Project A-Ko (1986)

The holidays are over, my vacation time is spent, and despite my best efforts, it looks like I'm not moving anymore.  So instead of desperately packing up my home, I finally have time to sit around and watch some films again.  Today, I re-watched Project A-Ko (1986), a classic from my childhood.

SYNOPSIS:
Two best friends, the strong redhead A-Ko and blonde ditzy C-Ko, begin their first day at Graviton High School for Girls.  There, they meet a fellow classmate, B-Ko: a rich and spoiled blue-haired brat who falls for C-Ko and plots to remove A-Ko from her life.  But defeating A-Ko in battle proves difficult, as she apparently possesses superhuman speed and strength!  B-Ko develops larger and more powerful mechs to fight A-Ko every day before class.  But while they're locked in deadly skirmish, an alien ship full of manly women approaches their town, having identified their long-lost princess among the three girls...

REVIEW:
This was the very first anime film I ever saw, and to this day, still stands as one of my favorites!  As a young kid, I was a very energetic and outdoorsy kind of person.  I loved to climb trees, play sports, practice martial arts, and I was always the fastest at obstacle courses - no one could beat me!  Speed and agility were some of my top tenets in life back then.  If American Ninja Warrior had been a thing when I was a kid, I would've dominated that show! Of course, I'm slow, broken, and putting on a bit of weight nowadays, so my most active days are probably behind me.  But back then, I loved anything that inspired speed and agility.  Which is probably why, to this day, Sonic the Hedgehog is my all-time favorite cartoon character.

A-Ko's speed and strength are never really addressed in this film, except as a shock to people introduced to her for the first time.  Every day, she and C-Ko are running late to school and A-Ko makes the trip running at supersonic speeds, with C-Ko in tow.  Every day, she has to defeat a new powerful mech of B-Ko's, which she punches and kicks through like they were paper.  She seems near-indestructible!  And she was a huge inspiration to young me, who wanted to be faster and stronger.

I will say, if you can bear it, you may be better off watching this in Japanese with subtitles.  The English dub was made back when anime was passed off as kid shows in America and budgets for translating voices was very low, so the English audio is rough to listen to at times.  C-Ko is incredibly annoying to hear in English, being a whiny brat who cries if she gets in trouble or doesn't get her way.  Honestly, I don't see what the appeal is for B-Ko.

This film would probably be appealing to modern-day feminists and trans people, as the entire cast is female, regardless of strength, size, or appearance.  One of B-Ko's henchmen is a giant muscle-bound lady who has deep grunts and shouts, but speaks in a high-pitched effeminate voice.  The alien forces invading the town are from an all-woman race.  Some of them appear to be men at first glance, but it's revealed that not one of them is a man, and they're all very strong fighters.  Even A-Ko, with all her superhuman strength, finds herself challenged while fighting one of their top operatives.

Of course, this was made in a different era, so when the English dub was made, they changed B-Ko's interest in C-Ko from a romantic one to a friendly one.  She only wants C-Ko as her new friend in the English dub.  If you watch the Japanese version, you'll find she's actually attracted to C-Ko and is jealous of A-Ko getting to hang out with her all the time.  So the original version was a bit more tolerant of LGBTQ+ relationships.

RECOMMENDATION:
If you want some action porn, this movie has plenty of it!  (If you're here for the "other" anime porn, there's like two brief boob shots in this film, but that's it)  If you want to see space battles, there's a few good scenes of giant ships battling, plus some tanks and jets vs alien spider mechs.  If you enjoy old 80s anime films and music (like me), this is the epitome of 80s anime!  If you like strong, powerful women who save the day and rescue the damsel in distress, there's plenty of that here too!  Watching empowering films like this as a kid, plus having a strong female role model throughout my upbringing (my mother), made me the tolerant and empathetic person I am today.  I'd recommend this film to anyone!

The Witcher (2019)

Boy, I haven't posted any new reviews since last year! ;)  My wife and I finished watching The Witcher (2019) last night.  It was really good!

SYNOPSIS:
Set in a medieval fantasy world known as The Continent, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) is a Witcher; a man mutated by chemicals and magic in his childhood to improve his strength and senses tenfold and give him limited magical abilities.  Witchers were created to protect humanity and hunt monsters, but most monsters are slipping into legend and the few Witchers left are treated like monsters themselves by humanity.  Also traveling The Continent is Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), a crippled magic user who hopes to become the most powerful mage in the world one day, and Ciri (Freya Allan), a princess from a fallen kingdom who is desperately searching for Geralt to protect her.

