ANI-MOVIES, *The Grinch

Illumination tried to milk the Dr. Seuss cow one more time after The Lorax with yet another full-length adaptation of How The Grinch Stole Christmas which was perfect the first time in the 30-minute TV special done by the master of facial expressions, Chuck Jones. The live-action version gave people the jibblies, so possibly going back to animation would be a step back up. The CGI is pleasant to watch but bringing in modern day 3D animation filled with pop culture references don't really help.

This version of Whoville doesn't mention the fact that their world exists in a microverse which happened to have their own counterparts to Jesus and Santa Claus as Christmas is the center of the entire town's attention. The Grinch is a mysteriously green loner that lives inside a nearby mountain along with his dog Max who realizes he needs to go into town for groceries. The decorations, good cheer, and aggressive carollers reinforces Grinch's hatred of the holiday, so much so that he plans on stealing the entire thing from everyone. He decides to dress up as Santa Claus(this time with an actual white beard!)and herds the fat reindeer Fred into pulling his sled which he stole from his neighbor. Fred is later shown to have his own family so Grinch lets him go and replaces him with Max. With an assortment of gadgets right out of Wile. E. Coyote's catalog the Grinch successfully pulls off the citywide heist, even though the Whoville residents still sing welcoming Christmas which seeps into his heart. It's just then that the sled filled with swag almost goes over a cliff where Fred and his family shows up to use their mutant reindeer super-strength to help Grinch retrieve his stolen goods so he can return them. The Whoville folk are strangely okay with this as they invite Grinch to Christmas dinner where the reformed loner realizing that all he really wanted was to stop being alone. There is a subplot in this with Cindy Lou trying to ask Santa to help with her single mother raising her twin baby brothers, although this is mainly used as filler to make it to an 85-minute long feature.

The Grinch is definitely the lesser annoying of the two adaptations of Seuss' book and it does have a number of charming cartoon gags. The downside is that it pulls along what is a short story into a full-length movie by giving the Grinch another unnecessarily sobby origin with pathetically little dedicated to giving any details concerning his past. The original TV special is still one of the single greatest holiday specials of all time and this movie is more of a humorous cash grab instead of becoming a Christmas standard.

ANI-MOVIES, *Mirai

Being the only non-Ghibli anime movie to be nominated for an Oscar, Mirai was directed by Mamoru Hosoda of Summer Wars fame. Produced by Studio Chizu, the 2018 movie used elements from Hosoda's previous title The Girl Who Leapt Through Time into a new time travel fantasy feature for all ages.

Kun is a playful 4-year-old who gets some competition for his parents' affection with his newborn sister. The baby Mirai(which is Japanese for "future")is taking up most of the family's time with their second child, and the Kun is naturally jealous of her for this. The boy goes out to the garden of the house that his family built enclosing a tree where he meets a humanized version of his dog Yukko, revealing that there is something enchanted concerning this tree. Kun gets a visit from a teenage Mirai from the future who convinces him to put away a pair of dolls which is a Japanese tradition concerning a girl's marriage. Somehow being able to go along with all the weirdness, Kun soon gets sent back in time to meet his mother as a girl, and then later on his great-grandfather after WWII. A visit from Kun's future self leads him to a realize that Mirai has a place in his family as her future self shows him how the tree in the garden literally acts as a family tree with its mysterious power.

Mirai is shown from the point of view of a toddler with none of the adult characters having any given names. It doesn't make Kun out to be a likable protagonist, but then he's only 4 as his perception on the bigger world is still developing so any criticisms about him being a brat should add his age to the equation. The anime is an original idea by Hosoda and the creators at Studio Chizu where their vision expands into a diverse feature with the various timelines Kun visits. As a movie, this might not seem as memorable as a Ghibli presentation, although it does help the viewer appreciate the ties to their family both past and future.

Christine McVie, R.I.P.

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Early Man

After digging back into their Wallace And Grommit franchise with the Shaun The Sheep spinoff movie, Aardman Animation created an original idea for a stop-motion picture in Early Man. Unlike some of the previous Aardman movies, Early Man was specifically engineered for a British audience as it focuses on football, or as it is called in the Western Hemisphere, "soccer". The sports movie is mixed in with director Nick Park's brand of shenanigans and cartoon humor.

Set a few millions of years ago, a meteor crashes on a group of prehistoric primates in what would become England who use the burnt space rock to invent the game of soccer. Some ages later, the descendants of that tribe have their land taken over by a greedy empire to mine its precious metals. Hopeful caveman Dug challenges the empire's Lord Nooth to get their home back by winning a soccer game but Dug and his faithful boar don't really know how it is played. Luckily, local bronze dealer Goona is a naturally good player, but the empire turned her down because they only use male players, and she teaches Dug's tribe to work together as a team as they come to realize the talent they inherited from their ancestors.

