ANI-MOVIES: *Goat

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 Based on an unpublished book by Chris Tougas, former Venture Bros.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

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

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

ANI-MOVIES, *The Monkey King

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

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

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

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.

ANI-MOVIE, *Flushed Away

Aside from the fact the film was minus any hamster butlers as shown in certain previews, Aardman's first of only two fully-CGI animated movies wasn't the drowning disappointment most people thought it was. This was the last of three films Aardman did with DreamWorks before joining up with Sony, but instead of the studio's traditional stop motion animation as they did with Wallace And Gromit, Flushed Away was all done digitally which might seem like a stretch for them to take, but then even the Jim Henson Company got roped into doing a few direct-to-video bad 3D releases. It was chosen to go CGI because the majority of the animation takes place around water and would make it difficult to move around clay figures, so Aardman put aside their Gummy standards to give digital animation a shot. Upon first look, some might confuse this for being a Danger Mouse ripoff, but since Flushed Away was directed by animator David Bowers who worked for Cosgrove Hall, you'd be better off thinking of the film as an homage. Along with director Sam Fell, Aardman had a total of five screenwriters to write all of the "witty dialogue". The cast was stacked with Hugh Jackman in the lead role and finally singing, Ian McKellen playing the wannabe Bond villain, Kate Winslet as the inevitable love interest, Jean Reno as the standard French stereotype, plus Andy Serkis and Bill Nighy as a comical pair of henchmen.

Roddy is the pet rat of a rich family in London who leave home for vacation, and he gets literally flushed down the tubes by the intrusive Sid who takes over his pad. Roddy ends up in a rat metropolis within the sewers which is partially run by the criminal boss Toad who captures him and a female ship captain named Rita who he tried to gain passage with back up top. Rita and Roddy escape along with taking Toad's master cable to his apparatus which he planned to wipe out all the rats from the sewer, so Toad sends his cousin Le Frog and his team of French zipper ninjas to get it back. Rita eventually helps Roddy get back to his home, but after realizing that he was miserable being lonely in a such a big palatial estate and figuring out what Toad has planned for the other rats, Roddy gets flushed away again to save everyone.

Flushed Away doesn't have the most spectacular computer graphics in an animated film, however there is some particularly upstanding slapstick and rapid-fire dialogue that make it a comedic watch. It would have been better if Aardman had been able to pull off their usual claymation creations, but the 3D animation is acceptable even if it's not up to Pixar's level. A sample of something that definitely padded out the runtime longer than it needed to be is the singing slugs who show up to do a romantic ditty and demanding to be noticed, as if the slugs were the prototype for the Minions from Despicable Me that Illumination totally stole from. Your kids might just see this film as a fun sit to fill out an afternoon, but Anglophiles and animation fans should get a kick out of it.

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Gameoverse: Don't Call It A Pilot!

Glitch has become more than an independent animation studio from Australia. It has become a full-fledged juggernaut including scores of merch outside of the generic swag you usually see in niche markets and right up on the mainstream toy isles, plus getting a mainstream theatrical release for one of their series finales. Their latest pilot is by Ross O’Donvan titled Gameoverse which has taken the world by storm and was cowritten by Arin Hanson also known as Egoraptor. This all started back in 2009 on the springboard for wide-eyed animators known as Newgrounds as a mini-series and O’Donovan tried pitching it to Glitch although it was put in stasis for years as O’Donovan went to work for Game Grumps. Finally in 2024, it was announced that Glitch would make this a full series. The animation obviously got an upgrade, with real gaming and animation professionals backing the project, plus the shocking part is that even though it’s inspired by retro video games, the animation is done in 2D.

The pilot takes place in a universe where each planet is its own video game world inhabited by a variety of characters, featuring a hero and a villain. If at some point, if the hero defeats the villain, then the entire world is destroyed by an unknown source. This sets up competing factions, one is the Farcade who are essentially the good guys who try to help the villain win, while their counterparts of the Syntax are doing the opposite who gather the destroyed planet’s energy into something called Float which is supposed to be able to restore those who were killed when their planets got the finger. This sets up an original concept with rival organizations battling for simultaneous devastation along with keeping the status quo with no progress being made by the hero in his predestined struggle as the game’s lead character.

