ANI-MOVIES, *Resident Evil: Damnation

Since Resident Evil: Degeneration achieved a moderate success, the fellas at Capcom decided to do another fully-CGI movie. This one also ties into the continuity of the Resident Evil video games, and totally void of the Paul W.S. Anderson live-action franchise(thankfully!). It was animated by Capcom studios, and Digital Frontier which handles several Japanese live-action and anime movies.

Taking place sometime after the Resident Evil 5 game, zombie survivalist Leon Kennedy is sent into an unnamed Soviet country which is in the middle of a civil war to see if either side is using BOWs(Bio-Organic Weapons)such as the T-Virus. Leon is captured by the resistance and discover that they are using a new form Plaga that allows them to mentally control the wall-crawling Lickers. Meanwhile, RE femme fatale Ada Wong is posing as UN liasion to the country's female president Svetlana, but Ada is really working for a unknown source(more than likely to be revealed in Resident Evil 6. Leon's rebel buddies get taken down by the Plaga-infested zombies, and their remaining leader Alexander uses a Plaga to launch a Licker attack on the capitol. Svetlana's forces are unable to repel them, until she unleashes several of the giant Tyrant monsters on them. Leon and Alexander are ultimately saved by the combined American and Russian forces, which almost seems to make everything Leon went through entirely pointless if they were going to step in and take control of the country in the first place.

Damnation is a definate upgrade from Degeneration in as far as the action and animation, plus this one is actually Rated R so there's alot more blood for your buck. Storywise though, this doesn't have much of an impact on the given series, sorta like an anime movie based on an TV series like Naruto that acts an an outside filler arc. There's still very few actual "zombies" in this, although the showdown between the Tyrants and Lickers is a seriously cool fight. I'd recommend this for fans of the video games, or people who are just damn tired of Milla Jovovich and her Matrix bullcrap.

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 6: Page 3

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Isabel Marks.

ANI-MOVIES, *Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

Adapted from the third Vampire Hunter D book by Hideyuki Kikuchi, this was an international production done in part by American anime distributor, Urban Vision. Unlike some other companies, Urban Vision actually put forth its own moola to get anime made, in much the same way they did for Ninja Scroll: The Series. The film was headed up by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who did the Ninja Scroll movie, and later on went on to do other American-funded anime projects like Highlander: Search For Vengeance, The Animatrix, and Batman: Gotham Knight. This was viewed as being the sequal to the 1985 VHD anime film(always respect the original!!!), although you can watch it on its own without having to see the first one.

Set about 10,000 years in the future, the world is still suffering effects from a nuclear fallout that happened sometime in the late 20th Century, and vampires have come out of their coffins to take over. The only thing keeping most innocent humans from being eaten alive are vampire hunters. One of them is the tall, dark, and mysterious D, a dunpeal(or "dhampir"), a well-renowned hunter who is also half-vampire who happens to have a living parasite in his left hand he uses to dispell curses and suck up ghosts. His daddy was actually Dracula, and D tries to defy his bloodsucking nature by hunting down his kind for money. D takes up the job of tracking down the young lady Charlotte who was taken away by the vampire lord Meier Link. Also on their trail are the Marcus Brothers, a team of vampire hunters that were apparently remodeled for the movie to look like the A-Team(I'm not kidding!). Their made of four brothers with their adopted sexy sister Leila, and tour around in their own badass anti-vampire A-Team van. Meier is heading for the castle of the vampire empress Carmilla, D's stepmother that had been killed by Dracula a long time ago. Meier hires the mutant tribe of the Barbarois to protect his carriage on their journey to Carmilla, and they kill off two of the A-Team. Once finally at Carmilla's castle, the remaining Marcus Bros. are taken down leaving only Leila and D. It turns out that Carmilla was using them to resurrect herself from Charlotte's blood. D goes full vampire-Saiyan on her, and then has a last duel with Meier. The movie ends on what is argruably the greatest final scenes in an anime movie ever.

