ANI-MOVIES, *New Gods: Nezha Reborn

The Taost deity Nezha has a hit cinematic universe based on his legend from Bejing Enlight Entertainment, but another take on the chaotic fireball was turned into part of the New Gods (no relation to Jack Kirby) franchise and its first installment, Nezha Reborn. Release in 2021, just two years after the blockbuster adaptation, this is a completely separate entity, although it's easy to figure out that it was mainly done as a cash grab on the Investiture Of The Gods novel from the Ming Dynasty, but this was produced by Light Chaser Animation Studios and sets it sets apart by taking place in a dystopian future. Light Chaser had already made an impact on international animation with their White Snake trilogy, and their New Gods movie series continued in a spinoff of Yang Jian. Many people consider Nezha Reborn to be steampunk, but given that it's in a post-disaster world, that would place it more under cyberpunk, especially with all the updated technology and mecha suits.

Donghai is an oceanside city which is controlled by the De Clan syndicate who maintains authority by subverting the city's water which is in short supply, although this fact doesn't seem to come up much in the movie. The film actually starts with Yunxiang literally speaking to the viewer and introducing himself as if he knew he was a character in a fictional story, but for some reason he also doesn't do this again during the course of the story because from that point on he relies on inner monologue to act as the narrator. After a tussle with Bing, son of De Clan's leader Guang, Yunxiang suddenly gains pyrokinetic spiritual powers, and a strange hairy man wearing a huge mask tells him that he's the latest reincarnation of Nezha. The masked man is later revealed to be none other than Sun Wukong, the genuine Monkey King who has been kicking around for centuries waiting for Nezha so they could defeat the evil Dragon King that surprisingly is Guang. Wukong trains Yunxiang on how to use his powers, even though he never seems to get any help from the actual spirit of Nezha during most of the major fights. It isn't until near the end when Yunxiang practically dies trying to stop Guang, but only when the entire city is going to be totally flooded that Nezha finally decides to lend one of his six hands to save everyone. Yunxiang now has one of Nezha's old treasures and sets out to find the remaining divine arsenal.

Being a 3D animated film, New Gods: Nezha Reborn features an eye-catching production and you will see hints of other cyberpunk titles like Afro Samurai, Akira or Final Fantasy VII. The character development is acceptable, although most of Yunxiang's friends and family seem to suffer more than he does during his progress as a hero. You can currently catch Nezha Reborn streaming on Netflix, but the spinoff movie of Jian Xing was licensed by GKids so you might not be able to find both films on the same service.

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.

ANI-MOVIES, *Transformers: The Movie (40th Anniversary Celebration)

"Beyond your wildest imagination," was what this bad boy boasted in 1986, and it didn't disappoint. Coming out two months after Hasbro's first franchise theatrical release for My Little Pony, they went even bigger with Transformers: The Movie, however this was an extension of an animation show whereas MLP only had a pair of TV specials prior to its motion picture, so Transformers had a big leg up continuing an existing series. The film came out after Season 2 of the original Transformers series but shot the story two decades into the future skipping over a whole bunch of history which have never been covered in the Transformers lore, plus quite a few of the characters that were introduced during the latter part of Season 2 were completely left out of the movie since the movie started production sometime at the beginning of that season. The film was written by Ron Friedman who also created the GI Joe series, and it had a gaggle of diverse celebrities voicing the new characters including Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, Robert Stack, and Orson Welles in his last movie roll appearance, plus the first theatrical appearance of John Moschitta who up until then was the fast-talking guy from Fed-Ex commercials and later became the Micro Machine Man. The other huge selling point was the rocking soundtrack by Vince DiCola featuring songs by Weird Al Yankovic and King Kobra. Since Transformers was a melting pot of different Japanese toy lines put together in a single narrative, the idea for the movie was to introduce an entirely new roster of characters to the same lineup that G1 fans had already become familiar with, so this caused most of the characters to either get brutally murdered or reformed as a totally new one. The effect of this apparently traumatized many younger viewers seeing their favorite Autobot leader die which was retconned in Season 3 taking place after the movie. The movie had a huge effect on the toy industry when the film just swept away the first line of products to show bright shiny new ones, a strategy that caused many toy franchises to eventually collapse such as He-Man and TMNT. However, the film had such lush animation by Toei and Sunbow along with brilliant performances by celebrity and veteran voice actors that the movie became a sleeper hit.

