ANI-MOVIES, *Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

While most of the last few Shrek movies were met with varying standards of quality, the first spinoff of Puss In Boots from 2011 received a mediocre response. So, it’s weird that 11 years later that DreamWorks would choose to a sequel to it. This time under Universal instead of Paramount, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the production got juiced up to Spider-Verse levels of animation with paintbrush aesthetics. Gone are most of the pop culture references, fart jokes, and pointless singalong finales as we got fantastic thrill ride with a familiar character but in a totally different kind of fairy tale parody. For one thing, there was way less Disney-bashing in this as showing disdain for them has practically become a national pastime at this point, and this helped DreamWorks give the Shrek franchise its own pair of legs so they’re not just throwing eggs at their old bosses. The film was in development limbo for a while, and it’s possible that this would have gone straight to streaming and even thought that worked for K-Pop Demon Hunters, it might not have found the audience it wanted if parents didn’t already trust the Shrek brand as something for the children to watch in theaters. This wasn’t just a fantasy adventure either but an ode to Clint Eastwood’s Dollars Trilogy with desperado showdowns mixed in with Puss’ swashbuckling antics.

Taking place after parting ways with the regular Shrek cast, Puss has gone back to being a solo buccaneer and dies after fighting a giant. He awakens to have a doctor tell him that he’s down to the last of his nine lives, which at first Puss brushes off, but gets terminally scared with a huge wolf claiming to be Death himself comes to claim his last life. Puss tries hiding in an old cat lady’s cottage where he meets the overly chipper puppy Perrito. Suddenly, the criminal gang of Goldilocks and her bear family come looking for Puss to help them find the Wishing Star that lies in the middle of the Dark Forest to grant them a single wish. The map to find this is in the clutches of a grown-up Jack Horner who hoards magical items and wants to wish for all the magic in the world. Working against all these grabby hands is the inclusion of Puss’ old girlfriend Kitty Softpaws who also want to make a with, so Puss teams up with Kitty and Perrito after getting the map so he can wish for more lives, with Goldilocks and the bears are on their tail, plus Horner and his enchanted arsenal in a big chase to claim the wish.

Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek’s return as Puss and Kitty is the only big continuation from the former Shrek productions, but they put on a great performance reprising their roles. Producer Joel Crofford helped raise the grade of animation as even though the character designs are roughly the same but with added textures and less motion blur effects which make the movements seem more fluid which helps give the movie a better adaptation of an illustrated fairy tale. There’s great detail given to the background with subtle jokes and callbacks, plus real drama is added to the serious parts as the final duel between Puss and Death, and the body count piles up as people literally die along the way. The Last Wish is amazing as a stand-alone story that doesn’t require you to have seen the original or any other Shrek stuff, so give it a watch and you’ll find out why this sequel to a spinoff was worth all the hype.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Ribbon Hero

Osamu Tezuka was the point of departure when anyone brings up the founding of anime and manga, and one of his lesser-known creations was Ribbon No Kishi, otherwise known in English as Princess Knight. This was a manga Tezuka came up with in the 50s, and had it turned into an anime series in 1967 which had a limited English dub that aired in syndication. Since then, there has been no new animated adaptations, even though this was one of the first anime heroines to lead her own series and began the concept of genderbending in anime which inspired shows like Utena and Rose Of Versailles. The story is about a princess who was born with the heart of a male and female and usually engaged in swashbuckling adventures you’d expect out of your average Musketeer tale. Cue ahead to 2026 where Netflix finally dusted the idea off for a new movie titled The Ribbon Hero and made the point that this is a reboot and not a remake as there are some hints to the original franchise that show up near the end. With all the gender-fluid anime out now, you’d think this movie would embrace the non-binary aspects, but instead the director Yuki Igarashi barely covered it and turned this into a compressed story under two hours long, so it’s almost like you’re watching a TV series compilation instead of a fully fleshed out plot. This is a shame because animation studios Outline and Twin Engine did manage to make it beautifully picturesque, even though there are moments of slapstick that hinder the experience.

