I think I've reached the holy grail of terrible anime. This is Maze.
In a fantasy world full of war and conflict, the Jaina Holy Group have nearly taken over the world with only Princess Mill left to capture, but a mysterious girl named Maze appears out of nowhere, possessing powers known as Phantom Light power, she reluctantly becomes the world's last hope for victory against Jaina using Dulga, a giant organic mecha to stop them, but there is more to Maze than you might think as Maze suddenly changes gender at night to a more aggressive, wild male persona.
Where to start? I don't exaggerate when I say this is the holy grail of terrible anime, in fact I say this is the worst 90s anime period.
It's the type of bad where every decision that was made caused you severe whiplash in terms of "Wait WHAT?!"
The story is horribly paced and constantly backs itself into a corner with it's own narrative only to pull a reset button just to escape.
The few characters that are good are under used and suffer for it.
Female Maze is an insufferable protagonist who some how acts and dresses like Shinji Ikari.
The few times male Maze gets screen time he wastes it either being a pervert or repeating his lines over and over.
Mill is a clingy little bitch whose only mode is cheerfully annoying.
The need to make sex jokes every chance they got was distracting and don't get me started on Episode 26.
The Japanese had so little faith in it, the west only got the edited version of the tv series and the OVA with the unedited version on vhs and laserdisc only, so no movie or episode 26 as that was laserdisc only and episode 26 was also banned from broadcast a full two years before Excel Saga did it.
Then there's the dub which is incompetent in every way; no emotion in dramatic scenes, female Maze under sells her performance, dub mistakes are frequent, the fairy switches between high voiced to helium voiced every other scene, another voice actor was changed halfway which only made the character sound worse, Mill is painful to listen to, male Maze is trying way to hard and to top it all off they forget to add dialogue in some scenes HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
After all that, is there anything I like? The opening music and the other main party members Rapier, Aster, Woll, Solude and Randy despite the fact that they are horribly underused and Randy sounds like she snorted helium. I've also seen worst villains, Chic and Gorgeous have their good moments.
Final Verdict: if you can get over some of the creepier in context moments I'd watch the OVA, that is passable. The tv series on the other hand is an epic train wreck that manages every scene to have something wrong with it. It's every single bad 90s anime trope wrapped into one anime, sure there are anime that are way worst than Maze, but the badness in this is so bad that it's almost artistic in it's delivery.
This one is long overdue, time to finally tackle Captain Planet.
The planet is being ravished by pollution and mass destruction, Gaia no longer able to tolerate such atrocities calls upon five teenagers to summon the champion of Earth, Captain Planet to rid the world of looting and polluting.
Yes it's the king of environmental cartoons Captain Planet, and it's really, really cheesy, to a degree that you wonder what on Earth the program makers were taking.
I enjoyed it when I was a kid but I don't look back on it fondly mainly because there was a period where cartoons would stop their antics to deliver PSA messages, a side effect to the rules set out by Ronald Reagan for kids TV deregulation was you can screen a 20 minute cartoon to sell toys but it was to come with a good healthy message, don't do drugs, recycle and don't be an ass hole, all wholesome preachy stuff that parents demanded were on every show.
There's nothing wrong with these messages, they are good messages but there are some issues with it.
1. They are being dictated by cartoon characters, not real people, this is the kinda stuff you should be taught in school.
2. The high cheese value later killed off the genre in the late 90s during the Golden eras of cartoon channels and the advent of anime in America
3. It's failure means that crazy people are now preaching these messages, the same people who super glue themselves to trains and buildings thinking the government will stop and listen to them.
I remember Captain Planet's guest appearance in Ok Ko Let's Be Heroes, where Kwame is now the only Planeteer remaining where he says "the planteers quit and got real jobs" whether that's a dig at the actors not coming back or a sadder in context statement that no one believes in Captain Planet anymore.
I find 2019 exhausting, every week there's a protest or a report that's either about racism, sexism, environmental concerns, political correctness, LGBT rights or another pathetic argument spoken by a pathetic human; worst thing about it is, both sides are as bad as each other.
The right wing are being portrayed as pathetic whiney bigots.
The left wing are being portrayed as whiny intolerant snowflakes.
So where am I going with this?
As cheesy as Captain Planet was, we need him back just to teach us how to be decent human beings again, only then can we solve the problems of this world.
So from one Lupin film to another, this is Pricess of the Breeze.
Another day at the office for Lupin as this time he targets an airship belonging to the small nation of Shahalta but ends up going after the same things as a band of Sky Pirates.
Knowing that there must be more to this than meets the eye, Lupin uses what he captured, a baby, to try and draw out the pirates. Soon enough he meets Yutika, a young Sky Pirate with a family of ex royal guards holding onto gems that would reveal a massive treasure but the royal family themselves manipulated by a corrupt business man and some dangerous mercenaries seek the same treasure.
I'm going to be honest after seeing four films from this long franchise, it's showing itself to be formulaic, which works for Lupin in a way.
Lupin and Jigen are on a heist but end up losing out due to something bigger landing on their lap.
Fujiko is already in deep with the mystery.
Zenigata is usually hired by the villain but ends up unintentionally helping Lupin.
And Goemon just shows up.
It's an effective formula but it needs to surround a big storyline.
This film was on the right track but it's need to repeat the formula caused numerous plot holes with the biggest one being the baby's parents. It also paces itself a bit schizophrenic like a gamer reacting too early to a time limit despite having more than enough to finish it properly.
The other characters are okay but having to work off some big characters is tough to nail and this film is far too generic to be really good.
I didn't watch the dub but based on the last film's voice acting it shouldn't be an issue.
Final Verdict: It's fine but if you've come into this film having seen one of the better ones you'll feel disappointed.
Think I'm not far off finding that diamond in the rough thanks to Denmark and a return for cartoons this is Ronal the Barbarian.
In the land of Metalonia, legend tells of the hero Kron who defeated the evil demon Zaal with his mighty strength and sword.
Dying from his wounds his blood gave strength to the Barbarian race.
Present day, a wimpy Barbarian named Ronal feels like the odd one out during a routine display of strength and showing off from the Barbarians. The peace gets disturbed by S&M warriors led by the evil Volcazar who promptly defeats them with his indestructible armor.
Ignored for his lack of muscles, Ronal travels to find Kron's sword to defeat Volcazar and stop the revival of Zaal.
Oh and this is unapologetic in it's profanity and over indulgence in sexual innuendo and I love it.
It's rare to find this sort of thing in film especially animation, quite often you get moments expecting certain things to go a certain way but you end up surprised by the outcome such as the overly feminine Amazons or bard Alibert being actually useful on the quest or Ronal being smart enough to infiltrate an Elven Stronghold on his own.
The characters are written extremely well and don't fall into obvious character tropes, the animation style is similar to Aardman's style and for an English dub it's exceptional.
It's not for everyone and it does come across as a budget cartoon and you can see some parallels between this and How to Train your Dragon but if this is the standard of budget cartoon films these days then I'll take ten Ronals over Toy Story 4 any day.
To keep up with everything I've ever reviewed since the beginning I've produced a quick guide saying which Anime and Cartoons I've reviewed, a one line synopsis and a one line verdict for each one. It'll be updated in the near future.
What-...
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