ANI-MOVIES, *The Last Unicorn

Probably one of the most cherished non-Disney animated family movies from the last century, The Last Unicorn was based on the book of the same name by Peter S. Beagle. This was one of the few theatrical movies produced by Jules Bass and Aurthur Rankin Jr., better known as Rankin/Bass, the creators of nearly every Christmas holiday TV special, and other hit shows like Thundercats and Silverhawks.

Set sometime during the middle ages, a unicorn discovers from a passing butterfly that she is the only one left in the world. She leaves her forest in search of them, but gets captured by a witch for her travelling carnival. The unicorn is set free by the novice magician Schmendrick. Along the way, they are accompanied by the ex-bandit wench Molly Grue. The trio make their way to realm of King Haggard where the other unicorns are supposed to be. Once there, Haggard's menacing Red Bull appears to drive the unicorn into the sea. In order to protect her, Schmendrick taps into his true magic and turns the unicorn into a human female, which makes the Red Bull give up on her. Our heroes then enter into Haggard's castle under the guise of looking for work, with Schmendrick claiming that the now-human unicorn is his niece, Amalthea. Schmendrick keeps Haggard entertained, while Molly searches for a way into the Red Bull's lair which is supposed to lead to the missing unicorns. Haggard's son Lir has meanwhile has fallen in love with Amalthea, believing her to be just a beautiful girl, while at the same time Amalthea is growing fond of him and growing to forget her former life as a unicorn. Molly and Schmendrick eventually find the secret entrance, and with Alamathea and Lir into tow, they confront the Red Bull. Amalthea is changed back into a human, who because of her newfound human feelings is able to defeat the Red Bull and free all the unicorns that were trapped in the sea. Amalthea the unicorn then heads back for her forest, with Schmendrick and Molly apparently hooking up together in the end.

This film features some of the best animation by the Rankin/Bass group since their animated version of The Hobbit. The studio responsible for most of the actual animation though was Topcraft, whose work also includes the anime movie Nausicaa. The character designs are very unique and original too. The movie features an odd assortment of voice actors, like Mia Farrow doing a wonderful job as the unicorn, Christopher Lee as the mad Haggard, Alan Arkin as the indifferent Schmendrick, and Rene Auberjonois steals his scene as a laughing skeleton. There have been two DVD releases of this movie, the original, and the 25th Anniversary Edition which has way better quality. If you haven't seen this yet, treat yourself to a truly epic animated fantasy.

ANI-MOVIES, *Blood: The Last Vampire

For anyone who is sick to the fangs of all the bishonen vampire crap that Twilight kept shoving down your pipe, then get a load of this is a teenage darkstalker who would have them all crying for their mamas, Blood-The Last Vampire. While there was a British live-action movie based on it not real long ago, the first one from 2000 is considered a genre-forging classic, which helped begin the new millenium's anime vampire craze.

Taking place in just before the Vietnam War, Saya is a pouty-lipped teenage hunter of chiropterans, a rare race of bat-like monsters that can assume human form. Whether or not the chiropterans are supposed to be genuine vampires is never fully explored. Saya works with a secret orginization with the mission of killing off these bloodsuckers, and disguises herself as a student at a school on a American air base in Japan to look for three chiropterans. Saya sniffs out two of them, and manages to take save a school doctor from them. However, a crossdressing chiropteran shows up for a showdown after Saya finally gets a working katana from her cheapass commander. Saya then stops the monster from escaping by cutting him as apparently the only real way to destroy them is by cutting all the blood out of them.

This story from this somewhat short feature-length movie continued into a one-shot manga, three light novels, and a Playstation game. There was of course a made-for-television anime remake called Blood+ which achieved some success on Adult Swim, plus the extended live-action film. The original movie though was groundbreaking for its time, mostly because of the graphic nature of it which up until that point was pretty gory for an anime. Another was because it was one of the first anime movies that implemented some serious 3D animation in it. Prior to that, digital effects weren't combined into the overall feature as much as traditional cel animation in most productions. It's still visually superb even by today's technical standards, and probably the best non-Vampire Hunter D anime horror movie ever done.

Am I the only one around here who cares about Instrumentality?

