Top Cartoons: A Wish For Wings That Work

It’s no holiday standard, but it means something to me.

Now that December is here, I’d like to talk about a TV Christmas special that I remember from my childhood. Adapted from the comic strip Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed, A Wish for Wings That Work tells the wistful tale of Opus the penguin, who pines for a pair of soaring feathered wings to replace the flightless fins he’s been cursed with. As a big budget production with sly adult humor, and featuring the voices of Michael Bell, Frank Welker, Joe Alaskey, Raven Symone, Tress McNielle, Robin Williams, and Dustin freakin’ Hoffman, A Wish for Wings That Work should have been a sensation. Sadly, it turned out to be just another cartoon special that never really got off the ground.

The tale begins in flashback via a letter to Santa Claus that Opus writes. He describes his desperate desire to fly as other birds do, the insecurity he feels because of it, and the building resentment he’s gathered for his mephitic but well-meaning friend, Bill the Cat.

Opus attends a support group for “earthbound birds,” but finds the thinly-veiled discussion on sexual inadequacy to be of little help. Later, he and Bill rig up a balloon harness to lift Opus into the sky, but Bill ties his tongue into the strings and dismantles the procedure. This sequence is very funny and well-animated, almost like something out of a Roger Rabbit cartoon, but it’s also a little brief. I kinda wish it had developed and expanded into a widespread catastrophe. I would have liked to see Opus and Bill drag an ever-growing train of detritus as Opus careens through streets, farms, and buildings. Still, what’s there is pretty good.

Fed up at his failures, Opus takes his frustration out on Bill and chews him out. As Bill sulks away, Opus realizes that there’s still one person who can help him: Santa.

Here we return to the present, when Opus closes his letter and, realizing that it’s too late for mailing, faxes it to the North Pole. As he dreams of waking up to new wings on Christmas morning, and Bill collects snow watching his friend’s house from a distance, we pan up, and up and up, until we’re in the troposphere. That’s where Santa emerges, sailing from cloud to cloud and ho-ho-ho-ing his enlarged heart out. It looks like dreams are about come true after all, but a loose sleigh hitch leads to disaster, and the funniest “Oh, NOOOOO!” I’ve ever heard in my life.

I won’t spoil what happens from here, but it’s not the fairy-tale ending you typically get in holiday programming. The story closes instead with a “We’ll do the best with what we’ve got” message that works well enough.

While I enjoyed its neurotic tone and gross-out humor, A Wish for Wings That Work was not a ratings sensation, and most of those who did see it didn’t much care for it. As far as I can remember, CBS only aired it once, and that confused me. Bloom County was popular, right? People knew what they were getting into when they watched this show, right? Hell, we were living in the age of The Simpsons, Liquid Television, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. Cartoons were growing up, and I was excited about it. Where was everyone else?

My guess at the downfall of Wings was its packaging as a sanitized, child-friendly Christmas special. When Mother and Father plop their kids down for some network-sanctioned holiday television, they’re looking for fat tabbies who hate Mondays, not emaciated ones who hork hairballs. They want beagles who pretend to be flying aces, not cockroaches who pretend to be different genders. So, I guess I can understand that. Had Opus made his television debut on Fox, he might have gotten away with his twisted take on Christmas. Hell, he might have given birth to a whole series, as The Simpsons did. On CBS, however, where Garfield and Snoopy make the rules, Opus was a dead duck.

Even Breathed considered the special a failure. He felt that the director was in over his head, and tried too hard to made the show edgy. Breathed didn’t like his own writing, would have preferred a different actor to play Opus, and generally despised the whole production. He says that an eventual Opus film will surely be better than this, but I was actually quite happy with what we already got. I love the ways that Opus and Bill walk, the bluesy musical score, the emotional and comical performances, and the exaggerated, striking backgrounds (even the ones with the disturbing visual gags).

I consider A Wish for Wings That Work to be a real tragedy. It stood at the vanguard of nuanced, adult-oriented cartoons, at a time when mainstream audiences appeared to be ready for them. Somehow, its particular formula just didn’t add up to commercial success. I admit that it’s a little dark, a little uncomfortable, a little out there, but that’s what I love about it. I say that as someone who’s not even a big Bloom County fan. I’m more of a Calvin & Hobbes guy, but you know what I’m getting at.

Top Cartoons: Aqua Teen Hunger Force – Total Recarl

While I’ve always enjoyed the dark humor of Williams Street, I feel like they kind of lost their way as time went on. Take the later seasons of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They fell back on gimmicks, fourth-wall breakage, dick jokes, and guest voices. There’s a sense of growing frustration, or maybe boredom, about them, and it just got tiresome. The show wasn’t about the characters anymore, and it was disappointing.

The first three seasons, however, are where it’s at. In place of the cynicism of the later days, you’ll find real excitement and joy in the early Aqua Teens, and Total Recarl is one of the best.

There are really only two kinds of scripts in the the Aqua Teen toolbox:

1.) Weird creatures show up. Carl is victimized. Master Shake makes sarcastic comments. Meatwad tries to make friends with the creatures. Frylock eventually disposes of them.

2.) Frylock invents dangerous device. Carl is victimized. Shake makes sarcastic comments. Meatwad stands by in fear. Frylock eventually disposes of the invention.

This doesn’t signify a lack of imagination on the writers’ part, of course. These guys held nothing back once a plot got started. Total Recarl is particularly nuts, with characters dying in horrible bloody ways, and then coping with awful attempts at reanimation. The moment when Carl is asked to “try to take another step towards” Frylock is one of the funniest in animated history. It was the moment that cemented Aqua Teen Hunger Force as a new favorite of mine, even if the celebration wasn’t to last. Daniel says, “check it out.”

Top Cartoons: Gary Larson’s Tales From the Far Side

vid’s been taken down, sorry 😦

Like its creator, Tales From the Far Side is a misunderstood creature. A lot of people just don’t get Gary Larson, and I don’t think they got this show either. It was one of just two animated specials based on the popular comic strip, and the only one that aired in the United States. It’s a lovely bit of animation, but I think that director Marv Newland, creator of the haunting Black Hula and Bambi Meets Godzilla, pushed things a little too far into Halloween-Town for most audiences. His vision is clear right from the beginning: the score is a cloud of gloomy guitars and eerie er-hus. The camera glides past smoking farm animals and dead people before settling on a reanimated bovine. This queen of the night tells us with an piercing bleat that she’s bringing us somewhere that we might not like to go, and she doesn’t give a damn how we feel about it.

That Newland’s direction is matched with Gary Larson’s off-center perceptions doesn’t aid the accessibility factor. In keeping with the spirit of the strip, the show is a series of disconnected jokes, many of them conceptual, so if you never dug The Far Side, you’re not going to dig this. I once watched this show with a non-fan friend, and the loudest, angriest question to come up was, “So what happened to the cow?” She was frustrated that the show had ditched the Franken-cow from the opening, and had never come back to it. She didn’t understand that The Far Side was never about the traditional, long-term payoff. Larson is foremost an idea man, and in his world, the punchline is in the premise.