There was alot of changes that were made from the book, like the story was more shown from the POV of the Marcus Bros. instead of dealing with D and his journey. Plus, Carmilla is not in the novel at all, and was added to bring an over villain into the story. The movie has a unique roster of voice actors in it, like Michael McShane(of Whose Line Is It Anyway)as the Left Hand, Pamela Adlon(Bobby on King Of The Hill)as Leila, plus John DiMaggio and Dwight Schultz doing a great job as some of the various cast members. Yoshiaki Kawajiri does a fantastic job on this movie, even better than his previous films. The world it takes place in has a lush elaborate feel to it that slides between dark gothic backgrounds and post-apocalyptic ruins. This was as close to doing a Castlevania anime as we're probably going to get, so for a fantastic vampire action/adventure thrillride, then this should be the #1 choice on your Halloween hitlst!

JESI THE GENIE, *Part 6: Page 2

Story by Jer Alford. Art by Isabel Marks.

ANI-MOVIES, *Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

Since the original TV series was a such a phenomenon, even for non-anime fans, there just had to be a movie follow-up to it. Although like most films based on a TV anime, this one is a midquel taking place between Episodes #22 and 23 of the series. Usually, a movie like this is either a sequel, or it doesn't happen in the context of the series at all. This is a little rare to have a movie be like a "lost episode" to the TV series.

Set mostly on Mars, Spike and the Bebop crew are hunting for a terrorist named Vincent who plans to use a deadly nano-virus to wipe out everyone on the planet. Vincent was part of a team of soldiers from a previous war on Jupiter's moon of Titan that were subjected to military experiments in nanomachine warfare. This technology was later reused by a pharmaceutical company done in secret for the Martian government. Vincent got a hold of the virus, and is going to spread it all over the planet during a Halloween parade. Spike makes a reluctant alliance with the sexy Electra who is Vincent's old lover and an agent of the shifty pharmaceutical company. Electra conveniently happens to have the vaccine to the virus that Vincent gave her without her knowledge. Together along with Jet, Faye, and some retired pilots, they manage to stop Vincent's plan. After all, Spike couldn't possibly die...yet!

The movie employs the same badass animation that made the series so enduring. Truthfully, it's only a little above the quality that the series had, which proves it's greatness to begin with. Everyone of the regulars gets some screentime, including the three old farts who frequently showed up in every other episode. Edward and Ein have a few magic moments too(beware of angry transvestites!). The climax is awesome too, even more so than Spike's final battle with Vicious. The soundtrack by Yoko Kanno is exemplary, with some hip opening and closing themes. This film also sports some of the best aerial dogfighting in an anime since Macross Plus. If you have the series box set, then you've gotta get this to complete your collection. See you, Space Cowboys!

American Anime Movies That Should NEVER Be Made!!!

Hi. Since Dragonball: Evolution and Priest dropped a whole new pile of fertilizer on the prospects of there ever being an actually good American live-action movie based on an anime or manga, I thought what I'd do is a list of potential titles that genuinely could be done right out here. But first, I figured we should tackle some of the ones that don't stand a snowflake's chance in Hell in August of being made into a even a decent American movie! Oh sure, alot of fans would like to see them do a movie based on this hot new martial arts anime starring so-and-so up-and-coming young Disney-spawned actor or actress. But could alot of these movies ever really get made in a way that wouldn't have every otaku in the country ready to attack FOX with torches and pitchforks? F*ck no! So here's an itinerary of titles that Hollywood needs to stay the hell away from...

BLEACH
Sorry, no. I know the idea of a hardass-but-caring highschool kid who can see dead people, and somehow ends up as a part-time soul reaper might sound appealing. Now, this might work in America if they left out all the Soul Society stuff, where all the shingami are just a bunch of punk-ass samurai who only seem to really care about whose the baddest mutha with an "enchanted sword". If it was mainly just about Ichigo and Rukia fighting ghosts and demons, it could fly. But put in all that unnecessary Yu Yu Hakusho shit, and it just becomes another Dragonball Z wannabe.