Seven years ago, the kingdom of Silverland was decimated by a monstrous Nergal, a stone-skinned kaiju under control of the mysterious King of Ash, and one of the only survivors is the Princess Sapphire who lost an arm during the attack. The other survivor is the royal scientist Zirco who is a short old lady that uses a small hovercraft to get around and makes Sapphire a new mechanical arm. The two make their way to the kingdom of Goldland led by the Mitra forces which have kept the King of Ash at bay by making the occasional sacrifice with innocent young souls. Sapphire makes friends with the local girl Pine and the two of them for a very sapphic bond, but she gets a job working in the mines digging for a special crystal. On her first day, Sapphire uses her magical ribbon to transform into a warrior called the Princess Knight when a Nergal attacks. This attracts the attention of Mitra lord Velvet who gets Sapphire to attack several points on the map that Nergal could return from. Despite these efforts, Nergal slowly begin to invade Goldland, and it’s up to the Princess Knight to save the kingdom as the gigantic King of Ash finally appears to receive its sacrifice. It’s later revealed that Sapphire is the latest incarnation of the Princess Knight and it’s a position given to a champion forged to defeat evil, so Sapphire has inherited the title from her 1960s predecessor.

The Ribbon Hero is a radical departure from the original premise and incorporates elements of the magical girl genre, particularly from Madoka Magica. Lesbian fangirls will revel with the sapphic representation here, plus the addition of the androgynous Velvet helps diversify it. The problem with the film shifts from a serious world-shattering crisis to a Tex Avery cartoon in a heartbeat. The narrative seriously lacks context and has trouble centering on a singular objective as near the end the film switches to live-action shots of the anime studios that helped produce it like the fourth wall breaks in End Of Evangelion. It’s hard to compare this to the original Princess Knight TV series because it’s presented as a stage play divided into acts where each is like a condensed arc. Sapphire’s binary nature also isn’t as prevalent here as in the 60s show, but the story does succeed in delivering the idea that the tale of the Princess Knight can be retold for a new generation and continue as an enduring legend.

R.I.P., Michael Donovan

ANI-MOVIES, *Isle Of Dogs

Whereas The Fantastic Mr. Fox was based on a Roald Dahl book, Wes Anderson's second stop-motion animated film was an original idea thought up mostly by him in Isle Of Dogs. This is a futuristic future fable set in a fictional Japanese city but told through the perspective of American viewers. Wes Anderson's auteur-driven filmmaking is on full display here with distinctive symmetry, unique color pallettes, quirky writing, and introspective dialogue. The animation is more fluid than Mr. Fox with a better frame rate which takes this up to Laika levels of productions, although there is some 2D animation thrown in whenever they have the occasional shot being shown a video display. Anderson was inspired to do this from the old Rankin-Bass 3D specials, plus borrowed some plot elements from various Disney films shown from the dog's perspective as well as The Plague Dogs. The film was PG-13 and intended for older audiences as there is some animal cruelty and mature themes which wasn't as cohesive as most people with families might have hoped for, but despite its limited theatrical release it gained numerous accolades. There was some controversy as the plot was catered more for Americans which incorporated colonialism as well as ignoring genuine Japanese culture as the film has stereotypical elements like sumo wrestling, kabuki theater, and haiku is apparently the ultimate form of speechmaking, plus the addition of a blonde American transfer student to advance the story who was ultimately pointless.

Happening in the 2030s, the Japanese town of Megasaki is under the corrupt rule of Mayor Kobayashi who has been planning on ridding their streets of dogs as most of the people running the town are huge cat lovers. To accomplish this, they design a flu intended for dogs, have all the dogs banished to the neighboring garbage-ridden Trash Island, and suppress any chances or protests to thwart their plans, including poisoning a professor who had developed a cure for the flu. Kobayashi inherited his position of mayor from his brother who passed away, and he adopted his rebellious nephew Atari who has created his own self-repaired plane to rescue his guard dog Spots. Atari crashes and is found by a pack of five dogs who decide to help him find Spots, even though the one stray of them named Chief isn't totally with the others on their decision. Chief and Atari get separated from the others and finally come across Spots who it turns out to be Chief's long-lost brother and is leader of a tribe of outcasted dogs, so Chief accepts his brother's position of bodyguard. All this is going on when the minority of dog lovers in Megasaki work against Kobayshi's plan, specifically a foreign exchange student who secretly falls for Atari. The showdown comes down to the dog refugees with their advocates breaking into Kobayashi's re-election celebration where it's revealed that everything was engineered by the mayor's Major Domo who planned this whole conspiracy. The dogs are accepted back into the city, the dog flu is cured, and Chief begins a partnership along a nice female dog he briefly met earlier in the movie.