Shooting from 1986 to the year 2005, we find that the Decepticons eventually regained control of Cybertron leaving the Autobots with the task of defeating them with their limited sources, one of which is a full Autobot city on Earth. Megatron leads an assault on Autobot City with fresh-faced soldiers like Hot Rod, Kupp, Arcee, and Blurr to defend it until Optimus Prime arrives with the calvary. Prime and Megatron have an epic duel to the death resulting in Optimus' demise, while Megatron is cast out by the retreating Decpticons along with other damaged warriors. They all just happen to come across the gigantic planet-eating monster known as Unicron reformatting Megatron into his herald Galvatron, plus remodeling the other survivors. Starscream is finally killed by the newly born Megatron, who has to take the Autobot Matrix away from its new owner, Ultra Magnus which is the only thing that could destroy Unicron. The new Autobots along with most of the Dinobots leave Earth to keep the Matrix out of Galvatron's grasp, but are all separated, some of which crash on a huge junkyard planet inhabited by the TV-obsessed Junkions. They all reconvene and head out to kick Unicron's colossal butt from destroying Cybertron, and Hot Rod uses the Matrix to destroy him and become the new Autobot leader, Rodimus Prime.

Transformers: The Movie completely changed the game as far as animated entertainment intended to promote a franchise as after this other toy line-based films like GI Joe: The Movie had to contend with not having any of their characters meet a violent ending. Toei Animation along with Sunbow Productions and Marvel crafter together an eye-popping theatrical experience that was way better than it ever intended to be. Even people who hadn't watched the Transformers G1 series up until then still got a kick out of it, especially since it had one of the greatest soundtrack albums of the entire decade. If your local theater is having a special screening of this, then get your tickets and ride the nostalgia Astrotrain!

MISC. MANGA, *The Great Yokai War: Guardians

During the late 1960s, director Yoshiyuki Kuroda created a movie trilogy titled Yokai Monsters, and in 2005 Takashi Miike of Audition fame put together an homage to the original films called The Great Yokai Wars. Shoot ahead to 2021 and Miike did The Great Yokai War: Guardians which acted as a reboot of the franchise and only tangentially a sequel to the 2005 movie. There was also a 3-volume manga series adapted by Sanami Suzuki who also did the manga retelling of The Colors Within, although the manga went has an appearance by the giant Daimajin from his own movie franchise.

In modern day Japan, a colossal culmination of evil called the Yokaiju is planning on laying waste to Tokyo. The local spirits known as yokai want to prevent this disaster, so they take their case to the World Yokai Conference to get the help of monsters from other countries, but they decide that Japanese yokai are seen nowadays as cute mascots instead of monsters, so they leave Japan's yokai to deal with this threat on their own. The only hope they have is in young Ken Watanabe who is the descendent of infamous yokai slayer. Ken turns the yokai down, so they talk his younger brother Dai into becoming their savior, but Ken knows this will lead to Dai's demise, so he heads off to the spirit world to find him. With the help of Koko the kitsune, Ken embarks on a crusade to save his brother and possibly help the yoaki with their impending threat.

The Great Yokai War: Guardians is a feasibly likable manga that a reader can check out without having to see the motion picture to like it. Sanami Suzuki is a great artist, although it's hard to say if his writing is up to specs, or if the English translation by Titan Manga wasn't Americanized a step too much. There's plenty of laughs and sight gags to find enjoyable, although nothing as dark as some of Takashi Miike's prior movies. For a lighter view of natural spirits trying to defend their homeland, then this is one spooky army you'll want to sign up for.

ANI-MOVIES, *Predator: Killer Of Killers

After 5 live-action movies and 2 crossover films, we finally get a full-length feature of the Yuatja. Predator: Killer Of Killers follows the path that The Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight did before it and took an established media franchise and made an anthology movie about it with most of the stories tying together into a single narrative at the end. We've seen this before in other productions like Halo Legends, however this one is actually canon to the Predator series, either that or it's in a parallel universe. This was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who had already done Prey, and then followed that up with Predator: Badlands, plus he wrote the screenplay for this with Micho Robert Rutare. 20th Century Animation created a gorgeous production, although the constant low frame rate gets tiresome with every animated movie trying to keep up with the Spider-Verse movies.

