ANI-MOVIES: The Corpse Bride

Tim Burton returned to his stop-motion greatness is this great romantic fantasy. Once again teaming up with animator Mike Johnson who he worked with on The Nightmare Before Christmas, and turned Burton's idea for a short story invoving necrophilia into an enjoyable family feature.

Taking place in Victorian era England, the worried young Victor is engaged to the very ladylike a Victoria(a joke on Victor/Victoria), but is having trouble remembering his vows. After dropping his engagement ring in the woods, he unintentionally resurrects Emily, the corpse of a bride who was killed on her wedding night. She takes him to the underworld where he learns her sad tale. Victor manages to talk her into taking him topside by a magic potion, and tells Victoria what happened, but Emily spitefully returns him to back to the land of the dead. Meanwhile, Victoria's parents believe Victor has ditched her, so they promise her hand to the aristocratic Lord Barkis, who really intends to kill and take her fortune, although he's unaware that Victoria's family was really marrying her to Victor for his family's money. Victor himself hears of Victoria's new fiance via one of his old coachmen who recently died of a bad cough. This causes Victor to consent to marrying Emily, but they decide to take their wedding upstairs to the land of the living. After an initial shock by most of the townspeople who think that's its a typical zombie holocaust, they realize that the dead are just there for the wedding. Victoria makes her way to the chapel, and Emily notices her just before Victor is willingly going to drink poison to join Emily in holy matrimony. Emily decides to let Victor marry Victoria instead, but Lord Barkis shows up and Emily recognizes him as the man who killed her. He unwittingly drinks the poison though, and the dead guests drag him back to the underworld. Emily then drifts peacefully off into the afterlife, leaving Victor and Victoria to live happily ever after.

When this movie first came out, I liked it but quickly forgot about it because of how much more entertaining I found the Wallace & Gromit movie(another stop-motion movie)at the time which came out a few weeks later. It wasn't until I rented it again a few years later that I grew to appreciate it more. It's got a bittersweet story to it done to gothic background. There's some fine humor in it, along with a few slightly unecessary but still welcome musical numbers. I especially loved the outlandish character designs and dark backgrounds, and how much more livelier they made the world of the dead seem from the world of the living. I highly recommend this as a movie to show at either Halloween or Valentines, an definately one for your video library.

2013: Year of the Snake

MISC. MANGA, *Slayers Special

With the original Slayers manga and light novels being a huge success, creator Hajime Kanzaka decided to go back and cover some of the earlier days of explosive sorceress Lina Inverse before she met up with Gourry, Amelia, and Zelgadis. Prior to that, Lina began on her journeys usually being plagued by the busty bikini-clad loudmouth known as Naga the White Serpent, a skilled-enough sorceress in her own right, but constantly trying to outdo Lina as both a rival and sometimes ally. This portion of the "Young Lina Inverse Chronicles" was first done in a spinoff prequel manga titled Slayers Special. Several of these chapters became the basis for some of the Slayers anime movies and OVA episodes, as well as tie-ins to some of the video games. But this 4-volume manga was the main take on Lina and Naga's whirlwind tour.

Several of the adventures with Lina have Naga tagging along somewhere in each chapter, and sometimes at the beginning of one, but each one is all over the map. From either gratuitous trips to the beach, the search for the perfect cuisine, or being hired to watch over wannabe squires, helping necromancers getting over their fear of zombies, the possibilities seem endless. Some of them later get adapted into OVAs where Lina and Naga are confronted with the true horror of their exact mirror opposites.

There are a few stories that get stretched out for more than one chapter though. Lina and the young soreceress Shia have to protect a dark crystal from a demonic Vegita-looking creep with intentions on taking over the world. Another where our heroines disguise themselves as maids to uncover a plot by some nefarious bandits is a real kneeslapper. Alot of them have Lina being more involved with the Magic Guild and going on various missions for them. Some stories act as callbacks to later chapters, like where Lina has to deal with more than one outlaw using her name which eventually has none other than an early appearance by Ameila searching to being her to justice. There's even an earlier meeting between Lina and Amelia's father, Prince Phil, which is pretty much how it was done in the TV series minus Gourry.

CPM Manga did the adaptation of this, which has some "Americanized" lines thrown in for mostly no reason, and they also sort of broke theire tradition with the first two volumes printed in left-to-right, and then the next two in right-to-left. It's worth getting all four volumes, even though they aren't numbered. Definitely a choice pic for fans of D&D and Asterix.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 7: Page 9

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Aimi Tokutake.

