What is the Case with 2024's Animated Line-up?

There has been something really nagging at me as of late, and if you've read some of my previous First Impressions posts this year, you'd know what it is. The animated line-up of 2024 has been, in my opinion anyway, severely mediocre at best... at least for the first half or so of the year. Something about the releases has just made me question, "Am I becoming a jaded snob?", like there really is nothing I can get really upset about with movies like Saving Bikini Bottom or The Garfield Movie, I haven't really watched anything that I felt was an insult to animation, to be fair that notion is a bit of hyperbole, but you get the idea right? To me, the majority of the "Bad" animated films this year have been more on the "Mediocre" side of bad, which wouldn't be an issue, except that until recently, similar could be said about the good movies too. Ultraman: Rising and Thelma the Unicorn are not bad movies in and of themselves, but are they really that good?

I think I know what the ultimate problem is, 2022 absolutely spoiled me. There was just something magical about that year, the good movies were really good, and even the bad movies were interesting to talk about. Off the top of my head, 2022 was just filled with releases like Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, The Bad Guys, The Sea Beast, Apollo 10½, Wendell & Wild, and honestly I'll even throw a bone to stuff like Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Paws of Fury, even Luck. 2022 was not a dull or empty year for animation fans, but why? Well, I think it's partly for two main reasons, firstly, this was 2022. In 2020, there was a global pandemic that basically shut everything down, and in that time, people got to do something they almost never did in this hustle and bustle work culture we've created, they got to relax for a couple days. Being a creative type, I know just how good the power of relaxing can be for your creativity, so finally getting that chance to properly relax must have been so relieving to a lot of these writers and directors, so throughout 2020 and 2021 they got to work and polish up these ideas of theirs and then voila, 2022 came around.

I think the other big thing to keep in mind is, this is the 2020s. I write for a living, I'm really good at this! Okay, so the 2010s were a big game changing decade for animation, there was a new movie studio coming in that was gonna rival Disney and DreamWorks, Cartoon Network released two major cartoons that changed the landscape, Adventure Time and Regular Show, there was this itty bitty minor show that completely blew up called Friendship is Magic, and through the 2010s it was very clear that the animation landscape was changing. Shows like Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, The Amazing World of Gumball, Over the Garden Wall, Sonic Boom, Teen Titans Go!, Rick and Morty, BoJack Horseman, Bob's Burgers, Dan Vs., OK K.O.!, Ultimate Spider-Man, DuckTales, this was a new era of animation, and it began with the new decade. On top of that, internet animation was becoming bigger, streaming was becoming bigger, and there was this little movie that released at towards tail-end of the decade, a movie that would become one of the most influential pieces of animation of all time; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So it would make absolute sense that the influence of the animation from the 2010s would seep into the projects of the 2020s.

The 2020s has the potential to be an amazing decade for animation, and as of now we're still pretty early in the decade so it still does, so... why aren't we reaching that potential? I think a lot of people will make the same arguments, "We're gonna get peaks and valleys", "It takes time to make a movie", "Not every year is gonna be golden", and I understand those points, I do, but they explain nothing. Yes, it does take plenty of time to make an animated movie, but as we have learned with The Thief and the Cobbler, time does not make a good movie automatically, so what is ultimately the reason? Why aren't films like Thelma the Unicorn or Orion and the Dark really reaching those heights? Again, it is easy for me to say "2022 was a big year and it gave me a lot of expectations", but I think there is a little bit more to it than that.

There has been a massive problem that goes beyond animation. When Technology becomes better, more possibilities are open, meaning more trends are started, the problem is that it is easy in the moment to call something a "Trend Setter", something that is wholly different and unique, but art trends and business trends are not the same thing, when something like Into the Spider-Verse comes out, artists see it as something grand, the way the stylization brings the characters and world to life, thus breathing new life into the story. Businessmen however, they tend to view it differently, they see that this popular character got a movie that is making big bucks and getting a lot of attention, so they want to see how far this trend will go, why do you think The Minecraft Movie is live action? are we really shocked they decided to do that after all the attention that the Sonic the Hedgehog movie got?

