OBSCURE O.V.A., *Fight! Iczer One

As one of the first big hits to enter the emerging OVA market of the mid-80's, Fight! Iczer One was based on a story from an adult manga anthology. The plot was tweaked into being less mature but still maintaining plenty of gore and sexual innuendo. Macross and Megazone 23 animator Toshiki Hirano premiered as a director in this 3-episode series which was successful enough to not only two OVA sequels as well as an incomplete manga prequel, all of which were all given their own English release, although through separate distributors. Fight! Iczer One got initially thrown on to the American market through the early defunct U.S. Renditions on VHS with a dub specifically created for American audiences, which was later put on DVD by Media Blasters. Hirano's work on this series would later influence anime like Magic Knight Rayearth, as well as audio dramas based on the manga, one of which was a crossover with his other OVA project of Dangaioh. The original OVA would create its own legacy of super-powered characters like Dragonball Z, horror titles that were inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft such as Vampire Hunter D, and bio-mecha giant robots that later evolved into anime similar to Evangelion. Fight! Iczer One was also the first anime to focus on yuri but still set in the horror and mecha genres.

Taking place in a slightly futuristic Japan, Nagisa is an average blue-haired girl who gets scouted by pointy-eared bio-android Iczer One who needs to use her unrequited love to help power her giant robot, Iczer-Robo. A mecha powered by yuri love might seem unusual, but since Iczer One is a synthetic lifeform just learning about her own emotions, and somehow synchronizes this with Nagisa to stop the corrupted forces of her own people known as the Cthulhu(or as they call it in the dub, Cthulwulf), a race of artificially created alien females travelling through space. A disembodied supercomputer called Big Gold had earlier taken over the Cthulhu turning them into her own personal army, even though Iczer One managed to escape her grasp just before the evil AI picks Earth as its next target. Iczer-Robo manages to win against Cthulhu's first mecha assault which leads to Big Gold creating Iczer One's redheaded sister, Iczer Two, who now pilots her own robot, Iczer-Sigma, all this while the Cthulhu are slowly taking over the world by turning its inhabitants into mixed up Cronenberg monsters. Iczer Two captures Nagisa and brainwashes her to attack Iczer One leaving our title character with no other choice but to lethally defeat her while simultaneously giving her the inner strength to kill her wicked sister as well as Big Gold. With the Cthulhu now under Iczer One's management, she uses her new resources to remake the end of the first Superman movie by reversing time so that the Earth was never invaded in the first place with all the human having no memory of the dark invasion.

One of the standout features of Fight! Iczer One is that it shows influences from other Japanese titles like a battlecraft modeled after the infamous Atragon, plus other tokusatu and anime with characters like Tetsuo from Akira making an appearance, which is not too unsurprising as it was released at the same time as other reflective anime including Project A-Ko that was played largely for laughs. The mecha designs from Masami Obari are apparent with the pointy shoulderguards, even though Iczer-Robo probably has one of the junkiest paint jobs ever which does get pimped out better in the Iczer-3 sequel, plus having it inducted into the Super Robot Wars video games. Fight! Iczer One was one of the first dubs intended to grab the attention of adult audiences with an above average performance by Wendee Lee in one of her earliest roles. The yuri aspect isn't particularly deep when compared to future shoujo-ai titles, even though it was still groundbreaking in its delivery of the genre. If your curiosity is peaked for one of the original OVA hits, it's certainly earned its place as an otaku stepstone.

ANI-MOVIES, *Coco

Numerous naysayers probably confused Pixar's Coco with Fox's Book Of Life which came out just three years prior, with Disney still two years as yet to buy out Fox. Both movies were CGI animated dealing centered around Mexico and their country's beliefs surrounding the Day of the Dead, although Book Of Life was more of a romantic fantasy while Coco focused in on familial ties. Lee Unkrich directed this several years after doing his last movie, Cars 3, and the film was written by Adrian Molina as his first screenplay project, both creators helped make Coco one of Pixar's biggest sellers of all time.

