Spring Cleaning the Spring Anime Season Part 2

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this editorial!)

Here we are with Part 2, and while the first part of this overall season was stuffed to the gills with good shows, here we have some other great shows, but this was definitely the second half of the season where we ran into some true garbage anime. Some of these could have been saved by better execution of their plots and bad source material, but more times than not, it’s a bad adaptation. Let’s dive right into the spring season and let’s finish it! 

Fantasy/Isekai

I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled (Crunchyroll)

CW: harassment, bullying, fatphobic

Do you mean to tell me the same author behind Fruit of Evolution has another terrible isekai that is also problematic, hateful, and mediocre? Color me surprised that this author is pretty terrible or at the very least, has a big issue with fat people. As I not so subtly said, this is based on the novels by Miku. The adaptation is produced by Millepensee, is written by Shin Itagaki, and co-directed by Shin Itagaki and Shingo Tanabe. We have yet another isekai where we have a lead character who is fat, and then one day finds all of his problems are solved when he is able to go from his human world to a fantasy world, turns into a super thin hot guy, gets two worlds worth of friends and harem acquaintances, and is as shallow as a puddle. The mean-spirited nature of this show is cartoonish and melodramatic in the worst way possible. It’s one of those lazy and uninspired power fantasies that aren’t interested in going in-depth with how society treats people who look different or are heavy. It’s a bad version of Lookism that actually delves into the topics this show failed to tackle with much more nuance. Outside of its repugnant characters and terrible writing, it’s just another power fantasy that isn’t interesting at all. These authors need to do better. Screw this self-indulgent power fantasy nonsense. Your petty pathetic power fantasy ruins any potential this anime could have had in the story department.

My One-Hit Kill Sister (Crunchyroll)

CW: themes of incest

This show honestly has the exact opposite problem from which most of these shows from this season suffer. This anime is directed by Hiroaki Takagi, written by Yohei Kashii, and produced by Studio Gekko. It’s based on the novels and manga by Konoe. What’s so fascinating about this anime is how hard it goes with its visual presentation. Out of all of the shows to have a stunning visual look and some of the best-directed action of the season, it shouldn’t be the anime with an incest kink with the older sister wanting to be very close to her younger brother. The whiplash you get from how well-executed certain scenes and jokes are is on the level of some of the best action and comedy anime out there, and yet what falls apart is the fact that this has a heavy emphasis on an incest subplot. Sure, they can try to write it off that she really cares about her brother, but it’s not in a way that says she just cares for him on a platonic level, because without that angle, it’s just a middling if well-executed edgy dark isekai fantasy comedy. It has a funny angle of the brother being sent to a fantasy world and not being the special one, whereas the sister is the one with all of the power fantasy tropes, and some of the jokes, (or at the very least, the execution of the jokes are more humorous than usual), but the incest angle is an instant turn-off to ever recommending this show. It also isn’t the only show this season with incest or a possible incest angle. 

The Aristocrat’s Otherworldly Adventure (Crunchyroll)

CW: Harassment played for laughs, and some slight hints of incest. 

Well, while I do not like this show for a multitude of similar reasons I don’t like most isekai power fantasies, I can say that at least this isn’t a tedious chore in many ways. This is based on the novels by Yashu. It’s produced by EMT Squared. It’s co-directed by Noriyuki Nakamura and Mitsutaka Noshitani, and written by Natsuko Takahashi. As I said, it suffers from a lot of the nonsense that plagues the most boring and generic isekai stories that include no stakes and harem elements that become slightly creepy when it’s about our lead who is a child for much of the show’s run. They also introduce mentors who don’t do anything, and there are no stakes in the action since our hero can’t be harmed. They try to make the characters more interesting by focusing on the more comedic angle of the series, and that is honestly its strongest aspect. The show is really adamant about being a comedy and it does a lot of different gags and jokes to make for a more entertaining sit. Even if the jokes don’t always land, it’s more than most isekai that play their stale power fantasies straight. They are trying a lot of things with this show and due to bad pacing and the stuff mentioned above, it still falls flat, but it’s not a boring sit. 

KamiKatsu Working for a God in a Godless World (Crunchyroll)

Honestly, while I wouldn’t call the fantasy/isekai genre this season as good as others since it’s pretty rancid in a lot of ways when one of the best shows is still a dumpster fire, that’s a telling note of this being one of the best by default. It’s based on the manga by Aoi Akashiro. It’s directed by Yuki Inaba, written by Aoi Akashiro, and produced by Studio Palette.Yeah, this is one of the most infamous anime of the season, and not because characters do repugnant things or a creative is a terrible person. I mean, who knows, those things could happen, but more about the production side of things is why this show is being heralded as a dumpster fire/ironic classic. Shoddy editing, wild jumps in quality with animation, and inconsistent tones make this a real hot mess of a series to watch. On one side of the quality spectrum it’s a harsh snappy commentary about religious extremists and sex, but on the other side, it takes itself too seriously at points for the few laughs to fall flat, it restarts its stakes about halfway through the show’s run, and the zany tone it wants to go for doesn’t truly stick to that lane. This could have been the new generation Cromartie High, but due to its lack of commitment to the bit, it falls hard on its face. It’s a real shame, because I was down when it stuck to the zany unhinged side of its run, but it’s hard to fully recommend, since this show will either be your cup of tea or just turn you right off. Sure, it’s being made by a studio that is relatively new and a director who hasn’t done a lot of actual directing, but it at least stands out from the rest due to how wild it tries to go at points with its story and humor. 

Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts (Crunchyroll) 

Thankfully, we don’t end the fantasy isekai genre of this season on a bad note. Granted, if this show was in any other stronger season, it wouldn’t be at the top, but here we are, and at least it’s a solid show. This is based on the manga by Yu Tomofuji. It’s produced by JC Staff, written by Seishi Minakami, and directed by Chiaki Kon. While this is yet another take on Beauty and the Beast, unlike last season’s similar show and has to compete with The Ancient Magus Bride this season, Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts actually does stand on its own compared to other shows with similar premises. For one thing, our female lead actually has stakes, unlike some shows where they take all of their stakes and have them solely rely on the beastly individual for everything. What also makes this stand out is that while it is a fantasy romance, it’s more interested in the world and politics of our beast king’s actions of having a human bride and how she is treated in both the human and beast world. While I am not fond of how young the lead is compared to the king, their chemistry almost distracts from that. It’s nothing original for this type of story, but being original can sometimes be its own beast of burden, and just being a well-constructed show is enough. Again, if this was in any other season, this probably wouldn’t be at the top, but due to the world, the characters, the inciting incidents that kick off this powder keg drama, and the twist and turns we see unwrap, it makes for a really solid watch. 

Romance/Comedy

Rokudo’s Bad Girls (Crunchyroll)

This category is starting out with a rough and rather clunky show based on the manga by Yuji Nakamura. It’s directed by Keiya Sato, written by Yuichiro Momose, and produced by Satelight. You would think an anime that’s trying to be retro in its visuals and premise about a boy who ends up with a curse where he gains a harem of ladies, but they are only delinquents and “bad girls”, would be funny or creative, but it’s not. It doesn’t seem sure what it wants to be with its take on masculinity and finding a more peaceful approach to conflicts, due to how the entire premise is based around our lead inadvertently getting all the bad girls to like him. What makes this premise worse are the implications of a single male individual thinking he can tame “wild girls” and how they all don’t really have any personality to speak of. They have character quirks, but they are extremely surface level, and the main blonde bad girl has no personality. Sure, they might show off some backstory about these characters at one point or another, but by the third episode, when you have been sitting there tolerating the mediocre action, animation, and writing, you just end up feeling like you wasted your entire time watching those episodes hoping for something good. It’s terrible, and not in a fun way other shows can be fun while being bad.

Yuri is My Job (Crunchyroll)

Hey, look, a Studio Passione project that isn’t sleazy and creepy. This is based on the manga by Miman. It’s co-directed by Hijiri Sanpei and Takahiro Majima, written by Naoki Hayashi, and produced by Studio Passione and Studio Lings. This show had me conflicted about how to feel about the few episodes I watched. On one hand, the premise is creative about a girl who puts on a facade in front of everyone who is put to the test with said facade when she gets roped into a dinner theater-like cafe. It’s definitely a melodramatic, possibly queer romance story where our lead has to come to terms with the persona/face she puts on when she has to do it differently when the theatrical stuff takes place at an all-girls school that obviously dips into queer romantic intent at points. It’s a fascinating premise that gets a touch repetitive until the third episode gets the ball rolling. I like the ideas that this show brings to the table, and the drama, if a bit melodramatic and queerbait-feeling, is compelling stuff. What do you do when the face you put on to make people compelled to like you, is put to the test in a setting where that face has to adapt on the fly? What happens when the persona is so much your personality that it becomes hard for people to know when it’s on or off? I have heard and read it gets better past the third episode, but if this all sounds interesting, give it a watch! It’s just not for me. 

Too Cute Crisis (HiDive)

Some viewers may want compelling thrillers. Some viewers may want high-octane action. Some may just want to see someone who has never seen cats or dogs before react to them and have their love for them to not have the earth blow up. It’s based on the manga by Mitsuru Kido. It’s directed by Jun Hatori, written by Aya Satsuki, and produced by SynergySP. Honestly, this is the most straightforward anime of the season. An alien is sent down to survey the earth and see if it’s worth blowing up, but is smitten by encountering cats and has a change of heart. Its main focus is poking fun, but also being sincere about the obsession pet owners have with their animals and this passive competition of the owners having the cutest animal. It doesn’t have the flashiest animation and a lot of its humor is reliant on viewers being pet owners, but it’s a cute series. It’s extremely silly and lightweight, but if you are down for a bunch of animal and pet owner jokes with a slice of sci-fi in your comedies, then you will like this series. It even has real-life photos of pets in the credits, and it does just make you want to snuggle and take photos of your favorite pets or cute animals. 

