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ANI-MOVIES, *Luca

Before Turning Red, Pixar created a totally different tale of maturity with fantasy elements to it in 2021. Luca was the first full-length picture directed by animator Enrico Casarosa who previously worked on Pixar productions like Up, Onward, and Coco. The whole concept is somewhat of a successor to Casarosa's short that he did for Pixar in 2011, La Luna which was about a fisher family off the coast of Italy, except this time a supernatural twist has been added. Dreamworks would take the concept of Luca along with Turning Red into their own "original" idea for Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, even though it took on its own unique style. Luca was not a regular Pixar story delving into social commentary or emotional inner peace, but merely a tale of growth in an otherworldly setting.

The movie is set in 1959 at the fictional Italian fishing town of Portorosso where a family of sea monsters live nearby underwater. Their only son Luca shepherds dim fish for some reason, while his parents warn him to stay away from boats, even though he gets interested in the things humans drop from their boats. He meets another young sea monster named Alberto who lives alone on a small island in a desolate lighthouse, and he shows Luca that when sea monsters go on dry land they turn into humans. This gets Luca in trouble with his parents who want him to go the depths to with his see-through uncle, so he'll be safe from humans. Luca runs away from home and teams up with Alfredo with the goal of getting their own vespa scooter which they believe will help them see the world on their own. They meet local girl Giulia who tells them about an upcoming multisport race where they can win the prize money to get their own vespa. The boys spend the next week living with Giulia and her one-armed fisher father training for the race while trying to keep their sea monster identities secret, all while avoiding Luca's parents who have come up to the surface to look for their son. There is of course the standard cartoon villain involved whose sole motivation was to win the race along with his two henchboys just to flaunt his ego. Not to give away the ending, but it doesn't have what you normally expect to see in a Pixar flick.

Luca is an endearing movie which is more of a slice-of-life story than a modern-day fairy tale. The animation style has an obvious influence on the works of Hayao Miyazaki, especially Ponyo. There is a strong sense of innocence and fairness to each of the character's motivations, except of course for the villain. Even though it is a Pixar production, Luca is a little lacking in visual dynamics, at least outside of Luca's dream sequences which is most of the film. The moderate tone of this film works at least as a change of pace from all the Cars movies Pixar keeps turning out. It's more of a pleasant inoffensive feature for the whole family, even though it could stand be more decisive about whether they want to stick with either spoken English or Italian.

No matter what they say on Mandalore...this is the only true way!

ANI-MOVIES, *Blue Thermal

Kana Ozawa created the five-volume manga series of Blue Thermal in 2015 that was popular enough to not only get a prequel manga, but a full-length anime movie in 2022. The studio behind it was Telecom Animation Film who has a long lists of credits in several American productions like Real Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, and Mighty Orbots. It's a slice-of-life story with some melodrama added to pad out the film's 103-minute run time. There is resplendent designs and flying sequences, although some of the characters are obvious generic anime stock.

Tamaki Tsuru is a freshman on her own in her new college and accidently causes the aviation club's glider to be damaged. The team captain Kuramochi talks her into paying the debt off by joining their club, and later discovers that she has a natural talent for operating a glider and all the aeronautics involved with it. The majority of the middle of the story has Tamaki contending with rival gliders and her big sister from the competing school who has been holding a grudge against her since they were young, so the plot is lengthened with customary anime cliches. The film wraps with Tamaki working out her feelings for Kuramochi who has gone missing in Germany while the aviation club is going through its finals. There's never any confirmed romance, although greatly hinted at between the male and female leads.

As a movie, Blue Thermal is better here than it might have as a TV series which it was first conceived as, even though it can seem lackluster at points. Eleven Arts decided to save even further money in their English release of this by not providing a dub or even bothering with a U.S. theatrical run. You can find this on Blu-ray through Shout Factory but could save some cash just by catching it for free on numerous streaming channels.

ANI-MOVIES, *Fear(s) Of The Dark

Not related to the Canadian horror movie, Fear(s) Of The Dark is an animated horror anthology done entirely in black-and-white by Prima Linea Productions who also helped produce The Red Turtle film from Studio Ghibli. This was done as the brainchild of a select group of cartoonists and designers that pulled their talents to create a study of fear in everything from social anxiety to full-blown horror. The major problem with the film is the sequence it is presented in, as it has several different segments that don't chronologically play out one after the other. There are wraparound intervals between each chapter which are all narrated pieces of a woman going over her everyday woes with a constantly shifting graphic backdrop. The interior components are their own separate installments, even though a few of them break into a previous story that hadn't completed yet, so it's the horror anthology equivalent of channel surfing while you're watching something on one TV network.