ANI-MOVIES, Redline

Speed Racer ain't got nuthin' on this one! Animatrix director Takeshi Koike spent a good seven freakin' years putting this movie together, which was done entirely in hand-drawn animation using over 100,000 drawings in its production. It was a staggeringly dedicated task put forth in today's totally digital world using mostly CGI animation.

Set way in the future, JP is an underdog racer in the highly dangerous world of intergalactic car races. After crashing in the preliminary Yellowline race, he luckily gets into the prestige Redline race which is the Indy 500 of the universe. This race is taking place on Roboworld run by a fascist government of cyborg pricks. They don't want these Wacky Racers rejects on their planet, mostly because it might reveal a lot of their military secrets exposed to the public. JP hopes to woo fellow racer Sonoshee, who is someone he's admired since he was a kid, but this keeps him distracted from his double-dealing mechanic Frisbee who is making deals with the mob to rig the race. The big race finally happens, and the big contender, Machinehead, leads the pack, along with several other colorful racers(most of which they only briefly touch on as far as their backstories). Roboworld's military pulls out all the stops(aside from a freakin' blockade!), including particle beam satellites and a giant bioweapon named Funky Boy, that is like an out of control pure energy version of Tetsuo from Akira when he got all bloated. It takes one of the Roboworld's generals to merge with another bioweapon to try and stop Funky Boy, but the movie just leaves off as their big kaiju fight begins. Without giving away the ending, the winner(s) is/are pretty obvious, but the final stretch to the end is nailbiting!

What this movie lacks a little in as far as story is concerned(specifically the unresolved characters' story arcs), it completely makes up for in style and animation. Madhouse comes through again with a real trailblazer. There was a short "pilot" movie that came out about four years prior that was just a excellent, and available on the American release as a bonus. Do yourself a big favor and get the Blu-Ray to get the full visual splendor. It's almost impossible not to dig the living hell out of this high-octane thrill-fest!

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 8: Page 6

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Serena Paccagani.

ANI-MOVIES, *Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker

Probably one of the best of the made-for-video animated Batflicks(Mask Of The Phantasm was a theatrical release), Return Of The Joker was the only movie of Batman Beyond, which also acted as a kind of finale to the series.

Set sometime after Season 3 of the show, a remaining group of the Jokerz(a street gang enspired by the Joker)has been working with a criminal claiming to be the original Joker. Meanwhile, the elderly Bruce Wayne has regained control of his family's business, but Joker & Co. crash his big party. Luckily, Batman 2.0(aka: Terry McGinnis)is on hand to stop them. The return of his old nemesis forces Bruce to take away the Batsuit from Terry. That doesn't stop the Jokerz from hunting down him down while Joker busts into the Batcave and nearly kills Bruce. Barbara Gordon fills Terry in on the demise of the first Joker from back in her Batgirl days when Tim Drake(the second Robin)was kidnapped and tortured by the Joker, which caused Tim to shoot him. Terry suspects Tim has some connection to the new Joker, mainly because of his current expertise as a satellite engineer, and the Joker's been stealing lots of computer parts used to control satellites. Joker uses an orbiting particle-beam satellite to shoot down the Batmobile, and wrecking half of Gotham in the process! Batman arrives at the Joker's hideout, and is stunned to find out that Tim Drake is really the Joker who the original one had planted some of his DNA inside him when he was Robin. Thankfully, Terry is successful in freeing Tim from the Joker's control, and stops the satellite laser.

This was a triumph for Warner Bros. video animation, which later helped set the stage for the current DC Universe line of films. It was also alot more mature then the previous DC Comics animated outlets up until then, so much so that there is a unrated version of this film that's much more worth owning. The animation is also profoundly upgraded. Batman Beyond was already heavily influenced by cyberpunk anime like Akira and Bubblegum Crisis, but it really shows up alot more here than in the TV series, especially in the shots involving the space laser destroying the city. The TV series also occasionally suffered from a lack of decent writing, but this movie was a profound boost in that and making it a true Batman story more with mystery and intrigue. There's also better development with the characters, more so with the original Batman characters than the Beyond ones. This is a must for all Batfans, even ones who didn't watch BB.

Spider-Man on Japan