A Galaxy Next Door (Crunchyroll)

Sometimes, a rom-com needs to have an out-of-this-world angle and perspective to stand out from the rest. Sadly, it also came out in the same season as Tonikawa Season 2. This is based on the manga by Gido Amagakure. It’s produced by Asahi Productions, directed by Ryuichi Kimura, and written by Gigaemon Ichikawa. Reading up how this manga was from the same author that made Sweetness and Lightning makes so much sense due to how both manga and anime are about a father taking care of their kids, and in A Galaxy Next Door’s case, the father meets a young woman who is actually from a race of people from the stars that took refuge on an island off of Japan. It feels a bit like a wish fulfillment. Oh, the woman who signed up to do illustration work for the lead’s manga happens to be a huge fan of his work, has read everything obsessively, and happens to be drop-dead gorgeous? It’s not as self-indulgent as some of the isekais we talk about, but it has that feeling. What does help is that the characters are likable and they take their time for their bond and relationship to build and grow as the two bond with one another. It’s a bit slow-paced and that does hurt the show due to how low-key it all is. At some point, the family drama and the bond between the father and his kids can be more interesting than the main romance of the couple. With all that said, if you like slow-burn and I mean really slow-paced shows, then you will like this one. 

The Reason Why Raelina Ended up at the Duke’s Mansion (Crunchyroll) 

While this is technically an isekai, it’s really more of a romantic drama. It is based on a South Korean web novel by Milcha. It’s directed by Junichi Yamamoto, written by Mitsutaka Hirota, and produced by Typhoon Graphics. Instead of Raelina reincarnating as the main female lead of a romance novel, she is a minor character in the novel the isekai world is based on, and her fate is to be killed. So, that puts us in the shoes of our lead who goes out of her way to make sure she doesn’t end up on some royal’s hit list and to make sure she gets the life she didn’t have in the modern world. Much of the runtime is her maneuvering around the rich socialite lifestyle so she doesn’t end up six feet under the ground, and a lot of the emphasis is put on her relationships with everyone. It can be compelling stuff, if a tad clunky from time to time. Some moments feel like a bit too big of a leap in logic, and the sometimes solid and sometimes underwhelming animation can make yet another slow-burn thriller feel very frustrating to sit through. It gets juicy though when our lead realizes that while she is playing her version of chess to make sure she doesn’t die, her key player in her plan is also playing his own version of chess to get out of certain situations, and it combines in a romantic drama that can be compelling to watch. It definitely got me wanting to check out the rest of the series.

The Dangers in My Heart (HiDive)

It’s always nice when an anime decides to surprise you every season, and this is one of those hidden gem surprises that snuck up on this anime fan. This is based on the manga by Norio Sakurai. It’s directed by Hiroaki Akagi, written by Jukki Hanada, and produced by Shin-Ei Animation. Basically, it’s a story about an edgy teen who thinks of dark murder-like thoughts of taking out his other classmates, but in reality, is just an angsty teenager who is depressed, and he has the realization about his classmate he decides should be his first victim. The realization is that he thinks the popular girl is cute, but also finds out that she isn’t just a stereotypical popular girl, but is silly, loves snacks, and so on. The show is basically about their blossoming friendship and love. It captures a very real feeling of that time period of being a teenager where you become edgy, discover your attraction to the other sex, and become an individual who doesn’t quite know how to take in all of these new situations and emotions. Ever want to see yourself squirm and remember how awkward or terrible you are as a blossoming teenager? This show will do that well! It’s a sweet show that does a lot with its premise, and shows constant character growth and makes some types of jokes work that I don’t normally care for. That’s rare! Anyway, this was a surprise gem this season and it shows how good a lot of HiDive’s shows were this season. 

Oshi no Ko aka My Favorite Idol (HiDive)

Spoiler talk

Content Warning, Stalking, mentions of suicide, and abuse.

This one is a lot, and that’s both good and in some ways bad. But when the manga is by the same author of Kaguya Sama: Love is War, then you know you are in for something. This is based on the manga by Aka Akasaka. It’s directed by Daisuke Hiramaki, written by Jin Tanaka, and produced by Doga Kobo. So, since it’s been more than a month since this anime’s release, it’s time to talk about this film’s extremely unhinged premise, but surprisingly well-done execution of said premise. If you don’t want to know about the premise, skip this section until you see the first episode. Now then, let’s begin! First off, it starts with a 90-min first episode, and you get why it did. If your plot was of a doctor and a terminally ill teen being reborn as the two children of their favorite idol, and what feels like a sweet romantic slice-of-life turns into a drama with a slow-burn revenge thriller of finding the person behind the idol’s murder, then you would need 90 minutes to get all of that out of the way first. They could have made a 30-minute or an hour-long premiere, but it really does set up the emotional connection you make with the characters, and then those last five minutes really stab you in the feelings. It turns from idol stuff into a romantic drama about the two now teenage kids going about their lives in the entertainment industry, where the daughter tries to make it as an idol and the son tries to find connections to his mother’s murder. It also starts to sharply critique the entertainment industry on multiple avenues from idols, child acting, to the cynical marketing made by production companies to hamper actors who are truly great. It’s a show with layers of character depths and what drives them. Granted, the manga has some issues and irksome manga/anime-like elements, but the 90-min episode skips through a lot of the baby/child phase of the story for good reason since it seems like the focus of the people behind this adaptation knew what was more important to focus on. It might not grab everyone and you have to get through the 90-min first episode and the out-there premise, but I would easily recommend it as one of the stand-out series this season. 

Loving Yamada at lv 999 (Crunchyroll)

Still, if someone had to ask what romcom anime gave me the best impressions from its three-plus episodes, then this one would be it. This is based on the manga by Mashiro. It’s produced by Madhouse, written by Yasuhiro Nakanishi, and directed by Morio Asaka. We have yet another romcom anime this year with college/young adults as the leads, and as always it feels so refreshing that it isn’t just teen romance. Even when the teen romance is good, you just want to see some variety in ages, and this season brought us that in spades. What also helps is how they created this great parallel between the online game the characters connect with, and the story of a woman going through a rough breakup and bonding with a member of a guild via the game they play in real life. Both of our leads are complex, interesting, funny, and truly human in their interactions. Sure, our male lead is a shut-in gamer who doesn’t have a lot of human connection, but obviously isn’t a terrible person. Our female lead is dealing with pain and wants to put the sadness and anger of her breakup through the wringer instead of dealing with it sensibly. It’s another compelling drama/romcom that’s equal parts funny, romantic, and appealing to the eye via Madhouse’s fantastic animation. You feel for them, and their chemistry is wonderful. The cast of side characters are also great additions to the roster, and makes it an incredible series. I wholly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch the best of the romcom/drama. 

And that is the Spring 2023 anime season! Overall, thinking about the lineup between Part 1 and 2, this was a great season. It definitely took some time to get good, and some of the bad anime were intensely terrible, but since the anime industry is going to keep chugging along no matter how many times people tell them to slow down, we might as well keep track of the industry in its doom spiral. Hopefully, they change, because as usual, when anime is great, it’s really good! 

My Spring 2023 Anime Recommendations: Loving Yamada at lvl 999, Oshi no Ko, Hell’s Paradise, Skip & Loafer, The Dangers in My Heart, Magical Destroyers, Mashle, Otaku Elf, Insomniacs After School, My Clueless First Friend, Heavenly Delusion.

Spring Cleaning the 2023 Spring Anime Season Part 1

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this editorial!)

2023’s spring season was fascinating to watch unfold. While not feeling as thrilling as 2021 or 2022’s spring season, I would argue it’s more diverse and experimental with its ideas of what adaptations got put into this released chunk of the year. While it definitely had its share of big titles to be hyped about, it also had a slew of surprises that came with some of the underdogs. Even the big hype machine titles had something going on with them more so than previous titles that everyone was looking forward to seeing in previous seasonal anime drops. It’s a more provocative lineup of anime titles that even the lesser ones were, at some points, trying to be different in some way shape or form. Now then, let’s get started! 

Action/Adventure

Summoned to Another World for a Second Time (Crunchyroll)

Just wouldn’t be an isekai or fantasy adventure without some isekais that don’t do enough to stand out. This is based on the light novels and manga by Kazuha Kishimoto. It’s directed by Motoki Nakanishi, written by Yukihito, and produced by Studio Elle. As usual we have an isekai that has a potentially interesting premise of our lead getting summoned into a fantasy world, but the twist being is that he has been here before. You think this would lead to fun or interesting commentary about the isekai genre, and crafting some great jokes, but instead, it plays it straight with no thrills or chills to call its own. Even some of the gags it has have been done better in much more lovable shows. These authors can’t seem to get past the elevator pitch with their ideas, and that sucks since this had so much more potential to be something special, but isn’t. The characters fall flat, the action isn’t stellar, the setting is boring, and it’s just a reminder of how most isekais need to start doing better.

The Marginal Service (Crunchyroll)

We have one of the few original anime this season and it’s sadly not one of the better ones. This show is directed by Masayuki Sakoi, written by Kenta Ihara, and produced by Studio 3HZ and Cygames. You think a mix of Men in Black and Power Rangers-themed construction suits/weaponry fighting cryptids and aliens would be fun, but the show, at least for its first three episodes, spends too much time explaining its world instead of showing it. The characters are one-note and annoying, the gags aren’t funny, and the animation isn’t as personality-driven as the show feels like or wants it to be. It’s a creative idea with a lot of potential possibilities to get better as time goes on, but it has left a really underwhelming taste on my anime-watching palette. It’s a shame since original anime should be supportive, but just as there are bad adaptations, there are also bad original anime.

The Legendary Hero is Dead (Crunchyroll)

Well, the premise for this one is interesting enough. This is based on the manga by Subaruichi. The anime is directed by Rion Kujo, written by Yu Sato, and produced by Liden Films. For a dark comedy fantasy anime, the hook of the setting is a fun one. Our lead is a dirtbag who accidentally gets the legendary hero killed and now has to take on not only the mantle of the hero but also his body via his spirit. This could’ve led to some very fun jabs at the genre and to some funny jokes. Well, too bad it’s not as creative as the elevator pitch for this show is. The leads are all very forgettable. Our main lead is a skeevy dirtbag, our female lead is there for the sake of fanservice, and the necromancer is the most well-rounded character, but she is inconsistently written, and that results in a party of characters you don’t really want to hang out with. They even introduce a villain who is way worse as a human being that is only there to give you a reason to root for our unlikeable lead. Having mean and nasty characters isn’t the constant deal breaker, it’s the fact that everything else around those leads doesn’t balance it all out. 

