Cartoon Vault is back with a unique toy franchise series from France, it's Super 4.
Super 4 is a CGI cartoon featuring characters from the German made Playmobil building block toy franchise. The idea was to try and jump on the bandwagon of the overwhelming success story that was the Lego Movie and it just so happens that it's Playmobil's 40th anniversary.
The cartoon takes place in a multi-themed land of medieval, magic, pirates and futuristic as they are the building sets that sell the best. The characters are Alex the Knight, Gene the Secret Agent, Ruby the Pirate and Twinkle the Fairy as quite often the characters find themselves saving Alex's Kingdom more than the others with occasional back stories and inventions gone wrong scenarios.
It's no where near the same quality as Lego shows as it seems to lack comic timing and most of their adventures are far too safe to really get kids interested, and despite being a cast of four main characters, it's Ruby and Alex who steal most of the spotlight as Gene feels like he doesn't want to be in the cartoon while Twinkle has the attention span of a canary in a mirror shop.
To give the show credit, it's a valiant effort and caters for all tastes but doesn't quite do enough to really tempt any viewers away from Lego and the lack of suspense and comedy doesn't make the show all that intelligent. The show is available on TV in most European Countries, not sure if it's licensed for North American release.
It was Valentine's Day yesterday but I'll spare you any romance themed blog entries and move onto a 4Kids anime.
(In case you haven't guessed yet I didn't get any Valentine's Cards and I'm taking it out on a 4Kids Anime)
So now give a warm welcome to Kirby.
Now the games don't offer much insight into Kirby's backstory so this anime cleans it up by saying that Kirby is one of the last star warriors of his kind and crash lands on Planet Popstar because he was drawn to it due to recent monster activity from the mostly villainous King Dedede. The bigger bad guy is Nightmare, who spreads his chaos around the universe by getting people like King Dedede to invest in his monsters sold by a weird smooth talking human who acts like the owner of a used car company. So for a hundred episodes watch Kirby fight a different monster every week along with friends Tiff and Tuff, and some support from the Spanish sounding Meta Knight.
Yeah Kirby is a monster-of-the-week style show and it knows it, I've only watched four episodes of this anime and I don't need anymore, this anime is so predictable that you don't even care what monster it is Kirby has to fight, it doesn't help that Kirby is known for being nigh invincible and that his feats and achievements make many of his Nintendo stable mates jealous. Thankfully Kirby doesn't talk because 4Kids were very quick to leave their trademark stamp on the anime; Meta Knight speaks with a Spanish accent which totally isn't ripping off Puss in Boots from Shrek and we have King Dedede sounding like a more refined Foghorn Leghorn, and yes I had to watch the dub that's all the Nintendo Anime Channel offers but I digress, Kirby is at the very least entertaining even if it is really predictable and uses some god awful voices but saying that 4Kids has never made Nintendo look bad since it did so well with Pokemon and you sense when watching Kirby that it was much easier to adapt than say Legend of Zelda or Metroid.
Final Verdict: It's tolerable in small doses and plays a lot of safe cards but it still showcases itself as 4Kids trash, slightly better quality trash but trash none the less but Kirby never loses any of his charm because of it. Depending on your taste in anime, I'd say take it or leave it.
I'm rewriting this to re-clarify some of the things I won't do on my blogs.
Anime Reviews
Android Ana Maico 2010: Again it's so boring there's nothing to pick from it that I can review.
Akira: I still won't review Akira as I have to invest a lot of time into the film.
Ghost in the Shell: Nor will I review this one for the same reasons.
Spirited Away: Or this one as well, again same reasons.
Video Game Reviews
Final Fantasy: I won't cover Final Fantasy as I don't have enough experience of the franchise to do it justice.
Kingdom Hearts: I hate Kingdom Hearts with a passion but I know a lot of people like it so to avoid a backlash I won't review it.
Video Game Politics: I want to avoid it like the plague so I won't mention anything to do with Gamergate or any other controversies.
Fantasy Zone
UAFC Battles: I will not use Bleach characters.
Hopefully that makes things a bit clearer although despite me not doing anything to review these shows, games or use characters, they are still all eligible for any top ten list.