The first chapter is The Shield where the viking warrior woman Ursa takes her son on a quest to avenge her father's killer, only to be interrupted by a Predator, and she is taken prisoner by the other Yuatja after killing the alien hunter. Next is The Sword about the samurai Kenji who has a duel with his brother to settle a decades-long feud over their father's armor, but they end up working together to stop another Predator with Kenji's brother dying to save his life, although Kenji himself is also collected by the Predators and put on ice along with several other humans for centuries. The third story is The Bullet which is a WWII tale where a young American pilot named Torres manages to shoot down a Predator airship only for himself to later get abducted sometime after the war. All three heroes are awakened on a different planet where they all have to fight to the death to have the honor of taking down a Predator champion. However, the trio of Earthlings ally themselves to escape on a spaceship, but only at the sacrifice of Ursa becoming a captive again. The film ends with some other Yuatja taking some frozen leftovers from past Predator movies hinting that there will be a big future team-up for survivors in another installment.

As a Predator movie, this was pretty good, but as an animated action flick it's a little below average with its graffiti-styled graphics. The action is turned up to 12 compared to the other Predator films, but that's mostly when the humans are fighting other humans, with the viking chapter being especially gory, although that might have been the reason this didn't get a theatrical release and went straight to streaming. Pred-Heads will more than likely to get their blood pumping on this, but it doesn't have the lasting power of the previous good Predator movies.

BNA: Brand New Animal, The Pre-furred Choice

After SSSS: Gridman, the studio Trigger did their next original work directed by Little Witch Academia creator Yoh Yoshimari. BNA: Brand New Animal is a new take on the “animals living in the same city” that Zootopia made a bundle on. The downside to this is most anime fans initially saw this as a rip-off of Beastars, so it didn’t receive the attention it needed. This was written by Kazaki Nakashima that also wrote for Getter Robo, and the Batman: Ninja movies. BNA was a limited series, only 12 episodes long, but it got in, told an entire story, and got out in record time. The anime premiered on Netflix in 2020 along with a light novel and a one-shot manga. The show initially prospered when it premiered, although its fandom has settled down over the years, even among furries.

Set on an alternate Earth where certain humans are called beastmen because they can take on the form of an anthropomorphic animal. Humans and beastmen have been living together for thousands of years, but beastmen are trying to have their own town in Japan named Anima City in Japan, because that’s the only country that takes in this kind of messed up metropolis. This was established because beastmen receive discrimination and need a haven to thrive. The Japanese government agreed to this to keep beastmen away from human population.

The story stars young basketball fan Michiru who has somehow become a beastman, specifically a tanuki also referred to as a raccoon dog which according to Japanese mythology are trickster creatures with the ability to shapeshift. She darts to Anima City to seek refuge and a cure for her case which is called beastmanitis. Upon getting there, she comes across the stoic wolfman Shirou who is a special agent for the mayor that helps Michiru gain her citizenship. While getting used to her new home, Michiru discovers that she can morph parts of her body into different animal parts, such as wings, gorilla arms, and her tail can be used as a cushion for rough landings. These new abilities help her locate her missing friend Nazuna who also got beastmanitis and is currently acting as the idol for a religious factor called the Silver Wolf cult who worship a mystical giant wolf that has appeared throughout history to help beastmen. The true antagonist is Slyvasta whose pharmaceutical company is secretly working on an anti-beastman formula to permanently turn all the beastmen into regular humans.

Trigger brought their A-game when they were making BNA. There is fast-paced action and sparkling animation with literal sparkles, plus explosive colors. The characters in both humans and beastmen stand out and are particularly sharp and angular. The designs vary between sharp and lean but can change to being either musclebound hulks or cute fuzzy children. You can see a lot of the effort that was used to make productions like Promare and Gurren Lagann so iconic.

Comparisons of BNA to Beastars were inevitable as both shows feature life in a city full of anthropomorphic animals, although Beastars was set within its all-furry world, whereas BNA shares its world with the rest of humanity. Beastars social division stems from carnivores and herbivores trusting one not to eat the other, of which Zootopia also shares some aspects. BNA represents a more relatable discrepancy as the human prejudice for beastmen is clearly meant to replicate discrimination between races, sexes, and gender. Anyone who has any idea of the X-Men can see the similarities between the plight of mutants and how the beastmen are treated by humans. The animosity humans have is partially out of fear, but mostly due to them seeing beastmen as not even human but lower lifeforms.

When BNA first aired, Netflix premiered the first 6 episodes, with the remaining finishing out the series a few weeks later, and there is a tone shift with the second half where it gets deeper into political intrigue and government conspiracies. Instead of exploring Michiru’s transformation into a tanuki girl, the concluding episodes get bogged down in the doctrine of the Silver Wolf and how religion can be a double-edged sword giving people faith but also making them too reliant on what they believe and how they have trouble dealing with the reality of a critical situation. It’s possible that an extra episode would’ve given BNA enough room to lay out all its racial and religious allegories while showing the everyday life of an actual community of furry people.