Dead Mount Death Play (Crunchyroll)

This anime is adapted from the manga by Ryugo Narita of Durarara!! and Baccano fame. It’s directed and written by Manabu Ono and produced by Geek Toys. Instead of being a normal isekai, we have a reverse isekai of a necromancer getting sent to the modern day. While it doesn’t have the same quality or charm as the author’s previous work, the show is, at the very least, more compelling than most isekai/action shows with our lead being more compelling and likable than most leads. Heck, a lot of the characters here are more likable than most isekai casts. It helps that the source material and the author have turned out good work in the past that relied heavily on good character chemistry. It’s just a shame that the animation is underwhelming and the show is only a bit more polished when it comes to the fanservicey aspects. I mean, that seems to be a consistent problem with a lot of shows this season having lackluster animation, but it’s frustrating because the rest of the show is good, and amazing animation isn’t always needed, but when the clunkiness is on screen, it’s hard to not have it detract from the show. Still, anytime an isekai can do better and be more creative than the rest, then I’m down to be more supportive of it as long as it keeps up the rest of the story, and the show is compelling. 

Magical Destroyers (Crunchyroll)

While I am not always down for chaotically trashy anime, this is one of the few exceptions to the rule. This original anime was created by Jun Inagawa. It’s directed by Hiroshi Ikehata and Masao Kawase, written by Daishiro Tanimura, and produced by Bibury Animation Studios. This feels like an anime that was made by Studio Trigger or later down the line Studio Gainax that has the passion and spirit of early to mid-2000s anime. It’s pretty much nerds with the help of their leader and a group of magical girls having to defeat the government which has quarantined and made otaku culture a bad thing to preserve Japan’s morals and honor. It might be another “we love otaku culture and this world is set in a world where otaku are targets of the government” anime, but unlike a lot of them, this one feels like it took a more unhinged and unapologetically nerdy approach to this action show and it is full of life because of it. It’s trashy, horny, thrilling, confusing, loving, and partly hateful of otaku culture, and feels mostly like it’s a team of people who want to see something a bit deranged, compared to a lot of the more “normal” anime out this season. It’s out to have a fun high-octane time, and whether that holds up over 12 or so episodes has yet to be seen, but at least it has one of the most exhilarating opening sequences of any anime this season. Seriously, even if you don’t watch this show or don’t like it, you can’t deny that the opening is just pure anime in the best way possible. Whether it sticks the landing or not is beside the point. Or at least, it’s beside the point with this show. 

Mashle: Magic and Muscle (Crunchyroll) 

We have yet again another alternative piece of art that has wizards and isn’t created by a horrible transphobic author. This anime is based on the manga by Hajime Komoto. It’s produced by A-1 Pictures, written by Yosuke Kuroda, and directed by Tomoya Tanaka. It’s basically what if Saitama from One Punch Man was thrown into a better version of Harry Potter? Well, this is what you would get. While our lead is intensely strong and can pretty much beat anyone into submission if need be, he is unfortunately in a world where everyone but him has magical powers. What makes this show fun is how they figure out creative ways for our lead character to get around the school’s curriculum by using his brute strength and quick if inconsistent smarts to pass classes like using “magic” to unlock a key or using a broom to fly. The ways they play with our protagonist’s strengths and his sometimes dense wits drives this into being one of the best comedies of the year so far. The sheer ways they come up with gags and solutions to problems never stop being amusing and it has a lot going on underneath the comedic shenanigans, but it so far from what I have seen balances it out perfectly. It results in a show that might not get everything about the manga right but is a consistently fun show to watch.

Hell’s Paradise (Crunchyroll)

And here we have the big Studio MAPPA anime of the season that shows that while this studio needs to get its act together with how they treat their animators, and stop taking on so much work, they are the only studio in the anime industry that could tackle something like this project. This is based on the manga by Yuji Kaku, is directed by Kaori Makita, and written by Akira Kindaichi. What makes this thrilling action/horror anime so exciting to watch are the stakes of a bunch of criminals and their handlers being sent to an island to find an elixir of life that happens to be populated by horrific plants and grotesque monsters are how the stakes are raised by the third episode. A lot of characters that are introduced are not going to make it past this point, and while it’s frustrating to see such fun designs end up not making it past the first three episodes, it makes for a sign of how brutal this show can be. The danger is around every corner and that isn’t counting the inhabitants of the island itself, but all the other criminals and the handlers that are ready and willing to kill one another to get off the island. Heck, who says the monsters are the only human-based things to worry about? With MAPPA’s usual polished animation, exciting action set pieces, and a more human study-based story about life, death, and what makes these characters thrive results in an easy frontrunner for one of the best anime this season in a season full of really strong contenders. 

Slice of Life/Drama

My Clueless First Friend (Crunchyroll)

Sometimes, what ya need is a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. This anime is based on the manga by Taku Kamamura. It’s directed by Shigenori Kageyama, written by Takafumi Hosikawa and Shogo Yasukawa, and produced by Studio Signpost. While this anime doesn’t do anything new with it being about a girl who is constantly bullied for looking “like a grim reaper” the one person to befriend her is a boy who doesn’t quite get the memo and thinks she is cool. It is an intensely sincere anime. The act of being kind to one another really is what drives this show into being a fun lightweight watch with some goofy antics, sweet-as-sugar moments, and some solid story beats and character growth from the cast. Sometimes, you just want to watch something to escape from the cynical and harsh world for a few episodes. Definitely an easy watch and one to recommend. 

Otaku Elf (HiDive)

Who knew the slice-of-life genre would be full of super charming shows? This one is based on the manga by Akihiko Higuchi. The anime is directed by Takebumi Anzai, written by Shogo Yasukawa, and produced by C2C. What starts off as a simple gag anime with an elf that was sent to Japan centuries ago and who now is seen as a goddess can almost feel one note. The only real gag is that now that the elf is aware of geek and pop culture fandoms and memorabilia, she has become reclusive like most nerd-like characters seen in anime and other forms of media. But then they start sprinkling in little payoffs to why she is so reclusive, and while a lot of it is played for laughs and to poke fun at merchandise stuff, it does show a more sincere reason as to why she shuts herself off from the world. How being alive for so long and seeing the world literally change around you, and experiencing the people that you love and know pass on while you still live can really affect how open you become to people in the world. And that is all just in the first episode where we see her learn to be more social and friendly towards other people. It also is nice that this show got some of the better-looking visuals and character animation, though that might be because they have an official Red Bull sponsorship. This is funny because they have some well-known brands and then parody brands, which makes you wonder how they pick and choose what brands they could use. Still, the rest of the cast including the elf’s handler, her sister, and her classmate, and I definitely want to see who the other characters are to find out how they fit into this very quirky world. 

Insomniacs After School (HiDive)

Even though I love the quirkiness of a lot of anime, at times, anime is at its best when it’s wholly unique and different from the rest of the shows that have come out during this season. This includes Insomniacs After School. This is based on the manga by Makoto Ojiro. Its adaptation is directed by Yuki Ikeda, written by Rintaro Ikeda, and produced by Liden Films. While not similar in any major way, this show reminds me of Call of The Night from last year’s summer season. It has a low-fi atmosphere to its slice-of-life antics about two teens who suffer from insomnia making their hang out in the school’s observatory which is rather quiet in its atmospheric tone. It’s a romantic experience as we see our leads bond over looking at the stars and fulfilling night-based activities together. They are two individuals who feel isolated and alone in the daytime period of the day but feel personally connected to one another as the night sky blankets over the earth, and the stars make themselves known throughout the far reaches of the universe as they hang over the leads observing them. Granted, what kind of money is a high school making to have its own functioning observatory, but I digress. What matters most is how this show really does have a great pair of protagonists, fantastic supporting cast members, and some lovely ethereal visuals to keep you hooked to the screen. 

Skip and Loafer (Crunchyroll)

Honestly, this and Insomniacs After School are tied as some of my favorite anime of the year. This is based on the manga by Misaki Takamatsu. It’s written and directed by Kotomi Deai, and produced by P.A. Works. This show reminds me a lot of Horimiya, where we dive more into the characters that have an outward persona that they show off but are way more complex individuals with reasons why they use the facade that they have, with the exception of our lead who is unapologetically themselves no matter who they are hanging with. It’s a show about acceptance and how we sometimes overthink situations and what we observe about people around us. It’s such a low-key show that really mellows you out and tells you to not over-complicate life and what you do with friends. It’s an absolutely wholesome show that is delightful from start to finish due to the incredible designs, animation, and probably the best opening song sequence of any anime this season. 

Other

Opus Colors (Crunchyroll)

This original anime is directed by Shunsuke Tada, written by Sayaka Harada, and produced by C-Station. You would think the story of the struggle of two creative individuals crafting AR/VR art would be both visually splendid and compelling. It’s neither of those things. This spring season has brought us some very ugly-looking anime and Opus Colors is very much one of the worst-looking shows of the season. Flat, lifeless characters, generic designs, queerbaiting through the roof, contrived drama to drive the plot, but not much else, and so much more. This should be a fascinating drama of what it’s like for two creatives, an artist and what is essentially their producer to struggle to be on the same page to make something powerful and evocative, but due to the underwhelming animation, it all falls flat. It’s a frustrating show to sit through due to how boring and drab it all is. Even though it’s not based on any preexisting manga or mobile game, it sure feels like it was made to advertise a mobile rhythm game with a bunch of good-looking guys, but the twist is that the game never came out and we are stuck with its ad campaign. A really tedious show to watch that is lacking any sort of cohesive artistic identity. 

