ANI-MOVIES, *Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie

Gege Akutami's hit manga-turned anime series, Jujutsu Kaisen, was at first a one-volume manga titled Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School which was later renamed Jujutsu Kaisen 0 as it was a prelude to the ongoing series. The original 2017 was adapted as an anime movie instead of making it part of the official show, so you can view this prequel to the TV series separately on its own without first having watch the show, even though there are some hints that appear throughout the film that make you want to explore the rest of this universe. The film is an adaptation of the entire one-shot comic, so you can see how this plays out as sequence of chapters instead of a steady 3-act movie as some it does suffer from pacing issues and entire concepts get brought up that are completely dropped later on to keep the film under 105 minutes. The story focuses on a completely different protagonist instead of the TV main character Yuji Itadori and how this other character was introduced into the world of the Jujutsu Society. TV series director Sunghoo Park is also the head of this film, and it is still under the studio Mappa's production.

Yuta Okkotsu is a timid teenager that gets constantly harassed by bullies, but what they didn't know is that he is cursed by the spirit of his childhood friend Rika who manifests as a raging demon whenever Yuta is threatened. This gets the attention of the secretive Jujutsu Society made of sorcerers who use their powers to keep mankind from the lethal Cursed Spirits that plague Japan, and they have Yuta enrolled in Jujutsu High in the first-year class of their up-and-coming students. Yuta's new classmates are strange enough including a bad girl with a blade, a strange boy who only speaks using rice ball ingredients, and a talking panda, although it's later revealed that each of them is under their own curse that they've managed to weaponize. Yuta learns to use his curse and bond it to a katana sword to help him attack rogue Cursed Spirits that haunt vacant places throughout the country. Suddenly, the story shifts into a completely different direction when a rival school of sorcerers lead by Geto, a dropout from Jujutsu High who formed his own school, and now his students are planning a turf war by unleashing an army of curses upon the country on Christmas Eve. Yuta's teacher Gojo who regularly covers his eyes with sunglasses or a headband leads the strike against Geto's forces, but it turns out the entire attack was a ruse for Geto to lure all the Jujustu High alumni away from the school so he can absorb Yuta's spirit of Rika. Geto however didn't really count on how quickly Yuta had adapted to his curse and eventually defeats the egotistical villain leaving Geto to supposedly be finished off by Gojo as it turns out the two of them were classmates long ago. There is a post-credits scene where Gojo later on meets up with Yuta in Africa setting up potential plots.

Jujutsu Kaisen O is a fair enough single feature on its own that doesn't demand you to have extensive knowledge of the anime series, although it doesn't hurt much either. The TV series probably did a better job introducing the world of Jujutsu sorcery then the movie did because the film is more focused on Yuta's PTSD and how he's getting used to new teachings. Mappa added a little taste of their own brand of humor that wasn't in the original manga adding some more fan service and heightens up the fight scenes. The battle sequences are amazing and is one of the most shonen of all shonen power battles in anime movies, leagues above anything out of Dragonball. The casting is okay, especially Lex Lang(the best Dr. Doom!)as the charismatic pantomime antagonist Geto who gives his most Machiavellian performance. Existing fans of the TV show were more than content with the movie's backstory of some of the secondary characters who take center stage in this production. If this film is your introduction to the Jujutsu Kaisen universe, then it's a good enough first step into a larger world.

Yet another indie animated pilot set in a Hell of some kind!

 

DC League Of Super-Pets

"How Not To Do A Superhero Adaptation..." would be the title of any book warning people about the colossal clutter that is DC League Of Super-Pets. First created in the Silver Age, the concept came from a quartet of super-powered animals all adjacent to the Superman Family called the Legion Of Super-Pets who would sometimes team up for a fun little comic short. This was brought back in the 2010s in a series of children's books done by Art Baltazar titled DC Super-Pets featuring some of these pets along with other standard animal sidekicks like Ace The Bat-Hound and Wonder Woman's alien kangaroo Jumpa. This led to more appearances by various Super-Pets in animated shows like DC Super Hero Girls, Justice League Action, and a series of DC Nation shorts. So, since Dwayne Johnson was on a massive vanity project to pimp his live-action Black Adam movie, he thought it would be a great idea to hitch the kids into it by making a theatrically released DC animated movie, although this has almost none of the original Super-Pets. Krypto and Ace are starring in it, but they only brought in a pair of obscure characters for it, one of which isn't even a pet as he's an intelligent alien squirrel who's part of the Green Lantern Corps. This was also the first fully-CGI animated film based on a DC Comic coming out in 2022 a few months before the Super Sons direct-to-video movie, as well as being the last film on the roster for Warner Animation Group before their name change. Warner Bros. made more than twice their money back for this, partially due to some toys, but DC Super Pets didn't leave a big mark among children or animation fans and was totally forgotten about after Black Adam bombed and failed to live up to the Henry Cavill cameo at the finale. Like most big-budget cartoon projects, the studio hired celebrities to do the characters, both human and animal, aside from merely hiring professional voice actors, so basically the characters get completely rewritten to fit the methods of whichever star is playing them. Johnson plays Krypto with his glues at the hip cohort Kevin Hart as Ace which really says they did this whole thing for another big paycheck and didn't care at all about the original source material.

