Hi I'm Dranzerstorm
You may remember me as a regular contestant on the caption battle contest.
Welcome to Retro Retrospective, my world dedicated to the old guard of the Otaku world; expect some reviews of the old & obscure, and in-depth geeky knowledge with the occasional top ten and I now have a logo.
Little info about me
Well I'm British and I'm in to all things animated and nostalgia.
I've grown up with every cartoon going and have watched hundreds of anime.
Oh and to answer a question I was asked once, no I don't wear glasses in real life, I would wear Loke's sunglasses though.
Villain Songs are a core part of any good Animation production whether it be "Poor Unfortunate Souls" or the gripping "Hellfire" but some are just bizarre full stop so here are the Top 10 Most Bizarre Villain Songs.
Rules this time that it covers all forms of Animation including anime so lets begin.
10. "Money is Such a Beautiful Word" from Tom & Jerry: The Movie
This song tried to be too much like a Disney Villain song but fails to hit the mark, it doesn't help that you're singing with a lawyer with a creepy voice. Although a fat dog dancing with his Skateboard certainly comes under weird.
9. "Nothing Can Stop the Smooze" from My Little Pony: The Movie
Behold as we see the Pokemon Muk in his role before breaking into Pokemon. Made even more appealing by the ship powered by enormous bra sails.
8. "In the Dark of the Night" from Anastasia
Apparently the underworld is full of singing bugs which takes a lot off the effect of this awesome villain song.
7. "Team Rocket's Theme Song" from Pokemon
Sang every now and again as a change from the motto this awesome song features gratuitous rolling and strobe light effects. Although with Team Rocket being more dignified these days we no longer see any songs.
6. "Elmer Fudd: Wabbit Slayer" from Looney Tunes
This kind of cheats seeing as it was never seen in an actual cartoon but makes up for it by being awesome none the less. Have a see for yourself.
It's a fan made video but the song is still awesome.
5. "Yami no Baroque" from Mermaid Melody
Courtesy of the Black Beauty Sisters who are rather close for sisters, this song plays as the villain's main form of attack. What makes this funnier to watch is that their song is better than the Mermaid's songs.
4. "All Villain Songs" from Nerima Daikon Brothers
Every villain has a song in this anime, although my personal favorite comes from the fortune teller with the lyric "Cosmic Erection", this is the same series that contains an all singing, all dancing song for withdrawing money.
3. "I Can Change" from South Park: The Movie
Saddam Hussein can really bust moves in this film by break dancing, all the while trying to convince Satan he's not as bad as he really is.
2. "Evilmainya" from Freddie as FRO7
Singer Grace Jones singing as a cobra to dancing gestapo and KKK members. In fact TV Tropes described it better with "KKK Members on Roller Skates doing the Macarena", let that sink in for a second.
1. "The Music Meister" from Batman: Brave and the Bold
But nothing creates such a scene than the Music Meister, one of the most well received non-canon Batman villains since Harley Quinn back in the 90s cartoon. The whole episode is a musical with some brilliant singing from the Meister himself, in fact he almost succeeds on a global level by turning the world into a musical crime fest, before receiving the Batman trademark hook.
If there's any I missed do say so and I'll try and reply, see ya next time.
Another British export for you to digest, today's review is for 1992 animated feature Freddie as FRO7.
Very much a pet project for the writer and director who used bedtime stories he told his son about his favorite toy frog being a secret agent as the main plot for the film, which is sweet but very flawed as the film bombed on release, there's no DVD release, you can still get VHS and I have a copy of it. There is an American version called Freddie the Frog but it's not as good as the original British version. So what's the plot?
In a French micro nation believed to be Monaco but not in the way we know it, a young prince gets turned into a frog by his evil aunt who also killed his family. His aunt, Messina is a shape-shifter and sorceress which makes her top of the evil list in terms of villains. The Prince whose name is Frederic has powers of his own in the form of telekinesis and psychic manipulation, which comes in handy numerous times through out the film.
With no way to change back, Frederic spends the rest of his youth as a frog and grows up into a human-frog hybrid that would make the ninja turtles proud. The beginning of the film is entirely in flashback and after what seemed like a long time we come to present day where Freddie as he is named now works for the French Secret Service, god knows why, I'd just go with it; it's at this point we go into our main plot where Britain's landmarks are being stolen by a mysterious fog, with no one available to solve the mystery the Brigadier General hires Freddie to take the case, he is joined by a Scottish Weapons Expert, un-originally named Scotty and a Martial Artist who looks like April O'Neil's British cousin named Daffers. (short for Daphne apparantly)
While obtaining information we learn of the next target which is Big Ben, in between we get the villain song "Evilmania" which has a number of characters marching during the song which managed to somehow pass the censors.
Once our heroes are caught and taken to the villains lair we meet Messina again in snake form alongside a chubby bearded man named El Supremo with the big booming voice of Brian Blessed.