DRAGONBALL Z
Yeah, I know. They're already scripting Dragonball: Evolution 2-Saiyan Boogaloo. WTF?! If you were like me and saw the first movie online(this is about the only time that I'd advocate video piracy)instead of wasting a dollar at the $1 theatre a week after it premiered in the U.S., you'd know that a Dragonball Z followup is a complete waste of freakin' time! There are people out there starving in the streets, and you wanna waste good money seeing a shitty sequal to a shitty movie? The only way this would work if it was a made-for-video or Sci-Fi Channel original movie. At least that way the special effects would be consistant with the obsurd premise. If Japan decides they want to do an all-Japanese version of DBZ, then okay. Other than that, FOX better stay the f*ck away!

NARUTO
Forget it! No f*cking way! Drop it, boy! Drop it! There's been so much fan praise for this series, which is somewhat justified since it does have a great concept taking place in an all-ninja universe, despite the infinite number of filler episodes. However, there's no way that this would translate into an American movie. First of all, the premise of training youth to be lethal killers and assassins would never go with your average bible-thumping midwest families, unless the kids were brandishing hunting rifles. Any whiney little blonde kid who keeps going around saying that he's going to be their supreme dictator would get the living tar slapped outta him every given minute. Plus, all the chakra horse-hockey would just go over our heads, and the ninjas defy logic by not wearing black or bothering to cover up their bright pink hair when the go on covert operations. Barring that, it'd just be some lame-o cosplay sketch.

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
Here's one that's been waiting to get off the runway for a while now. The history is that the American distributor of the anime TV series, ADV Films, decided to spearhead a live-action movie base on it(even though they couldn't even afford the license to the actual Evangelion anime movies!). They're currently in talks with Gainax(FLCL, Gurren Lagann)to get the rights to do the movie, and have gone as far as getting concept art from WETA, the New England production company that did Lord Of The Rings. There's several reasons why this won't work as an American production. One is we simply don't give enough of a crap about giant robots to do a whole movie about them. Transformers was a merchandising vehicle thrown together with several different anime series models. Aside from The Iron Giant(which on its own was largely inspired by Gigantor)there's been no real attempts at approaching anything even remotely "mecha". Another reason it wouldn't work is because of the overwhelming religious overtones. You thought there were people uptight about The DaVinci Code? This turkey would've had the Mel Gibson lobby forming lynch mobs around the theatre. The main reason is though is that no way in the world could they ever get this done in a single movie. With like seventeen angels to whack coming at them one at a time, this would have to at least be a trilogy to do it any real justice.

ONE PIECE
Oh! An anime about pirates? Is Johnny Depp available? Bitch, please! First off, this anime is really more about "sea adventurers" than pirates. They hardly ever do anything pirate-like, instead of looking for the One Piece(of which they have no f*cking clue as to what it is!). Also, nearly everyone in it has somekind of cursed fruit-induced mutant superpower like stretching, or a completely off the charts fighting ability like using three swords at once. It's a good show for young male viewers(aka: shonen), but this all takes place in an alternate parallel universe with all pirates, like Naruto is just all ninjas. It's just to hard to craft this into something that would be tangible enough to hold any water for an American movie. Plus the style of comedy and action is just so over the wall for us gaijin.

POKEMON
What? Are you f*cking serious?! Do you honestly think they'd consider doing a live-action flick about this dated kids show? Um...YES! For one thing, the fact that something is a dated kids show didn't stop them from making movies of Transformers, He-Man, and G.I. Joe. The other is that despite being around for a while, Pokemon is still a popular series with both new and old anime fans, plus kids who just watch it on TV. Not to mention that the card game and video games are still one of the most enduring franchises in the last decade. You can bet someone in Hollywood was thinking kids would eat this up like salsa-flavored crack, and that Spielberg would've sold out to it big time. God knows that they'd have kids from 90210 as Ash, Misty, Brock, etc., and all the Pokemon would be profoundly shitty CGI abominations.