We get some throwaway gags lifted straight from the funny pages, like a crow scraping its meal off the street with a spatula, but there are also more elaborate setups. My favorite is the insect airline, where the business class is packed with worker bees, and the in-flight movie is The Fly.

There are also several “role-reversal” scenarios, not unlike Paul Driessen’s The Killing of an Egg, in which arrogant humanity suffers for its transgressions against nature. Presented in the innocent pictures of the comic, this dark theme was leavened. When bolstered by motion and sound, however, it turns downright devilish.

I think it’s terrific, but most critics of the day did not. They admired the slick presentation, but found the material simple and one-note. I’m really not sure what they expected from a show based off a one-panel cartoon. I think Tales From the Far Side is the perfect amplification of the comic strip. Just watching Larson’s dumpy, bell-shaped characters take motion is a lot of fun. The animators clearly had a great time with it: everything bounces and wobbles and wiggles in a delightful fashion that suits the visual style. There’s very little dialogue, which is odd considering that the comic could be quite wordy, but I think it works. Too much speech would soften the show’s concepts, and extract us from the uncomfortable un-reality that we’re meant to be visiting.

Some of the sequences could use a little trimming, and the finale is a big letdown, but I still think that Tales From the Far Side is a marvel. Like A Wish For Wings That Work, it’s a comic strip special whose material simply can’t cater to everyone, but that’s precisely why I love it so.

Top Cartoons: Snoopy Come Home

There have been over forty animated Peanuts TV specials, and five feature films. There’s a timeless quality to these tales of precocious youngsters. Their lives, activities, pains, and pleasures — baseball games, flying kites, pulling pranks, fitting in — have rarely deviated from what children deal with even today. Snoopy Come Home maintains the themes of the comic, but it pushes them farther than they ever went before.

This is the second animated Peanuts feature, written by Charles Schulz and directed by Bill Melendez. As the title says, the focus is on Charlie Brown’s independent, imaginative, attention-loving beagle, but instead of playing vulture or chasing the Red Baron, he gets trapped at the peak of what amounts to a symbolic love triangle.

There are tensions in the Peanuts neighborhood. Snoopy’s been spending too much time away from home, fighting with the Van Pelt kids, and standing up his play dates. NO DOGS ALLOWED signs are cropping up at his favorite haunts, and even that round-headed kid is pounding him with lectures. It seems as though he just doesn’t belong anymore.

So when a letter from a mysterious girl named Lila arrives, which spurs Snoopy on an impromptu road trip, everyone feels responsible.

It turns out that Lila is Snoopy’s original owner, who, for some reason, had to give up her puppy when her family moved. She returned him to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, where Charlie Brown’s parents later discovered him.

Now Lila is sick with an unnamed, but  serious disease, and misses her pup terribly. Snoopy and his bud Woodstock try to use mass transit to reach her, but NO DOGS ALLOWED signs stymie them, so they have to make the trip through unfamiliar towns and wilderness on foot. They travel a mighty long distance together, bonding, joking, and generally dealing with the rustic life. On one occasion, however, their adventure, and their lives, are put in serious jeopardy.

Having gone without human companionship, Snoopy is pleased to spot Clara, a gal playing in the sand outside her house. He runs up and greets her, but she seizes him, kidnaps him, and attempts to forcibly adopt him.

Clara is more or less a relative of Tiny Toons’s Elmyra, with no awareness or empathy for an animal’s feelings. She gives Snoopy a flea bath, repeatedly dunking him underwater. She ties a hefty rope around his neck and yanks him around. She dresses him in hideous clothes for a tea party. Then, when she spills her tea on him, she blames Snoopy, and gives him a spanking.

It must be noted that Linda Ercoli, the voice actress for Clara, is amazing. At only thirteen years old, she gives Clara an impressive range of emotions, from giddiness to rage, and she’s always  horrifying. She even sings a very complicated patter song with aplomb and perfect rhythm.

After a crazy and intense chase, our wayward heroes make their escape, perhaps having learned something about dealing with strangers.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown is haggard with worry. His friends reach out and provide advice to help him accept that Snoopy is likely gone for good, but nothing works.

When Snoopy finally reaches his old friend, he has to make a tremendous decision. Lila feels so much better with her doggy around that she begs him to come back to her. It is here that Melendez’s direction best demonstrates its wisdom. Melendez understood that Snoopy’s comic strip thought-bubbles wouldn’t work in a film, so he instructed  his animators to pour their efforts into the pup’s physical expression. He may be a simple-looking cartoon character, but the agony Snoopy displays at Lila’s request is truly heartbreaking.

What follows is a series of shockingly painful scenes, restrained only with a stingy sprinkle of humor. There are tearful, even maudlin, partings, and a haunting portrait of real depression as Charlie Brown is unable to eat or sleep in the absence of his dear friend. The sequence plays to a wistful lament called “It Changes,” which, while written with innocent and childlike language, will likely never be understood by any but the most scarred of children.

Speaking of music, one will notice that Vince Guaraldi’s jazzy piano themes are missing from this film. You won’t even hear the iconic “Linus and Lucy” anywhere in it. The score is by Richard and Robert Sherman, who also worked on Disney’s The Jungle Book and Hanna-Barbera’s Charlotte’s Web. Their work here swerves from pleasant and dark, just like the film itself.

Mercifully, two wonderful payoffs await, and the film closes with enough joy to conquer the preceding misery.

Snoopy Come Home baffled most critics, and even Roger Ebert described it as “schizoid.” I agree that it vacillates from one emotional extreme to the other, but I don’t know if that damages the film in any way. Peanuts has always been tinged with anxiety, and I believe that’s part of its endearing nature. I don’t believe it would continue to be printed in today’s comics if Schulz hadn’t dared to mix his own insecurities and doubts into the minds of his cute little characters. I think this movie is quite an achievement, even if it would never play well with today’s audiences, who expect shiny computer animation instead of the exquisite hand-drawn work shown here.

Top Cartoons: Space Ghost Coast to Coast – Intense Patriotism

Oh man…it’s been too long since I last watched this. I’m still laughing too hard to even organize this post. This is a comedy tidal wave, and if you watch it, you’re going to have a tough time getting enough oxygen. Sure, it’s recycled animation put through After Effects, but who cares? The concept, jokes, and timing are so god-damned, spot-on perfect that I think it earns a spot on the ol’ Top Cartoon list.

This episode came at that SGC2C sweet spot between the lame Evan Dorkin days and the just plain weird Adult Swim days. Talk show host Space Ghost has decided to finally travel to America, where all the great superheroes live. Evil musician Zorak, and mostly-indifferent director Moltar have their doubts, but they’re going whether they like it or not. Unfortunately they end up in Mexico.

Highlights include:

• The Pledge of Allegiance
• Jeff Foxworthy’s “jokes”
• Moltar’s fear
• Zorak’s kids
• The box
• Zorak demands freedom
• “MINE is still on.”