After a brief moment we hear the big evil plan; apparently El Supremo is using the energy stored in the monuments to put everyone in the country to sleep so he can invade the country unchallenged, he does this by removing the historical energy from the monuments which I assume is ectoplasm from historical people but it's never made clear what it actually is.
With Freddie and Scotty taking a dip in the ocean, Daffers is kind of brainwashed into being a follower, I say kind of because she maintains slight control of her mind.
Meanwhile Freddie & Scotty are saved by the Loch Ness Monster who is friends with Freddie from the flashback part. After a bizarre song, Nessie and the other Loch Ness creatures tie up the submarine fleet with seaweed to stop them while Freddie & Scotty join Daffers for the first of the big fight scenes, played to music by the band Asia. (That's awesome)
Freddie then stops the big gemstone that's absorbing the monument energy by throwing it away which is enough to break it, that's what you get for using cheap gemstone. We then move onto fight two with more music by Asia, this time joined by El Supremo. The heroes beat El Supremo which leads nicely into the final fight between Messina & Freddie which finishes slightly anti-climatic with Messina escaping in bird form, and so ends the adventure of Freddie the Frog.
This is a very cheesy film listed under the so bad it's good category. It serves as a good example of how not to apply your own artistic view, especially when all you got to go on is a bedtime story and a selection of 80s & early 90s power ballad cds. It deserves cult status but the license has never been renewed and a DVD release is unlikely considering the failings of it's release. A soundtrack still exists for an expensive price as it's super rare and VHS tapes still hang around in various discount stores and ebay.
Although to give you a treat and seeing as it's unlikely to be taken down I shall link you to the Youtube upload.
View the rest of the parts on Youtube, my blog isn't a movie theater you know.
So there you go, yet another offering from the British, at some point I'll find something we did that's actually good.
Here's something very few people will argue about, Looney Tunes is arguable the most ground breaking, most significant cartoons of the 20th century, being as well known as Mickey Mouse and Tom & Jerry of the same era made them the big three of...
I mentioned before about popstars and how much they did in anime including Avril Lavigne's shameless manga series or TATU's failed anime movie but in the cartoon world, it's a little more tricky. Most stars don't tend to enter the cartoon world apart from guest entries in The Simpsons or a show of equal value, as for cartoon pop shows, they are even rarer and judging by this subject, there's probably a good reason, so allow me to apologize for this one on behalf of the British Public, for this is the V-Birds.
The idea began as a promo in about five or six parts revealing more each time, it was about a group of girls sent to earth as punishment for refusing to dance for some event. They are sealed inside a dance machine and will forever spend their days dancing to the tunes of the kids who play said machine, see for yourself how bad this is, especially in animation terms.
The sad thing about this promo is the amount of faith that Cartoon Network UK had in the whole project, but the two major things they overlooked are so simple it's insulting.
1. The Pop Music Industry would never accept a virtual idol at the time who wasn't the Gorillaz. The simple fighting the juggernaut theory of failure.
2. The target audience were tweens who don't watch cartoons.
This wasn't just a failure by Cartoon Network, it was a high profile costly failure that pretty much killed off Cartoon Network's popularity for much of the 00s before Ben 10 came along to save them, although you American's probably experienced Cartoon Network's downfall differently. In this country we blame the V-Birds.
But there is a sense of what could've been, thanks to modern technology and people's interest, this youtuber cleaned up the music video for the bands only single.
It's much better to look at and with Hatsune Miku turning Virtual Idol into a much bigger industry, there is room for a comeback but you're going to need some retooling and better song writers.
A normal schedule for a cartoon channel during weekdays is prime time mornings and afternoons but what about midday? The realms of midday cartoons was an unusual zone for anyone who's ever been off sick from school and all that was on was the most bizarre cartoons you could ever see. No idea what you Americans had but when I was young I had the Fruitties.
Fruitties is a Spanish cartoon from the late 80s about the adventures of a group of fruit, not to be confused with or associated with Christian cartoon show Veggie Tales. My memory of this show is sketchy at best as the only name I remember is Roly the Pineapple, I recognize the cactus & banana along with the human girl and a number of different songs which covered most of the plot.
Speaking of which 2 minutes 28 Seconds is stupidly long for an opening sequence, but then again most of my memories about this show were that the episodes felt like they lasted longer than they really were.
The thing about being sick while watching this and the Magic School Bus gave the impression of a mushroom trip, they seem so weird and likeable that I couldn't possibly hate them, in fact one of the best memories I have of this show that stands above all else is the character theme song for Roly the Pineapple. If the episode was about him, guarantee you'll here this song.
The Fruitties are on DVD in it's native Spain and clips from the episodes are easy to find on Youtube, there is no English DVD release, and the closest it got to America was Brazil.
Share your thoughts on this and tell us what you watched when you were ill from school.
