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

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

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

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