ANI-MOVIES, *Flash Gordon The Greatest Adventure Of All

After the success of their late 70s Saturday morning cartoon series of The Adventures Of Flash Gordon, and the killer Dino De Laurentis live-action movie was made, Filmation went back and redid the classic space hero with this full-length animated TV movie. It took the story back to the Golden Age in an attempt to recapture the pulp feel of Warlords Of Mars. It was actually written and directed by former Star Trek show writer, Samuel Peeples, and premiered in 1982. The crappy part is that even though the original series is on DVD, this movie isn’t.

The story starts out in WWII, and Flash Gordon is an athlete/government agent flying on route to the brilliant Dr. Zarkov, but his plane is attacked by meteors! So, he and female reporter Dale Arden parachute away to safety, and remarkably end up in Zarkov’s personal underground rocket base. They blast off for the planet Mongo which Zarkov claims is attacking Earth, but they get attacked by space raiders. Once on Mongo, they’re captured by cavemen in a lengthy sequence that becomes slightly unnecessary in the long run. They escape, but are captured the luscious Princess Aura who is the daughter of the evil Ming The Merciless, the ruler of Mongo. With the Lion Man, Thunn, they are brought before Ming who enslaves Dale, and sends Flash and Thunn to the prision mine to get eated by lizard women. Aura comes down to convince Flash into being her boytoy(what guy wouldn’t!), instead he and Thunn make off with her through the mines into the forest of Aboria, where they are confronted by Prince Barin and his band of merry Robin Hood ripoffs. They are all abucted by the warrior Hawkmen(DC Comics, beware!), and the boisterous King Vultan. All four heroes form an alliance against Ming, and then launch an assault on Ming’s pad. Ming is revealed to be in league with Hitler, and after a duel with Flash, a freakin’ robot! But the “real” Ming flees, leaving Flash to turn the approaching Mongo away from Earth, thus stranding our heroes on a planet with exotic bikini-clad slavegirls! “Boo-freakin’-hoo!”

In traditional Filmation fashion, they reused a number of their original footage, mostly from the Flash Gordon TV series, although here it was given some fine tuning, like adding shadows and more rotoscope-style shots. The movie was created at the same time at the TV series, but didn’t air until two years after the series ended. If you wanna see probably the most faithful adaptations of Flash Gordon without the awesome Queen music, then track down this hard to find gem for some great serial sci-fi thrills!

MISC. MANGA, *Marvel Mangaverse

Marvel Mangaverse was originally a collection of one-shot specials showing an alternative anime-styled version of the Marvel Universe. These 8 issues paved the way for the Marvel Mangaverse comic book series, as well as Spider Man: Legend Of The Spider Clan and X-Men: Ronin.

It starts off with the Mangaverse version of the Avengers lead by Irongirl testing a new technology that attracts the attention of the criminal orginization Hydra and the rebellious forces of the underwater nation of Atlantis lead by Prince Namor. This causes the arrivial of the gigantic Godzilla-like Hulk to go on a rampage in New York. The Avengers assemble their giant robot, Iron Man, to stop it, while keeping it out of the clutches of the evil mutant, Apocalypse. Then, the meta-altered Fantastic Four tangles with the interdimensional menace, Annihilus. Ghost Rider roles in next to try and take the monsterous Hulk on his own. A Kabuki version of Punisher is introdueced next. Plus, Spider Man is redone as a ninja kid. The X-Men lead by Storm bring up the rear. Finally, all the heroes combine their efforts along with Dr. Strange and a very anime catgirl version of Tigra to stop The Hulk, Hydra, and Namor to save the world. But thanks to the hammer of Thor, the day is saved, but only at the cost of two of Marvel’s greatest heroes(who never would’ve ended up together like THAT in the regular comics!).

Definately check the collected graphic novel out! It features the talents of Ben Dunn, Lea Hernandez, Adam Warren, and Udon Studios. A must for anime and comic book fans!

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 4: Page 1

Story by Jer Alford. Art by E. Aedo.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Babel II

Following the manga from Metsuteru Yokoyama(the creator of Gigantor), Babel II is not a sequel to something. The “II” indicates the main character is Babel the 2nd.

Koichi is a seemingly normal young man who keeps getting dreams about a tall tower in the desert. It turns out to be the very Tower of Babel from the Bible. He is sought out by Juju, a beautiful pink-haired psychic who tries to recruit him for her group of revolutionary psychics lead by the maniacal Magnus. Koichi decides to use the special powers that awaken inside him to help defend humanity from this band of superhuman revolutionaries. With his comrades, the shape-changing panther, a giant robot, and a Rodan clone, he might just win. Adopting the new name of Babel II, Koichi tries to assist a group of authorities with bringing down Magnus’ plans for world domination.

Many characters from this series were later reused for the Giant Robo anime which was an almgamation of several of Yokoyama’s titles, where Babel II is really the secret main bad guy who only appears at the very end of the series. Babel II: Perfect Collection has all 4 episodes of the original OVA series as released through Streamline Pictures which is now owned by Image Entertainment. This is not the TV series however, Babel II: Beyond Infinity. People sometimes confuse this with the remake. But still the animation is fair and has lots of super action for your generic X-Men fan!