Simply put, I believe we're in something of a transitionary period, 2022 was kind of an outlier of perfect, and not so perfect, ideas that were being thought at the perfect time, looking back, I should not have been surprised that the best movies were coming from Netflix of all places. I think the big problem is that nobody is quite sure where exactly to go from here, the world of stylized animation is a great place to explore, but it might be emptier than we'd like it to be. I remember watching Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and noting that the action scenes were definitely influenced by the stylized look of movies like Spider-Verse or The Bad Guys, but I wouldn't say that Puss in Boots is a heavily stylized movie, it looks like any other DreamWorks production. I do think we'll be seeing a lot more movies with stylized CG animation in the future, but I think a lot more of them will be Puss in Boots instead of Spider-Verse, and it's because we're at a point where the artists have to figure out the "how" of it, and that is always the difficult part.

To be absolutely fair, Transformers One, The Wild Robot and Piece by Piece, that Lego Pharrell Williams documentary, have been pretty good, so I think we are getting back on track. We are seeing the influence of the 2010s and of 2022 starting to really take form. Piece by Piece, a documentary told via Lego animation is a unique idea, we don't see many animated documentaries out there. The Wild Robot was a stylized movie, and Transformers One, well it was just really good, and that's great too. I'm really hoping that 2024 is the last really dry spell of animated features, I hope 2025 begins to really shape a new era of animation in theatres. We can argue about whether the 2020s have been a good decade for animation, but I hope it will be as interesting as the 2010s.

El Apóstol; The First Animated Feature and What It Could Have Been Like to Watch It

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving animated feature, however, animated cinema has existed for an entire decade before. In 1917, Argentine animator Quirino Cristiani put together El Apóstol, or The Apostle, released in Buenos Aires on November 9th, the film was a political satire that featured the Argentine President of the time Hipólito Yrigoyen, and it was well received by critics at the time. It had  some controversy, and the film was made with cutout animation. The movie is also completely lost, as most of Cristiani's work was destroyed in two separate fires, with El Apóstol being destroyed in a 1926 fire at the studio of the film's producer, Federico Valle. Lost media is truly fascinating, because you have to use your imagination to really figure out what it could be like, so I thought it would be fun to imagine, take some guess work, speculate even.

The big thing that needs to kept in mind is that, this movie is directly influenced by Argentine history, or Argentine Current Events at the time. So in order to really guess at what this movie could have been like, I have to answer a few questions; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen? And the most important one, what is the plot of this movie? I'll be honest, Argentinian history is not entirely my forte, I don't even know which things I should refer to as Argentine or Argentinian, needless to say I am a bit out of my depth here, but I wanted to speculate and talk about lost media and animation history, so that's what I'll be doing now.

So, first question; Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen?

Hipólito Yrigoyen, was the two-time president of Argentina, serving from 1916 until 1922, and then again in 1928 and 1930. He was of the Radical Civic Union, or Unión Cívica Radical, which is a Centrist and Liberal political party in Argentina. Yrigoyen was first to be elected under the Sáenz Peña Law, which guaranteed secret and compulsory voting. He was also a nationalist president, convinced that Argentina had to have control of it's transportation, energy and oil, as well has manage its own currency. He also decided to keep Argentina out of World War I and was nicknamed Peludo, which translates of "Furry" or "Armadillo"? Someone correct me on that. Things didn't entirely go well as his second term ended in a military coup in the September Revolution, which was mostly started when the Yrigoyen government took power from the legislature and cut off support for the Conservative, and this lead to what is called the "Infamous Decade", why does world history have to be so messy and problematic? Okay, I think I'm making this more complicated than I should be, to put it basically, Yrigoyen was the leader of the Radical Party in Argentina, and was outed in his second term in 1930.

With that context, what is the plot of El Apóstol?

So I am basically going to be reading the plot summary off of Wikipedia here, I would have loved to read the books Wikipedia cited, those would be Giannalberto Bendazzi's 1995 book "Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation" and his 2017 book "Twice the First - Quirino Cristiani and the Animated Feature Film", however I am unable to read or acquire either book at the moment. I do apologize for this, I would love to do a more thorough detailing of this topic, because it deserves proper detailing, but I have limits, and a lot of that is budget and availability. I won't quote Wikipedia word for word, but I'm going to be fully transparent here. Maybe I'll rewrite this if I get a chance to read those books.