BNA is an anomaly among Trigger’s productions like Kill La Kill as it steers away from a few anime tropes like gratuitous fan service or Dragonball-level fights, even though there is a big battle between two kaiju-sized wolves, one of which even has three heads like Ghidorah. There’s plenty to enjoy in this and the plot does move along swimmingly, although it has much more backstory and world building than a 12-episode series could handle. If this anime was given another season, it would have been able to accomplish what it set out to do. Michiru’s childhood friendship with Nazuna was borderline sapphic in the beginning, but we see that there was a bigger chasm between the two characters thus making any lesbian fangirls disappointed. Over the course of the series, you are given a satisfying watch with a fun anime with dynamic animation, but you’ll also feel a little left out as there was clearly more to this brand-new world than what we got.

MISC. MANGA, *Grendizer U: The Inception

Acting as the third stage of Go Nagai's Mazinger franchise, Grendizer (also known as Grandizer) took the giant robot epic to the stars and became a space opera up there with Captain Harlock and was so popular that it ended up in the Shogun Warriors toy line, plus the anime was part of Force Five. There is a Grendizer anime and manga that ran in the 70s, and then it was given a reboot in 2024 with a simultaneous anime and manga called Grendizer U, and the manga is titled Grendizer U: The Inception which takes place before the TV series. It's hard to say that it's a "prequel" per say as it was released at the same time as the anime. Go Nagai wrote this new interpretation and it was illustrated by 8 Key, although it's American release was by Titan Manga who instead of releasing a full-sized novel came out with a light thin book for the same price as a standard published manga.

The corrupt Vega Alliance has conquered a good portion of the galaxy along with the planet Fleed. Duke is a prince of the empire, and he is coming of age to take charge of the powerful robot defender Grendizer, but his right of succession is being blocked by his best friend/rival Gau Su, so the two of them have a duel to inherit the tile of official mecha meister. Gau Su wins the match by cheating and leaves Duke for dead as he takes Grendizer, but Duke survived and learns that his father the king caused the death of Gau Su's father. Duke reunites with Gau Su and vows to help him fight against the king, but an accident causes Gau Su to perish and Duke winds up on Earth with no memory of his past. Duke was conveniently found by Koji Kabuto, the pilot for Mazinger Z, along with fellow mecha driver Sayaka. They ask Duke to be part of their team even though he doesn't currently have robot of his own, but anyone reading this will figure out that he'll eventually get Grendizer back and help out in defending Earth.

The manga has a decent start, but the opening chapters take place on an alien world, and then the plot is dropped into the storyline of an adjacent mecha series, so there's a massive tone shift. 8 Key's artwork isn't as hard edged as Go Nagai's original art from the 70s, but it is effective for the first few chapters. Titan Manga's translation seriously lacks any emotion to it and needed some spicing up. Once more volumes of this comes out it will hopefully bear better fruit.

ANI-MOVIES, *Madagascar

After Schrek became a mainstay for DreamWorks, they were looking for their next cinematic franchise. In 2005, the first Madagascar film was put in theaters to a rising victory. Even though it's an original story, the concept borrowed quite a bit from various classic cartoons, specifically Tennessee Tuxedo and Hair Bair Bunch, plus plenty of callbacks to Looney Tunes. The conceprt was about zoo animals ending up in the wild, which turned out to be such an original idea that a year later Disney came out with their own hideously animated movie titled The Wild. The characters have a specific angular design to them which is a fresh take instead of trying to make them match an established motif. One thing that the film keeps dragging its feet over is the constant barrage of pop culture references, and the soundtrack is littered with incidental jukebox music. However, as an animated family film, it does reach what it's going for.

A quartet of animals at the Central Park Zoo in New York City are all buddies who despite whatever natural tendencies they have are all friends. The lion Alex is the zoo's star attraction, and his neighbors Gloria the hippo, Melman the giraffe, along with zebra Marty whose 10th birthday makes him wish to see what life is like outside the zoo. After four penguins plan to bust out of their captive habitat, Marty gets the idea to also go see the great wild world, so he takes a stroll out on the town, with his friends chasing after him which gets them all deported. The penguins take control of the freighter which lands the main characters on the coast of Madagascar, thus finally living up to the movie's title. After being greeted by a tribe of lemurs lead by the charismatic King Julien, the zoo castaways decide to stay, although this new change of scenery doesn't help Alex's carnivore cravings. The penguins eventually turn the freighter around to Madagascar and help introduce Alex to seafood which cures his want to eat his friends and seeing everyone as talking steaks. They all plan to head back to New York, although the film ends with no functioning ship to make the journey home, so that's where the sequels come in.

