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Contains some spoilers

Ever since I first watched Kiki’s delivery service around 2001, Ghibli films have been a major part of my life. Specifically the more family friendly ones that Disney heavily advertised for families. So of course I was surprised when, in 2010, I discovered this film in the library with Hayao Miyazaki’s name on it and Ghibli’s signature visual style, but rated PG-13 for violence. To be fair, Miyazaki had never shied away from violence, blood, or bruises, before. Mononoke, however, is real anime violence: gory and bloody to a near sensationalist degree. It’s also by far the most adult oriented film, with no ... child proxy characters, whimsy, or cute sidekicks. Needless to say, after being bored by the first 10 minutes, I left the couch, leaving my 6 year old sister to finish the movie. I came back about an hour and half later, intrigued by what was going on, and watched the insane and miraculous climax, completely devoid of its context.

Of course I didn’t like it.

I’ve also never forgotten it.

Ten years later, I’ve finally watched (or re watched?) Mononoke Hime.
Was it better this time around? Of course it was, but I can’t help but still feel a little bummed out by how it didn’t live up to the hype this film gets. Also, as unfair it is for me to do so, I’m reviewing this film specifically in comparison to other ghibli films.

Ashitaka, the poor but reserved prince of a struggling village, fends off a mysterious demon that is revealed out to be a dying war god. Despite successfully killing it, however, Ashitaka gets poisoned, and is fated to die. Hoping to find a cure, Ashitaka leaves his village, only to get mixed up in a massive conflict between the emperor and his thuggish samurai: a independent industrial town called Iron Town, led by the power hungry but cool headed leader, Lady Eboshi; and the Gods and Spirits of the earth, accompanied by the honorary wolf goddess, San, the titular “Princess Mononoke.

The biggest disappointment for me is the film's use of color, or lack thereof. This criticism is entirely unfair, as I am incredibly spoiled by the neon richness of the digital coloring the studio would later use, but even then, I feel the previous films were more rich in their pallet. Granted, the film Is going for a more realistic approach towards its colors compared to most ghibli films but I still found it non distinctive. Along similar lines, the animation is rather minimal-for a ghibli film (to be clear, the movie is about on par, if not slightly above average compared to the level of animation in most anime films. Its just low for ghibli) Again I understand why; at 134 minutes it is the third longest animated film of all time - of course they were going to have to cut a few corners, but again, it reduced the film's potential impact.

I’m being harsh about the film's aesthetics because usually that's the best part of a ghibli film, even when the story and characters are mediocre. Here the aesthetics didn’t come through and, frankly, the characters are also mediocre. The worst of both worlds. First of all, Ashitaka is probably the blandest protagonist I’ve seen in an anime film, and to make things worse, he has no character development throughout the entire film. I don’t mean he has a cliched arc, like a basic hero's journey or a bildungsroman, or even that they screwed up and made his character inconsistent. Nope, Ashitaka is literally the same exact uncharismatic wet blanket of a character from start to finish. This is because he begins the film already enlightened to the solution - all sides must not fight and instead should find a compromise. Through a series of action and dialogue scenes that he maneuvers easily, he (mostly) communicates this solution to the fighting parties. Roll credits.

The decent characters, like princess San and Lady Eboshi, are not given nearly enough screen time to match their potential. Both are striking and determined women trying to accomplish their goals and are the driving forces moving the events of the story. They’re especially neat because both are seemingly the height of Miyazaki’s two main female archetypes; the youthful and fierce young woman, still looking for her place in the world; and the mature adult woman who has already found her calling and is fighting to remain independent. Both are also quite charismatic and are skilled fighters. And yet, despite these wells of potential, both of them are in less than half the movie. It is truly a shame.

Personally, I feel that there are a multitude of reasons why a person could love a movie, and that the two categories of characters and visuals are perhaps given too much weight compared to other qualities. That said, the reason why they are given such weight is because they are considered the minimal elements needed for a film to be considered a film. Sadly, I feel Mononoke is lackluster, albeit still slightly above average, in these categories. If the film were to be only poorer in one, my opinion of the movie would likely be high enough to forgive the other, but alas, both are weights pulling the film down.

Where Mononoke Hime does excel at is in character/mechanical design, and themes.