This might sound like a remake of the Wreck It Ralph movies with its concept of game hopping, but Gameoverse goes an extra step further outsiders from one reality altering the course of a world caught in its own loop. This can affect how each video game world works on its own physics, making for a diverse selection of game genres to choose from. It also digs into the morality of trying to go along with a program everyone in that world follows while having complete strangers show up and trying to either help or heed their progress.

Gameoverse does have a temple of talent behind the cast with anime actors like Erica (Netflix Ritsuko) Lindbeck and Chris (Not My Vegeta) Sabbot, although Egoraptor playing two of the major characters doesn’t blend well especially his Grunkle Stan voice as the Barney parody dinosaur. The writing also needed some tweaking by waiting to save most of the character motivations until a later episode. Many people don’t like it nowadays when they give too much exposition in the first episode and instead get right to the action, however this door swings both ways and not giving enough can work against it.

One thing that doesn’t most people don’t seem to notice that this is a pilot episode. The story ironically takes place after the original trailer with the Farcade team adding the Learnosaurus to their roster, but there is a big divide between a pilot episode and the first episode. It’s clear from examples like Hazbin Hotel that the pilot and the first episode made for streaming were separate in tone and theme with a totally different cast being added to the series than the plot, an alteration in the animation quality, plus less time spent on people going, “Who is this new character?”. It’s hard to say if Glitch is planning on changing much from the initial Gameoverse episode like giving it a completely redone beginning like what was done with Bee And Puppycat for Netflix. Even though the studio might make huge changes like making it as dark as something like Final Space with concepts like planetary oblivion looming over the characters, or they might make it an absurdist comedy out of a Douglas Adams novel. So, whatever goes on between now with the pilot and when it becomes an ongoing series might be one big chasm to leap.

There’s been some major criticism claiming the pilot relies to much on fan service. Not so much the appeal to old school gamers, but the fact that the two main female characters spend most of the episode in bikinis. This isn’t done in a leering way but in a G-rated cartoon approach. The heroic Kit and the wicked Miss Information aren’t drawn with overtly sexual designs and are instead very generic with a visually retro motif, so it’s nothing on the level of a Dead Or Alive volleyball match.

Gameoverse is still rough around the edges, but there is a ton of potential along the way. It’s not like they’re doing yet another bad video game adaptation such as the old USA Network cartoons based on Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Instead, it’s an above average homage to gaming culture keeping otaku stimulated with the random comedy and overexaggerated personalities of the colorful cast of characters. It’s not yet at its peak, but the pilot did go out of its way to make a first impression, even if some narrow-minded people see it as a Pibby clone.

ANI-MOVIES, *Deemo: Memorial Keys

With all the movies animated and live action based on video games lately, only one of them is based on a rhythm game, which means we're never getting that official Dance Dance Revolution film. Deemo was a rhythm game with an actual story to it that was released in 2013 that gained a big following, which was adapted into full-length anime movie in 2022 by Production IG and Signal.MD as their last project before Production IG bought them out and just after they completed Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. The director was Shuhei Matsushita who also directed Doctor Stone, although there seems to be a supreme lack of effort put into this as its all CGI and looks like mid-2000s cel shading. The models from the video game appear better than those in the anime and the character movements are stiff like they're all lifeless puppets, plus the bad story pacing added to film's downfall.

The movie is split into two plots both playing out at the same time. One has an amnesiac young girl named Alice entering a fantasy world, so already they're just ripping off Lewis Carroll. The dream realm is like the inside of a castle with books and talking toys and a tall dark stick figure called Deemos who plays the piano. Whenever Deemos plays some memorable music other parts of the castle open up which eventually lead to the way out, so Alice and her friends are first thwarted by a masked girl who eventually joins in their efforts. After a while, Alice realized that all these characters were aspects of her life before an accident which killed her older brother who she lived with and the masked girl was an incarnation of her dream self, so this whole time Alice has been in a coma. Years later, Alice was adopted by her brother's old music instructor who teaches at an academy that she is a student at, but she had almost no memory of her time in the dream realm until she was given an incomplete song her brother left for her. With the addition of her finally gaining some friends in school, Alice's memories are restored and is able to finish her brother's piece.