Just watch the dang thing.

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #1: Memories Episode 2 – Stink Bomb

If Rod Serling had made a Warner Bros. cartoon, it probably would have ended up like this.

While each of the Ultimate Top Cartoons contains at least one quality that I fiercely admire, Stink Bomb has them all. 

I love the intense animation and timing in Ninja Scroll, but I could do without its adolescent moodiness and badassery, not to mention the excessive, voyeuristic violence that poor Jubei and Kagero have to endure.

I love the characterization, concepts, and set pieces in The Wrong Trousers, but I prefer my cartoons a bit more grown up.

I love the mature, volatile atmosphere in Who Framed Roger Rabbit that lends a dangerous, unstable edge to harmless-looking toons, but the story is ultimately disposable and the antagonist embarrassing.

I love the art design and the clever script of The Triplets of Belleville, but I found the final act to be lame and unsatisfying.

Stink Bomb has all of the best qualities from these cartoons, and none of the bad parts. It starts out hip and smart, gets rolling really quickly, and then it fucking catches fire, amusing, startling, and maybe even scaring any witnesses. It is a masterpiece, and if you were to ask me what kind of cartoons I want to make, I’d say “I wanna make Stink Bombs.”

This forty-minute marvel, the top of the Ultimate Top Cartoons, is the middle segment in an anime anthology called Memories, produced by the great Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira fame.

I became interested in Memories because of the unique look of its final segment, Cannon Fodder. Its characters are designed to look like cute little toy soldiers, and its a far cry from your typical anime art style, so I was curious about it. After watching it, I realized that the style was only chosen for the sake of dark ironic contrast, and the story beneath it was grim and depressing. A lot of folks love Cannon Fodder for what they call a “powerful anti-war message,” but I found it tiresome, empty, and delivered with too heavy a hand. The animation is really good, though.

As for the first segment, Magnetic Rose…ah, forget it, that one was stupid with a capital “STU.” The animation in it is pretty good, though.

No, the real gem in the film is the unassuming Stink Bomb, the middle child that isn’t out to be dark or disturbing or tear-jerking or award-winning, but simply to be a heap of jeering, sneering, devilish fun.

It’s still okay for cartoons to be fun, isn’t it?

Now, before I start my synopsis, I feel I should mention that I’m a big fan of George Carlin. Have been since age nine. In one of his last HBO specials, Life is Worth Losing, Carlin closes his act with a bit he calls “Coast-to-Coast Emergency.” Here’s the premise in his own words:

“I’m an interesting guy. I always hope that no matter how small the original problem is, it’s going to grow bigger and bigger, until it’s completely out of control.”

He then proceeds to explain how a busted water main can lead to the transcendental annihilation of the universe.

As morbid as it sounds, I have a similar fascination with disasters, and this may be why I enjoy Stink Bomb so much. It starts with a dumb move made by a hapless nincompoop, and ends in an extinction-level mega-disaster that threatens all life on Earth.

And it’s all this guy’s fault:

Meet Nobuo Tanaka, a lab technician at Nishibashi Pharmaceuticals. He’s come down with a bad winter cold, and he can’t stop sneezing at his desk.

His co-workers recommend that Nobuo sneak a sample of the new fever medicine Nishibashi is producing. It hasn’t been diluted for sale yet, so it should work great! Just grab one of the blue capsules from the red bottle on Chief Ohmaeda’s desk, they say.

Now, Nobuo is not a very swift man, and when he stops in at the chief’s office (which is unfortunately empty at the time), he makes the obvious mix-up: he takes the red capsule from out of the blue bottle.

Yeah, it’s a pretty big mistake.

Nobuo decides to take a nap in the guest room while the drug does its work. Meanwhile, the chief himself bursts into the lab, demanding to know who touched his red pills. His raving, wild-eyed demeanor suggests that something might be wrong. When Nobuo’s buddies say that it was likely Nobuo who poked around in Ohmaeda’s office, the chief freaks out further, and dashes away, presumably to find the culprit.

The techs have little time to ponder this weirdness before a strange smell wafts into the room. The lab rats notice it too. Then there’s a long, lingering shot on a ventilating fan that slowly fades to black.

CUT TO: Nobuo, as he rises from a revitalizing sleep in the guest room — the following morning. He wanders the building, wondering why nobody woke him. He discovers the answer very shortly: everyone else in the building is dead. Even the lab rats.

Panicked and horrified, Nobuo calls for an ambulance, and then goes to the chief’s office to get some clue of what happened.

He finds Ohmaeda sprawled before a control panel on the wall, his finger stretched towards a button that he didn’t live long enough to hit. Curious, Nobuo presses the button himself, and the whole building suddenly goes into emergency mode: sirens blare, shutters slam, and a dozen men appear on a giant monitor, ordering “to give this line priority!”

Then, a stern, middle-aged man spots Nobuo on his screen and asks where the hell Ohmaeda is.

This man is Nirasaki, the head of Nishibashi’s medicine development. Once Nobuo informs him of what’s happened, Nirasaki explains that the accident is likely related to a drug being secretly developed for the government. Nirasaki orders Nobuo to bring all samples of the drug, along with its corresponding data, straight to him at Nishibashi headquarters in Tokyo, immediately.

Nobuo collects the samples and info based on the details Nirasaki provides, and just notices it’s the same red pill that he took the previous evening. Huh! Of course, he only realizes this after his conversation with Nirasaki is over, and he doesn’t think anything of it. He stuffs everything into a briefcase, and begins his trek to Tokyo on a little red bike.

Then a murder of crows falls dead out of the sky and hits him on the head.

Nobuo loses control and crashes, and that’s when he notices that all the flowers in the valley are suddenly in bloom. Also, there are dead things everywhere. The ambulance and police car he called are both smashed on the sides of the street, as though their drivers simply bit it while at the wheel.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nirasaki and Mr. Kamata, Nishibashi’s president, are summoned to the JSDF war room to explain “just what the hell is going on” in Kofu Valley. The NHK news is airing warnings about a deadly “stench” in the area, against which respirators and even NBC suits afford no protection.

A news team in a helicopter spots Nobuo and touches down to rescue him, but even with gas masks on, they all suffocate and perish before they can get within ten yards of him. Nobuo can’t figure out why.

Then a military convoy attempts to pick up and evacuate Nobuo, only to end up dying as well. Nobuo still can’t figure out why.

Nirasaki and Kamata, however, do know why. They explain to the JSDF that the pill Nobuo took was originally designed to protect people against methods of biological warfare, but an unknown reaction in Nobuo’s body has created an unexpected effect. It is now causing him to secrete a sweet-smelling, but lethal gas that asphyxiates any human or animal that breathes it. He has become, in essence, a walking chemical weapon.

Nirasaki adds the unsettling detail that this gas will thicken, and its deadly effects strengthen, as Nobuo eats, changes emotional states, or otherwise undergoes any activity that spurs his metabolism.

An executive decision is swiftly made: GET HIM.