The first and opening story is four chapters of a nobleman walking around town with his quartet of violent dogs that each hunt down an innocent victim who is powerless to fight back which ends with the final canine turning on his sadistic master. The next tale is by comic artist Charles Burns who created Black Hole about a shy young man who begins a relationship with a girl he knows from college that turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare with insect/human hybrids. Following that is one that also gets brought back througout different points in the movie about a Japanese girl plagued by the ghost of a samurai. After this is a particularly creepy story where a boy in rural France witnesses his neighbors getting slaughtered by a crocodile, which is odd enough considering there aren't any crocodiles native to that area, but the victims it left behind are forever changed into creatures of the night. The finale is the longest where a large man seeks shelter from a snowstorm in an old, abandoned house and finds himself going through the memories of a former occupant as he slowly gets trapped in the dark confines of the haunted mansion.

Fear(s) Of The Dark blends in traditional and CGI animation in their own segments and still looks good since it was made in 2007. There is no English dub so that might put off a few potential American viewers, but it maintains the tradition of horror anthology movies like Creepshow even if half the material is about everyday fears and not just supernatural. The eerie imagery puts you in the mood for dark tales of one of our deepest emotions.

ANI-MOVIES, *Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths-Part Two

Where the first installment of the Crisis trilogy that is supposed to wrap up the Tomorrowverse was a rousing time-tripping event, Part Two is more of a character study of two of its main characters instead of an actual story. The second chapter leaps from different points of the prior Tomorrowverse titles while showing how the still remaining characters attempt to hold their realities together. The movie strays somewhat from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths comic book series of the 80s, even though it's trying to establish a new take on old characters who were first introduced in that same event. If there was a reason for buying this movie on its own as opposed to waiting for the compilation movie that Warner Bros. will do is if you're a profoundly compulsive DC fan who has to get everything related to comics as they are first released.

The state of things is that there are five remaining Earths being held together with a tower on each one keeping the anti-matter waves at bay. Joker tries to destroy one with Solomon Grundy and Killer Crock while Tomorrowverse Batman teams up with different members of the Bat-Family from various realities to stop this attack. The remaining heroes gathered by The Monitor are coordinating in an attempt to prevent being wiped from existence. The majority of the first half goes over the lives of Supergirl and Psycho-Pirate who was the main villain from Justice Society: World War II. We learn about Supergirl's life after Krypton exploded at the beginning of Legion Of Super-Heroes at how she ended up spending some years under the care of The Monitor and then eventually heading to Earth to reunite with her cousin. Psycho-Pirate's entire backstory is covered in his prior life on Earth-2 as Charles Halstead who can control emotions, how he gained the ability to travel to other worlds from Dr. Fate, and how he went from one reality to another when he would wear out his welcome just restarting his plan in a different universe. It turns out that Psycho-Pirate was also Doctor Spectro from the DC Showcase: Blue Beetle short, meaning that he has assumed different identities on other worlds, and finally gets a visit by Supergirl who is now Harbinger thanks to a power transfer by The Monitor. Pycho-Pirate gets The Monitor to also give him a portion of his cosmic power to enhance his own empathic abilities as the villain begins to make contact with The Monitor's opposite, the equally powerful Anti-Monitor. This mysterious new enemy sends hordes of shadow demons against the heroes who are defending the towers. Wonder Woman disappears along with the Amazons on their world, the Bat-Family fall prey to Psycho-Pirate's control, and John Stewart manages to finally awaken John Constantine from his centuries long haze of being Pariah but at the cost of the last remaining Green Lantern ring. Psycho-Pirate manipulates Supergirl into taking out her aggression on The Monitor, brutally attacking him. The Anti-Monitor coalesces all his shadow demons into a single huge giant about to destroy the final tower, ending on a cliffhanger.

Part Two carries on the story from Part One, but it all seems like the entire project could've just been split up into a longer double feature instead of a trilogy. Despite the Bat-Family showing up on a lot of the promotional material, there is little done with the characters, and Will Friedle as Batman Beyond only gets about two lines in the whole movie. The final chapter is supposed to feature the return of many former DCAU actors, including the final performance of Batman by Kevin Conroy, although it seems like it will be more of a sound bite. You would be better off waiting until the final chapter is released before bothering with this forgettable filler episode, or at least when they do the mandatory collected edition of all three movies.

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