I've reviewed OVAs in the past but there are many that don't require their own pages for and these three certainly live up to that.
Handsome na Kanojo
Actress and model Mio Hagiwara meets a young director named Ichiya Kumagai and falls in love with him, however Ichiya is too fixated on his movie to notice and it's only when he escapes a nasty motorcycle accident that he realizes his feelings for Mio. This story was one of many attempts by artist Wataru Yoshizumi before finding success with Marmalade Boy. Translated as Handsome Girl and the term is used within the OVA by Ichiya to describe classy Hollywood ladies like Lauren Bacall.
Despite a good setup and a fantastic art style this 1991 OVA goes too fast leaving little time for chemistry to develop between the leads.
Final Verdict: Out of the three OVAs this one is the most solid in terms of setup and story but is still forgettable and overshadowed by the artist's more popular works.
Elf 17
Prince Muscat of the Galaxy Empire holds a martial arts tournament to find people to travel with him across the universe which draws the attention of wrestling fairy Lu and the mecha suited K.K. Together along with the spaceship's pilot travel across the universe starting with a desert planet where they thwart a smuggling operation of antique wine.
It sounds like a good idea but with nothing much to work with in the character department, there are plenty of moments where the viewer will draw blanks such as the poorly constructed plot twist in the last five minutes of the feature. Then again this was made by the same person who did Ultimate Teacher, an anime deemed unreviewable by Bennett the Sage of Anime Abandon.
Final Verdict: Out of the three, this 1987 OVA is probably the only one that could've been serialized if a bit more care was taken over the final product particularly the poor characters.
Katsugeki Shōjo Tantei Dan
School Girls Yuriko and Shizuka attempt to save their rich friend Midori who gets kidnapped as part of an operation by the chairman of the school to steal a military weapon hidden in Midori's mansion.
This is the worst of the three as the characters are designed to be stupid within a story that makes utterly no sense in a world with such a lousy color palette. My first review on this blog was Debutante Detective Corps which you could argue is a more sophisticated version of this anime which is like saying a McDonald's is high class cuisine. But there is a fundamental difference between this 1986 OVA and the Debutante Girls, at the very least the Debutante Detective Corps made an effort to suck while this OVA is lacking any effort at all.
Final Verdict: It's such a low to see such crap being dredged up from the distant past and I thought Circuit Angel was bad, this is just insulting.
Today we look at a movie from everyone's favorite pirate crew the StrawHats as we dive into the film Strong World.
We begin with a breakout as a veteran villain escapes the marine's prison going by the name of Golden Lion Shiki, a pirate captain who used to fight Gold Roger back in the day.
Later on with rumors of the East Blue facing several vicious attacks, the StrawHats decide to return to East Blue to save it but a chance meeting with Shiki whisks the crew off to a number of floating islands which ends in the crew getting scattered about the islands with Nami getting captured by Shiki, after battles with some fantastic looking monsters and a round one defeat to Shiki, the StrawHats descend on the stronghold and promptly kick ass in style.
Eiichiro Oda provided much of the support for this film personally but to be honest his contribution is less improving the story and more drawing as many fantastic animals as possible which don't get me wrong, it's his biggest talent as an artist but it didn't warrant extending the film's running time, it doesn't help that some action scenes are a little rushed, but the one scene that saves the film is the epic moment when the StrawHats all dressed in suits descend on Shiki's palace surrounded by hundreds of pirates and promptly blast them all to pieces with high powered guns; One Piece is often criticized for being less pirate and more fantastic adventure but that scene reminds us that Luffy and co are pirates and not to mess with them, it truly is one of One Piece's finest moments.
As for everything else, Shiki is a decent villain, his henchman are pretty terrible and we could've done without Japanese slapstick or fart shoes, I know One Piece does comedy pretty well but that stuff is more at home on the Muppet Show.
Dub is good but I prefer the subtitled version.
Final Verdict: It's a longer version of all the other One Piece movies, even with Eiichiro Oda's support, this doesn't break any new ground but the stuff it does well is really well done and makes the experience worthwhile.