However, the military, even with its most advanced weaponry, can’t get Nobuo. Their snipers can’t draw a bead on him because the poison in the air makes their eyes water, and the gas has become so thick that it shorts out the computerized targeting systems in their tanks and helicopters. The army literally can no longer shoot straight, so while they accidentally decimate every structure in sight, Nobuo is left scratching his head as to what the hell they’re firing at.

My favorite moment in this sequence occurs when the army knocks out a bridge that Nobuo is riding on. As you can see below, the poor dope survives as though God Himself is guiding him:

This is one of my favorite shots in all of cartoon-dom, if not my absolute favorite. I fucking love tracking shots like this. Just look at how the pavement judders and crumbles behind Nobuo! Look at how he bounces on his bike as the explosions propel him forward! Look at the flames and sparks and smoke plumes! Look at Nobuo’s face!!! It’s like watching Ichabod Crane riding around Syria! I love it!

Now that Nobuo has pretty much proven himself unstoppable, an emergency evacuation order is issued in Tokyo. Yeah, good luck with that. The highways are instantly hammered, the trains are all clogged, and the airports become a mass of writhing crowds and weeping children.

Stink Bomb’s director, Tensai Okamura, cleverly intercuts the Tokyo crush with the degrading military situation, in which the all the vehicles have stopped responding and are now completely haywire. They’re firing at anything and everything, causing chain reactions of carnage, and inadvertently destroying themselves.

To quote Mr. Carlin:

“At this point, it looks like pretty soon, things are gonna start to get out of control.”

It looks as though the only hope for humanity is for the United Nations to raze Japan to the ground, but all is not lost yet. Saunders, an American general who has an investment in Nishibashi’s wonder drug, decides to intervene, and he sends three American soldiers in cutting-edge, air-tight spacesuits to apprehend Nobuo.

These super-suited soldiers corner Nobuo in a tunnel, and…well, I don’t want to give everything away. I will tell you that Nirasaki gets his briefcase back, but that’s it! You’re just going to have to watch the rest for yourself. You won’t be disappointed, and that’s a fact, Jack.

So.

Whew.

Wow.

Jeez, man. There just isn’t all that much left to say anymore. This is Stink Bomb. You should go see it. It’s got everything that a Top Cartoon should: great art and animation, funny and scary moments, a delightful soundtrack, stellar voice acting, and a wicked sense of humor. I hope you weren’t waiting for me to pick at its flaws, because the truth is, I just can’t find any.

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And thus the list of Ultimate Top Cartoons comes to a close. I hope you enjoyed reading these lengthy reviews because, I tell ya, writing these suckers really took a chunk out of me! Plus, my sinuses are starting to act up, so I think I’ll take one of these red pills over here and have a nap.

Hope to see you in the morning.

‘Night, all!

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #2: The Triplets of Belleville

Out of all the Ultimate Top Cartoons, The Triplets of Belleville by Sylvain Chomet is the one I’m most conflicted about. It is a strange and beautiful creation, something that deserves recognition for its genius, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something missing from it. The film was released in 2003, and was an Oscar-nominee for Best Animated Feature, but it had to go up against Pixar’s juggernaut Finding Nemo, and it really didn’t stand a chance.

I think it’s this Oscar battle that makes Triplets so difficult for me to talk about. I feel as though, in discussing it, I must always compare it to Nemo. Hell, I even noticed that their plots are similar.

The fact is that Nemo deserved the Oscar. I think it is the superior film. Yet, I do not consider it to be an Ultimate Top Cartoon. It’s too sweet and too safe. It takes too few chances with its material, and none at all with its appearance.

Triplets, on the other hand, is something else.

I suppose I can sum up my feelings this way: while Nemo will make you marvel at how real it appears to be, Triplets will make you marvel at how unreal it appears to be.

It’s also a soft-spoken, saucy trip that goes into some dark places, so it’s not for everybody. Nevertheless, whether you enjoy Triplets or not, you’ll find that you won’t forget it anytime soon. It will stick with you.

The film starts out looking like a 1930s Fleischer cartoon. It brings us to a famous music hall where a trio of singers, the eponymous Triplets, perform with the likes of Fred Astaire and Django Reinhart. It’s cute, but you might want to let the kids play with their phones during this scene — the acts, while crazy and funny, also involve a little violence, and even nudity.

We pull back from the show to reveal that two short, chubby characters (presented in the movie’s “real” artistic style) have been watching it on a little TV. One is Champion, a morose boy whose parents seem to have passed away. The other is Madame Souza, Champion’s devoted grandmother, who suffers from a lazy eye and unequal leg length.

Seeing Champion’s growing melancholy concerns Souza, and she pays close attention to him in order to find something that will light his fire. She dusts off an old piano for him, but her own poor playing of it turns him off. She buys him a puppy named Bruno, but the joy doesn’t last. Finally, she discovers that Champion has a passion for bicycles, and it appears that boy’s future is decided.

Bear in mind that nearly all of this story is told without words. The animation does all the heavy lifting in communicating this tale to us, and not once does it slouch.

Flash-forward to about ten years later. Souza has become Champion’s cycling trainer, and she prepares him nightly for his big shot at the Tour de France. Bruno has turned into a butterball on wobbly stick-legs, while Champion has undergone an inverse transformation. His tall, slim figure and long, hooked nose make him resemble a turkey vulture — except for his legs, of course, which are now freakishly developed after years of cycle training.

The regimen is unusual, but effective. Souza follows Champion on his bike rides, blowing a whistle in a steady rhythm to help him keep time. She massages his muscles with vacuum cleaners, eggbeaters, and lawnmowers to prevent him from locking up. When she feeds him, she has Champion sit on a scale tied to an alarm clock so as to limit his food intake. The lengths some people will go to, huh?

When the big race finally arrives, it’s to a dazzling parade of character designs. No two faces look alike in this crowd.

I especially like how this movie portrays the cyclists. They may each have unique facial features, but they all have the same skinny frame and massive legs as Champion, and they all pedal with the empty look of loping, dead-eyed zombies.

Things get complicated when a pair of box-shaped mafia goons kidnap a handful of the cyclists, including Champion, and haul them away in a ship’s cargo hold. In response, Souza rents a recreational paddleboat to pursue the ship, and she winds up following it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

Souza and Bruno arrive in Belleville, a sort of fusion of New York City, Montreal, and Quebec, but quickly lose their trail. Lost, confused, and with no money to her name, Souza makes camp under a bridge one night, and taps on a nearby bike wheel to pass the time.

It’s at this lonely moment, when Souza is at her most wretched, that her humble sense of rhythm turns everything around. The tapping draws the attention of three ancient, looming figures, who saunter from the darkness like roused ghouls. They shuffle up to her, close in, and then…they sing.

These are, of course, the once-famous Triplets of Belleville, who have come not to threaten, but to enjoy a good backbeat. Their love of song is so ingrained in their souls that no amount of years can erase it; the tiny taps from Souza’s wheel launch them into joyous performance, and then leave them laughing with all sincerity. I find this touching to the point of sadness.