Deemo: Memorial Keys is a below average production that stretches out a meager video game plot with the meandering antics of Alice's toy friends, and the narrative has an uneven flow to it as it switches between the modern-day events and those during Alice's extended dream sequence. The entire film is jumbled in its presentation and is difficult to keep cohesive with the only plus sign being the piano soundtrack which does help keep the movie's head above water. You can watch this on several free streaming services, but you'll probably instantly forget it after a single watch.

The Gameoverse Guide To The Galaxy

 

Terminator Zero: An Unfinished Future

Since it looks like Disney will never release that Aliens Vs. Predator anime series (Yes, it’s real! Look it up!) it’s up to the Terminator franchise to break in the nostalgia vault of 80s sci-fi movies and have it redone as an anime titled Terminator Zero. Mattson Tomlin who did uncredited writing on The Batman movie and worked on Netflix Animation’s The Sea Beast developed the series also for Netflix, and it was directed by Masashi Kudo who was an animation director on Bleach. This was animated by Studio IG that most Americans would be familiar with from its various incarnations of Ghost In The Shell, which is convenient as similar to the original movie version of that cyberpunk classic took the premise of a high-tech action tale and turned it into a cerebral exploration of humanity’s relationship with machines, the same is done here where normally huge cyborgs mowing people down with machine guns is replaced with slow-paced tone that brings a deeper philosophical approach to it. A total of 8 episodes were released in late 2024 completing the intended first season, however a year later Netflix announced it was cancelling the series leaving any fans of it hanging waiting for a resolution.

The story for this is completely free from the original Terminators movies showing how other parts of the world dealt with the rise of Skynet after it ends up nuking most of the world, so for once we’re not roaming around California. Starting out in Tokyo just before the prophesized Judgement Day in 1997, the brilliant Malcom Lee has spent the last few years developing a revolutionary AI named Kokoro with the hidden intent of competing with Skynet. Malcom is really from one of the numerous post-apocalyptic futures that travelled back in time to 1983 with his cybernetic partner Misaki, although his plan for creating a rival for Skynet instead of just plain trying to destroy it altogether is a little more convoluted. During his stay, Malcom fell in love and had three children, the eldest one Kenta is a prodigy sharing his father’s genius, and Misaki has been reprogrammed into being the children’s nanny. A Terminator from the future has been sent back to prevent Malcom’s efforts, but a female member of the remaining human resistance named Eiko is also sent to stop the Terminator plus her own mission involving Malcom. Kokoro stops Skynet from bombing Tokyo, even though the rest of the planet is decimated, plus she uses an army of early robots to take control of the panicked population while deciding to help the remaining humans with revelations of the Terminator and Eiko’s pasts from the future coming into focus. The series ends with Malcom getting killed from the Terminator with Eiko and Misaki along with all three kids exiting what’s left of Tokyo. How the story was to continue from here is up in the air, although the idea is that Kenta has a large part yet to played in a possible future.

Time travel takes a hard turn in this from most of the other Terminator outlets when here it gives its own explanation as to how the concept works, which ironically helps tie all the other movies together into a single universe, although broken off into multiple realities. There’s a scene where a prophet who leads the future human resistance explains to Eiko just before she goes back in time that whenever a Terminator or someone is sent into the past that they’re going into a completely different timeline, meaning for every time trip results in the birth of a whole different history being established, so the future the traveler originally came from is now inaccessible since their now in a totally separate history. This gives a lot of leeway to free itself from the Terminator movies to become its own story, plus it means that each of the sequel movies takes place in their own timeline like it’s a parallel universe, so you don’t have to worry about any continuity inconsistencies.

