R.I.P. , Arleen Sorkin

ANI-MOVIES, *Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

As one of three movies being released 2022 based on the beloved but often confusing fairy tale, Guillermo del Toro's was the exception as a stop-motion animated production. This was created through Robot Chicken's Shadowmachine and the legendary Jim Henson Company which was a concept that del Toro had haunting around development limbo for over a decade. Netflix Animation swooped in to help finally get this dream on the screen as a streaming exclusive. The film strays quite a bit from author Carlo Collodi's original text, but sticks the core concept in a dieselpunk fantasy which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature .

Taking place during WWII, Geppetto is a lonely carpenter whose son Carlo was accidently killed in WWI. In a drunken rage, he cuts down the tree next to his son's grave and carves it into a boy-sized puppet. A wood sprite appears and brings the puppet to life, along with appointing an attending cricket named Sebastian to act as the boy's moral wisdom as the wood golem is christened Pinocchio. Geppetto is shocked to find his hangover has resulted in a living wooden creation, and the local townsfolk don't take kindly to a walking log entering their church during the middle of a service. Pinocchio is sent to school but gets flimflammed by the egotistical travelling puppeteer Count Volpe along with his gremlin-like monkey sidekick Spazzatura into signing a contract to join his act. This scuffle leads to Pinocchio "dying" after being run over by a cart, and the wooden boy goes to the afterlife where he talks with the sphynx-life spirit of Death who is the wood sprite's sister. Pinocchio is told by Death that he can die several times but will never be permanently dead or ever age and that each time he is killed he will only appear in Death's realm for a few minutes, which for some reason is run by skeleton bunnies. Pinocchio comes back to life but decides to go with Volpe to help pay for his father's debts as Geppetto referred to him as a burden. Geppetto and Sebastian set out to find the Count's touring act which is shut down by Mussolini when Pinocchio compares the dictator to a steaming pile of poop. This gets our puppet hero killed again and returns to find himself drafted into the Italian army where he befriends the young Candlewick who is eager to live up to his officer father's inhuman expectations. Volpe arrives to try and get his revenge for Pinocchio's shenanigans, although he is rescued by Spazzatura who was fed up with Volpe's constant abuse. The Count is finally done away with which unfortunately leads to the puppet and monkey getting swallowed up by a sea monster where they find Geppetto and Sebastian inside. Pinocchio uses his strange power of having his nose grow when lying to help the castaways make it out of the giant's blowhole. The monster gives chase to his undigested meal but accidently eats a live mine, causing Pinocchio to die again. While in the afterlife, Pinocchio finds out he can go back early to try and save his father at the sacrifice of his own talent for resurrection. He comes back just in time to rescue Geppetto, and the survivors all live together in peace. Despite Pinocchio outliving everyone else by never aging, we learn that the entire story has been told by Sebastian's ghost in the afterlife playing cards with Death's bunnies.

Guillermo del Toro's darker take on Pinocchio places a larger emphasis on how sacred life should be, even to immortals. The stop-motion animation is commendable, although you can see more fluid animation in productions by Laika or Tim Burton. The plot forges its own path while still holding the idea of the source material. Characters' motivations are in constant flux not being able to stick to a set pattern throughout the movie. This is a deeply memorable addition to the fairy tale mythos still keeping it in a gothic backdrop.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Iczer 3

Also known as Iczer Reborn and Adventures With Iczer 3, this OVA took the original Fight! Iczer One anime and continued the story, this time however it was more of a tokusatsu theme with superheroes and giant monsters. The prior anime director Toshiki Hirano returned to do this sequel which was twice as long as the original as a 6-episode series. The anime has been released on subtitled VHS and DVD through Central Park Media, and a special dub for Manga Entertainment's DVD release. This also leaded to an American comic book adaptation of the anime that only lasted two issues, as well as a 3-part visual novel and a Japanese manga.