Set in modern Mexico, Miguel is the great-grandson of the now elderly shoemaker Coco whose entire family has been raised with an intense phobia of music because Coco's father left her family to become a famous musician. Miguel wants to break free of his family's cycle of hatred and become a famous singer on his own. He tries to perform at the Day of the Dead festival, but can't find a guitar to play, so he makes off with the enshrined guitar of famed deceased star Ernesto which curses him into a living spirit able to interact with the ghosts from the other side that are in town to accept their loved ones offerings. Miguel gets help from his visiting dead relatives who take him to the underworld so Coco's mother can offer her blessing to him so he can return before dawn, otherwise he'll be stuck in the afterlife forever. Coco can go back but only under the condition that he never plays music again. The living ghost boy can't accept this deal and believes that Ernesto is really his genuine great-great-grandpa, so Miguel agrees to help the lonely Hector to get to his possible ancestor in exchange for taking his photo back to the land of the living otherwise Hector might fade away into limbo if no living person remembers them on the Day of the Dead. Miguel has enough problems navigating this new spirit world while being hunted by his dead relatives as well as the police that exist in his realm, while at the same time him trying to accept certain truths about his family's past as it becomes a race against the clock to undo the curse.

Coco could have focused a little more on the title characters despite her deep senility,  although that would give away the plot too early. Whether you are up to date on Mexican folklore enough to understand the rules of the afterlife, it doesn't take away for the from the overall narrative as it is simple enough to comprehend. What separates Coco over Book Of Life is that it does feature richer vibrant animation, even though Book Of Life doesn't insist on throwing a new character in every couple of seconds. Coco is a winsome all-ages movie despite dealing heavily in the subject of death.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Amon Saga

At the beginning of the OVA boom of the mid-80's, Amon Saga was a feature-length project by Tohokushinsha Film which based on the manga written by Baku Yumemakura and drawn by Final Fantasy character designer Yoshitaka Amano. It was a standard sword and sorcery tale but with a pinch more gore than the average fantasy anime had at the time. There was little fanfare for it in America when it was released in 2001 as most people thought that it was the recently produced Amon: Devilman Apocalypse OVA which followed up the early 90's Devilman series.

In a reality like something out of Robert E. Howard's Conan, lone swordsman Amon traverses the war torn lands seeking to get revenge on the evil masked Emperor Valhiss whose entire kingdom rides on the back of a giant turtle. Amon works his way into Valhiss' goon squad in an attempt to assassinate the Emperor for killing his mother, although the wicked ruler has captured the princess of another realm whose father holds the map to a missing treasure that could give the empire enough power to take over the known world. Amon has to juggle his feelings for the kidnapped princess while maintaining his position in the empire but breaks away with two other fellow recruits that help free the princess. Afterwards, they are all attacked by werewolves, but the barbarians literally rip their faces off. The Valhiss forces find where the treasure lies just as Amon and his party arrive to have a final duel to the death where the Emperor is revealed to have a deformed hamburger face wrecking whatever kind of Darth Vader cred he might have had.

Amon Saga is a forgettable Dungeons And Dragons rip off, although you can see some elements from it were used in future Japanese productions like the Golden Axe video games. There is a brief cameo by Amon's original sensei who is a dead ringer for Amano's most popular character, Vampire Hunter D, although there is no given connection between the two separate properties. The style and design are the only real appeal to this as the plot and characters are so predictable you won't be surprised by anything less than the intense fighting sequences. The OVA could make for a one-time watch for a look into the rise of high fantasy anime at the time, but its limited VHS and DVD release from Manga Entertainment shows that it isn't really worth seeking out a physical copy.

ANI-MOVIES, *Strange World

On what could be viewed as one of the first solarpunk motion pictures ever made, Disney's Strange World was an attempt of the billion dollar company to create a more ecologically minded animated movie, even though Fox beat them to the punch 30 years earlier with Ferngully. Aside from being another Disney CGI movie that had nothing to do with Pixar, Strange World suffered from a severe depletion of the average amount of publicity into one of their major theatrical releases. There was also some drawback since the film featured not only one of Disney's first multiracial characters but also their first canonical gay character as well which made various parties protest against it. Inspired by vintage sci-fi pulp fiction stories, this was the directorial debut of Disney regular animator Don Hall with an original screenplay by Qui Nguyen who formally worked on Raya And The Last Dragon.

