Been away for a bit but I've been busy watching more movies and anime to update this blog, after this review, Kubo and the Two Strings, All Dogs Go To Heaven and Magic Kyun Renaissance but first it's Lego Batman.
Without giving away too much as this is a current movie, Lego Batman Movie is basically a comical look at the most overlooked part of Batman's psyche which is of course his crippling fear of accepting family again, so lets see what Lego makes of it.
Batman is being Batman as he is Batman but after the latest battle with Joker and his villain friends, Batman rejects Joker as his biggest enemy, this is followed by Barbara Gordon taking on the head role of Police Commissioner from her father and calling out Batman for not actually catching the criminals which leads to a strange moment when Joker surrenders, unable to fight crime anymore, Batman resorts to getting rid of the Joker once and for all with the help of Robin but in doing so creates an even greater scenario which is where this review stops as it's spoiler territory.
Lego Batman is funny which is what it was aiming to be to begin with, it's Lego it's not meant to be taken seriously but I get the sense and this will make me a massive hipster, that Lego has become too mainstream.
It's absolutly everywhere, it's making the franchises they cover into sellouts and this film is so ridiculously cheesy and marketable that I kind of feel cheated. I say that because the Lego Movie was actually really good and was written well and actually felt like what Lego was representing. This is a cash in trying to rebuild (No pun intended) Batman's shattered movie career and using Lego to bring yourself back is as last resort as you can get without resorting to an unpopular reboot.
It's still funny and it's non offensive but I still feel cheated considering how much I enjoyed the Lego Movie.
Review time and we look at a show that just finished, it's Regular Show.
A couple of weeks ago from time of writing, Regular Show ended it's run, the final episode closing on what has been the best cartoon I've watched in many years and I don't say that lightly.
The exploits of park keepers Mordecai and Rigby were a sight to be hold, one minute you're slacking off work, the next you battle an intergalactic space demon from an arcade machine or battling the very forces of the internet, anything they can come up with they did, heck the first episode featured a rock, paper, scissors game that nearly destroys the world.
What made this show work were three things.
1. No cartoon had really covered the in's and out's of a young twenty something adult.
2. The music and references as well as the throwbacks were more than enough to appeal to the gradually growing twenty something demograph.
3. When it did have to give a serious message it was spot on, most notably on Mordecai's tortured love life.
And that really helped this demograph blossom along with the help of Adventure Time and the My Little Pony reboot, all released after 2009 the darkest days of animation and Cartoon Network especially.
This cartoon isn't for everyone; a younger person won't get the references, some jokes are outdated while others outstay their welcome and as it was nearing the climax it was starting to show decay in the writing but all forgiven based on how the final episode went.
If there is one thing I can take away from Regular Show is this; the real test of life is done in your 20s not your final school days or in your College years or University, it's what you do after.
Your ideal job may elude you, the qualifications you get may go to waste, love isn't as simple as it was in school, there will be plenty of people to screw you over and nostalgia will feel like your only escape but you are not alone, the most perfect of diamonds still need to be mined in the cold dark ground and even the most awkward looking gems still have value and Regular Show despite it's penchant of going way over board with it's most weird and unusual concepts still had enough life lessons to survive the twenty something era.
Had I been born in a different era I wouldn't like this but as it arrived as my 20s were in full swing I embraced it as a cartoon I could really get behind and I doubt we'll see another one like this again, least not for a long time.
It's sad to see it go and I do wonder what Cartoon Network will do next now this show has ended and Adventure Time is drawing to it's conclusion but its got a tough act to follow.
That's Regular Show, it's anything but.
And as the late David Bowie sang as well as the song used in Regular Show's Final Episode.
"We can be heroes, just for one day"
From one movie to another, this time it's Captain Harlock but not a live action but a CGI version.
Captain Harlock is the broody captain of the Arcadia, a ship powered by Dark Matter, crewed by a ragtag band of space pirates, his mission is to steal all the detonators to use on certain planets to trigger what's known as the Genesis clock that would reset time and space in a bid to rid himself of the guilt of being the man responsible for reducing Earth to a Dark Matter wasteland, stopping them in their path is the Gaia Sanction who after a war over the Planet Earth forbid everyone to return to it hiding the fact that Captain Harlock already ruined it for everyone.