ANI-MOVIES, *The Princess And The Frog

Disney has gone back to its 2-D roots with this fresh take on the story of The Frog Prince. This might be because they wanted to get some additional income from potential younger viewers who just wanna see a good story instead of a whole digital eye-orgy from Pixar.

Set in early 20th Century New Orleans, the hardworking young lady Tiana is planning to one day own her own restaraunt, and it seems like it might finally happen to when her debutante friend Charlotte hires her to help cater her big Mardi Gras reception for a visiting prince. Prince Naveen is from a made-up European country(he's not black, BTW!)who has been cut off from his family, and came to New Orleans to find a wealthy girl to marry. However, a voodoo dude named Dr. Facilier tricks Naveen into accepting a deal with him. He turns Naveen into a frog, and gives his disgruntled valet Lawrence the ability to take on the form of Naveen to try and marry Charlotte. Naveen now as a frog mistakes Tiana for an actual princess in a dress Charlotte gives her, and convinces her to kiss him to break the spell. Instead of him turning back into a human, Tiana is also transformed into a frog, mainly because she's not a "real" princess. The two of them get cast out into the swamp, and befriend an alligator(a not-so-big-lipped one)called Louis who longs to play trumpet in a jazz band, and later on the bayou firefly Ray that believes that a wishing star is his old girlfriend. They take Naveen and Tiana to the good witch doctress, Mama Odie. She tells them that they can reverse the spell if Naveen can kiss Charlotte before the end of Mardi Gras since she's considered a princess during it while her father won the title of King of Mardi Gras. Our heroes make their way back to New Orleans via riverboat, and Naveen and Tiana start to realize their inevitable feelings for each other. While this is going on, Facilier's plan to have Lawrence gain Charlotte's fortune is in trouble because the charm used to disguise his true form has run out of Naveen's blood, so they need find him to complete their scheme. During the chase, Ray gets squashed, and Facilier is dragged to the underworld by his voodoo overlords. Naveen's chance to kiss Charlotte passes, but he and Tiana seem content to remain as frogs. They have a "wedding" in the swamp help by Mama Odie, and then become human again when they kissed since Tiana became a princess when she married Naveen. The two of them manage to open Tiana's dream restaurant with Naveen and Louis playing jazz in it.

This movie was tantalizing in every single way. It's nice to see Disney back in the saddle on that, although I thought from time to time during some of the non-musical scenes was a little lacking in standard Disney-quality. Speaking of the music, Keith David who does the shadowy Dr. Facilier totally kicks singing in his big number. Aside from a few story flaws involving the bylaws of the frog curse, and the tacked on usage of having talking animal sidekicks in a Disney flick, I had a great time watching it. This is probably the best original 2-D animated film to hit theatres in years, and will hopefully push the envelope to do more feature-length like this, despite how "cool" 3-D cartoons are.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 7: Page 8

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Aimi Tokutake.

ANI-MOVIES, *Sky Crawlers

One of the best non-Miyazaki anime movies I've seen in a while. Sky Crawlers is based on a popular series of Japanese sci-fi novels(not manga!). They were so big, they spawned off a video game, and a manga based on the game titled Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces. It won the Future Film Festival Digital Award at the 65th Venice International Film Festival, and several awards at the Catalonian International Film Festival. It's credit was due to the fact that the film had acclaimed director Mamoru Oshii(Patlabor, Ghost In The Shell, Jin-Roh).

Set in an alternate timeline, a type of human beings exist called Kildren who stop aging once they reach their teenages. These Kildren are employed by a nation's government to be pilots who engage in arial battles with the rival country. Yuichi Kannami is the newest ace pilot at a military base, of which several Kildren pilots are stationed, along with the Suito Kusannagi who is the pretty but stern base commander. Yuichi learns later on that he is the replacement for a deceased pilot that Suito allegedly had killed, although whether he died in battle or not isn't revealed. Yuichi carries on a relationship with Suito, despite her apathetic nature toward everything, even her own daughter(yep, she's the only Kildren to have a child!). Yuichi also sets his sites on the illusive enemy pilot known as "The Teacher", who may or may not be his father. As the movie progresses, the truth about the Kildren is revealed, that they are artificially-created beings bred to act as sacrificial fighters.

Sky Crawlers is an absolute triumph in animation. The dogfight sequences are spectacularly rendered, and the arial visuals are like nothing seen in any other anime(even Macross Plus). Mamoru Oshii does a masterful job with developing the characters, and is brilliant with establishing the storyline. This movie was a breath of fresh air after alot of the somewhat stagnent non-Miyazaki feature-length anime films as of late. You simply must own this one. I don't care if you like animation or not! You must own it! Go out and buy it now!