Taking place in a parallel Earth-like world, the land of Avalonia is a country that is totally blocked off from the rest of the planet by a nearly endless mountain range. Famous explorer Jaeger Clade leads several expeditions looking for the edge of the mountains despite losing the respect of his teenage son Searcher. Jaeger leaves on his own while Searcher manages to create a sustaining electrical system using peculiar plants which conduct their own power called Pando over the next quarter of a century. Searcher eventually married, had a son of his own named Ethan, and ran a farm that harvested the Pando energy. Avalonia's female president Callisto enlists Searcher to help her discover why the Pando isn't flowing as frequent, so Ethan stows away along with his mother Meridian chasing after him to an unknown inner world below their own. This new realm is filled with various different lifeforms, some of which cause the team's airship to crash. Searcher finds his long-lost father who spent the last few years fighting to survive with his own modified flamethrower, while Ethan runs across a bizarre blue slime he names Splat. After the family reunion, they continue to resolve the Pando power loss which leads to a major revelation of not only the land they live in as well as their planet of origin. Along the journey, Jaeger, Searcher, and Ethan resolve their father-son relationships, even though it has the reoccurring Disney trope of a secret antagonist that shows up near the finale.

Disney's lack of promoting Strange World made it their biggest animated theatrical flop, plus the hesitancy to plug their more diversified release had several countries put a ban on the film. As far as the originality of the story is concerned it is exceptionally inspiring, even though the characters are tediously stock and predictable in their conflicts and actions. The animation quality is however in its own level of superiority far exceeding Disney's prior CGI movies, with a special initiative centered on the otherworldly creatures and their own unique biology. Strange World is a fair enough adventure keeping par with their prior efforts like Atlantis, although the stereotypical characters might ward off anyone considering adding this title to their personal movie library.

ANI-MOVIES, *A Wizard's Tale

If anyone remembers the old Bugs Bunny short where Yosemite Sam played a knight on a stupid dragon, then they might be familiar with an unrelated 1970's Saturday Morning cartoon inspired by it. Former Looney Tunes animator Friz Freling with partner David DePatie formed DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, an independent studio that ended up taking a majority of work from Warner Bros. after they closed their own animation department. DePatie–Freleng Enterprises went on to do the original Pink Panther toons, as well as some of the early Marvel animated series like Fantastic Four and Spider-Woman. Friz took the idea of a mustached menacing dragonrider and created what could be viewed as a modern day fairy tale in the series titled Here Comes The Grump which only lasted a single season. The cartoon never received much circulation in reruns, but it did gain a slight cult following with Spanish-language audiences, similarly to Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat to which a full-length feature was made along with a prequel film by Anima Estudios in Mexico. Anima went on to co-produce a new CGI animated movie with Handmade Films, a British company founded by George Harrisson of The Beatles, and the film was released in most English-speaking markets as A Wizard's Tale.

First opening up in the parallel universe land of Groovingham, a newly appointed wizard labeled The Grin sets about his first day of royal duties by using his sorcery to make the population uncontrollably happy, causing much chaos in the city. The Grin becomes a wanted man as he and his ladyfriend Mary escape in his motorcycle/blimp and adopting a baby dragon. Mary gets banished by the King along with her flying machine and ends up in our world where she would spend the following decades writing a popular book about her earlier adventures which leads to a successful career operating her own amusement park modeled after her writings. She passed away but left the park under the supervision of her grandson Terry who is struggling to keep the business afloat. Terry finds a missing piece to his grandmother's zeppelin which opens up a roller coaster back to the magical world. Once there, the bewildered youth finds that an evil wizard known as The Grump has broken out of jail thanks to his doofus dragon and gang of trumpet-nosed minions. The Grump puts a spell on the entire kingdom making everyone gloomy leaving only the perky Princess Dawn unaffected who teams up with Terry to find a way to free her people. The young heroes along with Dawn's bizarre canine take off in Terry's blimp to consult a mountainous oracle who tells them to break the gloom curse they need to find a magic key. The rest of the movie steps into the setting of the original TV series with two kids constantly being chased by a cranky wizard on his flying dragon flunky in a realm right out of Wonderland with its own unique areas made up of balloon people, living Christmas trees, and sentient whispers.

A Wizard's Tale possesses the potential to be an entertaining sit for cartoon historians, even though the main thing holding it back is the repurposed English dub which has most of the same cast from the original Spanish one, including its only celebrity voice over from Ian McShane as The Grump first played by prop comic Rip Taylor back in the 70's The animation is charming even though not up to Pixar's level, specifically in the stock character designs appearing like they are out of a Mario game. The English translation is filled with topical jokes that you would normally see in a stock Dreamworks film like internet memes and pop culture references. The source material does contain some schlocky goodness, but it might be worth your while to give A Wizard's Tale a shot as well as introducing your kids to the idea of comedic isekai.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Landlock

Masamune Shirow gained attention from his past manga works being turned into cyberpunk anime standards like Dominion and Ghost In The Shell, but he also got talked into providing the character designs for original projects like Gundress. Landlock on the other hand was a 2-episode OVA where Shirow drew the characters along with some cover art, but the rest of it was under the production of Yasuhiro Matsumara whose leadership specialized in mediocre anime like Z-Mind. The anime was initially pitched as the pilot for a possible video game franchise, but the OVAs lack of sales buried that in an early grave. This didn't stop companies like Manga Entertainment from imposing on Shirow's credits on the anime as the sole focus of their promotion, which might also explain why they spent so little time on a quality release as it was the only time they got the dub performed by unknown Canadian actors.