My Home Hero (Crunchyroll)

This show, even with its faults, is so distinct that it feels like a miracle that it got made in the current anime landscape. This is based on the manga by Naoki Yamakawa. It’s directed by Takashi Kamei, written by Kohei Kiyasu, and produced by Tezuka Productions. When was the last time an anime had a lead character that was 47? Seriously, in a landscape that requires lead characters to be at most 16 years old, we rarely if ever get adult-focused main characters. This is one that is basically a drama thriller of the dad killing his daughter’s abusive yakuza boyfriend to protect her only to end up in the dark world of the yakuza. It is such a good premise, and it differentiates itself from most anime this season due to this. Watching the slow spiral of playing chess with the family dealing with the yakuza is a compelling watch. What sucks though is that the animation, once again, is lackluster. Again, the anime industry could improve the quality of everything if they just paid their animators better and stopped overburdening them among other things. Imagine if this show had the proper lighting and imagery a dramatic thriller like this needs. Sure, the story can be a bit melodramatic, but anime is melodramatic. A lot of media and dramas are melodramatic. As long as the show is making a convincing case for itself, then that’s all that matters. I could see this one probably spiraling out of control, but considering how many mediocre anime we get with teen characters, it’s okay to root for and support shows like this, because that’s how we get more shows like this and not the middling slop we tend to get that fill up every season. 

Heavenly Delusion (Disney+/Hulu)

Consider this one of the biggest surprises of the season. This anime is directed by Hirotaka Mori, written by Makoto Fukami, and produced by Production I.G. It’s based on the manga by Masakazu Ishiguro. What we have here is a fairly complex and mysterious dystopian sci-fi journey as we follow two different plots happening at around the same time. They are full of themes and commentary about life, sexuality, sex, relationships, gender, and gender norms/gender roles in society that are placed on certain people. It finds a way to balance it all out really well with some of this season’s best visuals and animation. Luckily, it doesn’t get too stuck in the mud or in the depths of its own hubris as it keeps you guessing what exactly is going on and how the two concurring plots connect to one another. It’s a sci-fi anime that isn’t afraid to step back from heavy-handed philosophical quandaries and dialogue being the focus, and instead lets you live in the world this show sets up and invests into the characters and their individualistic drives of what they are looking for in a scary unnerving world. 

Least Favorite Animated Films of 2022

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

Sorry to keep getting these types of articles up late, but sometimes you need time to just let everything simmer about how amazing and chaotic a year like 2022 was in animation. Lots of great stuff, but also stuff that missed the mark. The talented crews and artists made some of the best animated films for Netflix, while the streaming service also had some of the most panned animated films of 2022. Only in this chaotic world of the animation industry can this happen. As usual, these will be the nine animated films I liked the least during this year, and it’s always a shame that I can’t like everything. No one wants to criticize the people who work in a chaotic industry that needs all the love and support they can get right now. Despite this list and ranking, and however I feel about these films, I’m always going to be rooting for everyone to succeed.  Now then, let’s get started. 

9. Night at the Museum: Kahmunra’s Revenge

Maybe it would have been better if I had more attachment to the franchise, but this film felt like it was made to be a pilot for an animated TV series. The script does have a few moments where the comedy hits and the 2D animation is better than what I was expecting. Still, the story and themes feel undercooked and needlessly complicated with the introduction of an art museum and how the portraits can be portals to the past. It doesn’t help either that a good chunk of the cast is there for nostalgia and fans, and then they don’t do anything. Still, if it’s here, then that means I still enjoyed it, but their non-Pixar-released-to-Disney Plus films have not been great. 

8. Ryoma: The Prince of Tennis 

The biggest sin that a sports film can commit is to not be about the sport itself. Instead of being based on the main series, this film is based on the stageplays. This means a much heavier focus on big grand musical moments and very little focus on story cohesion and characters. You think the plot of our lead getting sent back in time to see his dad would be interesting, but it’s not. You keep watching to see how absurd this film gets with rap battles and duets while playing one of the few scant games of tennis that you do see in the film. The CGI is also really ugly. It looks like a higher-end PlayStation 2 cinematic cutscene at points, and it’s a definite downgrade compared to the other CGI films from Japan that show how far they have come with films like The First Slam Dunk. The characters are forgettable, and once you are over the absurd things that ignite the musical sequences, the film is boring. Even when our lead meets and faces off with his dad, it’s too little too late. For a franchise that already doesn’t have a huge foothold in the US market, the fact we got this is wild. It was probably brought over when they were dubbing the second Prince of Tennis series, but it’s going to be a bad time if you make this your first piece of media to intake from the franchise. 

7. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania 

While Genndy Tartakovsky was still attached to the writing of this film, it feels like it also had the same energy as a DTV Disney film from back in the day. It had a creative hook of Andy Samberg’s character turning into a monster, and Drac and his friends turning human, but it doesn’t do much with the premise that feels like they weren’t given enough time to flesh out the story. It was part regressive of the character growth, lacked the same silly humor that was mastered in the third film, and once again, they bring a lot of your favorite characters back only for them to do very little. Even if the very little they do was decent, it just feels like a film that was running on fumes, and hopefully, the talented group of animators at Sony Pictures Animation hit it out of the park in the future, which seeing their lineup, probably will. 

6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules 

Yeah, the promise of Diary of a Wimpy Kid animation adaptations has been a real disappointment so far. This one looks slightly better and has a better overall story, but a lot of these characters are not fun to be around. I still wish they had more time or a budget to make this film more visually interesting than it is, and I’m glad that they tried to put more of an emphasis on the family feeling more connected with one another. Still, Disney needs to give these people more time to craft an excellent animated adaptation of the books with the visual flair that they deserve. 

5. Riverdance: The Animated Adventure 

For a film based on the dance sensation, you would think there would be a bit more to it than dancing elk. To be fair, it does try to with trying to tie the story around a young boy dealing with the grief of losing his relative, but the animation and creativity on display don’t match the whimsy, and the more fantastical aspects of it don’t feel all that whimsical The dance sequences are also way more robotic due to either time or budgeting making the iconic dancing look more stiff and lifeless than it should be. Just a real forgettable experience and that’s a shame. In a world where we have films like The LEGO Movie and silly films like Seal Team, a Riverdance film is not that out there, but it just feels like they didn’t go far enough with their premise and production. 

4. The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild 

No matter how good this film could have been, it was always going to have the stink of Disney’s corporate greed of letting this film get made by a third-party studio, and banked on the love for the franchise and the return of Simon Pegg as Buck Wild. Sadly, this is essentially a direct-to-video plot with no other returning cast members and a huge downgrade to the CG animation from the theatrical films. It became less of a high-flying adventure of Buck saving the day, and more of a sad state of things as Disney shut down Blue Sky Studios and then made a film from one of their IPs that resulted in a cheap experience.

3. Pinocchio: Based on a True Story

Honestly, these next three films could tie for the worst. People elevated this film thinking it was going to be some gonzo disaster that was fueled by the meme of Pauly Shore’s take on Pinocchio, but when you take out the clips of Shore’s performance, the film is absurdly boring, badly animated, and will leave your mind once the film ends its sluggish finale. It banks on the meme factor and ends up with a frustratingly mediocre experience. Oh, and how is this fantastical story a “true story”? Seriously, there is a reason why this came and went as it did after it got its 15 seconds of fame. 

2. The Soccer Football Movie 

I’m still baffled by how this film came to be. There were no news announcements, no real trailers, the audiences only getting clips of this film a few days before it was released, and no production history that you could find beforehand. It just arrived on Netflix with no real mention of it from the company itself. Was this half-baked fever dream supposed to have originally come out during the World Cup? For whom was this made? Who was the target demographic? Why did this film need to get made? Even the creator of Angry Beavers who was the director of this, Tom Kenny, and Weird Al couldn’t save this heap from just feeling like a movie put together by an ai. Hopefully, the two soccer players who star in the film got to have a good time, but this is yet again, another film that just came and went with no real fanfare or reason to exist. 

1. Marmaduke 

Like I said above, The Soccer Football Movie, Pinocchio: Based on a True Story, and Marmaduke are tied for my least favorite animated films of the year. Something about Marmaduke filled me with dread, due to how it had a trailer that failed to impress, and when I was finally able to watch the film, I had a rough time sitting through it. You can tell this was trying to do more than what it possibly could on a small budget, but what it does try to do falls flat on its face with annoying characters, ugly designs, gags that fall flat, a weak story that doesn’t grab you at all, and some of the worst animation of 2022. Who knows what the animation production was for this film since it was supposed to come out before the pandemic happened, but it feels like they just made a first run-through of what the film will look like, and then couldn’t do a pass with adding better textures or anything like that. Better animation wouldn’t have helped a garbage story, but it would have at least made it a little bit more tolerable. A lot can happen in the production of animated features and this may have had a bad production, but it was probably a bad idea in the first place to make a film based on an IP that no one outside of rights holders care about. It was one of the few films I watched in 2022 that made me feel like I wasted my time, and the fact Netflix could put this out in the same year as The Sea Beast and Pinocchio is shocking.

The Other Side of Animation 300: Suzume Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

Well, this is the 300th review I have written, so I decided to journey back to one of the animation world’s brightest stars, Makoto Shinkai. I’ve infamously been one of the more critical voices talking about Your Name when it was one of the most important animated films and films in general from 2016. Shinkai became a household name once that film connected with audiences even though he has been known and made films before that one. However, recently, I have been rethinking my thoughts about Your Name, and how I connect with it more than back then. Not that I still don’t have my own subjective viewpoints about the twist or some of the storytelling elements, but it did make me go out and buy the blu-ray of it and made me think more about why I like this director despite my more mixed thoughts on his filmography. Outside of his amazing visual presentation that is in all of his films, he tackles themes like romance, distance, relationships, feeling alone, and he captures a feeling of something that can be described as an emotional vibe. Sure, some of his film’s logic and storytelling may not be perfect, but if you can connect with the vibe of his films, then you may have a better time engrossing yourself into the worlds he crafts. Even if he isn’t my favorite Japanese director, like Naoko Yamada, Masaaki Yuasa, or Mamoru Hosoda, I still look forward to his films every time they get announced. With how much of a dry spell 2023 has been for animation so far, until we get flooded with them in June, seeing a film like Suzume makes you feel alive and love the animation experience all over again. 