Anyway, as said before, El Apóstol is a satire based on Hipólito Yrigoyen, dubbed "El Peludo", where he has a dream about speaking with the gods of Olympus and using Zeus' lightning bolt to destroy Buenos Aires, cleansing it of immorality and corruption. I imagine this would have been a very dialogue heavy movie, because I skipped over a bit of stuff, but the gist is there. So this begs the question, what is the movie really saying?

I think this is where my limited resources can bite me in the butt here, because the small Wikipedia summary only gives me that, the summary. I have to wonder if the movie is portraying Yrigoyen as having delusions of grandeur or as being reckless and careless, maybe both? Maybe it's saying that his goals are only possible in his dreams, or that he will end up destroying Argentina? I think the only way I could really know for certain is if I saw it in Argentina at the time.

That brings me to my ultimate conclusion, I don't think I would like El Apóstol if I saw it today. There is a certain disconnect between me and Argentinian politics and history that I feel would really keep me from understanding this movie. It kind of reflects my views on Momotaro, which my affection for was entirely based around its historical significance, rather than it being a great, or even a good movie. Momotaro was also propaganda that reflected the views and political scene at the time, and likewise there is a pretty decent disconnect between then and now, and I believe there is probably a bigger disconnect between American audiences and Argentina than there is with Japan.

Should El Apóstol be found? Well I think it's unlikely it will be found, the only known copy of the movie was destroyed in a fire in the 1920s, but if there is a chance, I do think it is worth uncovering, again for the historical significance more than anything else. That being said, I can't help but think that maybe it's not a bad thing we can't watch this movie. It's practically mythology at this point, and seeing the reality would probably destroy a lot of that. I can't imagine this movie is something that would really resonate with modern audiences, either outside of or within Argentina, but at the same time it would give us a look at animation history and Argentinian history, so maybe it would have some value at the end of the day.

This was a big effort for me, and I can't say I'm super satisfied with the end result, but I got to stop working on it at some point, or I'll just keep working on it until I die. If I get the opportunity I'll probably revisit this topic in the future, but right now, I hope I spread a little knowledge about animation history, and I can safely say, I will never do a blog like this again.

Part 2: The 1990s Annie Awards for Best Animated Feature Are Still Weird (1996-1999)

If you have not read the first part of this post, you can find that link here!

In case you missed the first part, I have a bug up my... sphincter, yeah let's use that word, about award shows, and even though I have a fondness for the Annie Awards, they are still an award show at the end of the day, and award shows are notorious for having weird, off the mark and sometimes just straight up wrong nominees and awards, and the Annie Award is no stranger to nominating stuff that just makes you go... "Eh?". So, inspired by Crash Thompson's Curse of the Best New Artist Grammy videos, which by the way you should absolutely check out, I figured I'd talk about the weird and almost befuddling beginning period of the Best Animated Feature Annie Award, from 1992 until 1999.

So basically, now I'm just gonna wrap up the 1990s, and how... odd the Best Animated Feature Nominees are this decade. I have nothing else to add (Unless there is something I missed in the previous part), so let's get started.

1996

So, a big problem with the Annie Awards in this decade was, like I stated previously, that they didn't really keep their nominees to just "The previous year", I do believe they did have a cut-off date, but because these award ceremonies were often held late in the year, often in November, it meant that they really did have little to no excuses for not nominating certain films. However, even if 1996 was a spectacular year for animated movies (Which we will discuss in a bit), 1995 had a movie that was massive, and changed animation for ever. 1995 was the year that a little animated feature was released to the public, a little animated feature by the name of...

Winner: Toy Story

I mean, come on... this is another case of Beauty and the Beast where literally nothing else could have won that award this year. Unlike 1992 though, there were some other good nominees in 1996, but none of them had the impact as Toy Story did, and the amazing this is, the impact this movie had on animation wouldn't be felt until the 2000s, so Toy Story won based off the quality of the movie alone, though the novelty of it being 3D probably helped a lot.

I'm not the biggest fan of Toy Story, I don't really like the kind of story it tells, but even I can't deny that it is a well-made movie that absolutely deserved the award. It's just that there was also a bit of competition this year.