Despite being as historically accurate as The Flintstones, Early Man is a fresh take on the vintage cartoon caveman concept. It bears a bouquet of cheeky humor but is still a family-friendly feature highlighting the virtues of family and friendship. Aside from its poor box office reception, the film is a gratifying watch with amazing voice acting, especially Tom Hiddleston hamming it up as the loathsome Lord Nooth.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Fragtime

The mangaka known as Sako created a 2-volume yuri series, and Kaze-san And Morning Glory director Takuya Sato applied his similar brand of shoujo-ai creativity into an OVA special based on the manga. Tear Studio hit the ground running with their work on this their first made for video feature, a girl/girl romance with a science-fiction twist.

Misuzu is a shy girl who has the strange ability to stop time for three minutes a day which she uses to get out of akward situations. This works on everyone and everything around her, except for the popular Haruka who learns of it after Misuzu tries to shockingly look at her panties while believed to be frozen. Haruka at first blackmails Misuzu into hanging out with her after breaking the ice, and they both become more than friends as they use the clock stopping to help out their schoolmates in hidden little ways. Misuzu's power begins to fade as she realizes that Haruka keeps up a helpful appearance to cover up her own insecurities. Despite the magic being used up, the two reconcile and come out to each other.

The similarities in the relationship between romantic duo in this and Sato's Kaze-san And Morning Glory which came out a year earlier are apparent, although it maintains the same fuzzy feelings someone experiences in adolescent love. Fragtime is yet another charming yuri anime inviting for curious minds.

ANI-MOVIES, *Big Fish And Begonia

One of the few Chinese animated movies to get a English theatrical release, Big Fish And Begonia was made partially through Studio Mir which most Americans would recognize for animating Voltron: Legendary Defender and Legend Of Korra. Zhang Chun and Liang Xuan directed this full-length movie that started out as a short flash animation which took the better part of a decade to finally get its big budget remake. The story takes inspiration from Chinese mythology as its style is similar to Studio Ghibli's Sprited Away.

A race of elementals known as the Others live in a world below the ocean where they govern the changing of the seasons. One of the Others is Chun and she joins more of her kind in her teenage years as they go to spend a small amount of time in the human world in the form of a red dolphin. Chun's visit causes a human boy to be killed in rescuing her, so once back home she makes a deal with the resident soul collector to give half her life away to return the boy to the living. Troublemaking neighbor Qui helps her take care of the boy's soul that they name Kun, and the two teens grow closer as they keep Kun now occupied in the body of a growing dolphin with a unicorn horn coming out his head. The celestial gods realize that Kun is in their world which is supposed to cause the ocean to crash over them. Chun is able to help Kun be resurrected in the human world, along with being reincarnated herself after Qui sacrifices his life to be the new soul collector.

Big Fish And Begonia has amazing 2D and 3D animation formatted in both hand drawn and CGI. The style and movement has their own special brand of excellence which shows how far Chinese animation has gotten in the last generation. The dub voice acting is fine, but the original Chinese language is equally good. The only thing that keeps the movie from achieving higher praise is the plot periodically introduces new elements that don't seem to pay off later on like the introduction of a rat witch who uses Kun as her way back to the human world. The overall story is easy enough to follow and it isn't necessary to have a major in Chinese folklore to appreciate this romantic fantasy.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *New Getter Robo

Go Nagai's second big hit in the field of giant robots after Mazinger Z was Getter Robo that introduces two major ingredients into the mecha genre, one was the concept of an entire team of pilots, but also the first combiner unit. Before Voltron or Transformers started stacking metal mashups, Getter Robo was the groundbreaker for it all. A few years after they finished up two separate OVA series concluding the original arc from the 1970s, New Getter Robo was its own 13-episode OVA as a remake. The anime was its own solid series set aside from the prior Getter Robo incarnations which don't require the prior series' history.

Oni are showing up and attacking a special lab housing the space radiation called "Getter Rays" which can do anything from folding space and time, pulling in demons and other monsters from different dimensions, and powers the lab's guardian Getter Robo which is piloted by a trio that can reconverge their vehicles into three battle modes. A disgraced martial artist, a former terrorist, and a reformed monk get pulled into a mad scientist's fanatical mission to halt the repeated monster attacks. Exactly what the Getter Rays are and what they actually do are a serious mystery as it keeps sending people into alternate timelines, gun-toting samurai, and steampunk airships makes for an interesting narrative, but ultimately makes the watcher confused as to what the actual point of it was other than nostalgia for the source material.

New Getter Robo did receive a television release but was first and foremost an OVA as it has large buckets of blood being sprayed all over the battlefield. The anime has the same over the top attitude that would later influence titles like Gurren Lagaan, but when making that frame of mind into the sole focus of an entire series doesn't help much if there is no definitive resolution or even a consistent plot. You can watch this whole series now on DVD or Blu-Ray, as well as streaming, even if you still enjoy the ride if you don't expect it to go anywhere.