Madagascar lives up to its name for the second half of the movie, although it could've been titled something a little closer to the story like Zoo Break. The casting is on point, even if most of the actors were high profile stars at the time this came out instead of standard voice over veterans. The film contains vibrant animation, although the human designs look like rejected background characters from the first Incredibles movie. The entire film is an homage to spastic golden age cartoons in the spirit of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, so old school toon fans should appreciate it, and it's a great film for kids.

ANI-MOVIES, *Appleseed Ex Machina

Appleseed was the second of Masamune Shirow's manga that got anime adaptation back in 1988. Shoot ahead to 2004 and Genesis Survivor Gaiarth director Shinji Aramaki took the reins of an all-CGI animated movie remake. Despite the dated cel shading, this Appleseed was successful enough to get a sequel in 2007 by the same studio Digital Frontier. Appleseed Ex Machina had the additional bonus as being the only animated production by action film guru John Woo, and they let you know that at the beginning of the film with a flock of doves. The animation got an upgrade, even though it still maintains that mid-00s 3D which crosses the border between great looking action but uncanny valley.

Taking place two years after the original film, mankind survived a global war by creating huge metropolises made up of not only humans, but cyborgs, and bioroids that are artificially created humanoids with enhanced abilities. One of these cities is Olympus which is threatened by terrorists, so to combat this is the special E-SWAT force, two of its officers are from the last movie, the nimble lady Deunan and her giant cyborg partner Briareos who fought by her side during the war before he lost most of his body. Briareos is taken out of action after a hostage situation, so Deunan is temporarily teamed up with Tereus, a bioroid made from Briareos' natural DNA. So, now there's a slight love triangle going on with Deunan's devotion to her true partner who happens to be a big hunk of metal, and the new guy with the same looks and behavior of the man she knew before his accident. An underground organization called Halcon threatens to destroy Olympus as they planted nanites in the latest mobile devices that mind control its victims. Halcon plans on taking control of the world's satellites to subjugate the planet, so Deunan along with her old and new partner have to launch a Matrix-styled assault on the Halcon headquarters filled with flying robot drones.

Appleseed Ex Machina is a step up for a cyberpunk feature finally bringing some high-octane action to the mix and abandoning the heavy exposition that weighed down the 2004 movie. It's clear that Shinji Aramaki borrowed a little from the Wachowskis when he turned up the volume on the fight scenes, however you still get a gratifying feeling after watching it. The best thing about this movie is that you can see it on its own without seeing the original, in fact it's probably better if you don't. Aramaki followed this up a few years later with a pseudo-prequel titled Appleseed Alpha which was more of a post-apocalyptic flick instead of a cyberpunk thriller, but you could also skip that and just enjoy this one.

MISC. MANGA, *You & Me

Most American otaku from the 90s might be familiar with Hiroshi Aro's manga, Futaba-Kun Change, which was a gender-bending madcap comedy done as an homage to Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2, but one of his other titles managed to briefly appear on American bookshelves that also honored Takahashi's work, You And Me which was his own take on Maison Ikkoku. Hiroshi Aro has had the entirety of Futuba-Kun Change available in English on formats like Kindle, but You And Me only got seven single issues with no collected paperback when Studio Ironcat translated it in 2002 as the company eventually went defunct under the label IC Entertainment. The original Japanese title for this was Yuu And Mii which of course means "you and me", and oddly enough there is an unrelated manga titled You And Me, Etc., but this version is more of a fast-paced gag series filled with a constantly moving parade of mature situations.

Yuu is what's referred to as a ronin which is someone who has troubling getting into a university, so he moves into his own apartment to concentrate on studying, however his apartment building called Yaninarisou is filled with the peak of strange neighbors. For one thing, Yuu discovers he has a roommate named Mii who is the ghost of a sexy girl that doesn't mind randomly getting naked. Among the other spooky inhabitants are a musclebound shojo manga creator, a creepy loner who longing to make friends, another ronin who truly needs a haircut, an ex-masked female wrestler, and the landlord who always wears midieval armor. Mii takes a serious liking to Yuu and makes his life even more hectic than a teenage ronin could normally handle. From here, Yuu tries to keep his sanity while studying for college, fending off his horny dead roomie, and the other weirdos in this supernatural looney bin.