Terminator Zero borrows more from the first two Terminator flicks more than the other sequels or the cancelled Sarah Conner Chronicles. The anime doesn’t give into repeating the same lines that most Terminator tales have like “I’ll be back,” although there is the standard high-speed chase, slaughtering of a police station, and creepy moments where the victim is hiding from the mechanical murder machine. There’s also a decent amount of time spent in the dystopian future, especially in the very beginning when Eiko single handedly takes down a Terminator to get its CPU chip for her time trip. Unlike other Terminator sequels, this one does contain some serious plot twists involving time travel which haven’t really been used since the first movie. Its main advantage is having no strings attached to anything involving John Conner and the average American characters.

There is enough action in this, although there is a lot more philosophy added to the fire. A good portion of the 8-episodes has Malcom stuck in a Terminator-proof room conversing with his AI Kokoro who is split into three different goddess forms and spends most of the series listening to her creator monologuing about why Kokoro should help protect humanity and help them defeat Skynet. For all the good this is supposed to do, it doesn’t stop Skynet from bombing all but Tokyo around the globe, so the protagonist’s efforts don’t amount too much to protect the rest of the world as he was more concerned with the safety of his family.

Anime has adapted numerous other American properties like The Matrix, Highlander, Batman, Witchblade, Halo, and various Marvel Comics. Terminator Zero bucks the trend by setting its own course not tying itself too much to the original source material. Production IG did a fantastic job providing top notch animation and not resorting to having their secondary department handling the quality 2D production, even though there is impressive CGI incorporated into it. Viewing the entire series is like watching an entire 4-hour long movie as each episode leads right into the other and the main course of it takes place over the course of a few days just before and after the upcoming Judgement Day.

There is a lack of cohesion in the narrative, specifically during the first half of the series, like whenever they go to Malcom’s children walking around the mostly abandoned Tokyo trying to avoid killer robots. It’s possible that the first season of Terminator Zero was intended to be only 6-7 episodes, but having it stretched out to 8 meant a great deal of filler material had to be thrown in. This might have added to the show’s premiere not receiving the sort of ratings that would have prompted Netflix to do a second series. Even though the single season does reach an ending point, there was clearly room for more stories to tell and tighten up the uneven pace of the original.

ANI-MOVIES, *Swapped

From Nathan Greno, the director of Tangled, is this new feature Swapped, which despite what a ton of critics thought isn't trying to hitch a ride on to the same bandwagon as Disney with their recent release of Hoppers. Not to belittle the title, but this movie isn't about body-swapping, as it is more about getting changed into a totally different animal. This is the third full-length movie by Skydance Animation, and the second one to premiere directly on Netflix, plus written by John Whittington from some of the Lego and Sonic movies. This is an original story taking place in a fantasy world with imaginative creatures that look like they're out of Pokemon with some of them being part plant or mineral. There is some seriously decent world building in this and character growth which help separate it from the usual Pixar wannabe movies.

Set in a lush valley, a small island in a river is inhabited by small furry mammals called Pookoo, and the story starts off with the young Ollie starts with a tale about how the current predicament of having their harvest raided by birds called Javan is all his fault as he introduced their food to a Javan when he was younger. Once they finish up the flashback, Ollie falls down a hole and finds a magic pod left behind by a herd of colossal mammoth-like plant-hybrids known as Dzo who would use their magic to maintain harmony in the valley, although the Dzo were casted out when a deadly predator called a Firewolf set the whole place ablaze. Ollie touches the pod and is transformed into Javan, so he runs off and is found by a trio of Javan sisters one named Ivy who helped saved him from drowning. After losing the other Javans, Ollie gets some information from a large fish called Boogle that there are other body-changing pods throughout the valley. Ollie finds one but Ivy gets to it first and is accidently turned into a Pookoo, so now both of them are stuck in the form of the other with the cure being more pods which Boogle happens to know about. The nearest pods are miles away, so Ivy has to teach Olllie how to fly to get there, and this begins an amazing aerial scene. Along the way, Ollie discovers that Ivy was the Javan he met as a child which caused the birds to take over the Pookoo's rations, however they put aside their differences to avoid some hungry Treewolves which are not on fire like the Firewolf. The two of them finally find the magic pods and change back to their original forms, but its at the beginning of the third act where a twist villain shows up like Hans from Frozen which causes all the animals of the valley to come together in order to survive and defeat this new menace. It might seem a cliche, but this does actually add a daring climax to the movie.