The Other Nominees: Balto, Ghost in the Shell, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, James and the Giant Peach

Yeah, like Balto was going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning this award. Say what you want about the movie, standing between Toy Story and Ghost in the Shell is practically a death sentence to any movie, and yes, this makes Ghost in the Shell our second Anime film to be nominated for this award. Enjoy it while you can because it will take five years before another anime film is nominated and an extra year until one actually wins. If your math is correct, or you looked it up, you probably already know what the first Japanese film to win this award is. Honestly, major dark horse candidate Ghost in the Shell, if Toy Story wasn't in the race, I could imagine this one might have won instead, but then again it might have been too much of an out there choice.

Our contemporary nominees this year are The Hunchback of Notre Dame and James and the Giant Peach. Hunchback is definitely an odd candidate, as it was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award in 1997 for "Worst Written Film grossing Over $100 Million", even the joke award is an absolute joke sometimes, to be fair though, The Hunchback of Notre Dame was insanely popular at the Annie Awards, being nominated thirteen different times for nine different awards. It won zero awards that night, it had three nominees for Best Achievement in Voice Acting and still lost to Pinky and the Brain, that is just... sad, but don't feel too sad for the movie though, it did win eight awards in 1997 so it didn't finish the year empty handed.

James and the Giant Peach on the other hand, it was nominated for seven awards, again winning none of them, and honestly... I don't think it really warranted the nomination, it's an okay movie but surely there were better movies to nominate, right?

Snubs:

Well the problem is, both Pocahontas and A Goofy Movie were nominated in 1995, that doesn't leave a whole lot for this year right? Well, kind of, but like with the 1995 awards, the stuff that is available is really worth noting, especially in Japan. It makes total sense that Ghost in the Shell was nominated, but you know what else was released in 1995? There was the third Sailor Moon movie, Sailor Moon SuperS, Slayers - The Motion Picture, and this little movie called Whisper of the Heart. You know, it does sting when one of your favourite movies isn't nominated, I get that, but this one especially hurts.

Over on the American side of things, there isn't really too much. Don Bluth is still losing his magic with The Pebble and the Penguin, another movie that is on my "To do list", and there was also the Gumby movie that... are there any Gumby fans reading this? Overall, this year was pretty solid... as long as you lived in Japan. However, Toonami is just around the corner, so Anime will soon get its foot on American shores.

1997

Like I said, the actual domination of Computer Generated Animation would not be felt until the 2000s, so I can't imagine too many people were thinking about how Toy Story would change the animation industry, but if you were, I can't imagine the 1997 Annie Awards to be anything other than either hilarious or just... unimpressive. Like, the most important animated feature film of the entire decade just won the award, what could follow that?

Winner: Cats Don't Dance

Cats Don't Dance? Really!? This is... kind of an odd choice for them, like I haven't watched Cats Don't Dance yet, but my understanding is that it only really became popular with the advent of the animation community on Social Media. Like, it was a box-office failure, was not promoted at the time and it did not receive a Blu-Ray release until 2023, that is absurdly late for any movie to be given a Blu-Ray release. That all being said, the film has received a lot more praise in the modern era, so this was a very... oddly foretelling nomination... especially considering the other nominees this year.

The Other Nominees: Hercules, Space Jam

Straight up, I'm shocked Hercules did not win. Disney was on top, winning this award every year, except for this one, making this the first year that Disney did not win the Best Animated Feature award... It won't even be the last of this decade either. Even despite that though, if I had to guess why they chose Cats Don't Dance instead... Well, maybe the story and the homages to golden era Hollywood resonated more than... Gerald Scarfe and Michael Bolton being involved in a project Musker and Clements got in so they could do something better.

However, this does also mean that there technically is no "Best Animated Feature of 1996", because a movie from 1995 won in the 1996 awards, and a movie from 1997 won in the 1997 awards. However, considering the only contemporary nominee this year is Space Jam... yeah... I'm not shocked that didn't win. Was there anything else in 1996 that could've been nominated?