You And Me is on its own a spastic comedy that never slows down to get into anything deep like character backstory, so it's pretty good for today's swipe left generation. Other historical gag manga like Dr. Slump and Crayon Shin-Chan have gained fans over the decades, but they also had popular anime to back it up. You And Me is one of those lost manga that saw a glimpse on the other side of the Pacific which never got a good enough chance to develop a following.

R.I.P., Daveigh Chase

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Taro The Dragon Boy

In 1960, Miyoko Matsutani created a popular children's book titled Taro The Dragon Boy that went on to have its own anime series in the mid-70s. Cutting ahead to 1979, Toei Animation did an animated movie based on the book which was directed by the studio founder Toei Daga. Columbia Home Pictures picked up the movie for an American release, and it recently got distributed by Discotek Media. The English dub does have some voice over royalty with Taro being portrayed by Billie Lou Watt who originally did the voices of both Astro Boy and Kimba, but another actor that most people weren't aware of was none other than Earl Hammond as the Red Demon who any fan of Rankin/Bass will know as the voice of Mumm-Ra and Mon-Star. This is a simple tale not bogged down with any recurring villain and is more about a young boy's redemption with expressive scenery and kooky characters.

Centuries ago in Japan, a young boy named Taro lies around all day while his grandmother works in the dried up fields in their village. Tora's mother was turned into a dragon because she violated the law of the mountains and ate all the fish she caught and didn't share them with anyone even though she was pregnant at the time and working on her own as a widow. After giving birth to Taro, the mama dragon became blind and is spirited away to another lake leaving her son behind. Taro is out one day and meets a Tengu that gives him some of his private hooch which gives Taro superhuman strength but only when he uses it to help others. Taro befriends Aya, a girl from a neighboring village who gets taken away by the well-meaning Red Demon, but Aya is kidnapped by the larger Black Demon. The Red Demon helps Taro defeat Black Demon after he falls to his death, even though that never stopped a certain coyote, then Taro throws Red Demon up to the clouds where he can play his drums and basically is this movie's version of Raijin. Taro then goes on a crusade to find his dragon mother and along the way helps depose a wicked rice farmer who doesn't share any of her loot with any of her workers. Taro gets frozen by some snow women, but Aya shows up on a flying pony they freed from Black Demon. They find the lake where Taro's mother dwells, and they free her from the curse.

Taro The Dragon Boy is a slight deconstruction of various Japanese myths and legends, particularly with yokai playing a notable role in this story. The film is not exactly high fantasy, but clearly not set in the ordinary world as it has talking animals and magical beings. Even though it's based on a children's story, it's not completely for kids as there is some blatant nudity showing up here and there. If tales of the Monkey King stir your pot, you'll discover a likable hero in Taro.

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 off 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.

MISC. MANGA, *American Barbarian

Before doing comics of Transformers, Gobots, GI Joe, and Godzilla, comic artist and writer Tom Scioli had his own original series titled American Barbarian which is a collision of Thundarr The Barbarian, Thundercats, and Masters Of The Universe. Indeed, this is a He-Man-themed take on the standard fantasy adventure hugely inspired by the works of Jack Kirby, which most of Scioli's works tend to as he's done the artwork on an entire graphic novel about the life of the King of Comics. Scioli worked on this while he was doing his Godland comic which was also Kirby-esque.

Set in the devastated New Earthea, the barbarian Meric is the last surviving member of a warrior clan who were all wiped out of by the mummy warlord Two-Tank Omen who has a whole working tank for each foot. Meric pretends to join Omen's forces while keeping his family's secret, the mystical Star Sword, hidden from evil. Meric meets up with a tribe of humans and sets them free from the scavengers and then reclaims the sword to have a cataclysmic clash with Two-Tank Omen resulting in the two of them getting sucked up into a black hole. All the remaining humans form the new United States of Barbaria with the hint that Meric will return someday.

With armored swordsmen, robotic dinosaurs, time travel, and sultry slave girls, American Barbarian grew from a webcomic to hit one-shot graphic novel. It contains terrific splash pages and just like Kirby would do when he was creating the New Gods and Thor. It has a real appreciation for the Bronze Age of comics. If you've recently joined the MOTU fandom, then this is a patriotic rainbow of fan nostalgia.