In this version of the DC Universe, Superman arrived on Earth as a baby with his dog Krypto instead of meeting him years later. Krypto acts as Superman's sidekick and faithful pal but begins to grow anxious when he notices that Superman is planning on marrying Lois Lane, making it like the hundredth time he's done this in the last few decades. Lex Luthor's latest scheme to stop Superman is to bring a meteorite of orange Kryptonite that he believes it will give him superpowers. Superman and the Justice League stop him after Luthor finds out the Kryptonite doesn't affect humans and gets arrested. Meanwhile, one of Luthor's former guinea pigs named Lulu pulls a Pinky And The Brain and plans to take over the world after gaining a portion of Kryptonite which gives her telekinetic powers. The radiation also gives all the other pets in the shelter powers too along with Ace whose now invulnerable, a size-changing pig named PB, the chipmunk Chip who can shoot electricity, and Merton the turtle that gains super-speed. Lulu gives a bunch of other guinea pigs their own superpowers from the Kryptonite and they wipe out the entire Justice League plus leaving Krypto powerless after he consumes some green Kryptonite. The former super-dog teams up with the newly powered pets to stop Lulu who launches the Justice League and Luthor into space which of course they foil. Lulu takes the remaining orange Kryptonite and turns into a giant psychic kaiju which only Krypto can stop after a super-punch that he could kill him. Krypto of course doesn't die, and Lulu is defeated with the other pets getting adopted by the other Justice Leaguers. This would've been a fair ending but there were so many unanswered questions like why does an Earth squirrel with lightning powers also get a Green Lantern ring, or does Lulu still have powers, and how are the pets able to communicate with humans even though it's been shown that they can't understand their barks and squeaks? And of course, they had to end it with a gratuitous stinger by Black Adam also voiced by Dwayne Johnson as well his own super-pet that we learn nothing about.

DC League Of Super-Pets was a flash in the pan flick overstuffed with pop culture references, inappropriate jukebox selections, and pointless celebrity casting. Even having Keanu Reeves as a Batman with way too much caffeine falls flat. The comedy is just going through a rolodex of catchphrases and poop jokes that no one is quoting and even had to mock Paw Patrol probably because that's the only other competition for this franchise. There's been no plans for a continuation, making it the only saving grace from this ungodly jumble that was created solely to inflate Dwayne Johnson's already bloated ego.

MISC. MANGA, *Spy x Family

Being the basis for the hit anime TV series, Spy x Family was written and drawn by Tatsuya Endo who had previously created Blade Of The Moon Princess based on the legendary Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter. His next title was a one-shot titled I Spy which was not as deep in Japanese folklore, and this led into expanding the idea by turning it into an action sitcom. Spy x Family has a man, a woman, and a little girl all pretending to be a family to complete a secret mission, and while this is the main goal of the series, the thing that got fans hooked was the chemistry between the main characters. Endo illustrates this with some swinging action and sincere but stern facial expressions as each of them deal with their own personal conflicts and motivations.

The bordering nations of Ostania and Westalis are constantly at odds, and the secret agent Loid Forger known as Twilight is given a special assignment to investigate the enigmatic chairman of a government party who only makes appearances at the private school of Eden Academy where his son goes to. The only way to get close to his target is for Loid to put together his own family within the span of a week to get his new foster child admitted into Eden, so he first gets the darling little Anya from a local orphanage. What Loid doesn't know is that his adopted daughter is actually telepathic as the result of a science experiment that she managed to get free of, and she knows that Loid is really a spy from reading his mind, so she sets out to help him in his endeavor. To fill the role of the mother, Loid happens to come across the lovely Yor who has a job at City Hall but is really a highly trained assassin codenamed Thorn Princess that agrees to pretend to be Loid's wife when the academy enrollment tests begin. From this point on, Loid and Yor are totally unaware of the other's background, even though Anya knows all about them and strives to keep her new family together no matter the social or domestic struggles they have to go through.

Spy x Family has gained more progress as an anime, especially with their first movie in 2023. The manga however should not be overlooked, even for otaku who mainly only sample the anime adaptations and don't bother with the original source material. Viz has done an exemplary job translating this series and if the TV series caught your eye, then give the manga a look as well. It's the right blend of action, comedy, and romance that people have been looking for in a mature series.

ANI-MOVIES, *Rio 2

Aside from Ice Age, the only other Blue Sky Studios film to receive a sequel was Rio. Rio 2 came out three years after the original, which was met with box office success, although the makers tried to pack too much into a single suitcase with numerous plots baked up for one a single film since they weren't sure there was enough gas in the tank to warrant this franchise being a trilogy, at least at the time. Carlos Saldanha returns to direct this installment which was dedicated to writer Don Rhymer who wrote the script for both Rio films and passed away before the sequel was released. The entire cast of celebrities from the original are back along with some new additions including Miguel Ferrer in his penultimate performance before he departed. Whereas the first film had a streamlined objective, Rio 2 suffers from an overload of plots that called for the film to be even longer than the original.