Swapped does deliver in the way a number of other talking animal cartoon films failed to do. It isn't just a Freaky Friday clone starring some of Disney's Wuzzles, but an original concept set in a fascinating backdrop. The casting is somewhat odd with Michael B. Jordan and Juno Temple as the two main characters having to walk a mile in the other's shoes, even though it does ultimately work out in the end. It is a shame that this went straight to Netflix instead of getting a theatrical release, despite the fact that this did help K-Pop Demon Hunters into becoming a blockbuster, however Skydance Animation created a truly cinematic experience with an engaging all-ages fantasy.

MISC. MANGA, *A Centaur's Life

Kei Murayama's first big break as a manga creator was A Centaur's Life which is a slice-of-life that just happens to take place in a world of half-human creatures. Murayama's other works include a yuri sci-fi one-shot, but an entire society of demihumans in a modern day humanless Japan is also a fresh idea. If you've read Beastars or were marveled by the mixed species concept of Zootopia, then this should be of great interest.

Himeno is a shy centaur going to high school along with other fantasy beings. Her two best friends are the draconid Nozomi, plus Kyoko of the goatfolk who are in fact not satyrs. She has to deal with the advances of some of her hornier schoolmates who find her attractive because of her being slightly top heavy, although she's fairly modest compared to most fan service norms. There is no major direction for the characters to pursue as their stories are aimed at how a society of different breeds get along. The opening Chapter 0 is somewhat off kilter as it has Himeno asking Kyoko and Nozomi to check a certain part of her body which is normally impossible for a centaur to see, but she is relieved when she appears to be normal, at least compared to other centaurs. There is a strong hint of shojo-ai in this, as well as some definitive sapphic representation in further chapters, but will probably be a big draw for any lesbian fangirls. The commonplace setting of an early 21st Century metropolis is a keen idea for a manga where the entire cast is made of people you would see in an RPG monster manual.

A Centaur's Life is not for younger readers as it does involve some mature situations, although this is not an adult title either. The manga is still running in Japan and Seven Seas Entertainment is doing a fine job releasing it into English in their larger-sized graphic novels. Imagine a toned-down version of Lucky Star inhabited by Dungeons And Dragons characters, and you're set for a fun read.

ANI-MOVIES, *Brother Bear

As the 44th theatrically released Disney animated movie, Brother Bear was one of the last non-CGI films the Mouse Mansion put out in cinemas. Being an original screenplay not based on any existing material like most Disney flicks, this was inspired by Inuit folklore. The story starts out fairly strong, but it really seems to go downhill once it becomes a talking animal movie. It did pull in several times its production cost back at the box office, but the film never seemed to gain any sort of lasting love even if it did get a direct-to-video sequel three years later. Phil Collins returned from Tarzan to do most of the soundtrack much the disdain of the haters, although Tina Turner adds a smashing song to it. For a 2D animated film, this was one of Disney's best since their renaissance with amazing backgrounds and underrated character movements that can flawlessly go from realistic to cartoonish at the drop of a hat.

Set sometime after the Ice Age in what would be called Alaska, a native tribe believes that divine spirits maintain order and live in the aurora borealis. Kenai is the youngest of three brothers who is finally receiving his totem which is like a rite of passage into manhood, but he is given the totem of love which his older brother Denahai gives him a hard time over it. The eldest sibling Sitka tried to maintain peace in his family, but Kenai's negligence leads to a bear stealing their food causing it to get into a fight with him which results in Sitka sacrificing himself becoming one with the spirits. Kenai goes after the bear and during the fight the bear falls on his spear, which technically means that the bear's death was theriocide and not Kenai's fault, although the great spirits have a crooked legislative system and put all the blame on Kenai by turning him into a bear. Denahai thinks that the transformed bear has killed Kenai and sets out to avenge his younger brother's demise, so Kenai now in the body of a bear runs into his tribe's shaman woman who tells him he has to go the top of a mountain miles away that reaches up to the aurora. On his way to the mountain, Kenai comes across a lone talkative bear cub named Koda who has been separated from his mother on their way to the same location, so Kenai teams up with Koda since he knows how to get to his destination. Along the way, they run into a pair of hoser moose based on SCTV's old McKenzie Bros. sketches who tag along their journey and manage to hitch a ride on some migrating woolly mammoths. Kenai and Koda run across some other bears who also travelled to see the aurora which Kenai begins to bond with the other bears and considers Koda as a little brother. Koda tells why he was on his own and Kenai realizes that the mother bear was the one he accidentally killed, so he confesses the entire truth to Kona in a scene that was entirely drowned out by Phil Collins' insistent lyrics, and Koda runs away just as Denahai finally catches up with them. The concludion has Sitka's spirit finally showing up as an eagle who transforms Kenai back into a human letting him know his bear curse has passed, but Kenai takes back his old bear totem so he can remain as an older brother for Koda. Whether or not Kenai can decide to change back into a man at will is up in the air, even though it's implied all he needs to do is take off his totem necklace.

