which was another Tatsunoko sci-fi mecha series. Each series made up its own story arc taking place sometime after the other with an intermediary time skip in between. The name Robotech was first used by the model kit makers at Revell as Robotech Defenders which got its own short DC Comics series that was made up of mechas from Macross and Orguss. Since Revell had the rights to the Macross mechas, they formed a co-license of the name Robotech and some of the merchandising rights. Matchbox was responsible for the initial wave of Robotech toys which included mechas, action figures, and fashion dolls that was picked up by Playmates in the 90s and added to their line of Exosquad which was an unrelated American property. The literal storyline for the Robotech TV series itself was one long ongoing saga that had several different retcons throughout its chronicles. This included a planned midquel series called The Sentinels which only got a compilation movie of the leftover footage, plus a pair American-original sequels titled The Shadow Chronicles and Love Live Alive. One other property added to the Robotech roster was “The Movie” from 1986 that was really the first Megazone 23 OVA rescripted into having a small connection to the Robotech TV series much to the regret of Carl Macek who called it one of the worst experiences of his career, which includes Heavy Metal 2000. The basic story of Robotech follows the original Macross series while picking up about a generation later with Southern Cross and Mospeada. In it, humankind encounters its first alien race of giants called the Zentradi while fighting back in transforming mecha. The two races unite and confront their original creators, the Robotech Masters. This leads to another invasion of Earth by the Invid race where a ragtag group of survivors defend the world while most of humanity’s military takes up arms in deep space. The Robotech legacy is probably one of the longest running in American history roping anime fans and even anime-haters into its ongoing epic.

After Robotech, Carl Macek tried to give the Leiji Matsumoto universe(or “Leijiverse”)another chance on American television since Star Blazers dazzled sci-fi fans in the 70s. In 1985, Harmony Gold took two completely unrelated titles and Cronenberged them into a single form. One show was Space Pirate Captain Harlock from 1978 with the other being Queen Millennia from 1981. Unlike Robotech with each series being given its own story arc, Captain Harlock And The Queen Of A Thousand Years splices material from both shows. They wanted to just do one of Captain Harlock, but with his first TV series having 41 episodes, it wouldn’t fit the necessary slot of 65 episodes, and Toei was asking too much for the Harlock sequel series. To resolve this, they spliced footage from Queen Millenia in with the first Harlock series to make for this two-headed beast. Harlock wasn’t adjacent to Millennia’s timeline when these series first came out, although this was later retconned in the Leijiverse as being slightly related to each other. Harmony Gold wasn’t given the luxurious amount of time they did for Robotech when it came to writing the storyline into any kind of unified coherence. The characters from one series would almost never be in the same shot as the other that gave viewers whiplash. The plot for the American series was Harlock being a renegade freedom fighter that sailed the skyways in his space bound pirate ship that was solely responsible for protecting the Earth from a race of living plant women called the Mazones. Harlock keeps taking the blame for all the Mazones attacks while trying to help the outcast Princess Olivia from regaining her throne of Millenia from the Mazones’ allies. Nothing of the American cut ever made the transfer to home media, largely because it got way less exposure than Robotech did, so unless you saw it while it was running, you’ll have to settle for bootleg copies on internet archives.

Not having any connection to the Shogun Warriors toys which helped fuel the fandom for the shows they came from, Force Five was a collection of five different mecha series. Force Five played weekdays for a single season from 1980-81 on select stations mostly in the northeast by Jim Terry Productions. A different title played on each weekday for a total of 26 weeks, making 130 episodes overall. All five of the series had a total of 39-74 episodes, meaning that several episodes were either left out completely or some edited into single screening. Three of the anime titles were created by Go Nagai, including Gaiking, Getter Robo G, and Grendizer which was originally supposed to be Mazinger Z that didn’t see an American release on its own until years later under the label Tranzor Z. The other two titles that made the lineup were by Leiji Matsumoto consisting of Starzinger and Danguard Ace, neither of which are fully connected to the established Leijiverse. There was no merchandise bearing the label of Force Five, even though there were some VHS collections of the series in their own compilation film, as well as the Getter Robo G dub gratuitously renamed Robo Formers by FB Productions. There was no crossover with any of these titles, so it wasn’t necessary to watch every one of the series if you only had a liking for one or two of them. Aside from Starzinger, all the rest featured giant robots, so it would have been simple to just tag one of the numerous mecha knockoff toys that plagued stores in the 80s with the Force Five logo.