Isle Of Dogs is one a kind in comparison to other stop-motion animated movies, even among the craft of Tim Burton's productions, although it does give into some cartoon cliches like whenever there's a big dog fight the entire scuffle is covered by a cloud of dust. The cast made this an amazing experience with Bryan Cranston as Chief returning to his anime roots back when he dubbed Macross Plus, plus other Wes Anderson regulars like Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, and Bill Murray. The story relies heavily on flashbacks and monologues that is big on backstory, so be ready for a non-linear experience. Anderson's idiosyncratic brand of cinematography shines in his second animated outing, and despite some its cultural flaws this is a film that demands repeat viewings to soak up all the hidden gems.

ANI-MOVIES, *Angel's Egg

For the first original movie by Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshii, Angel's Egg is probably the most surrealistic anime movie ever made. Coming out in 1985, Oshii partnered with Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to make an enigmatic fantasy that to this day people are still trying to figure out. Studio Deen who first broke out in the Urusei Yatsura TV series was the production company behind this multi-layered film. This was an original story dreamt up by Oshii and Amano to which there has yet to have been anything to compare it to, and it has only recently become available in English thanks to GKids. After 40 years of escaping American localization, Angel's Egg had finally been cracked open for otaku everywhere to discover and dissect for themselves. The animation and design are incomparable to nearly any other anime of the time, and its visually breathtaking imagery could only have come out at the dawn of the OVA market when experimental production was at its peak. Titles such as The Time Stranger and Nausicaa would blend otherworldly elements together, but Angel's Egg was a bold new direction taking place in a completely original world of its own. However, the films esoteric perspective made it a hard sell for Western release despite its hypnotic appeal. The slow-moving animation coupled with the slightly muffled musical score creates its own world for the viewer to get lost in and either brush off as being dull or to be thoroughly analyzed in ways that make Evangelion look like a list of cheat notes.

Set in an undetermined time and place, an unnamed girl dwelling in an abandoned city collects water for herself while taking care of a large egg she found and carries with her. The girl come across a wandering older boy carrying a strange crucifix-shaped weapon, and the two of them watch as numerous fishermen throw spears throughout the city in the chance of spearing schools of non-corporeal giant fish which only cast huge shadows with no physical trace of their existence. The girl tells the boy that she believes the egg is that of an angel which might bring new life to the world, although the boy believes that the egg symbolizes that they are all caught in an endless loop, so he smashes the egg when the girl finally sleeps. The girl awakens to find nothing but a cracked eggshell, so she chases after the boy leading to a very ambiguous ending which depending on your perspective either shows the dystopian landscape either being freed from despair or it's just a moebious strip ensnaring all within it in repeating purgatory.

Prior to GKids, Angel's Egg did get a physical release in America in 1988, but this was a totally different beast. The film was a blending of the anime along with original live-action segments in a forgotten project titled In The Aftermath which diverts the story in an even more incomprehensible way. New Line Cinema premiered this with a VHS found usually only in video rental stores, and Arrow Video gave it a Blu-Ray release in 2019, but a majority of American otaku were blissfully unaware of this Frankenstein creation. Even though anyone who watched this version of the movie was probably confused out of their mind when comparing it to the original anime, hardcore anime fans became familiar with Angel's Egg thanks to good old reliable fansubs. The new GKids release has the entire unedited animation motion picture with its first ever English dub, even though it did take its sweet time getting here considering the caliber of talent behind it. New Line's slapdash rehash of the anime kept the film in licensing limbo for years, but now its overdue homecoming has arrived and available on Blu-Ray and streaming.

MISC. MANGA, *Space Opera Xanadax Across The Unknown Dimensions Of The Galaxy

Original graphic novels are still as strong on the comics market as ever, and Space Opera Xanadax Across the Unknown Dimensions of the Galaxy gives you a gripping cinematic experience. Created by Tom Scioli who did the kaiju ode to literature in Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theater, his latest hardcore sci-fi epic has probably one of the longest titles for an American comic book to date. The character designs appear as if they're out of the box cover to an NES game, and there's two concurrent storylines going on at the same time, although the plots never actually seem to meet up before the end of the book. There's is also the bonus story of Princess: The Space Princess From Outer Space which also has an abrupt conclusion. No word as yet if this was intentional for either story or if there are plans for a future volume to continue the saga.