REVIEW:
The first thing you should know about this series is that Geralt and Yennifer's individual stories take place at different times in the past, while Ciri's is taking place in the present.  There are no date/time stamps or anything, so it takes you a while to realize you're viewing events a little out of order.  Someone dies in Ciri's story, then an episode later, they're hanging out with Geralt.  Kind of threw me for a loop.  But as the series goes on, all three stories eventually catch up to one another by the final episode.

Seriously, though... Yennefer is training to be a mage, then the next scene she's in, she's complaining that she's been stuck serving as someone's personal mage for 3 decades and is bored of it.  The fact that mages don't physically age in this series makes it hard to tell time accurately.  And as far as I understand, no one knows how old Witchers can live to, as they've all eventually died in battle.  Although in the video games, the Witcher who created Geralt was somewhere around 200 years old, and it's estimated that Geralt himself was over 100.  So telling the passage of time is an issue with this TV series.

But that's the only bad thing about this show.  The series itself is very entertaining.  It might take you a half an episode to get into the fantasy world, but once you understand the rules and expectations of this world, you start to really enjoy the adventures the characters are on.  Geralt is feared as a butcher of men, but a plucky bard named Jaskier (Joey Batey) decides to follow him and sing songs of his accomplishments, to improve his image and help earn him some coin along the way. His song "Toss a coin to your Witcher" is a very catchy tune.  Here's the song, set to some scenes from the video game:

Yennifer is a crippled girl who comes from an abusive common life, but upon discovering her magical talents, she trains to overcome her weaknesses and work her way toward becoming the most powerful mage in the world.  Ciri is a spoiled princess who finds herself on the run after her kingdom is overthrown.  She's told to find Geralt of Rivia to protect her and she learns how to survive on her own in the woods, with some help of random commoners along the way.  Both women have empowering stories, overcoming obstacles to better themselves and continue surviving in the harsh world.  They both start out the typical damsel in distress, but they take charge of their situation and save themselves instead of waiting for a hero to rescue them.

If you've ever played the first video game, you'll recognize episode 3, Betrayer Moon.  The (lengthy) opening cinematic for the first Witcher video game is loosely recreated as this episode's story.  I have all three video games, but I've been sitting on them for years, never getting more than a couple hours into the first game.  I really need to play those games through.

A little backstory that's not explained in this TV series: they talk about the "Conjunction of the Spheres" a couple of times, but not what that actually is. Basically, about 1,500 years prior to this tale, a bunch of portals opened up between parallel realms in the multiverse, letting a bunch of unnatural creatures into this universe. (According to the elves, humans were one of these "unnatural creatures" that crossed into their world)  Eventually, the portals were closed off and wars were fought by all the factions of creatures over who would rule the Continent.  Humans, with the aid of magic that they learned from the elves, and their mutated Witchers, eventually won and became the dominant race.  But monsters and other horrible creatures still exist, though rare and mostly hidden in the wilds.

A little history on the franchise: The Witcher originated as a short story written by the Polish author, Andrzej Sapkowski for a magazine contest in 1986.  It was called "Wiedźmin," which actually translates to "The Hexxer."  He wrote a couple more short stories in the early '90s before starting a 5-book series focused on Geralt and Ciri.  In 2002, a couple Polish guys who knew nothing about designing video games decided to create a video game company called CD Projekt Red.  They used Andrzej Sapkowski's book series as inspiration and got the rights to develop them into their first game, which amazingly turned out a success despite the company having no experience in video game development.  When translating it to English, instead of using the more accurate Hexxer, they called it The Witcher (2007).  And the title has stuck ever since.

RECOMMENDATION:
If the season finale of Game of Thrones disappointed you, this is the ailment for that burn.  Once you get used to the three different timelines being told in this show, the series is gripping to the end.  It tells a good backstory on all three of the main characters and helps establish motive and goals, so when they start to overlap in later episodes, you understand their individual plights and struggles.  The only thing that upsets me about this series is that season 2 won't release until 2021! I don't know if I can wait that long for more.  I feel like they just barely started scratching the surface of this world and I'm excited to see more in the future.  You should definitely check this show out. And if you haven't yet, play the three games!  During Steam's Winter Sale (ending around noon tomorrow (2 Jan 2020)), you can find The Witcher for $1.49, The Witcher 2 for $2.99, and The Witcher 3 for $11.99 on sale.  It's a steal!