Snubs:

I mean... not really. Once again, most of the films that could've been nominated were foreign releases. Slayers Return and X are our big anime movies this year, and we actually have something from Brazil this time. Another early CG Animated Feature called Cassiopeia, it doesn't seem like it was ever released in America, but we are starting to see the effects of Toy Story on animation. Though, it does seem like this movie is to Toy Story as Fleischer Studio's Gulliver's Travels was to Disney's Snow White.

As for domestic films, believe it or not, there are only two that I think could have gotten nominated, and one of them is All Dogs Go to Heaven 2. Yeah, I was kinda surprised that this one was released theatrically, but it was. This was apparently the last animated feature released theatrically by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios until the late 2000s. I mean, I don't think it would have won, but it could have been eligible for a nomination. However, you know what movie I'm both really shocked, and absolutely not shocked that it wasn't nominated this year? Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. I mean, on the one hand, it's a pretty good movie, but on the other hand... I mean, it's Beavis and Butt-Head, I can't really imagine Beavis and Butt-Head at any kind of Award show.

I guess I can't really be to shocked that there was practically nothing released this year, while Disney was on top of the Animation world this decade, lots of others were trying to copy their success to mixed results. Speaking of Disney!

1998

The year is 1998, I was born, but more importantly... Okay I have nothing to introduce this year. That is a big problem with the Annie Awards being held late in the year and not keeping the nominees to movies from the previous year. You can't really talk about what was going on in animation, especially when you should be talking about animation in 1997, but the award winner is a movie from 1998.

Winner: Mulan

I'm going to be honest, I'm not surprised that Mulan won the award, but I'm also not impressed either. Like, it's kind of a Beauty and the Beast thing, where I feel they purposefully selected nominees nobody would vote for just so they could hand the award to Mulan, and when I say "Nobody would have voted for these nominees", folks... I really do mean nobody would have voted for these movies.

The Other Nominees: Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, I Married a Strange Person!

Okay, to be fair, I can imagine some people voting for Anastasia, Don Bluth was finally getting back on track with his films after a series of bizarre messes, and while I don't think it's a great movie, I can definitely say there are weirder choices, like the sophomore feature by Bill Plympton. I told you to remember that statement because I Married a Strange Person! was nominated for the award this year. This movie has been on my watchlist, but like... there's practically nothing on Wikipedia about this movie, just a literal one sentence introductory line, a plot summary and a cast list, no production history, no reception, no release history, it either says something about the impact of this movie, the fanbase, or just Wikipedia in general.

However, I could still see someone, literally just one or two people, voting for it. I can't see anyone voting for the contemporary nominee that year. I mean, out of all the movies released in early and Mid 1998, why on Earth, with any sense of sincerity, nominate Quest for Camelot? Why?

Snubs:

Well, their might not have been much else to nominate that year. Literally everything I could find that could have been eligible, was also a foreign film that probably didn't see much of a major release in the United States, unless you want to count that direct-to-video Christmas Carol movie that I previously reviewed. There was Pippi Longstocking, which did get a theatrical release, but I doubt that got much attention from the folks at the Annie Awards. Of course, we also have our usual spattering of Anime films that probably would not have been nominated, The End of Evangelion, Princess Mononoke and Perfect Blue all being released in 1997.

Honestly, I think any of these would have probably been a better nominee than Quest for Camelot, but I guess this is just a case of hindsight being 20/20. Wait, no it isn't, Quest for Camelot was a commercial flop and a critical failure, nobody looked at Quest for Camelot and said "Hey, this movie is worthy of winning an award for being the best". Did they really pick it to guarantee Mulan won the award?

1999

Alright, finally, 1999, and I just have to comment, this year's nominees are all really solid. We don't have a case of "Well their just wasn't anything else to nominate" here, every single one of these movies, I feel, could have walked away with the award. So the winner of this award had to be something extra special, and was it?

Winner: The Iron Giant

It has been quite a while since I last watched The Iron Giant, but I can safely say... yeah, this movie earned the award. Frankly, this should have been the movie that made Warner Bros. bounce back from Quest for Camelot, but the box office was arguably worse on this movie. Still, I think this victory makes sense, even if it had some stiff competition.