Brother Bear was the first to start Disney's strange habit of making films where people get magically changed into animals and quite of few have noted that Pixar took this idea for their movie Brave. For a story that is supposed to take place after the Ice Age, the Inuit seem to have very up to date clothing and equipment, plus the animals use modern day concepts like pinkie swears and playing I Spy. Most of the casting is decent, although being a sucker for Strange Brew I actually appreciated Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas reprising their roles as Bob and Doug McKenzie but with antlers. One thing that is lacking in this movie is the actual "brotherhood" aspect which the film is titled after as we don't see any real bonding between Kenai and Koda until near the final act. It does dwell on some standard cartoon tomfoolery a bit too much, but it doesn't descend into immature fart jokes that most early 2000's animation seemed to be obsessed with. You will probably have an enjoyable time watching this, although whether it validates repeat viewings is up to the audience.

MISC. MANGA, *I'm In Love With The Villainess

Isekai has become the new standard for otaku, but regularly the protagonist ends up going to a world of high fantasy. I'm In Love With The Villainess does take place in a fantasy world but is slightly more up to date instead of taking place during the Middle Ages. Starting out as a light novel written by Inori and drawn by Hanagata, it was later developed into a manga in the pages of Comic Yuri Hime, a shojo-ai themed anthology mainly targeting older female readers, a market usually referred to as josei. There isn't a lot of isekai focused on sapphic relationships, so this was a refreshing change of pace, so much so that it even got an anime TV series that lasted for a single season.

Rei is an office drone whose only salvation from her dreary life is playing a dating video game for girls known as an otome game titled Revolution. After working to the point of lethal physical exhaustion, Rei is reborn in the magical world of Revolution as the 15-year-old main character, but instead of setting her sights on one of the male leads she targets the token villainess Claire, a stuck-up royal who constantly berates her for being a commoner. Despite the social abuse she receives, Rei continues to publicly make it clear that she flat out loves Claire much the hair drill schoolgirl's chagrin. The academy they both attend is a training ground for citizens to learn elemental magic in defense of their country, and Rei has proved that her MP is so immeasurable that she excels over the all the other students as far a potential is concerned, most of this was thanks to Rei playing the game this world takes place in countless times. Rei even gets a job working as Claire's maid just to be close to her which she managed by knowing her rich father's true backstory. From here Rei eventually begins to break down Claire's spoiled nature and even ends up marrying her and the two of them adopt two daughters which is pretty much the perfect outcome for a sapphic romance.

I'm In Love With The Villainess is a lesbian fangirl's dream come true, and writer Inori intended for this to represent the older shojo-ai audience, although this is still a teen-rated manga that doesn't give into fan service. The manga is very sweet and sincere in its commentary on societal issues not only for LGTBQ readers but also classism with how the elite treat the ordinary working population. The light novel story has concluded including a spinoff set in the same world, plus the anime seems to have wrapped up for now, but the manga is still ongoing, so seeing how a lesbian couple will thrive in a game-based fantasy world after they've already tied the knot should be incentive enough for any yuri fans.