Directed and written by Makoto Shinkai, we follow a teenager named Suzume Iwato, dubbed by Nicole Sakura. One day, as she is going to school, she encounters a young man named Sota Munakata, dubbed by Josh Keaton who is looking for some ruins that are around her hometown. A bit of the ol’ case of curiosity intrigues her, and she finds the ruins of the Onsen Resort herself. Upon opening a magical door standing in front of a ruined building, she ends up literally opening up a major can of worms in the form of a large magic worm-like entity that sprouts from the door that only she can see. As it turns out, the mysterious young man, Sota, can see it too, and when she leaves and returns to said ruins from where the giant worm thing is sprouting, she encounters him and helps him seal the door away. After tending to his wounds back at her place, she encounters a cat-like individual named or, well, nicknamed Daijin later in the film, dubbed by Lena Josephine Marano. She realizes that this cat was from the first encounter in the ruins, and before she or Sota can do anything, Sota is then turned into a chair! Yeah, the film doesn’t take any time to show off how fantastical this film is going to be. It then becomes a race for Sota and Suzume to travel across Japan to chase after Daijin to seal the doors so the entity doesn’t cause any major disasters and maybe return Sota to a human. 

Some of the reviews have pointed out that Suzume, as the newest film from Makoto Shinkai, is very different from his usual affair with what he likes to tackle in his films. You tend to get a lot about young love, distance in a metaphorical/literal sense, connection, and plenty of visually breathtaking skyscapes. This film definitely feels like one of the few times he went out of his way to avoid using his recurring story beats. Even though it could have been easy to do, this isn’t really a romance. Sure, Suzume somewhat falls for our male lead-turned-chair, but it’s very one-sided. The story is mostly about Suzume finding the strength to feel complete again after her life has felt broken and incomplete, which can be visually seen in the chair that her mother made for her. It’s all about forging the strong connections we make in life, whether it is with family members or with the people you meet along the way.

Even though much of this film’s runtime is the obviously high-stakes race across Japan to seal the doors, it is also about Suzume making connections with the random people she encounters through the journey. The other chunk of this film is also Shinkai taking a creative approach to deal with the trauma and pain brought onto Japan via the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The worm-like entity is such a creative way to portray cataclysmic events. Other themes include fate/destiny that both of our leads go through, and Suzume coming full circle to terms with the loss she has been handed in life. It might be Shinkai’s most intimate film that while having grand-scale sequences seen throughout, lets our characters be more of the focus. Since it begins with the whimsical and fantastical stuff from scene one, you aren’t having to deal with the whiplash of something like Your Name or the third act of Weathering With You. Even though most people think of Miyazaki and Takahata as directors who focus on characters, Shinkai has a real charm and appeal with how he writes his character dynamics, as everyone works so well off of one another and doesn’t feel like overly archetypical anime characters for the majority of the runtime. Just because it’s an animated film doesn’t mean it can’t have grounded characters. The director even held back on going full-tilt anime in terms of the humor and expressions, which would have been distracting when the characters are already so full of life. Not that having hyper-expressive characters and wacky anime-style humor doesn’t work, since it’s still thrown into the film from time to time, but it all comes down to the execution of what kind of tone and story you are trying to create. 

It should be no shock to anyone that CoMix Wave Films and the other talented teams of animators that brought this film to life always put in some incredible work. The mix of CGI backgrounds, buildings, and vehicles blend extremely well into the 2D elements, Shinkai’s typical design philosophy is as recognizable as ever, especially with how every female lead now has that red string of fate motif that was from Your Name, and the character designs pop. However, the animation on the chair is incredible. Even with its limited moveset, you can absolutely tell how much personality was shoved into its movements. Even when he made Voices of a Distant Star, Shinkai has had this magic touch of making the world around you feel ethereal and vast. The constant wide shots of the landscapes and sky views really make the viewer look small. The world and universe around our leads look vast, and in context make them look so small compared to everything else in the universe. Due to how the film is executed, it makes one feel like the most important part of your life and so on and so forth. The voice cast is also very good. It’s one of the first times Crunchyroll has used a mix of character actors and the usual voice actors that you see in anime titles. Granted, it’s a Makoto Shinkai film, so they were going to get some slightly bigger names, but you expect that from distributors like ElevenArts and GKIDS, so it’s a little surprising to see Crunchyroll do it as well. Still, it’s very cool to see a successful animated film from overseas using a mix of actors. Nichole Sakura, Josh Keaton, Jennifer Sun Bell, Roger Craig Smith, Amanda C. Miller, Rosalie Chiang, Allegra Clark, Cam Clarke, Joe Ziegla, Lena Josephine Marano, and Mela Lee. They do good job with their respective roles and bring a lot of fantastic performances to one of the best films of 2023. This being a Shinkai film, he teamed up with the band RADWIMPS and Kazma Jinnouchi which offer another ethereal and delightful score that brings a whimsy that is a refreshing take from most film soundtracks these days. 

Honestly, even with all is said and done, Suzume is my new favorite Makoto Shinkai film experience. Seeing it on the big screen helped, but even on the smaller screen, this film feels the most focused on relationship dynamics between characters as they journey through the challenging world of relationships and find connections with those close to them. It helps that he has indeed moved away from what he has done in the past, and in interviews said he is done with making certain types of films that people love from him in order to branch out and craft new and exciting tales. It’s what’s fun when you journey through a director’s filmography to see how they change and grow as time goes on, from their own art style to what kind of stories they like to tell. It’s why animation is such a fun medium of storytelling. You can do anything with animation, and the only limits you have are the ones you put on yourself. If you can find a way to watch this movie, please do. If you want to see original 2D animated features on the big theatrical screens you all ride and die for, then you need to see them if they are in your area. Don’t go see the sequels, remakes, and whatever that you think flood every single screen. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions in supporting films like Suzume speak louder than complaining about it on Twitter. Now then, thank you all for 300 reviews, and I’m going to take a small break from reviewing films, (well, unless I get a screener of course), to work on some editorials, but I will see you all in June! 

Rating: Essentials

The Other Side of Animation 299: Unicorn Wars Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

When people hear the term “animation is cinema”, do you either think about the amazing lines from Guillermo Del Toro, or people trying to justify their love for animated films? There seems to be this very fierce debate about how genuine it is when people use “animation is cinema” to defend and stand up for animated films. Detractors of it are annoyed with how people keep choosing widely loved animated films that are aimed at families. So, does the argument hold up if people keep using films like The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, The Mitchells vs the Machines, and so on and so forth? I mean, I get the desire from the more grumpy individuals to choose different films to prove their point. Many of us already love and respect the films listed above, and quite a few films aimed at families hit it out of the park more than many live-action films that we all watch. But with that said, being a lover of animation does mean that you should at the very least try to explore something outside of that. Sadly, when people try to go the route of “yes, that much-loved family film is great, but have you tried to see non-family films” they are never as graceful about recommending them as they could be. The beauty of animation is that you can tell a multitude of stories through its unlimited visual power, and that means that you can talk about something as dark as war and religious extremism, and how love and hate can mold an individual. And the best part? You can tell that story through a war between unicorns and teddy bears! This is my review of Unicorn Wars. 

This darkly comedic drama is written and directed by Alberto Vázquez who did 2015’s Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. We follow a troop of teddy bears who are training to take down what is considered the biggest enemies of teddy bears, unicorns. We follow the story of two brothers Azulin and Gordi aka Bluey and Tubby, voiced by Jon Goiri and Jaoine Insausti. Their life has been less than stellar with their parents dealing with a divorce, and the two brothers dealing with said divorce very differently. We follow the journey of this troop of teddy bear soldiers to find out what exactly is going on. We will also find out the origin of the war between unicorns and bears. 

So, from how I have described this film in the first two paragraphs, this is absolutely not for kids right? Yeah, obviously, and it’s accurate if you watch the trailers for it. This is one of those films that use the usual imagery and designs that would normally be used for family-friendly storytelling and experiences, and are using them to tell a very intense, graphic, and tragic story of the two different sides of one complicated coin. You can see how one brother is raised with love, while the other is raised with hate as anger and bitterness toward the world build up inside of him. The way they react to the different characters they meet, and the news and events that unfold in front of them, allows the cast to truly show the different sides of the human experience of the right and wrong way to deal with grief. Alberto is famously or infamously known as a director who doesn’t want to sugarcoat his themes and stories for an audience, and considering how polarized the audience was when I saw this at Animation is Film, it’s an intensely uncomfortable sit. It’s also a lawyered experience that will definitely mean a lot to certain types of moviegoers, but while it is easy to write this film off as indulgent and nihilistic, there is a story of how we need to stop following individuals with extremist philosophies in terms of military and religious ideals. The villains are pretty much the entities that gained knowledge and used said knowledge to kill a group of living beings that were different from them and didn’t agree with their ways of thinking. Sound familiar? Just like the director’s previous film, the story overall tackles a ton of different stories like the already mentioned commentary towards war and religion extremists, vanity, love, hate, drugs, deforestation, manipulation, and you get the idea. Sometimes it feels like the message and point the director wants to say takes over the plot, but at the core of the film, it’s about two brothers and the tragedy of war. Also, it’s extremely violent and gory. Yeah, this might be one of the most intentionally violent animated films I have ever seen, because it does not apologize about how violent war is and doesn’t shy away from how some people will enact violence against people they should be protecting and or caring for. Unlike the previous film by the director, this one definitely has more of a depressing end between the war of teddy bears vs unicorns. In a time in the industry where it seems like people are pushing back against depressing films more and talking about the subjective take on going to the movies for escapism and not to be reminded of the real world around them while at the theater, it’s understandable why people will probably not like the ending. It makes a lot of sense how it unfolds, but after 93 minutes of intensely dark and sometimes funny moments mixed with violence and rage against war and religious zealots, it can be too heavy-handed with its message and a bit much on a visual level. Then again, if you come out of this film and start talking about it and the underlying themes, then that’s a positive instead of just leaving the theater not taking in anything about the film at all. Sometimes, we need to be told bluntly about how bad humans can be through a creative visual metaphor. 