The story is broken into two parts. One involves a cyborg named Xanadax who was given bionic parts to become a more effective minor after his brother sentenced him to work in the mines while he kept his cozy command job. Among other gizmos like a mechanical eye, Xanadax also gets a pair of laser claws similar to Wolverine which he uses to bust out of jail. Along the way, he gets into a bombastic slugfest with the escaped supervillain Vokonokov which takes him the majority of his story to defeat while avoiding his pesky brother's troopers. The other story has a pair of space pirates first taking over a farming planet but then getting conscripted into stealing a powerful treasure which accidently kills their benefactor, so the stellar swashbucklers decide to keep the deadly secret to themselves.

The story of Xanadax plus the space pirate subplot make you feel like you're really watching a sweeping motion picture with action scenes going one after the other with no time for exposition or character development. Tom Scioli's style is an homage to the works of Jack Kirby while simultaneously giving off the appearance of a shonen manga with mainly just the colors of red, white, and black throughout the entire graphic novel. Again, it's unknown if this setting up a series because the cliffhanger ending for both Xanadax and the Princess backup stories, but hopefully it will continue to highlight Scioli's beautiful illustrations which are a throwback to 80s action movies.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Croods: A New Age

Joel Crawford was given the reigns of the Puss In Boots sequel which took everyone by surprise, but before that he directed another DreamWorks sequel, The Croods: A New Age. Released 7 years after the original, this continues the prehistoric sitcom as the titular family finally reach some other humans. This took longer to release because of the pandemic which caused much of the work to be done by creators working in lockdown from home. The Croods was doing good enough as a franchise with an animated TV prequel, and was given a follow-up taking place after The New Age. All the original cast returns with this being Cloris Leachman's voice over swansong, plus the addition of Peter Dinklage and Kelly Marie Tran makes the new talent welcoming.

Still on the look for a perfect settlement in their new country, Guy and Eep get further along in their young romance. Conveniently, Grug discovers a family called the Bettermans made of Phil, Hope, and their daughter Dawn who managed to create their own sealed off paradise all because they cut off the water supply to a valley to their home. The Bettermans were friends of Guy's family and they got separated before his parents died, and now Phil along with Hope plan to get Guy to be Dawn's husband, even though he's already betrothed to Eep. Grug and Ugga pick up that the Bettermans are trying to push them away, so get back at them for eating all the bananas which is the one forbidden fruit the Bettermans have a rule for. Turns out, Phil would give all the bananas to an army of punchy monkeys who in turn offer them to their giant mandrill overlord, and they all kidnap all the mens. So now, it is up to the remaining females to rescue them as they ride in on wolf-spiders to defeat the primates and save their families.

The Croods: A New Age is a good animated movie sequel with an noticable upgrade in the animation, although the designs on the Bettermans seem like they were copied from a cache of unused DreamWorks background characters. A large number of the jokes fall flat, and the movie is overly reliant on needledrop moments for their soundtrack. It's an amusing feature, although whether or not you'll find much replay value out of this is up to the viewer.

ANI-MOVIES, *Lu Over The Wall

After The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl came out in 2017, Science Saru had their second anime film released in the same year, both put out by Toho. Lu Over The Wall might seem like yet another anime take on The Little Mermaid, although this one is not a romance, however you will notice the film bears a resemblance to Ponyo as the mermaid here is more of a little sister to the male protagonist. Even the creator Masaaki Yuasa began to see how his story reflected Ponyo as he was making it, and he took the same approach a few years later when he directed Ride Your Wave. Science Saru really experimented with different styles of animation with hand-drawn key frames with all the in-betweens done with Flash, and keep in mind this was still the late 2010s, but the film still looks like a traditionally animated production. There are a few songs added to this movie too, but it couldn't count as a musical as its all performed by a band. GKids did gave the dub a good treatment, although for some reason a few of the songs were left in Japanese while some were dubbed in English.