Set in a techno-fantasy realm, the peaceful land of Zerlueis being attacked by the flying battle fortress nation of Zulearth whose leader Zanark wishes to find both halves of a special wind element that allows for teleporting and geomancy. For this plan, he raised the girl Agahli as his daughter to one day find the bearer of wind power who is her own biological father. Agahli unknowingly kills the poor guy, just as she comes across her twin sister Ansa and their brother Luta, none of which knowing that they have all inherited their father's potential with his passing. The three siblings put their differences aside to prevent Zarnak's evil schemes along with the help of Agahli's would-be boyfriend and a dorky bug expert.

Landlock has Shirow's character specs, but the rest of the world appears like something out of other mid-90's fantasy like El-Hazard or Escaflowne, particularly in the attire and hardware designs. The story is absurdly hollow with much of the lore and logic of how this fictional world operates left up in the air making you think the whole thing is run by mythical pixies. There is some gratuitous fanservice at the beginning featuring the alluring gyaru Agahli which is why she was used on the cover of the American video tapes. The OVA's lack of direction and failing to add anything else than having a celebrated artist as part of the staff make it a serious pass that only would make for a modest weekend rental around the turn of the century.

ANI-MOVIES, *Cats Don't Dance

Turner Feature Animation only produced two complete productions in its short active life, one was the animated/live-action film The Pagemaster, the other was the full-length cartoon film of Cats Don't Dance. Mark Dinal was the director behind it just after he initially left Disney to which he would eventually return to, along with David Kirschner producing it in between productions with Don Bluth. The film first began as a vanity project for Michael Jackson who gave up on it, so it fell into production limbo until Warner Bros. took over Turner Entertainment in the late 90's. It was released in theaters without much publicity which resulted in the film being a bomb at theaters, even though it was able to gain a large following after being released on video along with countless reruns on Cartoon Network at the turn of the millennium. Its success is being an ode to classic films, even though it is more geared toward the live-action movies of the time and not old Terrytoon shorts.

In a parallel universe in the 1930s where all animals are bipedal, can speak human language, and have jobs working with the regular humans, the young hopeful cat Danny heads for Hollywood to become a star. He gets a gig with an agent who specializes in movie parts for animal actors that need some for a new take on Noah's Ark starring Darla Dimple, a temperamental young diva who is like an Anti-Christ version of Shirley Temple. Danny decides to try an act up beyond the one line he has on the film shooting which wrecks the entire set causing Darla to sick her tremendous butler Max to straighten out the debacle. The other animals from the agency including former dancer/singer female cat Sawyer are worried about their future prospects after Danny messed things up for them, so he tries to get their spirits up by putting on a quick show outside the studio. Darla sees this as a potential threat to her popularity, so she sabotages their effort to impress the studio owner by flooding the city, although her efforts are in vain as her scheme is revealed giving the animals starring roles in upcoming movies, some of which wouldn't actually be made for another five decades.

Cats Don't Dance went from being a live-action and animated production in the style of Who Framed Roger Rabbit into a fully animated movie, even though the time period that the story was supposed to take place in a more modern era instead of classic Hollywood. The soundtrack highlighted songs written by Randy Newman, and stunning choreography by Gene Kelly in his final film contribution. The cast includes Scott Bakula and Jasmine Guy as the titular cats, with long time legends like Don Notts, John Rhys-Davis, and Betty Lou Gerson(aka: Cruella de Vil)rounding out the rest of the animal cast, along with cartoon mainstays such as Frank Welker and George Kennedy. The movie's undeniable drawback is that the story moves a tad faster than it should in an effort to emulate fast-talking films of the Golden Age which works against it in trying to appeal to modern audiences. Aside from that, the wholesome callbacks to classic musicals and knee-slapping cartoon antics make for a splendidly welcome watch.