Character designs are my weak spot, and Mononke Hime has great ones. The most stand out ones are, again, San and Eboshi. Both are visually distinct, with clothing and figures that match their opposite personalities. Sans mask and wolf skin headdress, as well as fleet footed abilities to climb walls and rocks with ease, make her unique and memorable. She also contrasts well with Eboshi’s elegant silk patterned robes which highlight her arrogance and power. Can you tell I thought the best scene in the entire movie was when the two of them were fighting one on one?

The designs of the Gods are also great. The expressions on Moro and Okkoto are always horrifying and mesmerizing, and the Forest spirit has the most unnerving yet beautiful design for a creature yet, with its tree-like antlers and baboon like face. The body horror of the “sickness” is also striking and has never left me since I first saw it growing on San and Ottoko a decade ago.

Other designs like the rifles and cannons used by Eboshi, as well as the building of the various locations, are simple but striking. Overall, the films designs were distinct and enjoyable and perhaps good enough to excuse the other colors and visuals.

Then we have the themes. What I love about Mononoke Hime is that this to me is the first film Miyazaki made where his characteristic themes came first. Typically, a Miyazaki movie will begin as a cool idea or a scenario or a character, and then his themes will appear through the movie's details and execution. Here, environmentalism, the horror of war, and feminism, are the full blown text of the film, not just enriching window dressing. Because of this, each theme is less one sided than it usually is in movies. Lady Eboshi is an earth destroying capitalist industrialist and is what would normally be unquestionably evil, but here she is also portrayed as a liberator and feminist, bringing hope to the disenfranchised and impoverished who have been left with nothing by the emperor's corrupt system. The Gods and Spirits, normally the unquestionably good and omnipotent characters, are portrayed as incredibly prideful and intolerant to change, often causing their own demise as much as the humans are. San herself is probably the most prideful of the Ghibli girls, making it difficult to be immediately on her side. Ashitaka’s call for compromise is not a typical solution for Miyazaki. Being the radical he is, he usually calls for more dramatic change. The emperor and his side are the only ones who aren’t given depth, but that's because they’re barely in it, only affecting the plot through small skirmishes and being mentioned in conversations.

This is also Miyazaki’s most overtly feminist film. Most of the female characters are former sex workers who are independent, hardworking, and frequently shown to be much more competent and courageous than their husbands. Of the three sides, the most in depth ones have several female leaders.

Further than that, however, Mononoke implies how Patriarchal societies push women to compete against each other. Lady Eboshi is fighting the Spirits because she is in debt and being blackmailed by the Emperor and a monk. San and her mother, Moro, are fighting, not only to defend their home, but to defend the male earth spirit. These women are shown to be nearly suicidal in passionate hate for the other, and yet a major reason they’re only doing so because society is forcing them to do so. In the end, both of them lose a lot in their pointless fighting, while gaining little. It’s tragic because it’s easy to imagine them being strong allies if they weren't both in competition, and that’s what ultimately makes the conflict of Mononoke Hime so compelling.

In the end, Mononoke Hime is a mixed bag, if an overall positive one. I recommend it, but don’t get your expectations too high.

As a final note, don’t watch this dubbed. Ghibli dubs are usually serviceable and sometimes are even better than the original, but Mononke Hime’s dub is pretty terrible. John DiMaggio and Jeda Pinkett Smith don’t sound like they belong there at all, Minnie Driver has a thick English accent for some reason, and they got Claire Danes to voice San, so you know it's going to suck. The only stand out performance is Kieth Richards as the blind war god, who is honestly amazing the whole way through. Too bad the rest of the cast were terrible.

I am awestruck at how beautiful this movie is. Taking inspiration from the detailed background art of Makoto Shinkai, the character shading of anime OVA’s from the 80’s and 90’s as well as putting a hefty budget behind studio Ufotable's signature style, has created one of the most ethereal and modern aesthetic anime.

The highlight of the entire film is how it designs the plant life in the backgrounds. Keep in mind that plants and nature are in no way themes or plot important to the movies story or even setting, it does after all take place in an urban Japanese city, albeit a small one. ... Whenever trees or bushes appear on the screen I squee at the mastery of color and shading. The greens and spots of oranges complement the dark, dingy, and man made surfaces that fill the rest of the frame. The film's best scene is when Zouken and Emiya are having a serious discussion, not because of the content of the conversation, but because it takes place in a beautiful exotic greenhouse.

Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but the TL;DR version of this review is watch Lost Butterfly for the plant art if nothing else.

I have not played the original visual novel, and in fact I have the pleasure of being unspoiled as to how this particular fate route ending goes. Because of this, this review will mostly be based on this movie as a movie and not as an adaptation.

The sad thing about anime today, as well as most mainstream media like the marvel franchise, is that cinematography is nearly nonexistent. Rarely are big budget productions incompetent in this regard, but it’s rarer for them to excel. Lost Butterfly, like the previous film, Presage Flower, uses the power of camera angles, closeups, wide angle shots, panning cameras, and every tool in the trade to communicate the films tone. Fear, anxiety, even dread; this is what the film communicates through its cinematography, and I applaud Sudou Tomonari for putting in the effort to make the film stand out in a way that is sadly uncommon

I already mentioned the plants, but the rest of the art is good as well. Ufotable is well known for their use of incorporating cgi and digital art into their work, and they spare no expense here, giving everything from the slick streets in the rain, the rusty metal gates on doors, and the individual bricks in walls a look that is so detailed that it’s better than realism. As I also already mentioned, the shading on the characters is excellent. Not only are multiple levels of shading and reflection shown in some areas, but the shading even has hues of blue to it that give the characters a vaguely impressionistic feel to them. Its not strong but it is there. It’s nice to see that this style of anime character design isn’t completely lost to us in a world where the OVA has essentially gone extinct.

This is all important because this film, like the rest of the series, has made the very specific, and in my opinion smart, decision to focus on adapting the mood of the story rather than the plot. From what I understand, there's about 40 hours of plot and exposition that these movies are meant to cover. That means that there should be scenes flying by at the speed of light, with paragraphs of lore and backstory being heaped onto you. Lost Butterfly cuts all of that out, reducing the story line to its barest minimum, and it even adds in a few anime original scenes. What it's staying true to is the tone, and in my opinion this is the best form of loyal adaptation. Plot is irrelevant, what makes you FEEL is still here. This and the original deen adaptation is what I feel is the closest to the original tone of quiet and fearful that Fate/stay night is meant to be. Unlimited blade works, while excellent, never achieved that mood, and you can forget all of the Fate spin offs, they don't even try.

This is compounded by the fact that this is also probably the most willing adaptation to delve into Fate’s darker themes, except perhaps Fate/Zero. Rape, domestic abuse, victim complexes, and PTSD are all major themes at work here. Not to mention, they FINALLY actually added a sex scene! This must be the fiftieth Fate anime and only now is Emiya actually banging the girl like he does in the original novel. I don’t get why all of the others didn’t do this. I get they don’t want to be pornographic like in the game, but you can at least imply that it happens! You have to respect the film for this addition if nothing else.

I truly hope the anime industry takes note of how Lost Butterfly excels compared to most mainstream anime, and incorporates it into other projects. We need more big budget beauties like this and less dividing the budget into a dozen half baked productions. Please see this movie to send that message.

This is not the first time Japan has adapted Swan Lake, and it isn’t the last. Indeed, if you've been alive on this earth then you’ve probably spent a decent amount of your childhood surrounded by many different adaptations of the classic tale: the ballet, the animated movie, that one episode in every kids show where they perform the ballet in school, Barbie; swan lake the movie etc. However, this one is different; it's actually really good (well okay the ballet is good too but that’s a given.)

Princess Tutu is inspirational and emotional. Our protagonist is Duck and she is well . . . a ... duck! However, having fallen in love with the beautiful boy Mytho, she is given the chance to live as a human and search for the missing pieces of his heart that are hidden around the mysterious town where they live, all in time before The Raven, and old evil being, comes back to kill Mytho and plunge the world into darkness. Despite it’s mahou shoujo tag, it's very much a heartfelt remix of 19th century European fantasy and fairy tales, with talking animals, magical curses, and salvation through the power of love.