Set in a bayside fishing village, Kai lives in emotional solitude with his father and grandfather while his mother left them to have a singing career in Tokyo. Kai has his parents' love for music and a talent for it which gets the attention of two of his schoolmates, Yuho and Kunio, and they form a band called Seiren. Kai's music attracts a Ningyu which is the Japanese equivalent of a mermaid, but instead of being a nice-looking redhead this mermaid named Lu looks more like baby Muppet, plus she grows human-like legs whenever she hears music she likes, and she takes a real liking to Kai and his music despite the fact that sunlight could kill her. Lu's existence becomes known to the rest of the village, and they want to use her as the mascot for their abandoned amusement park, so Seiren tries to help Lu along with her giant shark father, but the townsfolk prejudice evokes a curse which threatens to drown the village. Lu and Kai eventually lift the curse, then Lu along with the other merfolk creatures must leave the village coast because there's no longer anything blocking out the sun, but Kai resolves to pursue his passion in music until he and Lu can be reunited.

Lu Over The Wall is a fine movie for the whole family with no violence, even though there are some frightening imageries throughout the course of the film. Masaaki Yuasa took this comic fantasy in an unorthodox direction, both visually and tonally, plus the animation style can radically change which make it hard to keep up with figuring out whether the scene you're seeing is a flashback or not. Again, don't expect this to be a tale of star-crossed lovers like The Little Mermaid, although there is a small romantic element to it. If you've already watched Ponyo, then this isn't too unfamiliar, but it does pick up to slapstick levels of Tex Avery antics as it goes along. The plot is diverse as well as divisive among anime fans, but you might find something refreshing here.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Bad Guys 2

Being the franchise factory that they are, DreamWorks figured they'd apply the same arrangement for The Bad Guys. Coming out three years after the original, The Bad Guys 2 not only put the brand name back on tracks but also helped launch a prequel animated TV series on Netflix. The animation here reaches an even higher peak than the original did, and they literally raise the stakes by taking the premise and launches it into space which is usually where you take a franchise after you don't know what to do with it anymore (see Jason X for reference). The story takes a good approach on showing how reformed villains are treated after they renounced their evil ways by how no one wants to give them a chance at fitting into civilian society. The story does advance things a little fast as most characters seem to get more advanced in their personal progress that a single sequel should cover, although at least DreamWorks doesn't look like they'll keep this premise jumping through several hoops like they did with the Shrek movies.

Now being good, the Bad Guys have been trying to get legitimate jobs but keep getting shut down. Meanwhile, a crimewave hits town with a new thief called the Phantom Bandit when it's really a trio of female crooks referred to as the Bad Girls who set up Wolf and the others to join them in their latest caper by having them take the fall for a heist involving a luchador wrestling match. The Bad Girls include their leopard leader Kitty Kat, Pigtail the boar, and Doom the raven who manipulates Snake into falling for her. Kitty Kat's big scheme is to steal a space shuttle and collecting a made-up mineral called MacGuffinite to attract all the gold in the world to the International Space Station which for some reason is totally unmanned, and as leverage Kitty threatens to expose Governor Diane's criminal past. The Bad Guys go along with it, but the Bad Girls get the drop on them and expose Diane's hidden history to the internet. With nothing left to lose, the Bad Guys get a lift on the shuttle, win over Pigtail and Doom to their side, and stop Kitty's ludicrous plan. However, they along with Diane fake their deaths and are asked to become part of a special spy team called ISGLOP, while it turns out the entire caper was a plot by the villain from the first movie to get out of jail and is really an alien.

The Bad Guys 2 isn't a common sequel and leveled up the formula by taking it several steps forward. Normally, the first sequel to an animated film has the characters running through the same routine as in the original, but this film continues the story and levels it up to Super-Saiyan 2. The best aspect here is the animation which takes anthropomorphic characters with standard cartoon designs and blends it together with stunning action sequences. The CGI animation is dynamic and takes quite a few hints from Sony with their Spider-Verse outings. The only downside is that it tried to stuff too much into a single film meaning that the third movie will go ballistic with whatever outrageous plot it has in store.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Place Promised In Our Early Days