The most popular of all the gestalt 80s American anime releases was of course Voltron, also known as Defender Of The Universe. This was shown in syndication in 1984 by World Events Productions which integrated unrelated anime shows dealing with combiner robots, a concept that Power Rangers made a cool mint over. The main anime series that most everyone is aware of was Beast King Go Lion usually referred to as the Lion Voltron where five pilots from Earth find their world decimated and then captured by the wicked Gaira Empire. The five of them escape and become the pilots of the giant mecha Go Lion which is made of a quintet of huge robot lions. The henshin-themed anime broke tradition by killing off one of the main team members in the first few episodes and replaced him with the standard space princess character. The Lion Voltron is the one most Americans are familiar with, but at least one other anime series made up for the second half of it, Armored Fleet Dairugger XV that out here was known as the Vehicle Voltron series about a space battleship of explorers whose main defense against the evil Galveston Empire was a huge robot comprised of fifteen vehicles, some which were cars, but all of them were capable of flight and surviving in space. A good portion of America never even received the Vehicle Voltron chunk of the series even though both Voltrons made 52 episodes each. Over a year after both series were completed an original TV special was animated specifically for American audiences which finally united both teams titled Voltron: Fleet Of Doom. There was a third anime series planned to add to the franchise was Lightspeed Electroid Albegas that most Americans are aware of because it was always the Voltron toys left over in retail stores, but the series never made western airwaves. The Lion Voltron hit a serious groove among 80s pop culture, so much so that there were two separate sequels created specifically for U.S. fans, as well as a lengthy hit remake done decades later for Netflix. When most otaku think of early Super Sentai shows, Voltron has inaccurately but securely set its place in the backdrop of the Japanese superhero genre.

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ANI-MOVIES, *Suzume

Originally titled Suzume Looking Up, Makoto Shinkai's latest addition to his international winning list Suzume follows up the success of Your Name and Weathering With You, even though this feature doesn't take place in the same universe of The Garden Of Words like the past two releases. Suzume is another fantasy romance about doomed lovers who keep having everything in the world working against them to get together. There is of course the average amount of Shinkai's selling out to McDonald's, even though decidedly less than usual. Comix Wave Films once again was the production company behind a visually arousing film by Shinkai, even though it does have some problems with pacing and knowing exactly where to end. Shinkai does keep adding more and more plot points on as it already had enough going on after all that happens in just the first act, which did work against Shinkai slightly in Weathering With You as he was compelled to pile further story elements into an already rich plot. It is in fact one long road trip between two strangers that are trying to avoid natural disasters which is interchangeable from Shinkai's previous two outlets.

Suzume is a high school girl under the care of her aunt Tamaki in the countryside since her mother passed away a decade ago after the disasters that plagued real-life Japan in 2011. On her way to school one day, Suzume encounters a handsome young man named Souta who asked her where any nearby ruins might be. Suzume points out an abandoned resort and then goes to school but notices a dark plume of energy coming from the uninhabited park. She ditches school and finds a single doorway sitting in the middle of an empty area that the energy comes out of. The doors are portals to a realm called the Ever-After where a titanic spiritual worm exists and unless these portals are periodically sealed off by otherworldly specialists called Closers of which Shouta is the last one, the worm will leak into our world. Shouta manages to close the door with Suzume's help, although Suzume finds a small cat statue that turns into a real cat. She takes Shouta back to her place to nurse an injury he got from the experience and the cat appears then surprisingly talks to them. The enchanted kitty changes Shouta into a child's chair Suzume's mother made for her, and then the cat named Daijin quickly runs off. Suzume and her newly transformed comrade follow the cat across the Japanese islands as Daijin goes from one portal after another seemingly to release the giant worm. Suzume makes a lot of comrades along her journey in trying to finally track down this troublemaking tabby and its campaign that leads to Tokyo where the head of the worm resides which could cause a massive earthquake. Suzume and Shouta have been under the impression that Daijin is one of the two keystones that hold the worm in place, but there's a shocking reveal that Shouta has been given that task instead, even as an animated small chair. Shouta sacrifices himself, leaving Suzume heartbroken thinking that her would-be love interest is now dead. The title heroine gets new hope from Shouta's grandfather who tells her that she might be able to bring him back if she goes to where she first entered into the Ever-After. This whole thing turns out to be a causality loop where Suzume's present-day self meets with her past self just after her mother's death and gives her the chair after Souta is free from the curse. Suzume heads back home as she eventually runs into Shouta again hinting that the two of them will begin a romance together.

There is a ton of unexplained lore behind this story, like what started the whole ritual of Closers, and why Daijin changed Shouta into a chair in the first place. Shouta's curse was an excuse for the plot to have a teenage girl travelling on a mystic quest around Japan with a man in his early 20s without it being totally suspicious. Makoto Shinkai's story can get slightly cringey at times with the main characters' age difference, plus the legendarium not being all fleshed out. There are several nods to the works of Hayao Miyazaki in this like the worm being a stand-in for the demonic curse from Princess Mononoke, or background characters confusing Daijin for the baron cat from Whispers Of The Heart. Suzume might seem like the third part of a themed trilogy that Shinkai started with his last two theatrical creations, even though it leaves out the romantic overtones of either Your Name or Weathering With You. The visual look of the film is wondrous and makes you want to visit all the places in Japan that it covers. The stratagem of Suzume does work even though the plot seems stretched out longer than it became. It's not a masterpiece, but still a must see for fans of Shinkai's library of works.

R.I.P. Joe Flaherty