The Other Nominees: A Bug's Life, The Prince of Egypt, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Tarzan

I'll start with the two movies from 1998 here, A Bug's Life and The Prince of Egypt. Starting with the least likely to win the award, A Bug's Life is honestly one that I'd be shocked if it won, but I'm also a tiny bit shocked didn't win. Again, the whole novelty of being a Computer Generated movie I think would have given it a small edge, but I guess this just goes to show that Toy Story was awarded for the story and not the animation. The Prince of Egypt on the other hand, like I said in my review, is practically an epic, but maybe it was a little bit much to win the award. The Prince of Egypt is a fantastic movie, but it's kind of a movie you really have to be in a proper mood to watch, not just something you throw on for sheer entertainment... honestly, I'd probably have given it the award for that factor alone, but maybe they wanted something a bit more middle ground.

As for the contemporary nominees, I think Tarzan would have been the least likely movie out of all of these to win the award. Not that it's a bad movie, honestly I really like Tarzan, but it's not anything special, like the previous three movies, in their own ways, were special, and even South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is special in some way. Tarzan is just a really solid movie. Though, on that same subject, I am really not at all shocked South Park didn't win the award either, I mean at 399 uses of the F-Bomb, this would have probably been a very controversial win, honestly I'm surprised it was even nominated, but if a movie is really that good, anything is possible I guess.

Snubs:

Frankly, I think all the movies that should have been nominated from 1998, were nominated. There really is not much else that could have been nominated from 1998, like what do we have leftover? Antz and The Rugrats Movie. That is really it on the American side.

Foreign Animated films don't really stand much better to be honest, I think the biggest release from outside of the United States would be Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back, considering this was when the show was starting to air in America, the movie being nominated would have been really confusing at the time. There is also an Italian film named Lucky and Zorba, and a French film called Kirikou and the Sorceress... I may have to give that a look sometime in the future.

But really, everything that should've been nominated from 1998, was nominated if not in 1999 than in 1998, y'know except for Quest for Camelot, yeah that definitely deserved a nod over Antz.

And that wraps up the Best Animated Feature Annie Award for the 1990s, honestly, this was kind of a fun little look back on the award, and the history of animated cinema. It was fun looking at what movies won, what else was nominated, what got snubbed and why. I definitely would like to carry on into the 2000s and 2010s, and maybe look at other awards as well, maybe also do some speculating on years previous for what movies could have been nominated, what movies might have won, and what movies I think should have won. Though, right now, I think I want a small break from the Annie Awards, so I'll see you next time.

Part 1: The 1990s Annie Awards for Best Animated Feature Are Weird (1992-1995)

So... Award Shows are stupid right? I mean we know at this point it's all just advertising so they can say "This was nominated for and/or won a prestigious award" and it's all just nonsense, yes even the Annie Awards are nonsense. I still got to love them though, this is often how I learn of many animated projects, movies to check out, shorts to look up, TV shows to... put on my back burner and ultimately never get around the watching them, but that does not change the fact that at the core, the Annie Awards are still just an award show, and it's all unnecessary and pointless. I made comments about how Across the Spider-Verse swept the award ceremony and that it was boring that it happened, but at the end of the day, I don't really care. Nimona is still the better movie, fight me, and we would still go flock to the theatres to see the next Spider-Verse movie, even if it didn't win a single award because that is just what we do.

But one of the things I do have to admire about award shows is that they are such a great window into the past. You look at the awards that were given to which movies or shows or music or what have you and you just have to think, "What made them pick this?". You notice this a lot with the really big awards, notably the Oscars and the Grammy Awards, they have some really big categories that everyone pays attention to because they always get it wrong and there was always something better they could have chosen. I hate to say it but... sometimes the Annie Awards are like that too, and I want to try something new. I'm going to look at the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, year by year, and kind of discuss why I think the films that won the award did so, what else was nominated and any movies that could have been nominated but weren't, and why they might not have been. Kind of like what Crash Thompson is doing with the Best New Artist Grammy, except not as funny.

With all of that said, let's start with the 1990s, because this is the year the Annie Awards began and... this is when the weirdest things happened. I'll be specifically looking at the "Best Animated Feature" category, but maybe in the future I'll look into the other categories. So, let's begin with 1990... my mistake, the Best Animated Feature Category didn't exist until the 20th Annie Awards in 1992... Even though the award has existed since 1972, this is a topic for another day, 1992!