Makoto Shinkai's first full-length anime movie came out in 2004 titled The Place Promised In Our Early Days, and similar to his future works such as Your Name and Weathering With You this anime has star-crossed lovers separated by cosmic forces. This was also the first time Shinkai had worked with a full staff as opposed to when he started out doing his animated-short movies and OVAs all on his own, so when he hooked up with Comix Wave Inc. it was a match made in heaven as their combined efforts left its mark for years to come. This movie was able to bridge a great divide that still exists between anime fans and non-fans that anime is a media and not a genre, meaning its appeal isn't limited to simply a certain demographic, and this became much clearer as Shinkai's career went on as his productions went on to enrapture audiences, mostly due to the creator's work becoming more accessible to newcomers and when his films were given longer running tile, not that this hampered 5 Centimeters Per Second which was just under an hour long and got a live-action adaptation. The story itself is an alternate history yarn, and like most tales of that genre it involves WWII, but this is combined with a coming-of-age romance with heavy sci-fi overtones. It's almost like you're watching Evangelion minus the giant robots and monsters. In fact, most of the expository scenes that try to fill in the technobabble your used to hearing from Star Trek looks like all the high-tech facilities look like they take place in Tokyo-3, even the computer displays and control room layouts. Taking this parallel universe premise and fitting in a believable love story wasn't easy, but Shinkai managed to do it.

This is set in modern day in a world where Japan was split into two sections post-WWII, the north occupied by Russia, and the south occupied by America, also the Cold War is still active in this timeline. Two schoolfriends in the south, Hiroki and Takuya, are rebuilding an old aircraft they found and plan to make it flyable again so they can go to an enormous tower in the north region. Hiroki has a crush on his schoolmate Sayuri and invites her to see their progress. The boys promise to take Sayuri with her on their future endeavor, but then she goes missing and three years pass with Hiroki and Takuya abandoning their planned flight. After a time skip, Takuya is now a physicist working on a method of utilizing energy from parallel realities and finds out that Sayuri has been in a coma during all this time and her dreams are affecting the interaction between their universe and others. Hiroki has been living on his own but gets dreams from Sayuri who finally breaks through and informs him that her subconscious is trapped in a world where she's the only one in it, so Hiroki teams up with Takuya to free Sayuri from her mental exile. The two old schoolfriends meet up again to finish repairs on their plane and fly the comatose Sayuri to the tower which is acting as the nexus for all the multiverse mix-ups run by the northern faction. Since it's only a two-seater, Hiroki pilots the plane with Takuya stays behind all while both halves of Japan on the brink of war. Not to give away the ending, but it has a more satisfying conclusion than Shinkai's Five Centimeters Per Second.

The Place Promised In Our Early Days was first released in America through ADV Films but was later available on certain streaming servers and only subtitled. GKids eventually re-released it on home video format and streaming with the American dub. This was Makoto Shinkai's big theatrical debut, and it won lots of film festival awards, although in comparison to most of his other works this movie is slightly jumbled when Shinkai tried to combine a slice-of-life story with the overlapping interdimensional tropes. Shinkai managed to untangle this knot by the time he started his Disaster Trilogy as most of the otherworldly elementals are explained as simply being magic. Aside from the plot complications, this anime is glittering with Shinkai's particular style with lush horizons and backgrounds that make Ghibli look pale in comparison, plus the character designs are simple and reminiscent of 90s TV anime which at times works against the detailed landscapes. The film altogether is great but compared to Shinkai's future works it is not as memorable.

ANI-MOVIES, *Hercules

Rather than sticking with his original name, Disney decided for its 35th full-length animated movie to go with the more well-known Roman name of the mythical Greek hero, Hercules. Instead of this being an epic saga up there with The Odyssey, Disney decided to turn this into a musical done to gospel for some reason and threw in more pop culture callbacks than any historically inaccurate parody could comfortably contend with. This was directed and written by the combined talents of Ron Clemments and John Musker, and they figured that their modernized approach to the Hercules myth could work exactly like it did with their take on Aladdin. The Disney version attempts to establish how Hercules was the original superhero prototype and how he went through several struggles to reach his fame, although instead of crafting a relatable story that most kids in 1997 could wrap their head around it Disney went with a bit more of a cash grab and have a lifetime cycle of victories and losses into a whirling cavalcade of whatever happened to breeze into their minds at the time. This adaptation of Hercules showboats more than it needed to and could have been just a high production animated adventure which is a genre that most theatrical Disney productions tend to skip on. Obviously in order to make the film more kid friendly they had to edit out most of Hercules' tragic moments like when he turned psycho and killed his whole family, but accomplish that Disney had to pacify the general audiences. To this they added music numbers that had no business being in the film specifically sung by the main characters about what they want out of life. Another unwanted premise was the quirky attention-grabbing secondary character introduced halfway through the movie which worked for Genie in Aladdin but here started Disney's spiral down with the introduction of the annoying Phil and continued onward with other placeholders like Mushu in Mulan and BEN in Treasure Planet which are characters that demand you stop thinking about the ropey narrative and pay attention to their overhyped antics. Hercules isn't based on a fairy tale, so that was already working against the Disney formula, plus anyone who spotted the historical hiccups in the Pocahontas movie most have had a field day pointing the ones in this one. Despite the plot complications and its questionable approach to bringing a world-famous fable to life, Disney did manage to make this one of the most visually arresting animated films of the 90s which is something a great number of people failed to notice upon seeing this for the first time, and its character designs by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe helped establish the film's unique style.