What I love best about this show is what I look for in every anime I watch: weirdness. In a world of humans, our main character is a duck, not a girl turned into a duck, or a duck living amongst other ducks, but a real animal plain and simple that has fallen in love with a human. The people of the town/school where duck goes to learn ballet are sometimes people but also sometimes animals. Puppets come to life; a gear turning old man flamboyantly skips across the screen; and intense battles of love and justice are fought with dancing, with characters spinning and jumping gracefully while mysterious spotlights appear on them from seemingly nowhere. All of this is meant to be taken seriously.

While much of this may seem par for the course for an anime, there is a level of eccentricity here that you just know would be seen as “too odd” or “too much” for a modern American audience. Disney has stunted us into only accepting our fairy tales in the most coddled and bleached form imaginable, reducing classic European folktales and myths into toothless and cliched media, with everything that could’ve challenged the audiences world view or allowed for a new experience being flushed down the toilet in order to make way for branding and merchandising. This anime, despite being made in Japan, is more similar to the dark and unique spirit of Grimm's fairy tales and European folklore than anything coming out of the west today.This is a show with guts and I love that.

The character designs in this show are one of its strongest features, with Duck’s design taking the top spot. Whether she’s a duck, a little girl, or her magical alter ego Princess tutu, she is either adorable or magestic. Everyone else is great too; Mytho is a wisty bishounen with white hair and sleepy eyes; Fakir is mysterious and Rue is beautiful. These designs alone are enough to keep me watching and Itou Ikuko did a marvelous job. These designs lend themselves especially well to the great exaggerated expressions that the animators give the characters. In general, the art design is quite well done. The backgrounds can feel a little stale, like most anime backgrounds tend to be, but everything else is quite satisfactory.

The music is the second strongest aspect. Admittedly there’s very little original music, as the show mostly relies on playing sections of music from Tchaikovsky, Debussy and others, but the use of those songs is clever, making them serve the narrative and the tone rather than simply sitting on the laurels of older, better composers, hoping their own work will seem better by association like how many films and shows utilize classical music. Here the use is essential as fairy tales and ballet are major themes of the show. The show's OP is majestic, and I watched it every time it was played at the beginning of each episode.

These three elements are honestly enough in my opinion to make the show worth a try, However, pleasant and unique audiovisuals aren't the only thing that this show has to offer. The show's narrative rests firmly on the shoulders of our protagonist Duck and our antagonist Rue. together, they form the emotional backbone of the story. Neither have particularly complex arcs, but they are strong nonetheless. Duck is shy and clumsy yet loyal and determined to save those she loves despite being fully aware that her destiny is to die in vain. This sort of character is admittedly a dime a dozen but Duck pushes past the chaff through her sheer likability. You just want to pick her up and hug her, telling her everything will be alright. Watching her grow to become more successful in her battle against The Raven is satisfying and exciting. The show is also clever because, since she is a duck turned into a human, it makes sense that she wouldn’t understand things, and thus the exposition doesn’t feel forced. Overall, she is a great protagonist.

Even better than her, however, is her rival; Rue. To say what happens in Rue’s arc would be to spoil too much important plot, but I will say that what she goes through is heartbreaking. She just might be the best character, and is far more than the hime-brat archetype she appears to be at the beginning of the show.

Finally, the show's use of meta narrative is an interesting touch, with the character of Drosselmeyer, the in universe author of the story, watching and commenting on the narrative . I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this aspect early on in the show, however, without giving too much away, I can safely say that the pseudo framing device was used in an effective way by the end of the show.

If Tutu has flaws, it lies mostly in its side characters and comedy. Ducks two friends are not particularly funny nor important to the narrative, in fact their mean spirited attitude towards her can get rather aggravating. Even more annoying is the Cat ballet teacher who threatens to marry the students if they don’t keep up their grades. It happens every. Single. Episode. And it gets old really fast. Mytho himself, despite his great design, is a bit of a non entity. Granted there’s an in universe reason for why he's boring but that doesn’t stop him from being less interesting than I feel he should have been. The show is also a tad slow at times, but these are all relatively small gripes.

Overall, Princess Tutu is an exciting and emotional watch 8/10.

One day, when I was browsing the wayback machine, I tried checking out the Internet archives video section and thought “what the hell, lets see if there’s any lost anime” and lo and behold, I found this wonderful gem, called Raiders of Galaxy (yes, the word “the” is missing from the title card) in English.