Set decades after the original, Iczer-1(now spelled with the number instead of the word "one")is out in deep space hunting down Neos Gold, a cybernetic entity claiming to be the daughter of past villain Big Gold. The two heads clash leaving both damaged, but Neos Gold sets her sights on Earth as her next target. While the evil cyborg recovers, Neos Gold sends her four henchwomen to conquer the planet resulting in two-fifths of the world's population getting killed when Neos takes control of Earth's defense systems. One of the survivors is Nagisa Kasumi, the granddaughter of the prior anime series' Nagisa. She and a few other officers launch the Queen Fuji battle aircraft to go and defeat the alien invaders, which gets the attention of Iczer-1's younger sister Iczer-3 who rushes to protect earth while her sister is recovering with the Cthulhu race. Iczer-3 bonds with the second Nagisa to summon Iczer-Robo, complete with a new paint job. Neos Gold appears to steal the special Iczelio energy that powers the mecha and utilizes the strange source to create a brunette clone of Iczer-3 named Atros, as well as resurrect Iczer-2. Neos' generals are taken down one after the other, one even by Atros who snubbed her sympathy for a deceased pet. Iczer-1 eventually arrives leading to duel between her and Iczer-2 who is talked into helping all three Iczer sisters defeat Neos. Apparently, Iczer-1 doesn't have the power to manipulate time again as Earth is left in shambles by the alien attack, and the Iczers warp back into space leaving humanity to clean up after the mess they caused in the first place.

Iczer-3 removes the shoujo-ai and horror elements from Fight! Iczer-One to create a bigger emphasis on sci-fi action. There is also significantly less giant robot action as Iczer-Robo only shows up twice during the entire OVA. Iczer-3 is a more lighthearted story despite the foreboding apocalypse as the title character acts more like an innocent child despite her destructive powers. In comparison to the previous installment in the Iczer saga, this was extended possibly at least an episode or more longer than was necessary.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Mighty Space Miners

What was supposed to be a 6-episode OVA series, only two of Mighty Space Miners were ever produced. These were released originally on dubbed and subtitled VHS by ADV Films, and then later on DVD by Discotek Media. It's a novice science-fiction plot which is about as engaging as a 1970's disaster film.

In the mid-21st Century, big business Planet Catcher Corporation set out to mine asteroids for precious alien metals. Tortatis is the first child to survive being born in space and now as a 12-year old hopes to earn his license as a pilot. His big test happens as an accident on the asteroid forces it into an impact with Earth causing everyone on the space base to make evacuation plans. This is even more complicated when Tortatis discovers a hidden nuclear bomb stored away inside the asteroid by the Japanese government if it needed to blow the rock in just such an emergency. The OVA ends on a cliffhanger with four further chapters left undone.

Mighty Space Miners is a fair space anime with sprinkles of fluid animated sequences of spacecrafts zipping back and forth. The main characters are largely forgettable as it is hard to distinct how one them is connected to the rest of the cast. If the entire story were allowed to unfold this possibly might have been a more memorable OVA, but the failure of its continuation mines a steep hole for itself.

ANI-MOVIES, *Perfect Blue

The late Satoshi Kon got his first film that he directed in Perfect Blue in 1997, as well as the only film he headed up that he didn't write. Based on Yoshikazu Takeuchi's book series, the movie adapts the original story but takes a more surrealistic edge that Kon flourished at where the real world and dreams eventually become entangled. Madhouse was the studio behind this after their huge success from the hit X animated movie, although there are some scenes that lack the flowing brilliance behind their previous work, it does work for the dreamlike states that Perfect Blue is constantly shifting through. It is widely believed that this film was a large influence for Darren Aronofsky's thriller Black Swan, similarly to how Kon's Paprika was seen as a major source for the idea behind Inception. Regardless of your perspective on the film's impact on the psychological drama genre, Perfect Blue prevails in the library of Hitchkock-themed thrillers.

