ANI-MOVIES, *Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape

Surprisingly not being a remake of Hayao Miyazaki's Sherlock Hound anime TV series from the 80s, this production from China is based on the light novel series by Lai Hao and Yu Yuen Wong, The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes. The books tell cases of an opium-addict investigator in an anthropomorphic universe, which only differs from Sherlock Hound as all the characters in that were all dogs. Sherlock is still a canine person in a world of other various animal people, even though the horses are still just horses. This CGI movie is an adaptation of the second of the 5-volume series, each one acting as its own separate story.

Set in 19th Century London, Sherlock is on the hunt for the gentlemanly thief White Storm, who is like a Robin Hood stealing from the corrupt rich to give to the downtrodden. Sherlock deduces the thief is Mack, an elusive man who secretly visits his orphaned daughter every year on her birthday and captures him on his annual visit. Mack then spends the next four years in jail, with his daughter now old enough to get married to her childhood sweetheart, so he escapes from prison to attend her wedding. This fires up the hatred of fellow prisoner Scarface as he used his own escape plans without him and manages to evade the hapless police to get his petty vengeance, even though he managed to break out of jail on his own! Sherlock and Mack team up to capture Scarface who has captured Mack's daughter. There's a ending teaser where Sherlock realizes that this whole four year affair was really the machinations of the mastermind Moriarty, hinting at a sequel that so far doesn't seem to be happening.

Sherlock Holmes And The Great Escape has some impressive 3D animation, keeping the look of illustrator Wong's character designs. The character designs and mannerisms are token anime-themed, as several Chinese productions are inspired by Japanese entertainment, most especially in the scenes where Sherlock describes how a crime scene played out. The plot itself deviates severely from your standard Sherlock Holmes mystery as its made fairly clear who the original suspect was, and then adding a large thug as the main bad guy for the 2nd act. If you're looking for enjoyable Sherlock movie with talking animals for your kids to watch, then you might be better off watching The Great Mouse Detective, or at least catch the Sherlock Hound anime that this is clearly ripping off.

Where the Hell is the buddy cop movie starring these two?

 

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Prefectural Earth Defense Force

Having no relation to the Monster Attack video game spinoff, or the live-action 50s movie(aka: The Mysterians), Prefectural Earth Defense Force was at first a limited gag manga from the 80s parodying tokusatsu shows like Ultraman. Kouichirou Yasunaga created the manga, and the doujinshi gained enough traction to get Studio Gallop to take it up as a one-shot special, even though the anime is formatted as a 3-episode series in a single production, which was groundbreaking for the dawn of OVAs. Titles like Project A-Ko helped boost the market for anime spoofs, but this OVA helped carry it along the genre for the otaku market on both hemispheres.

A prefecture in Japan has been targeted for being conquered by the evil criminal organization, The Telephone Pole Group, mostly because their plans for world domination are better off being localized to a single section of a nation to begin. To counter this, the governor hires the baseball club of the nearby high school, consisting of only three members. They are given a boost from a foreign student from India who just happened to be turned into a missile-launching cyborg after a doctor fell in love with the idea from watching The Six Million Dollar Man. The villains consist of a standard leader with a thing for crowns and capes, a free lunch hording floozie, and a near endless army of masked minions. Despite there being superhero hijinks abound, alot of the plots deal with the characters overreacting to each other's efforts, leading to massive explosions resulting in tons of property damage.

Most of the humor and subject matter are slightly dated since it's from the early days of anime fandom, but it does make this OVA something easier to watch as opposed to a spoof like Project A-Ko which makes fun of numerous Japanese and American pop culture icons. Prefectural Earth Defense Force was available only in America on DVD directly through ADV Films' online store, meaning it wasn't readily for sale at your local Best Buy or most anime con dealers. There are some surprisingly impressive animation sequences in the OVA, which make it worth a watch if you're curious enough about retro anime, although it is hard to come across an affordable copy.

ANI-MOVIES, *Defenders Of Space

Yet another Korean knockoff from the Joseph Lai filmography, Defenders Of Space, was original titled Phoenix-Bot: Phoenix King(also known in parts of Europe as Master Of The Future), and features several ripoffs of various anime and Japanese toylines. Among these are White Base from Gundam, some of the ships from the Leijiverse, and a certain fire engine from Transformers which as this point was still part of its original Diaclone line, plus the title character of Tezuka's Phoenix manga.

In the future, the mighty Zinba empire lead by Emporer Nicholas are a race of blue aliens ripping off the Gamilons from Yamato armed with Tatsunoko super robots, and invade the human colony on Mars. Some of the youngsters were luckily off planet playing baseball, and arrive just as their city has been decimated. Two of them head to Earth to seek out the power of the mysterious Phoenix King, instead of for some reason getting help from Earth's defense forces, which seems to be run by guys in business suits. The pesky kids unlock the Phoenix King robot, which is actually Inferno from Transformers and only transforms into a fire engine near the end of the movie after a single Autobot manages to take out an entire galactic armada.