1992

So, 1992 was the first year the Best Animated Feature award was a thing, so this very monumentous first award had to be given to a very special movie, a movie that really gives the medium of animation a good name, something big, important, high quality. Now, the good news is that a movie of that status was awarded that night, the problem is that the movie in question was released in 1991.

Winner: Beauty and the Beast

Now this isn't a knock against Beauty and the Beast, I mean I'm dumb but not dumb enough to anger a bunch of animation fans and invite them to trample me to death. Beauty and the Beast absolutely deserved this win, I mean it was the first animated movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, it was the first animated feature to win the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy category, I mean, this movie was a pretty big deal, so why is the 1991 release date a problem? Well, the other two nominees of that year, weren't 1991 releases, they were 1992 releases.

Stuff like this happens for multiple reasons, and in this case it's because the Annie Awards were usually held in November, but for the sake of simplicity, when I talk about the "Snubs", I'm only going to talk about movies from 1991. However, what were those two movies from 1992 that absolutely needed that "early" nomination?

The Other Nominees: Bebe's Kids, FernGully: The Last Rainforest

Does anyone else think that they picked these movies specifically to ensure that Beauty and the Beast won the award? I've never seen Bebe's Kids, but from my understanding it's one of those animated movies that... people forgot about, y'know until internet morons remembered it so we didn't have to, and as for FernGully, I've already reviewed that movie, so you know exactly my thoughts on the matter, but to summarize, FernGully is a boring, preachy, slog of a movie. What I'm saying is, I don't think these movies really deserved the nomination, I mean, wasn't there anything else from 1991 that could've been nominated?

Snubs:

So, 1991 wasn't an absolutely barren year for animated movies, but... it wasn't a particularly great one. I think the biggest snubs from this year were mostly movies that were released in Japan, stuff like Only Yesterday, which didn't get any release outside of Japan until 2006, and Roujin Z, which would not be released outside of Japan until 1994. Otherwise, there is a Ranma ½ movie, a Doraemon movie, and a couple Dragon Ball Z movies, I dunno, are Cooler's Revenge and Lord Slug considered high points in the DBZ movie series?

Outside of Japan though... it's pretty slim pickings, Don Bluth fully looses control of what made his work so great with Rock-a-Doodle, another movie I reviewed, Rover Dangerfield was also released that year, and it's another movie people forgot about until some critic reviewed way back when, and as far as I can tell, the only other movies that anyone might know anything about from '91, were The Princess and the Goblin, a Hungarian and British co-production based on a book from 1872, and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West... I mean, this one might have been a nominee, but you only know of this one if you had it on VHS because your Mom thought the first movie was too much for you as a kid.

So really, Beauty and the Beast was like, the only pick for 1991. Maybe if they released them in the U.S. earlier, Only Yesterday and Roujin Z could have been nominated, I guess An American Tail: Fievel Goes West could have gotten a nod to, but it sure as hay would not have walked away with that award. I'm also really confused at why they didn't nominate any other movie from 1991, I mean... what does that leave for next year?

1993

Okay, it is now 1993, we had out big inaugural award to give out, now we gotta actually start taking this category a bit more seriously, right? Right?

Winner: Aladdin

Okay, I'm not going to say Aladdin is a bad choice, it's not my favourite of the Disney animated canon, or even of the Disney Renaissance, but it's a solid movie, I like it fine. I dunno, they'd really have to have nominated some really lesser movies to make me think this was the only choice.

The Other Nominees: Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Once Upon a Forest

Okay, for those of you who are thinking "But Little Nemo was originally released in 1989", you're right, but this is a technicality, Japanese animation wasn't as big in the nineties as it is now, so it took a while for their movies to cross over, so while Little Nemo was a 1989 release in Japan, in the United States it was released in 1992, so it is a bit "rules lawyering" but by technicality it counts. Otherwise, I haven't seen this movie either, I've heard it's not good, even from a fan of the Little Nemo comics, it is on my list of movies to review.

What I have seen is Once Upon a Forest and... I mean it's not the worst movie ever but... it's not very good. Also, it's a 1993 release, get used to this because the Annie Awards wouldn't have consistency in this department until 2004, I wish I was kidding.