Happening the exact same amount of time in real life later from the first film, Blu and Jewel now have a trio of children and live in the Rio bird sanctuary. Blu's owner Linda along with her new husband Tulio believe they've discovered a hidden colony of the blue parrots that Blu and Jewel were thought to be the last of. Blu finds out about this and flies with his entire family along with a few of their other friends from Rio, and of course eventually locate an entire flock of blue parrots. Turns out this is where Jewel originally came from, and her father Eduardo is the head bird. Blu begins to become jealous of Jewel's old childhood friend Roberto, but tries to adjust to the wildlife of birds in the jungle. Meanwhile, Linda and Tulio come across a gang of illegal foresters who are striping the Amazon of its trees. To add even more onto the plot, the bad bird Nigel finds out about Blu's trip although the former smuggler can no longer fly after getting run through a plane engine, but gets help from his lovesick poison frog ally Gabi and a silent anteater who gets roped into Nigel's plan of revenge. Blu fails to help impress his new father-in-law, especially after losing a parrot socker game to the neighboring red parrots. Things pick up though when Blu frees Linda and Tulio from the crooked loggers and leads the other jungle animals in a strike against them which saves their home. Nigel finally gets to have a small tussle with Blu but is ultimately defeated and set back to Rio along with Gabi who turns out to be not poisonous. Blu and his family decide to stay in the jungle with the other blue parrots.

Rio 2 has a contradictory title for a sequel as like the Madagascar sequels, it doesn't all happen in the place it's named after as most of it is deep in the Amazon. There was just an overlord of story ideas that some of the characters get completely removed from the film for long periods of time, including Blu's kids who you think would get more screentime. Way more scenes were given to Nigel who keeps plotting vengeance with at least two musical scenes to himself, and one for Gabi voiced sung by Kristin Chenoweth, and dedicating all this for characters who barely interact with the main story is merely filler which what killed the momentum of other animated sequels like Frozen 2. The first Rio had a satisfying singular objective, but Rio 2 stumbles around trying to find which direction to go to.

Happy Easter, and BITE MY SHINY METAL TAIL!

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Smallfoot

Starting a troika of animated movies featuring yeti, Smallfoot had a foot up on Abominable and Missing Link by about a year when the Warner Animation Group released it in 2018. Being the first non-Lego movie from WAG, this was based on an unpublished book by Klaus producer Sergio Pablos and directed by Over The Hedge's Karey Kirkpatrick. Being a Warner Bros. production, Smallfoot was of course cast entirely by Hollywood celebrities instead of professional voice actors. It was entirely done in CGI with a slightly jukebox musical score using older tunes with altered lyrics, so basically copying off DreamWorks battle plans. The movie did bank enough on its own making over 200 million in its theatrical run, even though no plans for a sequel have been made since then, not even your average made-for-TV holiday special.

Happening atop a tall mountain in the Himalayans lives a tribe of yetis who have sealed themselves off from the rest of the world thanks to an elaborate system of lies told to the populace and a big steam machine that blocks both the view of the yetis of the world below as well from any humans. The yetis believe the sun comes up because one of them rings a giant gong, and eager young Migo is the son of the gong-ringer. Migo's world view is totally shaken when he sees a plane crashing on the mountain along with its human pilot which the yetis refer to as a smallfoot. The pilot parachutes away, so Migo has no way to prove his wild claim which gets him banished from the village until he conforms to the rules of their leader, the Stonekeeper. A few of their kind believe smallfoots exist, all of which are led by Stonekeeper's rebellious daughter Meechee who gets Migo to go explore the world below. Migo ends up finding a human named Percy who is trying to save his nature documentary show from getting cancelled and sees this as an opportunity to put him back on top. Migo escorts Percy up to the yeti village and blows everyone's minds, but a chat with Stonekeeper clues Migo in on the real reason their kind isolated themselves from mankind because they are seen as monsters to the fearful humans, even though the yetis are at least three times bigger than them. Meechee decides to take Percy back to the human city since he can't survive in the higher altitude, and she blows the yetis existence, even though Percy first manages to cover them up pretending the whole thing to be a publicity stunt. Migo comes clean on the real history of his people, and they decide to make peace with the humans, which is first made with some hesitancy, although they eventually put aside their differences.

Smallfoot is up to scratch as far as animated films of the 2010s with some fair original songs and some good-natured cartoon frolics. It's fine enough to be a family feature, although most parents might find it not worth rewatching. The animation quality fits the specs well with slightly original character designs even if they look like they were taken out of a Dr. Seuss book. For the first of a trinity of sasquatch shenanigans, Smallfoot carries its idea adroitly and has a sizeable amount of originality in its setup which most animation devotees should be pleased by.