This unexpected jam session delights the triplets, and they gratefully invite Souza to stay with them in their humble home.

Their very humble home.

The triplets’ apartment is even smaller than Souza’s back in France. The triplets eat meager meals consisting of frogs, which the gals collect by blasting nearby lakes with WWII-era stielhandgranates. Souza isn’t allowed to vacuum, put away leftovers, or even read a newspaper, because all of those items are needed for their gigs.

As miserable as their situation might appear, though, the triplets nearly always smile. They have the warmth and contentedness about them that is earned from sharing a passionate life.

Champion, on the other hand, is not so fortunate. Now in the hands of a mafia don, he and his fellow captives have been hooked to a machine that creates a Tour de France simulation strictly for gambling purposes. An audience of dons puts up money on which of the three will be the last one standing. When one of them pulls up lame, he gets a bullet in the head from the oddsmaker.

So it’s a race against time, but some sleuthing and lucky coincidences lead Souza straight to the heart of this dark event, and her new friends insist on helping her out. Souza manages to sneak underneath the machine and detach it from the floor, so that the cyclists can propel it through the wall and out of the building. The dons lay down some heavy gunfire in protest, but a well-thrown potato-masher takes care of that.

Now Souza, the triplets, and the two cyclists are on the run, pedaling down the road with a convoy of mafia cars in pursuit. The scene promises to be pretty exciting: there’s a masterful composition of 2D and 3D animation on display, and I was expecting some smart, Wrong Trousers-style action to happen. Sadly, the chase is pretty slow-paced, and there’s not a whole lot of satisfaction to be had in it. The only applause-worthy moment occurs at the very end, when Souza looks Champion’s kidnapper in the eye (or what passes for it), and shows that she’s had enough.

It’s a decent ending, but I have to say it: it’s nowhere near Nemo’s. 

But that’s all right. Even though The Triplets of Belleville needed to be something different to compete with a Pixar film, to be anything else but what it is would be a deadly creative sin. It may not be a “traditional” animated film by the definition that Disney and Pixar have chosen, but it is a defiant and relentless beast, with a look all its own. Every background, every shape, every design in it tells a story, whether its heartwarming or heartbreaking. You can see that the artists worked their tails off at making the animation not only speak, but sing. Hardly any dialogue is needed: the visuals are enough — especially, presented as they are, in their unforgettable style. At a time when most animated films share the same bland, porcelain look, and are chiefly sold on what celebrities are doing the voices, to make a movie like Triplets is a brave thing indeed.

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #3: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

“Eddie, I could never hurt anybody. My whole purpose in life is to make people laugh!”

Such is the tenet of the Toon, a race of beings that exist alongside humans in Robert Zemeckis’s 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In the alternate world it presents, toons are not just drawings put to film, they are living actors working in Hollywood studios during the Golden Age of Animation.

And they’re total theater people. You think your co-worker Doris is a drama queen? Wait ’til you get a load of the toons.

Toons live to perform, and even when the cameras are off, they can’t resist an opportunity to pose, show off, or pull a comical gag. It is their raison d’être, and studio owner R.K. Maroon has turned this desire into big showbiz bucks.

Trouble is one of his biggest stars, Roger Rabbit, can’t keep his mind on his work lately, because of rumors that his wife, Jessica, is cheating on him. Seeking to put the issue to rest, Maroon hires Eddie Valiant, a P.I. specializing in toon cases, to snap some pics of Jessica in flagrante delicto.

Valiant, whom Bob Hoskins infuses with a hard-boiled mix of toughness,  fury, and curiosity, has a lot of hurts. Most of them involve his brother Teddy, with whom he shared a very close bond. The Valiant boys grew up sharing three careers: first as circus clowns, then as police officers, and finally private detectives. Their unique mixture of talents brought them great success at handling toon investigations.

Then, Teddy’s murder at the hands of a particularly evil toon shattered everything. Eddie has since become a bitter drunk who is distrustful of toons, especially when their antics put humans at risk.

One of the rules of Roger Rabbit’s world is that toon logic, while entertaining in controlled conditions, is quite hazardous when unchecked. Since toons simply can’t help themselves when it comes to dramatic showmanship (and since they come out of their own scrapes without so much as a bruise), they often endanger and harm humans inadvertently.

To wit: I love the look of horror on Valiant’s face when Donald Duck lights a cannon in a nightclub, for no other reason except to show up that uppity Cayuga who’s hogging the spotlight. Insurance rates must be sky-high in Roger Rabbit’s world.

Anyway, Valiant follows Jessica to her moonlighting gig at this club, and photographs her in the act of playing “pattycake” with another man. The Lothario: Marvin Acme, a practical gag manufacturer and the owner of Toontown, an animated otherworld that rests next door to Hollywood.

Roger is not pleased. He vows to Valiant that he and Jessica will be happy again one day, and then smashes through a window to disappear into the night. This scene is so film-noir it’s not even funny. Actually, scratch that; it’s quite funny, but the point still stands: here we have three major film-noir archetypes, but they’re all just slightly askew. It’s a lot of fun to have a scene out of Chinatown play out with an animated rabbit at its center.

The following morning, Valiant is awakened by his former LAPD pal Lieutenant Santino, who informs Valiant that the rabbit has “kacked” Acme by dropping a safe on his head.

Despite the painful similarities between Acme’s murder and the murder of Teddy, (the difference being that Teddy had a piano dropped on his head), the shocked Valiant can’t quite accept that Roger Rabbit could be capable of such an act. He attempts to swipe a bit of evidence from Acme’s body when he’s caught and admonished by the ghastly Judge Doom.

Doom is played by Christopher Lloyd, with a stern stiffness that implies he is not a man to be swayed. He has no patience for silliness, but he loves dishing out a slow punishment.

“Since I’ve had Toontown under my jurisdiction, my goal has been to rein in the insanity, and the only way to do that is to make toons respect the law.”

To this end, Doom has built an impressive system of enforcement. First, he has the Toon Patrol: five mobbed-up, zoot-suited weasels who are also — naturally — skilled rabbit hunters. I love these guys.

In early scripts, there were seven weasels, so that the bad guys would appear as a dark parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The five that remain post-edit are still memorable, though. They’re led by Sergeant Smartass, who’s voiced by none other than David Lander — yep, Squiggy — and he does a terrific job, with a high, drawling voice that spews malapropisms.

Then you’ve got Greasy, Wheezy, Psycho, and Stupid, characters who don’t say much, but who suffer little for it. My favorite is Psycho, the one with the straitjacket and the straight razor, not to mention the crazy eyes and the crazier laugh.

Doom’s other weapon is the deadly Dip — a hot cocktail of paint thinners traditionally used to clean animation cels — which he lords over the toons to keep them in line. According to Santino, the Dip is the only known way to kill a toon completely, and in a chilling moment that reminds us that Roger Rabbit is no Disneyland circle-jerk, Doom puts on a sadistic demonstration:

“That’s one bad shoe, eh, boss?”