The animation is sub-par, even by Korean forgery standards, with the characters changing facial patterns from scene to scene. There's boring music, and even though its only a little over an hour long the film pads out several segments with shots of the Phoenix-Bot flying in space, almost like the entire movie was one big commercial for this one 80s action figure. There are parts where the movie completely say "screw you physics" like when someone shoots opens a ship's window in space to run a drive-by on an approaching missle, like something out of GTA. If you're planning on doing your own Mystery Science Theatre session for a crappy anime wannabe bootleg, then dial this up, which is conveniently part of the Ronin Mecha lineup on Tubi.

ANI-MOVIES, *Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms

Acting as the second half of what would have been a more effective trilogy, Battle Of The Realms continues the story from Scorpion's Revenge. This animated movie combines elements from the later Mortal Kombat video games past the original one, and tend to rush plot elements from a series of fighting games that got more convoluted as it went along. The major difference is that in this one, the realm of Outworld is referred to as Edenia, the world that Otherworld eventually merged with. Former Avatar animator Ethan Spaulding returns as director, with slightly upgraded quality.

After the previous Mortal Kombat tournament, Shao Khan begins an invasion of Earth, with the tournament champions leading up humanity's defense forces. Shao Khan convinces the thunder god Raiden to petition the Elder Gods for a final Mortal Kombat to end any future conflicts, even though its not explained how Edenea could go to war to Earth since they lost the last tournament. The Gods agree, with Raiden asking to have his godhood removed so he could join Earth's fighters as a participant. Meanwhile, Scorpion is being hunted by the mad god Shinnok to unlock the final hidden piece of a powerful entity known as the One Being, to which Shinnok sent cybernetic Lin Kuei ninjas. The new Sub-Zero seeks revenge against Scorpion who was tricked into killing his brother by Quan Chi. The new Mortal Kombat takes place on the Outworld conquered realm of Edenia, of which Princess Kitana is the rightful heir to. Earth's fighters particpate with Liu Kang finally besting Shang Tsung, but newcomers Kung Lao and Stryker dying in combat. Kitana tries to assassinate Shao Khan fighting Raiden, but the skull-headed hulk stops her and kills the thunder god, which pressures Liu Kang to unlock his inner Super-Saiyan and defeats Shao Khan. The Elder Gods lend Liu Kang their combined powers so he can take on the revived One Being merged with Shinnok, leading to a full blown kaiju battle with the fate of the universe lying in the balance.

The sheer way the stakes keep building to cosmic levels in this single feature is sort of like taking Avengers: Age Of Ultron and zooming right into Endgame. You can tell that WB was rushing this out as a cashcow when the opening bit with Scorpion showing off his moves is taken out a meme of "Ultra-Instict Shaggy". You can get whiplash from the pace the plot warps to, and many might find the way the story escalates more than a little jarring. There's some development in Johnny Cage and Sonya's relationship, and we get to see Jax's new robot arms, but Liu Kang's evolution from fighter to godhead is more than slightly a major paradigm shift. Fans of the video games will probably find it inviting, however the average animation lover or comics fan would be better off just renting it.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Appleseed

Although most people might be familiar with the 2004 CGI movie, Masamune Shirow's manga series was turned into this feature-length OVA one-shot from 1988. The original comic was similar to Shirow's later work of Ghost In The Shell dealing with special police forces in a high-tech future and was one of the founding Japanese contributions to the cyberpunk genre. The OVA, along with several other anime adaptations of Shiro's titles, the director took a sci-fi cop story and turned it into a stage for social or political commentary. Kazuyoshi Katayama director had previously worked on 80s hit movies like Space Adventure Cobra and Nausicaa, but the 1988 OVA does lack the financial backing and high quality of his former productions, but this nostalgic gem by the legendary Gainax studio still maintains a place in anime history.

After the third World War, a good portion of the Earth lay in ruins, with the metropolis of Olympus acts as a shining beacon for refugees. Most of the citizens are either cyborgs, or bioroids, artificial humans. There is also a large population of regular humans, alot of which were former wastelanders. Two of these former road warriors are the sexy blonde SWAT team member Charon, and her cybernetic partner Briareos who has most of his outside replaced with mechanical parts, including a noticeable pair of antennae which makes him look like a big metal bunny. The city is being targeted by a terrorist cell set on bringing Olympus' down because they believe the utopian lifestyle is inhuman, and they kidnap the bioroid Hitomi whose DNA can bring down the entire computer network. This allows the terrorists to pull a grand theft mecha with one of Olympus' giant mobile battle towers to wreck the city, all while Charon and Briareos try to figure out the traitor in their midst in their mission to rescue their friend Hitomi.

The Appleseed OVA does steer slightly of the manga plot from a cyberpunk crime story to more one of soapbox for mankind's struggle between elitism and basic survival. The quality is above the norm as far as other OVAs from the time, but you can still see where alot of corners were cut, infamously with examples of Engrish like "Red Alart". There's alot of inconsistencies between the cybernetics lore from the OVA and the original source material including other cyberpunk titles, like having the entire city's defense being carried around in the DNA of a random girl, or the huge cyborg Briareos being able to consume human food which is never used in any of the other Appleseed adaptations. It's a token in the library of standard anime viewings, but still a great look into the 80s era.

Beachcomber is a Disney Princess