On the animation side of things, it still has the same amazing animation quality that we have seen from the director’s previous film, but instead of a more drab/dire color palette, we get bright almost neon pinks, blues, whites, reds, purples yellows, oranges, creating a much more saturated and colorful visual presentation. The way they portray the bears as vain, and keep the unicorns as these ominous figures in the perspective of the bears makes a lot of sense with how the film frames the story of the two. It also has some ridiculous visuals that will definitely lean into one moment where the bears eat hallucinogenic bugs. It’s a visually striking film with how it shows off its visuals, does environmental storytelling, and frames its themes with every shot. The voice work is fantastic as it’s cartoony but is still filled with the emotional drive you would for something that goes into some very dark places. Jon Goiri and Jaoine Insausti do a lot of the heavy lifting and Ramón Barea is a great narrator. The rest of the cast includes Txema Regalado, Maribel Legarreta, Itxaso Quintana, Manu Heras, Gaizka Soria, Kepa Cueto, Juan Carlos Loriz, Estívaliz Lizárraga, Iker Diaz, and Pedro Arrieta. They all take what sounds like a very twisted and odd premise, and bring conviction and commitment to the roles when the darker story-turns come up. 

Whether you can gel with the premise or not, Unicorn Wars is an example of a film that deserves to be talked about when bringing up the conversation of how animation is film/cinema or what have you. Being supportive of animation is both supporting the big releases as respectfully as whatever gets released during the award circuit, and it also means animation fans need to venture out into animated fare that’s not just from the US, not just for families, and ones that might be unnerving and experimental. If you don’t, then when you use the “animation is cinema” argument, then you aren’t really for it if you don’t try and watch everything. Unicorn Wars might be a bit blunt and a lot with its messaging, and will definitely leave you speechless, but every animation fan should give this one a watch. It’s coming out on Blu-ray in May but is right now available to purchase or rent digitally. While his films might not be my favorite from each year they are released, I am always going to be excited and down to check out whatever Alberto makes next. Now then, next time, we shall take a look at the newest film from Makoto Shinkai with the 300th, review being Suzume! 

Rating: Go See It!

The Other Side of Animation 298: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

From what has been discussed and seen from recent films and shows, the video game adaptation curse seems to have been lifted. I don’t fully agree with that statement, but it is definitely a much better place than previous entries that included stuff like Double Dragons, DOOM, House of the Dead, Monster Hunter, Alone in the Dark, and you get the idea. Sure, some of them are still not perfect like the Sonic movies, but when you get stuff like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, then you know that times have changed. Who would have thought that it took just getting the right people who actually cared about the material and a lot of involvement from the studio to make the films or shows that actually work and feel like they are from the same franchise. Granted, being 100% loyal to said source material isn’t necessarily going to result in a good adaptation since you need a story and characters to invest into, because otherwise, why would someone who isn’t a fan of the game in question care about what’s going on in the story? Anyway, 2023 decided to be weird with how it took until April to have our first major studio theatrical animated feature, and it just so happens to be a video game adaptation. Let’s talk about The Super Mario Bros. Movie! 

The movie is directed by Aaron Hovath and Michael Jelenic of Teen Titans Go!! fame and is written by Matthew Fogel. Of course, the animation is handled by Illumination Entertainment. We follow Mario and Luigi, voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day. They just started their own plumbing company and messed up on their first gig. Beaten down and disappointed with their lack of achievements and support from their family, all seems lost with the duo until Brooklyn gets flooded and the two go save the city. Unfortunately for them, they find themselves getting warped to the Mushroom Kingdom that is led by Princess Peach, voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy, who is dealing with the looming threat of invasion from Bowser, the king of the koopas, voiced by Jack Black. Can Mario save the kingdom and get his brother back who has been kidnapped by Bowser? 

This film has been getting a lot of people on social media in a firestorm about who is in the right, and whether the critics are being too grumpy about a simple animated film aimed at overall audiences and crowds, or are audiences too forgiving of lightweight entertainment and not supporting the “real” art that gets released when most filmgoers know that some films won’t appeal to them. Plus, it helps that until this film was released, the family film landscape in theaters was pretty much dead. For those that say superhero films are default family entertainment are also dismissing the fact that a lot of superhero media right now is absolutely not for families, unless they are hardcore watching Invincible and The Boys at age 5. For some reason the industry thought that superheroes were all audiences needed, and considering that the first two have underperformed due to a multitude of reasons, it’s no shock that families showed up in droves for this Mario movie. 

So, who is in the right here? Hate to say the safe answer, but it’s what I honestly think. Both are right. For example, while I don’t think the lightweight story hurts the overall experience, I get why people have criticized it. The thing about the Mario franchise is that unless you dive into the spin-offs, the franchise is very light on plot. With the few exceptions where Peach plays alongside Mario and Luigi, it’s always about Mario stopping Bowser. They weren’t going to turn this film’s plot into one of Pixar’s more methodical and philosophical stories. Asking for a deep plot with Mario is like asking Sonic to not have an angsty teen persona, it won’t happen. Now, if they adapt something like Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG, then I will get frustrated with that plot being light on story. With all that said, the story does fall flat in a few spots. It introduces a ton of story beats that could have added a little more meat, with an overall story like Luigi getting over his cowardice, Mario and Donkey Kong’s disconnection with their dads who see them as disappointments, or heck, Mario and Luigi’s dynamic, since for a film called The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it is rather light on having them on the screen at the same time. The entire plot basically separates them for about 80% of the time and that feels a tad disappointing, because there are story beats that would have strengthened the film all throughout the runtime. It’s pretty much the beginning and the third act where they get to be together and they wrap everything up fairly easily. I’m sure there was some situation of how the characters would be portrayed since Nintendo was actually collaborating with Illumination this time around and they couldn’t go too far with the characters and stories, but in some ways, that works to its advantage. No matter how much you love the recent live-action Sonic films, those films pander to casual audiences a bit too much. You could argue they aren’t good at adapting the Sonic storylines either, if you really want to discuss how good they are as adaptations. The Mario movie on the other hand does none of that. It’s a purely straight forward film with very few references outside of the film’s distracting use of 80s music. Mario doesn’t say or reference any memes, and I think there is appeal to that. The appeal of Mario is how safe it is compared to other franchise leads. He hasn’t had to do stuff like rap or cater to the social media crowd to have a lasting appeal. Granted, it also helps that the franchise has some of the best games of all time. It had enough charm and appeal to not alienate everyone, and whether you hate it or love it for that reason, it works here. The only references getting made are basically Mario and or Nintendo-focused with references to Star Fox, Punch Out!!!, and Kid Icarus among many others. Even the minor antagonist Spike is a reference to The Wrecking Crew game that is Mario adjacent. I did hear some people say it has too many references, but you all eat up the MCU and other comic book movie references, so maybe pick a lane when you complain about references. It’s at least more loyal than that disaster that was the 90s Mario movie that was basically lacking in anything Mario for a majority of its runtime and yet people are trying to claim it as an unsung masterpiece that is actually loyal to the game when it’s really not. Sometimes reevaluating a film that got panned doesn’t need to happen. Anyway, if you do feel the Illumination movie vibe at all, it would probably come from Bowser and his dynamic with Kamek, but if you have played the games like Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG, then you know that their personalities in the film would be pretty accurate from the games. That’s the thing about this film, all of the characters act pretty on point and for those that are crying about Peach being more active in the story has never played a Mario game before or one of the many spin-offs. It’s absurd how many people are revealing themselves by this one complaint. The only one who gets a bit more edge is Toad, but who wouldn’t want a Toad whose first line is so intense? He brings some of the best laughs of the film, and Keegan Michael Key does a great job as the character. 

Since we just mentioned one of the cast members, let’s talk about that next. Chris Pratt as Mario is actually not that bad. Sure, I wish he had a little more of that Mario energy in him, but he does a perfectly fine job as the lead. I still wish Charles Martinet was the lead character and not just some secondary characters, but I think everyone was trying to hype up how bad it was when the trailers weren’t doing a good job with how good or bad his performance was going to be. Of course, there are a lot of reasons outside of his acting to hate Chris Pratt, but in terms of his performance, he does okay. Charlie Day is a lot of fun as Luigi and captures his more earnest and innocent personality. Anya Taylor-Joy is also okay as Peach. She does as good as the princess as you could expect. Now, speaking of recognizable voices, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong is typical Rogen. While he does try to do more as the character and his voice as possible, he’s still going to be Seth Rogen, but he does keep a lot of his Seth Rogenisms outside of his laugh on the down low, which once again, helps to make this film feel more timeless than most video game adaptations. Still, Rogen captures what Donkey Kong would be as this cocky show-off compared to the more humble Mario. The only actor I felt was miscast was Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong. He could have been a touch sassier and more snarky instead of a sort of whiny grandpa. But all things considered, Jack Black, out of all of the celebrities, does the best job, because if you were going to cast Bowser, it had to be Jack Black. He puts it all into this performance with the best balance of comedic and threatening since Bowser can be both and also be a touch pathetic. Luckily, this film has a lot more voice actors playing side or minor roles than just getting a bunch of celebrity cameos to play all of them, but you will hear famed voice actors like Cree Summers, Kevin Michael Richardson, Eric Bauza, Khary Payton, Scott Menville, John DiMaggio, Jessica DiCicco, Rino Romano, Ashley Burch, and Phil LaMarr to name a few. It’s a pretty good cast in general, and probably one of the better casts for an Illumination Entertainment film. Brian Tyler does a great job at remixing the music from the franchise and it all sounds great. You can hear a multitude of different tracks from all over the franchise. As I said above, the only part that is distracting is when the film shoves in an 80s song, and while they are good ones, they are also the ones we have seen in almost every film ever made animated or live-action. 