The message is clear: Judge Doom is champing at the bit to turn Roger into a fast-track execution. Yeah, nothing suspicious about that.

Now pardon me while I have a strange interlude, but the Dip raises a lot of questions about the nature of toon mortality. If a deep-dunk in Dip is the only way a toon can be killed, why are the toons always so afraid of guns in this movie? Wouldn’t a gunshot simply cover them with an easily-washed layer of soot? And what about death from laughter? In a desperate moment, this ironic method of passage saves Valiant’s life, so is death from laughter a official “second” way to kill a toon? A way that Santino didn’t know about?

Who knows. And here’s a better question: who cares? As with Zemeckis’s other film jewel, the Back to the Future series, we’re better off not delving too deeply into the logic. Let’s get back to the movie.

Valiant returns to his office to find Roger waiting for him there. Roger insists that he’s innocent, but Valiant wants nothing to do with him. When the Toon Patrol arrives at his door, however, Valiant’s compassion wins out. Shootouts, bar fights, and car chases ensue.

Pieces of the plot drift in thanks to Jessica, Roger’s co-star Baby Herman, and Valiant’s sometime girlfriend Dolores, and a beefy conspiracy starts to shape up: something involving the Los Angeles streetcar service, a mysterious corporation called Cloverleaf Industries, and the ownership of Toontown.

It nearly comes together when Valiant makes a play to get the truth out of Maroon, but the cartoon-maker gets smoked before he can talk, seemingly by Jessica!

Valiant pursues Jessica, but she disappears into Toontown. Valiant hits the brakes, having frozen up at the prospect of returning to the place where his brother was killed.

Now, I apologize for this, but I need to pause in my synopsis so that I can explain something about the Ultimate Top Cartoons.

All of my favorite films have a Moment. Most of the Ultimate Top Cartoons have a few of these Moments, but don’t let that fool you: they are really very scarce.

What I’m describing is a Beautiful Moment, when every element of a particular shot, or series of shots, comes together in an absolutely perfect way. I detailed one of these moments in my recent review of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. The Beautiful Moment never fails to choke me up and make me want to cry like a pup. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve already seen it, either.

Now, here’s the weird thing: while the Moment usually arrives at some critical or symbolic point in the plot, my admiration is always on a completely different level, usually a technical one. I’m not just marveling at the effect, I’m marveling at the creativity and the construction.

There are many Beautiful Moments in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but this one’s my favorite: Valiant, thinking he’ll need some Dutch courage to head into Toontown, stops and has second thoughts. He dumps his bottle of Wild Turkey out on the street, and then, in a gesture of ultimate rejection, he heaves the empty bottle into the sky. Then he fires at it with his toon revolver, and…well, look.

Now, that, folks…is FUCKING AWESOME.

I know it’s missing the audio that makes it complete, but look at it! Look, and consider everything that’s happening: the camera swoops into the sky, closes on the toon bullet as he eyes his target, and then pulls back again to allow the gracefully spinning whiskey bottle to enter frame from the right. Then the bullet, being a toon, doesn’t merely pass through the bottle, he disintegrates it in the most over-the-top way imaginable. How did they even conceptualize something like this? I…I need to go wash my face.

Anyway, Eddie’s visit to Toontown has to be one of the most surreal experiences in cinema. A YouTube commenter likened the Toontown tunnel to a DMT breakthrough, and he’s probably not far off.

Everything in Toontown occurs like it’s part of some gigantic production. The inhabitants are constantly in action, playing out the same scenarios that are typically written for them. What’s more, toon logic applies to everything: if you bump your skull in Toontown, birdies will fly around your head. If you walk off a high ledge, you won’t fall until you look down. Your shadow will talk to you. Things like that.

Also, expect lots of cameos.

Valiant eventually tracks Jessica into an alley, but she saves him from getting the Maroon treatment by shooting the real killer, Judge Doom. Through a few unfortunate accidents, Doom gets the drop on our heroes, and drags them all to the Acme factory so he can gloat about his master plan.

Turns out that Doom wants to possess Maroon Cartoons, the Acme Factory, and Toontown, so that he can level them all and construct the first Los Angeles freeway. Yeah, that’s the plan. I’m pretty sure it’s another joke on Chinatown, but the movie plays it pretty damn seriously, and it comes off as a  little confusing.

Thankfully, it’s just another one of those “who cares?” moments, because the rest of the film is insanity. Reviving his inner clown, Valiant exterminates the weasels one by one to the tune of “Merry Go-Round Broke Down.”

Then he has to duke it out with Doom, who reveals himself to be the same demoniacal toon monster who killed Teddy!

Well, it’s a partial revelation. Honestly, this is the weakest part of the movie, and I would have much preferred to see the full monster, but Lloyd does the best he can. I do like his buzzsaw arms and anvil hands, however.

I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that all ends well, that everybody lives happily ever after, and that you’ll be ready to go do something else by the time the credits roll. If you look carefully, you’ll see a slight drop in the animation quality too, as though the artists themselves were exhausted by this point.

It is nice, however, to see the sudden convention of characters as they gawk at the disaster area that Acme’s factory has become. As they sing us off, there’s a pleasant shared goodbye from Tinkerbell and Porky Pig that always gives me a little chill. If only the studios would unite for crossovers like this more often!

So, to hear me tell it, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a top-heavy film with a weak plot that runs out of steam by the end. But can anyone really fault it for that? It clearly wasn’t made for deep critical analysis. It was made to celebrate the Golden Age of Animation, to introduce us to a new cast of cartoon characters with a slightly dark edge, and to give our imaginations a jolt by offering an alternate viewpoint on beloved animated worlds. Sure, it took an army of artists and technicians to make it happen, and not all of it looks great anymore, but the terrific performances, wild soundtrack, and bold direction make Roger Rabbit a one-of-a-kind wonder.

A coda: I’ve read some reviews online that berate this movie for portraying classic cartoon characters in an “inappropriate” way. I’m not talking about Baby Herman slapping ladies on the ass, either. I’m talking little things, like, “Donald Duck would never use a cannon on someone like that!”

I find this humorous, because anyone who would seriously make a claim like this must have difficulty separating fantasy from reality, and you’d think a person like that would rather buy into the movie where fantasy and reality collide believably!

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #4: Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers

And now for something completely different.

If you haven’t heard of Wallace and Gromit, it’s time you got plugged in, because these claymation characters have had some wonderful adventures. Wallace is a brilliant but scatterbrained scientist, and Gromit is an intelligent but silent dog. The two characters have a sort of Inspector Gadget/Brain relationship, in which Gromit constantly has to bail Wallace out of trouble of his own inadvertent making, and the formula never fails to entertain.

Wallace and Gromit starred in three televised specials: A Grand Day Out (Oscar-nominee), The Wrong Trousers (Oscar-winner), and A Close Shave (another Oscar-winner). So successful were they that they went on to a big-screen feature, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (which also won an Oscar). I find, however, that the long format doesn’t suit these two very well. The Wrong Trousers, which fits into a half-hour, feels better paced than the movie, and it’s still the best cartoon that Aardman has yet made.