MISC. MANGA, *Kaiju Kamui

Shintaro Arima created this new ongoing manga inspired by Toho monster movies and various mecha shows like Evangelion. Kaiju Kamui is almost like Kaiju No. 8 except with less humor and its more about someone actually piloting a giant monster instead of turning into one. You can see the look of recent kaiju designs in this from sources like Pacific Rim, Godzilla Minus One, and the Monsterverse franchise.

Large creatures labeled Mega-Organisms are ravaging Japan and the only main defense against them are special pilots called Link Operators who have a neural connection to their fighter jets. This new tech is called the Neural Connection Operating System and allows the user full mental control of their aircraft. After an attack by a Mega-Organism, all of the Link Operators are wiped out except for their leader, Yamato Shidou, and he is chosen by a kaiju countermeasures team to pilot their new weapon branded Kamui. The Kamui is the offspring of a former defeated kaiju that scientists had altered to be controlled by an operator placed inside a special cockpit from within the titanic body. It's now up to Yamato to use this prototype to prevent any upcoming monster attacks, even though he is still feeling the emotional loss of his squadron.

Kaiju Kamui is a refreshing idea in the kaiju genre where someone is given total control of a living monster instead of a giant mecha to fight other giants. Amira does a fine job with the mostly original creature designs so they don't just look like your average monster-of-the-week, although the author does need to work on the pacing of his story because a lot of first few chapters has an ace pilot living through one huge loss to becoming the chosen one destined to protect mankind withing in the first volume. If this ever gets adapted, it will hopefully be done in live action since tokusatsu has made some serious progress in the last few Godzilla productions.

ANI-MOVIES, *Meet The Robinsons

Unless your movie has Feebles in it, any film titled Meet The...." should be avoided at all costs, and yes that includes any Robert De Niro outing. Meet The Robinsons was Disney's 47th full-length animated theatrical release, as well as only the third one to be fully CGI that wasn't done by Pixar, and even though their previous 3D animated movie Chicken Little made twice of its budget back, this film only broke two million making it a serious dud by Disney standards. Based on William Joyce's children's book, A Day With Wilbur Robinson, this is almost a spiritual spinoff to Joyce's previous work on Fox's Robots movie as it involves atompunk elements which you might find in titles like Astro Boy or The Jetsons. For a mid-2000s all CGI production, Meet The Robinsons suffers from seriously dated graphics which Pixar had on its own perfected with their first release of Toy Story. Even Mainframe's work on Reboot and Beast Wars had better animation than this movie, and they came out over a decade before this. Another thing is that the story is stupefyingly sporadic going from one cliched cartoon gag after another following a paper-thin plot, so it's more like a tilt-a-whirl of cartoon gags sewed together in a time travel tale. The best way to describe this is that it is like watching Back To The Future: Part II without ever seeing the original chapter, but even lovers of non-linear narration won't appreciate it.

An orphaned boy named Lewis has been living in the orphanage for 12 years and still never got an adopted family, mostly because he's obsessed with learning who his real mother was and why she abandoned him. This fixation has Lewis diving into science and cobbling together whatever kind of contraption he can get from everyday objects, all of which seriously ticks off his roommate Goob who he keeps up every night with his constant tinkering. Lewis makes a memory scanner to see what his mother originally looked like from within his own memories as a baby and decides to premiere this at a school science fair, although a strange man with a bowler hat sabotages his efforts. A boy Lewis' age named Wilbur claims he's from the future and they journey several years to meet Wilbur's extensively bizarre family of the Robinsons most of which were also orphans and profoundly eccentric. Without getting into spoilers, it becomes obvious how each of these characters are relative to another across the past and the future, even though you don't have to be a Time Lord to realize that time travel doesn't work that way.

Meet The Robinsons is a mismanaged mess of a film that strings together a succession of unfunny non-sequitur cliches. The animation is rank and it's like the Mouse Mansion really didn't give a darn about making anything of genuine quality which is why Disney bought up Pixar just so they could have some type of decent 3D production. Aside from the extensive star-studded cast who make up the whole of the Robinson family which includes everyone from Tom Selleck to Adam West, there isn't any major pull for this as a large portion of the cast is made of different Disney animators and staff. Even with a time travel plot, this disorganized feature isn't worth of being a major Disney cinematic release, so don't even bother.