As for the animation, for a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination, the visuals and animation are perfect. You can tell the collaboration was a real commitment, because the characters move as they would in the games, and it just looks so good. Considering this is Illumination’s most expensive animated film to date at $100 mil, then it should look amazing. You can tell the resources went into the right spots for the animation and visuals. I don’t really agree with how this looks or feels like a typical Illumination film when all of the humans look like they were right out of a Mario game. It has some cartoony squash and stretches as well, which gives it a more bouncy feel that Illumination and Nintendo are really good at. Mario has a specific look and it needs to pretty much stay to said look. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Mario. The worlds they crafted look jaw-dropping and grand in scale with some real ambiance and atmosphere that are in each location. They look like they were once again right out of the video games. Even the world of the Kongs looks like they were pulled out of the Donkey Kong Country games. Nothing feels out of place. Even the human world looks as if Nintendo and the Mario team were asked to craft their version of Brooklyn. You also stay in the Mushroom Kingdom and that world for a lot of the movie, which is nice since the Sonic films were so afraid to do that for some reason. Plus, it keeps with the fact that Mario is basically an isekai anime due to Mario and Luigi getting transported to another world. They also capture the wild and surreal feel of Rainbow Road and how horrifying it can be depending on the Mario Kart game you play. 

Listen, Illumination Entertainment family films are going to be aiming for mass audiences and they are never going to try and be Pixar or Disney films, and it’s time for film snobs and filmgoers to realize that. There is a reason why, while maybe lacking in some regards in substance, and I have had my issues with them as well, their films make all of the money. Sure, I wish people went to see other animated films that had stuff that went against the US animation tradition, but many of the people that complain about Illumination films also don’t see those more “complex films”, and it’s very telling how much that happens. Who knew there were animation fans and filmgoers who didn’t actually follow what they preach. If you all wanted to go and support something, then Suzume is literally coming out soon (it’s out now) and you all should go find a screening of that film. Or we could all accept that some audiences don’t want to go to a theater to sit down for a few hours being depressed or challenged. Sometimes, you just go and see something silly like Cocaine Bear or a fun fantasy romp like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves or some amazing spectacle like John Wick 4. 

Back to the review of the film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an actually faithful adaptation of the games to a really impressive degree that offers everyone a fun and whimsical time at the theater. Honestly, I have some complicated feelings about it. It has some story beats that could have been fleshed out, and I wish Luigi was with Mario a lot more in the runtime, or that the film was longer than its extremely tight 90 minutes, but I found myself enjoying it a lot. I still have my issues with Illumination and that won’t change, but this is probably my favorite film from the studio, and so far is the best adaptation of a Nintendo property. It set out to be a loving adaptation of the video games and it passes with flying colors. I can see why some people may not like this film, but the beauty of animation is that it’s a medium that can be for everyone, and that means family and mass appeal audiences. Hopefully with the success of this film, the profits go into Illumination Entertainment’s new division that goes into more teen-to-adult-focused animated films, and I can’t wait to see what else they do next. I wouldn’t mind seeing them adapt the Mario franchise in another film since you can go in so many directions, and they have about 30+ years of games and spin-offs to pull from. I would say go see it, but due to how much money it’s making, you can tell everyone is going to see it. Like I said earlier, it helps that family audiences were starved of family entertainment for three months in 2023 so far. Now then, next time, we will be talking about the very intense Unicorn Wars. 

Rating: Go See It!

The Other Side of Animation 297: Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

Ernest & Celestine is a special film for me. It was the first animated film I saw from GKIDS that wasn’t Studio Ghibli-related, it was the first animated film I reviewed, and it was the first film to truly ignite my love for animation from around the world. It also helps that it was successful enough to get a TV series that we never got, and now, a brand new ‘hot off the presses’ sequel that has a lot to live up to, due to it having to follow up the incredible first film. Luckily for us, we didn’t run into a “sequel for sequel sake” like a lot of sequels to films where people weren’t really looking for them. What we ran into is a sequel that can be considered just as great as the original. 

Julien Chheng and Jean-Christophe Roger are our duo directors for this project. The writers for this film are Guillaume Mautalent, Sebastien Oursel, and Jean Regnaud. We follow our dynamic duo once more as they wake up after hibernation. As Celestine is getting breakfast ready and for them to enjoy a lovely new day, she accidentally breaks a violin that was on one of Ernest’s shelves. Heartbroken by this, Celestine offers to go on a trip with him to where he obtained the instrument to get it repaired. Where exactly? Why, Gibberitia of course! Unfortunately, Ernest is very set to not going back there due to some history there. After trying and failing to convince Ernest to go, Celestine embarks on the journey to get there. At one point, she forces Ernest’s hand and the two arrive in what is revealed to be Ernest’s home town. Something, though, is off about it. Children in the city dress like their parents and there is an odd hostility towards birds singing. It is revealed that the court system in the city has banned music, and it is up to Ernest & Celestine to figure out why that is and reconnect with some individuals that are personally connected to his life, aka, his family. 

Now, with the first film, it was mostly a Celestine-focused story that still had time for the two to bond as friends and deal with the film’s themes of capitalism, fearmongering, and discrimination. Not that Ernest played a secondary role, but you spent a lot more time in Celestine’s world and her backstory. With this one, Ernest takes more of the driver’s seat for the plot, as it focuses on him, and his relationship and history with his family that includes his doctor mother and judge father. You get a tiny bit of the backstory of Ernest in the first film, where his father was a judge and he didn’t want to be one. You find out why the city doesn’t allow music, and we see the themes of the film that include the censorship of art and the disconnect between generations as the parents in the city decide what the younger generation do with no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You finally get to see the repercussions of the fallout between Ernest and his family as you see how the children are dressed like their parents. 

Of course, we do get time to observe Ernest and his relationship with his entire family from his mother, father, and sister, and the film itself. Even though it’s only 79 minutes long, the film is able to breathe and let our two leads take in the world, the conversations, and some of the stellar comedy that was in the previous film. It might be as zany as the previous film, but it is still as Buster Keaton-driven as the first film with some truly fantastic physical comedy. It leads to a lot of tender moments that sit with you, even though there are just as many funny moments.

Speaking of comedy and animation, the visual presentation of this sequel is just as good as the last film. It still has that lovely watercolor look, and while it has more grounded expressions and movements outside its chase sequences, not much else has changed from the film’s previous amazing flair. It might not have as many trippy sequences, but the third act has a wild chase sequence that shows you why animation is a wonderful medium to tell a story. Even though the rules and world of Gibberitia are a touch ridiculous, the city itself feels lived-in, and has a ton of small details that are a lot of fun to notice when you see our leads travel across the city. Even the way you enter the town is so creative and offers a more mysterious and wondrous tone to the city due to how Ernest was building up the place in the first third of the film. It even has a more bright color palette due to being outside and or in spring whereas the previous film was more drab and dour, due to the tone and cold feel of the town. I only saw the French dub of the film, but the returning voices of Ernest and Celestine, Lambert Wilson and Pauline Brunner do a great job with their roles and still bring so much warmth with the two, especially now that they are way more comfortable chatting and joking with one another since they are the best of friends. 

While it would be tough to top the acclaim and impact left by the first film, A Trip to Gibberitia continues the fascinating journey of Ernest & Celestine by tackling the complicated theme of familial drama and finding the freedom to express yourself in a world that wants to limit those artistic voices. It’s a franchise that makes you feel good, and if you loved the previous film, then you will love this one. There is a reason why this film won the grand prize and the NYICFF, because it’s just an incredible journey through the world of animation. Now then, next time, we will be talking about a certain red and green-clothed duo of plumbers who just got their own movie with Illumination with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. 

Rating: Essential

The Other Side of Animation 296: Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

As much as I love to tackle foreign animation due to how creative and beautiful it can all be, it’s a good reminder that not every animated feature from around the world is an Inu-Oh, a Children of the Sea, a Titina, a Triplets of Belleville, and you get the idea. It’s nigh impossible to keep the quality up for every film to be that standard. I am pretty sure this has been mentioned before, but theatrical feature animation has always been a gradient no matter where you go in the world. It isn’t just top-tier award-winning amazingness and bottom-of-the-barrel cheap kids’ stuff. No matter who the audience is, there are movies for everyone in the world of animation, and that means films like Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo are released. 

This is a Syrian/Canadian collaboration that’s directed by Marya Zarif and Andre Kadi. We follow the journey of a young girl named Dounia as she is forced to flee from Syria with her grandparents and others due to the war happening around them. As she traverses through multiple countries trying to find a place to call home, she will get the help of some magical seeds and her country’s history, making sure they all make it through the story safe and sound. 

Even with this film’s charming visuals and animation, it doesn’t hide or sugarcoat the facts of how awful the war is on anyone and everyone involved in the crossfire. People are getting killed and forced to leave their cities/towns to hopefully find a new life and to be with their loved ones. No matter where everyone is from, we are all people who inhabit this planet, and we shouldn’t be destroying it or people’s livelihoods through senseless violence and wars. It’s a very hopeful film that definitely does a solid enough job to balance out the darker tone of our character’s journey and life, but also finds moments of peace among them, despite what’s going on around them. It doesn’t go as far as something like The Breadwinner or The Swallows of Kabul, but it definitely isn’t as middling as Lamya’s Poem. There is a right and a wrong way to write stories like this one, and like so many hot button or complicated topics, it takes a skilled hand to carefully go through it all, because one flub will screw over the entire story. Sure, it might take some very fairytale-like approaches to get around the situations, but it feels like this film was made from the child’s perspective, so having more magical solutions to these situations make sense. It luckily keeps the charm and likability of the characters up enough to make it to the end credits, and that’s always something to look for when crafting compelling character arcs. 

The animation for Dounia is rather lovely. You can compare it to other films like Lanya’s Poem and criticize how it uses what is assumedly a motion-tween-based world with its characters, but many shows use this type of animation and can pull it off well. As usual, it’s all about time, talent, and money, and the animation here has a pleasantly fun story-book charm to its presentation. The fact that the characters look like stylized caricatures from magazines and have outlines on the bodies that make them look like paper cut-outs gives the animation that might look flat a lot of charm and appeal. The fact Dounia’s hair looks like everlasting starlight and space is an amazing touch. The lighting and shadows help give the 2D animation life, and at the end of the day, a lot of what makes animation good is appeal. These are attractive designs, and the world crafted is nice to look at despite having an entirely different visual feel than other animated films playing at festivals like NYCIFF, Annecy, or Animation is Film. The fact they took the time to also do different camera angles also helps make shots feel more dynamic. The musical sequences are also charming and add some soft beautiful moments in between the darker moments in the films. 