The Wrong Trousers starts off with a rather simple scene: Gromit spends his birthday morning collecting the mail and preparing breakfast. On paper, this sounds quite dull; not the sort of thing you’d want to start your cartoon with. However, the animation has an easy, languid quality that’s incredibly attractive, and that makes even ordinary actions fun to watch. It invests us almost instantly, too: we get the sense this is a (relatively) realistic world we’ve entered into, where life is really all about enjoying a good cuppa. It doesn’t matter that it’s a clay dog selling us on this, either; our minds are already hooked into this place. Just watching old Wallace eat his toast with jam invariably makes me hungry for a slice of my own. How does that work?

Anyway, poor Gromit is feeling pretty neglected. Wallace behaves as though he’s forgotten the doggy’s birthday, and though that turns out to be a ruse, his gift doesn’t help matters.

It’s a pair of mechanical “techno-trousers,” which can be programmed to walk over predetermined routes with its front control panel. With a lead attached, they’re the perfect automated dog-walkers. Gromit isn’t too thrilled with the present, though. For one thing, the trousers move too quickly for Gromit to enjoy his trips, and for another, it seems as though Wallace only got them so that the two could spend less time together.

So when budget troubles cause Wallace to let out a room to an emotionless penguin…

…the sensitive Gromit really starts to feel unwanted.

This odd lodger insists on taking Gromit’s room instead of the spare. In the mornings he hogs the bathroom, and fetches Wallace’s paper and slippers before Gromit can. At night, he chuckles over cheese and wine with Wallace, and then leaves his radio on at full blast, even when he goes out.

Also, he has this unexpected interest in those techno-trousers.

Feeling that he’s lost Wallace’s favor, Gromit runs away, and moves into a rubbish can. Then, one morning, he wakes to see Wallace wandering around town, stuck in the techno-trousers! The machine’s control panel is missing, and Wallace has no idea who’s operating them. Gromit is no dummy, though, and he decides to do a little snooping.

Gromit tails the penguin into an alley, where he takes cover inside a cardboard box and witnesses some strange behavior.

Mysterious music plays, and we watch through Gromit’s eyes as the penguin scribbles notes, scales walls, and measures windows (I particularly admire the animation of the measuring tape). The effect is surprisingly eerie and menacing, and the scene closes with a “gotcha” moment that’s both thrilling and hilarious.

Gromit returns home to discover that this “paying guest” is planning an audacious heist. The building he was casing is actually a museum where a diamond exhibit is taking place. Using the vacuum-soled boots of the techno-trousers, the penguin sends Wallace marching up the side of the museum, down through a ventilation duct in the roof, and then upside-down along the ceiling to where the diamond lies.

The heist scene, for all its silliness, is nail-biting all the way through. Nick Park, who wrote and directed Trousers, obviously knows suspense. He knows when things should go smoothly, and he knows when things need to go wrong, so when the penguin sweats, you’ll sweat with him. Park earned his Oscar for this scene alone — though there’s one coming up that’s even better, if you can believe it.

The thief manages to get the booty back to home base, where he locks Wallace and the trousers in a wardrobe. Gromit steps in to save the day, but this penguin’s packing heat, so doggy and master are soon reunited.

Gromit manages to short the techno-trousers and make them charge at the penguin, smashing the wardrobe open in the process. In surprise, the penguin leaps to the engine of a passing toy train, a train whose tracks run all over the house. Thus begins the most gripping and memorable sequence of The Wrong Trousers: the train chase.

This chase has the kinetic, slapstick spirit of a Roger Rabbit cartoon, but it’s really a very smart scene in which Gromit and the penguin continually thwart and outwit each other.

And you’d have to be dead inside not to laugh and cheer at some of the things that happen:

Perhaps fittingly, the techno-trousers themselves save the day when they block the penguin’s path and cause everyone to crash in one place. What happens next is so hilariously satisfying that it’s certain to make at least one person in the room stand up and applaud. I know this because that person is usually me.

It should be clear by now that I adore this movie, and that I regard it more highly than most cartoons in the world. Still, I struggle to define exactly what it is that I love about it so much. The Wrong Trousers is a subtle and gentle thing; it’s about as far from “in your face” as possible. It doesn’t have the artistic pizzazz of the other Ultimate Top Cartoons, nor does it have the emotional or narrative complexity.

So what is it?

I think what impresses me most about The Wrong Trousers is that it defies expectation and classification. It pulls some chips away from Safe, Cute, and Charming, puts them down on Menace, Suspense, and Violence, and then goes and shoots seven after seven after seven. I mean, that’s got to be some kind of miracle.

Divine or not, The Wrong Trousers is a joy to watch over and over and over. I think it is the most humble of the Ultimate Top Cartoons, but it is also the only one you can watch with kids around, and the surest to brighten your day and leave you smiling. I recommend you take it with a nice port, and some Rogue River Blue.

ULTIMATE TOP CARTOONS #5: Ninja Scroll (Jubei Ninpocho)

Many are they who consider this their anime gateway drug.

And rightly so. When I saw my first glimpse of this masterpiece on MTV, all of my brain cells dropped what they were doing and shouted a single question at once:

“What the hell was that???”

God bless 90s MTV. 90s MTV understood that, as emotional media go, music and animation are very close cousins. To develop the “edgy” attitude that it needed to stand out, the network employed freaky, stunning animation for its IDs and commercials. It even produced shows specifically to showcase wild animation. Liquid Television was the first such program, and it turned Æon Flux and Beavis and Butt-head into national names.

A later show, Cartoon Sushi, used clips from Ninja Scroll as commercial bumpers. My brother called me over to check it out because he knew I’d go nuts for it, and holy shit, was he right. I couldn’t believe how amazing it was. Even my father said “Whoa,” when he happened to see it. You know your cartoon’s special when mere seconds of it get a better reaction than the remainder of the show it’s sprinkled in. It also helped that Japanese animation as we know it was just beginning to sink its claws into American culture at this time. Most of us hadn’t seen shit like this before.

But once we had a taste, we all wanted more.

The Japanese title of this movie is “Jubei Ninpocho,” which means “The Jubei Ninja Scrolls.” This peculiar phrasing is taken from the titles of ninja novels written by Futaro Yamada. These “ninja stories,” or “ninpocho,” were each titled in a similar manner: Koga Ninpocho, Edo Ninpocho, Yagyu Ninpocho, and so on.

The cartoon is set in a twisted version of feudal Japan, where blood and betrayal flow freely. In the opening scene, a roaming warrior named Jubei Kibagami is accosted by thieves, and seconds later, we’re told not only what we need to know about the setting, but also about our hero:

1.) Jubei is an unflappable man with a well-honed spider-sense.

2.) Jubei is a decent man who despises injustice.

3.) Jubei…is a badass.

He even catches the rice ball without looking.