SAILOR MOON
We've all heard rumors back in the 90s about Geena Davis being involved in a movie of this, and more recently Emma Watson. Hell, they even said Joss Whedon was going to be directing this a couple of years ago! Of course the anime TV series had been instrumental in swaying over thousands of American fans to anime, and is pretty much the single most popular "magical girl" series in the entire world, but there's so many reasons why this crawl out here. Mostly because it's too Japanese. How do you explain why they are wearing sailor-type outfits with wonderfully short skirts? Which if you didn't know was taken from Japanese schoolgirl uniforms. Another is magical girl stuff, at least the anime version of it, doesn't really work out here to well. In the five minutes it takes the Sailor Ganstas to transform, the monster would've gutted them alive! Not to mention, our magical girls either kick ass on a superninja level, or have godlike powers from just wiggling they're nose. It's also difficult to work all five girls meeting up and discovering their past lives in a single movie, which you could do, but would look so rushed to fit in. The other thing is that all the actresses they'd have playing the Sailor Chickas would be around 21 instead of 14 like in the anime/manga. Even Japan couldn't work out doing a live-action film, although they did a halfway good TV series.

ANI-MOVIES, *Dracula: Sovereign Of The Damned

This one is really obscure, but worth looking up if you're an old school otaku, or are sick of all the bishonen vampire anime. Long before Iron Man or Wolverine were tapped to be anime, Toei did this made-for-TV movie premiered in Japan in 1980 based on the Marvel Comics series, Tomb Of Dracula, from the 70s. This had Count Dracula being a regular character in the Marvel Universe who would frequently interact with the other Marvel superheroes like Spider-Man or the X-Men, and it was also the comic where the vampire hunter Blade first showed up. However, this movie has Dracula fighting not the Punisher or Ghost Rider, but Scooby-Doo, Satan, and Super-Jesus!

The story takes place in modern day with Dracula rebelling against Satan because he's the one who rose him from the the dead and made him a vampire. Drac makes off with a sacrifice meant to be Satan's bride, but he elopes with her instead, and a year later they have a seemingly normal baby named Janus. Elsewhere, a trio of fearless vampire slayers are out to get Dracula: Prof. Harker who is the grandson of his old flame, Rachel Van Helsing, and Drac's descendant Frank Drake that was invited along just because he knows kung-fu(whoa!). They're aided by a vampire-sniffing hound that snoops around all over Boston for about a year with no results. Satan meanwhile gets some cult leader to help him revenge against Dracula, although they end up accidently killing Janus instead. Then "God" resurrects Janus as a full grown man in some kind of Fantastic Four-looking outfit, and he then sets out to kill Dracula too. So Dracula and Janus have a little tussle complete with optic-blasts and Pikachu attacks, but Dracula has his powers taken from him by Satan. Now that he's human, neither the Scooby Gang or Ultra-Christ bother trying to off him because they'll only do it if he's a vampire. You don't wanna go to jail for killing a human, but vampires are okay! Drac hoofs it to New York to get his bloodsucker girlfriend Lila(who might actually be his daughter from the comics)to re-vamp him, but she totally snubs him. So then Dracula somehow makes it all the way back to Transylvania despite not having any money for an airline ticket, and fights off a zombie horde created by his old followers. Drac heads for his old castle for which the air inside somehow magically transforms him back into a vampire again. Harker is waiting for him, and he impales him with a silver blade(which would work if he was a werewolf), and riggs himself to blow up taking Dracula with him. This kills him, although in the comics Dracula survived it.

For a comic adaptation, this actually wasn't too bad, aside from the fact Blade wasn't in it concerning the story arc its taken from. The animation was standard for late-70s/early-80s TV quality, although that isn't too much considering studios like Ruby-Spears were a little around the same style. This was released in America on VHS in the mid-80s by Harmony Gold who are most famous for the train wreck known as Robotech. They added their regular staple of extremely bad dubbing on it, and had lines of dialogue that went on forever to fill in the lipflaps of the character, not to mention that the script was soooo corny that it makes Battle Of The Planets sound like Shakespeare. Despite that though, there is no censorship in it with plenty of blood and violence. However, the main draw to this movie is the fact that is an unexpectedly great source of schlockiness that I'm suprised the MST3K crew never went over it. Its great for a Halloween party, or just a drunken Rifftrax run. Where else are you gonna see the King of Vampires enjoying a Big Mac?