In ye olde Greece, Zeus and Hera have their god newborn son Hercules, but Zeus' charismatic brother Hades sees his nephew as a serious roadblock in his future plan to take over the world. Hades gives baby Hercules a potion which makes him mostly mortal with no memory of his origins and is raised by mortals. Years later, Hercules gets in touch with his real father who relays that Hercules can get his godhood if he becomes a genuine hero. To get this Hercules trains under the hero training satyr Phil, when it should have been Chiron who was Achilles' Jedi Master. A while later, Hercules returns and begins to bash monsters and other menaces with his super-strength which angers Hades whose plans involve releasing the Titans from their prison and conquer Mt. Olympus, so he sends a distressed damsel who owes him a favor to distract him. The non-princess heroine Megara (or Meg) gets in good with Hercules and become the Delilah to his Samson, even though she begins to actually care about him and sees the real goodness in him. The time comes for Hades' scheme to unfold, so he makes a deal with Hercules to become totally mortal while the Titans assault Mt. Olympus so long as Meg isn't hurt. Meg saves Hercules at the cost of her own life which gives him his strength back and defeats the Titans. Herc then travels to Tartarus to free Meg's soul, regains his full godhood, and sends Hades drowning in the river Styx for probably all eternity.

Hercules did very well and made three times its budget back merely from the theatrical release alone. The music by Alan Menkin is good but most of the songs not sung by the gospel-themed muses are flat. The star-studded cast includes James Woods in the performance of his troubled career as Hades, and the former Broadway version of Belle actress Susan Egan as Meg, although Tate Donovan as the title character is lackluster, and Danny DeVito's unriveting riffs as Phil get real tired real fast. The movie managed to spawn a non-canonical midquel animated TV series that lasted only a single season and didn't get much traction, even after a crossover with Aladdin. Disney's Hercules made its mark on cinematic animation, even though after three decades its flaws are still transparently apparent.

ANI-MOVIES, *Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning

Long before K-Pop Demon Hunters, Korea had a totally different collective of demon slayers. Toemarok started out as a book in 1994 by Lee Woo-hyeok which later went on to become a live-action movie titled The Soul Guardians, a hit manhwa (Korean manga), and recently a Webtoon series. In 2024, a full-length animated prequel was made which translated into English as Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning which sounds like it's the opening chapter of a movie franchise although there haven't been any plans for a follow-up sequel as of yet. Locus Animation Studios produced this CGI feature with a style that most American fans will identify as being similar to Arcane, but it's not totally up to the same level as some modern-day anime films. The movie took over six years to complete and was entirely animated in Korea, plus the studio created it without using any AI during its production.

Father Wood is a Christian priest in Korea that was excommunicated for performing exorcisms, and he is asked by an old friend-turned-monk to help protect the young Jun-hoo who is a young prodigy that has been trained in all the magics of Esoteric Buddhism. The head of the Buddhist order is planning on sacrificing Jun-hoo to claim his powers and become a god by making a pact with demonic forces. While this is going on, teenager Hyun-am is on a journey to increase his spiritual powers and get revenge on a monster that killed his sister, and his path has crossed with the battle against the possessed Buddhist leader. In the end, all three heroes are the only survivors of the encounter with a post-credit scene revealing a fourth member to their team who is an exorcist in her own right.

Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning does take a while assembling the main characters that the original book and comics are based on, so a good portion of other characters get brutally murdered. The film is an ambitious blend of action and horror with visceral sequences and truly eerie shocks. This was animated by some the same team behind Red Shoe And The Seven Dwarfs, so it's good to see they can go from making a Shreck-influenced fairy tale parody to a dark supernatural fantasy that would make even hardcore horror hounds flinch.

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.