This is also my first Korean anime, though I had no idea at first because I was watching the English dub. Not by choosing though but as far as I know this he only version that exists on the internet (though I didn’t look too hard) and it is GLORIOUS. ...

Dubbed in Singapore; it has all the hallmarks of a bad Singaporean eng dub with Speed racer level “Ah’s!” and “Oh’s!” interspersed with terribly ADR’d silence. Hearing garbled Aussie and British accents while watching this was hilarious, especially the woman they got to play the male lead who is not only straining to do a man's voice, but also delivers her lines in the most ridiculous ways possible, with possibly my favorite line of hers being how she says “Oh My gosh it disappeared!” in such a weird way that I burst out laughing. This is Garzey’s wing level bad.

But on to the actual anime itself. Super Majingga is a clear attempt to cash in on the mecha craze Japan was going through at the time, and it shows, with both the main robots design and its name being suspiciously similar to a certain mecha classic called Mazinger Z, but hey, lets not hold near plagiarism against them.

This anime is bad, with power point animation that would have been considered poor in the early seventies (this was made in the eighties) which leads to some deliciously crappy cuts and moments that make you wonder if the animators were paid in leftovers McDonald's. They also mis-color a few characters' skin green. It’s later revealed that they’re a green skinned alien, who is wearing a human mask. I guess the colorists forgot that the mask wasn’t green as well in a few scenes, and thus spoiled the twist of their identity about ten minutes before it happens.

The bad animation also leads to boring action scenes. I praise this anime for how funny it was, but the action scenes were by far the most boring part because no one talked during them, and there were way too many long panning shots of robots just flying in space. These were by far the points I was the most tempted to just stop.

There’s no point in talking about the characters, they’re flat as paper. I know everyone says that about a character they don’t like, but seriously there wasn’t a single character arc in this thing.

The plot is VERY basic. Aliens come to take over the planet, a bunch of kids in their giant robot stop them. The end.

The one bit of true praise I have for the movie is that in the few moments where there IS music, the music is pretty good. It’s not GREAT, but with how bad everything else is in comparison, it shined the most by far.

Sadly, I don’t know If there was supposed to be any more to Super Majingga 3 than this movie. The title implies this is part of a series, and the movie assumes you know who everyone is, not giving any introductions whatsoever, but this being nearly lost media, I couldn’t find anything about it, beyond the fact it was eventually brought to Australia, got chopped up and re-edited and then used to fill out dead time. If there’s more to this series, I’d be interested to see if the rest has a dub this wonderfully bad.

Overall, If you find it in its original Korean, I wouldn’t recommend it, but If you go to the internet archive (or of the several uploads of it on YouTube ) and watch it dubbed, go ahead. If the dub wasn’t entertaining enough to interest you, well it's only an hour long so not much time was wasted. Otherwise, this is a great so bad it's good watch. 1/10 for quality, but 7.5/10 for entertainment.

A Preliminary review for the first volume, as it's only just been translated into English, and seemingly no one knows about this manga despite the tremendous promise it has so far.

So far, Bakemono Yawa-zukushi, or as it is being published in English, Phantom Tales of the Night, is a manga about a mysterious place called Thundercloud Inn which takes in the unfortunate at the price of you biggest secret! It's possible a grand plot will be revealed, however the manga has been mostly episodic for now, showing semi-unrelated stories of people and spirits meeting the Inns strange and beautiful owner and his two servants Spider ... and Butterfly.

The mysteries as to who these people are and why they are doing this are interesting, but the real treat here is the art.

Let me tell you, Bakemono Yawa-zukushi has succulent art, especially in regards to its handsome male characters who fill the pages with their silky hair and flowing Kimonos. The author also has a good grasp of attractive page layouts, and clearly has a good team working with them as the backgrounds, inking, and little things like plants and fruit are all well designed and realistic.

Important - While this isn't a Yaoi, or even a shounen ai (not yet at least) there is a lot of fanservice with nude pretty Bishounens, so if you don't like that as much as I do, you may have trouble with this one, but personally I think it can be enjoyed by anyone regardless.

please support it so that it gets popular and Yen press knows to keep translating and publishing!