Set in the time of its release if the mid-90s, Mima Kirigoe has been a part of a pop idol trio who decides to make a change in her life after she gets praised for her acting talent. Mima leaves her group but still keeps her original agent Rumi who helps get her a part in a made-for-video drama which has her playing the part of rape victim. The new actress begins to question the character she is playing along with the change in her own life that seems to cause unforeseen anxiety. All this is happening while people professionally connected to Mima are systematically murdered, which Mima believes might be an odd-looking figure that shows up at most of her appearances disguised as security. Coincidentially a website claiming to be run by Mima herself appears even though she has no memory of doing it, plus Mima keeps seeing a past version of herself still as a singer that keeps telling her to go back to her old life. Mima's lunacy increases as she has difficulty remembering if she isn't reliving the same moment several times in a row. The grand reveal behind the mystery is only the tip of the iceberg as Mima is revealed to be part of a shared psychosis making the viewer question the line of fantasy and reality throughout the narrative.

Perfect Blue was a radical change in the realm of anime the majority of it involved magical girls and giant robots as it showed the rest of the world that Japanese animation can be applied to a variety of genres. Satoshi Kon was seriously specific on what the final product of the movie turned out to be which has left watchers debating about the film's diverse meanings and how they each shape the overall story. This deep psychological dive is strongly intended for mature audiences, so save it for after-hours screenings.

R.I.P.: Pee-Wee Herman

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Justice League: Warworld

The seventh chapter of DC Comic's Tomorrowverse picks up where Legion Of Super Heroes ended with the World's Finest getting beamed up into space. Justice League: Warworld focuses more on DC's Trinity instead of the actual League themselves, so why it wasn't titled The Big 3: Warworld is never given. James Wamestar returns for his third cosmic entry in the Tomorrowverse which appears to be more of a prelude to their upcoming Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths then telling its own original story. You don't need to have seen any of the previous DC animated movies to watch this, although you will want to familiarize yourself with their line of Elseworlds comics that takes its characters into new realities.

The movie opens up with a alternate version of Wonder Woman(possibly from the Justice Society movie)as a lone gunslinger in an old west town where regular roughneck Jonah Hex has been rewritten as a bad guy that Diana has to liberate a small town from. The Tomorrowverse version of Batman finds himself in the sword and sorcery world of DC's legendary Warlord reality where the Dark Knight helps the barbarian king slay the evil wizard Deimos who had previously captured the same Wonder Woman as the two heroes escape into yet another world. Clark Kent of the Tomorrowverse is shown to be in a black and white Twilight Zone episode where everyone but the Trinity are really White Martians in disguise. The Big 3 finally get their memories back and wake up finding Martian Manhunter hooked up to a machine. Our favorite Martian is probably the one seen before in Superman: Man Of Tomorrow who was abducted by the powerful Mongul to act as the mental link to all the prisoners inside his planet-sized headquarters of Warworld. Mongul would power the world through the negative emotions of its comatose captives locking them each in different simulated experiences, similar to The Matrix, and the galactic villain had been enslaving White Martians from different universes in an attempt to locate the only known remaining Green Martian in the multiverse. Mongul hired DC's baddest bounty hunter Lobo to keep his prisoners in line, even though the space bastard planned on betraying his client all along so he could take over Warworld. Martian Manhunter frees the Trinity to help liberate Warworld from Mongul's control resulting in the surviving Martian's probable death. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are then picked up by cosmic being Harbinger who tells them they are now being drafted into an even bigger conflict.

Justice League: Warworld is an interesting watch at least a first where you get to see DC superheroes in parallel universes honoring their source material, especially with Batman going full Frank Frazetta fantasy. Although it makes it hard for second viewing when you realize all the secondary characters in each reality are inconsequential as they are either clones of captured subjects or White Martians, both being manipulated into being part of what is essentially a dream sequence. This is the first time that DC's Trinity got featured in their own movie together while still maintaining their own story arcs. This is a hard Rated-R movie with serious gore and body horror making it almost a Chronenberg flick. Regular fans of DC Comics will appreciate how adaptive their characters can be reinterpreted into a multitude of genres, but the overall final product exists mainly as the opening chapter of an upcoming saga.