To try and stop this plan, a boy named Logan infiltrates the Arcadia only to start sympathizing with Harlock's cause.
Captain Harlock is a massive franchise, there are too many named anime series that he stars in for this movie to really make sense, so the story feels restricted to newbies and I find that to be a shame, Harlock himself is the embodiment of awesome, it's hard not to gush over one of the most infamous swashbucklers in all anime and he's well backed up by a decent performance by David Matranga in the dub which is of course Genjo Sanzo in the Saiyuki dub. However my reservations about this film are similar to that of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, it's the CGI, it doesn't suit anime, while I can see the effort gone into it, it can make the characters feel wooden as a result as the over reliance on exaggerated facial expressions that anime is built on it makes them less angry character more angsty teenager, this not well backed up by the female pirate Mimay who basically the designers took one look at Samus Aran and said "copy her", surprised Nintendo didn't slap a lawsuit on it.
If there is something to take from it, it's that it looks incredible as a film and Captain Harlock is every bit as awesome in this film as he is in the anime, if not better, but I feel it needs a selection of notes to try and welcome the new fans in.
Final Verdict: Captain Harlock is worth gushing over in visuals and the title character himself but try and dissect the story and you'll get lost easily.
This review is a rarity and somewhat a litmus test into how well anime translates as live action, this is Yatterman.
It's a typical episode of Yatterman complete with Dorombo Gang vs Team Yatterman until they stumble upon a plot to steal the Skull Stones which are needed to control time, after a couple of battles it ends in a final showdown between Yatterman and the boss of Dorombo, Skullobey.
Yatterman as an anime is fine if a little formulaic, this imagining of it is strange, for one thing it's just wrong for any robot to be sexualized, poor decision on the director there, also a subplot about Doronjo falling for Gan is just as bad, not the concept but the execution, it really comes off as forced as a result and don't get me started on Gan himself, in the anime he's lazy, a little single minded but at least good hearted, in this film he's a jerkass and you wonder why his girlfriend Ai sticks around.
It's not entirely terrible, the villains are actually accurate to their anime depictions, a couple of clever moments during the fight scenes and a well played 4th wall joke about the villains actually seeing their original voice actors is very good but everything else is bad, thank god there's no dub but if it were a piss take dub it may have saved it.
So if you want anime to work live action this is not the one to show people.
Final Verdict: Cringeworthy at best, facepalm inducing at worst but not the most terrible live remake of an anime, that'll always be Dragonball Evolution but when you set the bar that low to begin with it doesn't take much to step over it and I felt Yatterman live action was looking at the low bar rather than the higher ones set by the likes of Death Note.
Now for a treat, this show is a rarity that comes only once a generation and were going to talk about it, presenting the Mr Hell Show.
Mr Hell originally started as a demotivational series of greeting cards about a painfully honest devil named Mr Hell, a collaboration between British and Canadian animators including Jeff "Swampy" Marsh of Phineas & Ferb fame back when he was working in Britain long before he made it big with Disney were involved in the creation of a late night adult cartoon for BBC2. Mr Hell voiced by the late Bob Monkhouse (his final role before his death) gives the title character some class while he goes about the various sketches with quick fire gags and sinful mayhem worthy of Saints Row. Among the many other characters with their own mini sketches are the Victorian Lady Detective who can't solve cases because of the sexist laws of 1888, Josh the reincarnation guy who starts a conversation about the subject only to be brutally killed and Serge the Seal of Death who wants revenge on the Fashion Industry for killing his parents (Surprised PETA don't use him as a mascot) yet when he gets close to finding allies he brutally kills everyone as his post traumatic stress disorder drives him to mass murder.
The writing was very clever, the jokes most of the time hit the mark and Mr Hell is such a devious bad ass that it's more than worthy of a second season but with Bob Monkhouse's death a year after broadcast and in house jokes hinting at the cost being too high to continue further, Mr Hell Show faded into the background but under the radar the DVD came out giving some of it's very small fanbase a chance to watch it all again.
This show is high on the animation rarity scale particularly in the UK and even more so in Canada and if your a fan of Bob Monkhouse it's a worthy piece of history to have.