He is based on the Japanese folk hero Yagyu Jubei Mitsuroshi, a great samurai who was dismissed from service to the Shogun for unknown reasons, and who then spent years wandering Japan, perfecting his swordsmanship. Think of him as a Davy Crockett to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Our Jubei enters into a complex and nefarious plot when he happens upon a horrible scene: a monstrous man, Tessai, raping a young woman.

This woman is Kagero, a poison taster for the Koga ninja clan. She has just witnessed the slaughter of her comrades at the hands of her captor, who has since revealed himself to be a bloodthirsty monster with a skin of stone. Jubei bravely confronts Tessai anyway, and creates an opportunity for both he and Kagero to escape.

The two ninja part ways, and while Kagero reports the night’s terrible events to her indifferent lord, Jubei is caught by the highly-pissed Tessai. What ensues is a frightful battle in which Jubei is nearly overwhelmed. Tessai’s sheer strength and stone shell seem insurmountable, but then something happens to turn the tide: the monster’s skin starts to crumble and soften, seemingly for no reason. Thinking that Jubei used some unknown technique on him, Tessai pours his rage into one last attack — one that backfires on him in a most satisfying way. This whole scene is dazzling from top to bottom, and you might need to rub your eyes afterward because you forgot to blink while watching it.

Thus, Jubei draws first blood in a war against Tessai’s buddies, as well as the attention of a doddering, walleyed priest named Dakuan, who sees potential in the young ninja — and some use.

Dakuan, who is really a government spy, is the trickster of the story. His comical voice and appearance belie a cunning and ruthless personality whose motives are only ever kind on the surface. Still, he comes off as likable, and he’s also the only one who knows what the hell’s going on in this movie, so I can’t imagine anyone hissing when he shows up onscreen.

Dakuan explains to Jubei that Tessai was one of the Eight Devils of Kimon, a team of demons hired by the Yamashiro ninja clan — the same clan that Jubei once ran with. The Devils are contracted to protect the Yamashiro as they smuggle gold to their lord, the Shogun of the Dark (a.k.a. Toyotomi), an unseen villain who wishes to overthrow the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate. The Devils crossed paths with Jubei and Kagero while on their way to recover gold from a smuggler ship that sank accidentally, and now it seems they are entangled to the bitter end.

So how did the Yamashiro boys end up with all this cheddar? Well, some years back, its leaders discovered a gold mine, and instead of reporting it to their master, a Tokugawa daimyo, they tried to sneak the riches past him. A series of betrayals followed, and in an attempt to eliminate everyone who knew about the mine, one of the Yamashiro leaders, Gemma Himuro, ordered the extermination of his own men. This forced Jubei to slay his fellow ninja in self-defense, but in turn, he found and decapitated Gemma, and became a ronin.

But Gemma has revived, having somehow developed an ability to reconstruct his body after even the most traumatic of injuries. He now leads the Devils of Kimon, and seeks to undermine both Tokugawa and Toyotomi by purporting to guard the Yamashiro smuggling operation, and then stealing the gold for himself.

Whew! You get all that? Well, sorry; I tried. Let’s carry on.

These Kimon guys are an eclectic bunch. Each one has some unique and creative method for killing. One of them can literally hide inside shadows. Another can both animate, and detonate corpses as if they were bombs on legs. One carries a nest of hornets in the flesh of his back, and is able to communicate with them and give them orders. Still another can use the snake tattoos covering her body to hypnotize and attack her enemies, while the last can generate deadly amounts of electricity and conduct it through even the thinnest steel wire. Such powers might not sound immediately useful, but the movie sees the Devils apply their skills in some mighty creative ways.

I find it incredible that this movie makes time for encounters with eight separate supervillains, but it DOES, and if I tried to cover them all in-depth, we’d be here for months. So, I’ll just talk about my favorite of the group instead: Mujuro.

Mujuro Utsutsu is a pale, soft-spoken fellow who appears, at first, to have little of the supernatural about him. It turns out he’s an archetypal blind swordsman, but that’s really not that exciting, not after some of the crazy shit this movie’s already shown us.

But then, he goes and pulls out a really nasty trick.

Mujuro is so skilled at determining his unseen opponent’s position that he can calculate the angle at which to tilt his blade so that it will reflect the glare of the sun right into Jubei’s eyes.

“Your sight is your weakness,” he says.

This is one of my favorite moments in the film. Jubei is once again outmatched, but this time it’s in a way that’s so deceptively simple, it’s wholly unexpected. When combined with Mujuro’s aggressive fighting style, this bizarre talent nearly presses Jubei to the ground, and Jubei only survives the encounter because of pure luck.

Well, luck, and the loyalty of a friend.

While it initially seems that Jubei and Kagero have divergent paths, and that they would likely be rivals in other circumstances, it’s soon made clear that fate has linked them together. Both are their clans’ sole survivors, and both of them have suffered from the cruelty of the Eight Devils of Kimon. Both are immensely talented warriors, and both have a strong sense of justice. They are also both in need of someone to trust while they’re in this awful situation.

So only an idiot would be surprised that these two fall in love. What is surprising is that they really can’t do anything about it. Kagero has spent so many years immunizing herself to poison that her body is now saturated with it. Anyone who makes love to her, or even kisses her, is signing his own death warrant (just ask Tessai). Kagero tries to carry this deadliness as a point of pride, but it is plain that she resents it, for it has caused her to lose something beautiful and human about herself.

It’s a doomed romance to be sure, and it certainly ends tragically, but the connection between the two is indelible. In a gesture of honor and respect, Jubei dons Kagero’s ruby headband, so that they may continue to fight — figuratively — as one. This metaphor becomes literal in the desperate, final battle when, having lost his sword arm, Jubei resorts to head-butting Gemma until the Devil’s skull turns to paste. It’s amazing.

My most recent viewing of Ninja Scroll was also my first viewing of it on Blu-Ray, and holy shit…it looks better than it ever did. It sounds strange, but it really looks more impressive today than it did when it was first released, and that’s not something that can be said about many movies. I paused the playback many times just so I could take in the details in the artwork and to analyze the motion in the lightning quick ninja moves. I can’t imagine animation of this caliber ever, EVER losing its appeal.

Of course, it’s not just the animation that makes Ninja Scroll wonderful, it’s the direction. The pace fluctuates as it should in any good movie, but it never gets too terse or too slow. The action scenes fly by with one intense, perfectly-trimmed shot after another, while the softer sequences provide much needed breathers. I’d hazard to say that there are one or two scenes that go on too long, but overall, it feels like the whole thing was produced in time with a metronome. I still marvel at the fact that this was made in 1993.

If you’ve somehow not seen this movie before reading this entry, relax; you need not fear. Ninja Scroll is so masterfully produced that nothing I could write on this silly little blog could ruin it for you. Even after dozens of viewings, it continues to give me the chills. So if you’re going to see it for the first time (and for that you are envied), all I have left to say is that you should curl up in a warm blanket beforehand, because Ninja Scroll will hold you in shivering, wide-eyed suspense, all the way up to its final betrayal.