Honestly? I found Dounia to be a charming little experience. It might not last in my or anyone’s top 10 by the time the end of the year comes up, but there have been a lot of smaller animated films coming out that I have been truly charmed by, and that’s healthier than most years where smaller releases that aren’t good are given to everyone upfront and then the good stuff is released during the spring and summer releases before retreating back to the award season release timeline. Unfortunately, there is no word on an official US release, but since there is a US dub trailer, hopefully, that means it will be given one soon. Definitely give it a watch if you want something different from your usual animation enjoyment that shines. Next time though, we will be talking about one of my favorite films from NYCIFF with the decade-long follow-up to 2012/2013’s Ernest & Celestine with Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia. 

Rating: Go See It!

AGENT ELVIS IMPRESSIONS: A ROCKY ROCKABILLY TIME

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this editorial!)

There was a time when a lot of animated projects were greenlit or crafted because of reasons that are either tying-in with a recently released film, have some major celebrity attached to it, or selling some brand-spanking new toy. While that still happens in some cases, like a ton of anime being based on video games, mobile games, or what have you, it has slowed down a bit elsewhere. We still get the occasional toy tie-in show like Transformers: Earthspark, but the “oh I’m a big celebrity and want to have my own cartoon” era seems to be done with. I mean, it’s hard to find a way to make a show work with the celebrity in question unless you go all out in a certain direction. For example, we have this editorial’s impressions on Agent Elvis, an adult action-comedy animated series now on Netflix. 

The show was created by the late Priscilla Presley and John Eddie, who were also executive producers on the show. It unleashes adventures of the rockabilly god himself going on spy missions on the side of being, well, Elvis. Obviously, by the trailers and the premise, this won’t be the most historically accurate plot of all time, but if you want something normal out of someone like Elvis, then you might expect to see something in the same vein as Baz Lurhman’s Elvis film from last year. Now how different the history is and what kind of twists and turns the tales take, well, you will have to see for yourself. 

For the most part, the reason to be excited to check out this series is to watch the lovely animation with designs by the amazing and always fantastic Robert Valley. Even for a TV budget, Titmouse, the studio that handled the animation, pulled off a very fun-looking show with some of the most stylish animations of the year so far. Also, it is always nice to see an action spy show in the sea of shows that tend to be more slice-of-life comedies until they start to branch out into their own things. Here, you better love the concept of Elvis being a secret agent because it is pretty much all of that. The cast is stacked with Matthew McConaughey as the rock icon himself, and he does a good job of portraying him. It’s nice to see a main character who is married and loves his wife and does not want to fully indulge in trope-filled spy stuff. I mean, granted, there is a lot of spy stuff and tropes, but it doesn’t fully overshadow Elvis as a character. It flips a few of the tropes and still makes for a compelling story of why Elvis is doing this spy stuff during the second half of the season’s 10 episodes. The rest of the cast is also good, including Tom Kenny, Johnny Knoxville, Kaitlin Olsen, Niecy Nash, and Don Cheadle who plays a delightful dirtbag. However, the journey of watching this film has one major hurdle. 

I think the one real downside about this show is how a lot of this show’s entertainment value is coming from the absurd action and Robert Valley’s amazing designs and visuals. Those are the best parts of the show on top of the incredible voice cast. Why is that? Personally, the biggest hurdle and issue this show has as far as this batch of episodes goes is how it has amazing visuals, but its comedy writing is a very traditional feeling in the adult animation feel. It’s crass, shocking, violent, horny, and extremely quippy in the vein of shows like Archer. It has its moments where it all gels well and can be a truly bombastic ride of watching Elvis save the day, but a lot of it is your typical crass adult animation writing. I get this is meant to be an over-the-top experience, like being akin to the other absurd horror-comedy Bubba Ho-Tep, but it feels as though they are trying very hard with its dialogue at times. McConaughey, Kaitlin Olsen, Johnny Knoxville, Niecy Nash, Tom Kenny, and Don Cheadle can only carry so much of this show on their shoulders, and the show needed to either polish up its dialogue or tone down the massive number of quips that it throws at the audience. It’s not as obnoxious as it sounds in this paragraph, but there were definitely times when it felt like the tone clashed with certain story beats because it’s trying to be edgy and above it all. It works better when the entire show is on all cylinders, when it’s focusing on the fun camp and grindhouse premise with some focus on the overarching themes of Elvis and his history. It’s a shame, because so much of the typical crass adult animation comedy stuff takes up a lot of time, when it’s the stuff outside of the crass bits that makes it a fun time! 

Agent Elvis is a rather rocky rockabilly time that is fun to watch, but if you are tired of the typical adult animated comedy elements, then you might not enjoy this one. If you are looking for something other than Archer with a similar premise and style of execution though, then you will probably want to check this show out! It’s now available on Netflix, and while it has its rough edges, I hope people support it due to how terrible Netflix’s renewal system works on what gets renewed or canceled. IT Doesn’t help that the algorithm is the worst thing ever, forcing users of Netflix to curate their own playlists and so on. If you are wanting a rocking and a rolling good time, then get inside your bright pink Cadillac and have yourself an explosive good time.

The Other Side of Animation 295: Titina Review

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With Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio sweeping the award circuit as well as everyone’s heart, he has made it more vocal than ever that animation is film. There is not just one certain type of way of telling a story for a particular group of people in the movie-going world, and it shouldn’t have taken just one well-known director to make people realize this, when it has been a known fact that animation can be made for and loved by everyone. You can tell a multitude of stories with the medium, and it deserves as much respect as anything that comes out during award season. Even though it has been shown that most of the best films come out all throughout the year and not just the last three months, the film industry tends to only give respect to those films that are released during the award season. Heck, a lot of the ones that come out during this time period are terrible. Instead of giving focus to more mediocre biopics that all look the same, people should find time and give support to films like what was my favorite film during Animation is Film, Titina. 

This wonderful film is directed by Kaja Næss and is co-written by Kaja and Per Schreiner. The story follows the perspective of a world-spanning adventure through the eyes of a little dog named Titina, a stray that lives in Italy and is adopted by an aviator and airship designer named Umberto Nobile, voiced by Jan Gunnar Roise. Umberto gets a call from famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, voiced by Kare Conradi to craft a blimp to venture to the north pole. This, of course, is taking place during the 1920s during the early rise of Mussolini, and the two men are intertwined with this grand journey that we see all through the perspective of man’s best friend. 

This movie is so good at how it tells its story about our aviator and explorer with how they contrast with their goals of this journey to the North Pole. Both are doing it for their own countries, but Roald is doing it for personal pride. He thinks he is the only one that matters while Umberto sees it as a collaborative effort. Much of this movie is watching through visual storytelling and dialogue how the two treat the exploration, and it constantly goes back and forth with how the pair’s pride takes control of their ambitions. Each of our leads are flawed and not entirely likable individuals, but they feel more human than most live-action films due to how their strengths and faults really are brought up in the story. 

The decisions and actions they make or take feel reasonable and not out of left field. Granted, they had to go by history while crafting the story due to this being mostly based on true events, but the way the story is told through amazing 2D animation and footage from the actual adventure shows a compelling character study. It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite films from 2019, Bunuel and the Labyrinth of the Turtles due to how both films follow an individual/individuals who are on a journey of self-realization and reflection, ending up being driven more by pride and stubbornness that lead to the consequences for their actions. Just because it’s an animated film doesn’t mean this film doesn’t go into some really dark and depressing places. It has its surreal animated moments, with both funny and heartwarming moments, but the entire journey mixes all of those into a rollercoaster of emotions that gives you a bit of everything. No joke feels out of place, every emotional beat is earned, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome like most biopics. It’s also extremely critical of nationalistic pride, which is always a good thing. 

The animation is gorgeous. It uses a distinct and fun caricature style for its humans with soft colors that creatively use lighting and shadows to craft some of the best visuals seen in 2020’s feature animation. It reminds me a lot of foreign/indie comics with how it might all look flat in terms of textures to the world and everything in it, but it results in some truly beautiful visuals and some of the best cinematography in animation from 2022. The fact the film takes time to slow down and have quiet moments or moments of just pure beauty or trippy visuals shows that the director and the team knew what they were doing. That it’s able to capture the scale and the power of nature is a major win in my book. You can just feel the size of the blimp as it arrives on its first stop or how cold Alaska feels is nothing short of a miracle, revealing an art team that understood the assignment. The voice cast is stellar with some fantastic performances. An amusing point is that this is one of two films that makes fun of and punches down on Mussolini. It didn’t happen a lot during 2022, but the fact it happened more than once was a fun coincidence. The film also has a very Venust soundtrack. Not only does it have a fantastic cover of the titular song, but its infusion of jazz gives it a special flair that can’t be matched by other films. Thank you Kare Vestrheim for a hugely memorable soundtrack. 

Titina is a brilliant globe-trotting wonder of animation. It’s a human journey of what can happen when one’s pride gets in the way of an experience that was meant to be a positive one for the world in which they live. Of course, we see all of this through the eyes of one of the cutest animals in history, Titina and how what can get us through turbulent times is love, compassion, and connection. Unfortunately, this is one of those films where it doesn’t have a distributor as of writing this review, and that is a huge disappointment, because this is one of the best-animated films of the decade so far, and people need to see it as soon as possible, and that can only happen when or if companies like GKIDS or Shout! Factory can bring it over. There are so many amazing animated films in the world, and it’s a shame that some people won’t be able to watch them because of a lack of distribution/interest. Hopefully, this one can get picked up, because it truly is amazing. Now then, next time, we shall talk about another NYCIFF entry with Dounia and The Princess of Aleppo. 

Rating: Essentials