ANI-MOVIES, *Superman: Doomsday

Starting off their ongoing series of made-for-video features for DC Universe, Warner Premiere decided to go with a darker chapter from the Man Of Steel’s history that was mostly overlooked in any of his previous animated adaptations. Based on the Death Of Superman, Funeral For A Friend, and Reign Of The Supermen story arcs from the various comic books, this was directed by previous DC superhero animation writer Bruce Timm, along with Batman: The Animated Series writer Duane Capizzi. Even though it was done as its own movie, it shadows some story elements from Superman: The Animated Series.

This takes place during a time when Lex Luthor is still in charge of Lexcorp, and Superman has recently been dating Lois, although he hasn’t told her his secret identity yet, despite her suspicions. While digging underground for a new power source, Luthor’s crew discovers an ancient spacepod housing a hulking alien monster. The creature(Doomsday)goes on a rampage through Metropolis, and Supes enages with him in a slugfest the likes of which Goku wouldn’t have survived. Their clash knocks over building after building, which suprisingly no one was in at the time, but ultimately both the super-strong aliens die from the fight. Superman is buried in an elaborately huge memorial in the middle of Metropolis park, although apparently all the JLA members were too busy trying to get their own DC Universe movies made to bother to showing up at his funeral. Lois is bereaved, and goes to Martha Kent in Smallville for someone to talk to. Jimmy Olsen quits the Daily Planet to work for a tabloid rag, and Perry White give in to whisky. Villains on the other hand have been having a crime orgy in Metropolis, and staple crazy genius Toyman kidnaps a bus full of kids. Fortunately, they are rescued by a supposedly resurrected Superman! This revived Man of Tomorrow is really a clone created by Luthor, who now holds the corpse of the original in Lexcorp. However, Superman’s faithful robot manages to get it back with no detection, and brings him back to the Fortress of Solitude where its revealed that Superman wasn’t really dead at all, but in a biological stasis. He is revived, only to find out that his evil twin has killed Toyman, and just taken out Luthor, along with all the other soulless Superman clones. Even though he’s only at partial power, Superman puts on a solar-collecting gothic jumpsuit along with a kryptonite gun, and flies to confront Superman-B. The two of them butt heads, wrecking a good part of the freshly-regenerated city with them. Superman-A takes out Superman-B with some leftover Krytonite dust, and everyone welcomes the “real” Superman back(despite the fact that he just freakin’ killed a guy!).

This story is something that’s been adapted several times since its comic book run. In a radio drama, a novelization, and a killer video game. Although like most of them, the movie takes and leaves alot of material not used in the original. This includes Luthor’s whole rebirth thing where he actually has a full head of hair, no Supergirl, and pretty much none of the actual four Supermen who showed up after Super died. The evil clone is sorta based on the idea of the Superboy clone, but gone all bent after being abused by Luthor. Also, Lois was already married to Clark and knew his secret identity prior to Doomsday ruining their honeymoon. In most of the original DC animated continuity, Doomsday only fought the actual Superman once and got his ass kicked, but this movie managed to pull off a real all-out bout to end the doubt. The rest of the story after Superman kicks the bucket is fair, at least with everyone grieving over the loss, plus Luthor totally loosing it by beating the crap out his clone with Kryptonite gloves because he didn’t get the chance to kill Supes himself. For the first DC Universe movie, this did feature some impressive animation over that of their usual TV stock, and was totally a better movie than the crappy Superman: Brainiac Attacks debacle. The voice acting is fair too, even though it doesn’t feature any of the TV series actors. All in all, I’d recommend this for the serious Superfans, or anyone sick of waiting for Superman to have someone he can actually fight in his new movies.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 3: Page 3

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Jenn Oseicki.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Maetel Legend

This 2-episode OVA is the beginning chapter to three of Leji Matsumoto’s creations: Galaxy Express 999, Queen Emeraldas, and 1000 Year Queen which some old anime TV watchers might remember as Captain Harlock And The Queen Of 1000 Years from 1985.

We see a younger Maetel and her sister Emeraldas who live on a planet residing on the other part of the sun, slightly parallel to Earth. They are the princesses of this world called La Matelle. Their mother, the queen, has undergone the mechanization process which all the people on their planet are going over as La Matelle is slowing dying out due to exposure from the cold causing it to become an icy wasteland. Maetel and Emeraldas fight to stop this, but their mother ultimately succumbs to her machine half, and now sets forth to turn all humanoids into machines as part of the Mechanical Empire. Emeraldas and Maetel escape on the Galaxy Express 999 which is a space bound train that goes to all planets in the universe.

This leads into several of the other “Lejiverse” titles like Captain Harlock and Harlock Saga. As far as comparing Maetel Legend to some of the other Lejiverse titles that have been released in English like DNA Sights 999.9, the animation is very tame, and the story drags on at least 30 minutes longer than it needed to. The whole thing could have been wrapped up in one single 60-minute episode as there are a lot of flashbacks and scenes with reused footage. But if you're a big fan of Harlock, Emeraldas, and the other Matsumoto anime titles, you should see this one to know the beginning of it all.