Snubs:

1992 was also a slow year in terms of animated movies, like I can't think of very many "Big" animated movies from this year, there was Porco Rosso, which wouldn't hit the U.S. Shores until 2005, and there was the Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation movie, but that was Direct-to-Video so it probably wouldn't count anyway.

I think the only other "Well known" movies from this year would be Ralph Bakshi's Cool World, which... boy would that have been a wild choice, and Freddie as F.R.O. 7 which... you only know because small time animation reviewers talked about it, if you know it at all. Otherwise, there was a Japanese and Indian co-production called Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, might add that to the watchlist, Comet in Moominland , the first full-length Moomin film, but it doesn't seem like it was released in America at all, and there's a Bill Plympton musical-comedy called The Tune. Boy would I love to see the day Bill Plympton is nominated. Remember that statement.

So, 1992 was a bit of a bad year for animated movies, but still, I can imagine the Tiny Toon Adventures movie could have been nominated if they took direct-to-video films into account, Cool World would have been such an "out there" choice, and again some foreign films that never seemed to make it to the U.S., but surely the next year has to be better, right?

1994

The year is 1994, we're looking at the movies of 1993, there might not be much, but surely we can keep some kind of consistency here right? 1992 had a movie from 1991, 1993 had a movie from 1992, so 1994 has to have a movie from 1993 win the award, right?

Winner: The Lion King

Oh you are kidding me, right? Okay, well I guess The Lion King fell into the parameters of being eligible for this year, even if it's not at all consistent with the established norm, but again, an established norm wouldn't happen until 2004 so... bear with me here. I mean, I guess it's fair that this movie won the award, but if we're looking for movies from 1993, you had two really good choices alongside this one!

The Other Nominees: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Nightmare Before Christmas

Okay, so I've reviewed both of these movies, Mask of the Phantasm is an absolutely fantastic Batman adventure, and it's kind of a shame it didn't win the award, but I mean if you're going up against the Highest Grossing Animated Movie of the time, of course you're gonna lose, especially if you didn't even make your budget back at the box office. However, if there was no Lion King nomination for that year, I am absolutely certain the award would have gone to The Nightmare Before Christmas, because of just how unique it was at the time. Alas, The Lion King managed to eek in there, so it practically got handed the golden zoetrope on a silver plate.

Snubs:

Okay, straight up, 1993 was actually not a good year for animated movies. Yes, Mask of the Phantasm and Nightmare Before Christmas we're released, but you know what else was released in 1993? The Thief and the Cobbler, at least the version that was released as "The Princess and the Cobbler", the version that I reviewed, which was released as "Arabian Knight", was released in 1995, so the worst version wouldn't be up for nomination this year, but still. Also released in 1993 was We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, also on my "to review" list, and two other infamous movies that I have also previously reviewed we're also released this year, in America anyway. 1993 was the year that American audiences we're able to see the glorious garbage fires known as The Magic Voyage and Tom and Jerry: The Movie. Yeah, I know all sources say it Tom and Jerry was released in 1992, but that was in Germany and it didn't reach U.S. shores until 1993.

Was there anything good released in '93 outside of what was nominated? Well, there was Ninja Scroll, which I've heard good things about, but again it wouldn't be released in America that year, so it's tough to really consider it as a nominee. It's actually kind of dumb that the Annie Awards wouldn't really incorporate foreign animation until later, but I guess that is just what happens when world-wide communication is not at its peak yet.

1995

Okay, so 1995, the year that The Lion King should have been the winner, which technically means that there is no "best animated feature of 1993", but hey it's a new year, and a bunch of new movies are bound to get some attention. So, if The Lion King doesn't the award this year, what movie from 1994 does get it?

Winner: Pocahontas

Oh... so our second winner that is actually from the year the ceremony is held. Really, Pocahontas? This movie has a bit of a reputation to it, and frankly... it's kind of one that I don't want to review, because I am really not prepared to talk about this movie. Let's move on before I say something stupid.

The Other Nominees: A Goofy Movie, The Swan Princess

A Goofy Movie is also from 1995, so you would think this year would be when they finally decided to have some consistency with this, but it's not. Still, A Goofy Movie is an interesting choice here, it's actually kind of like the opposite of Pocahontas, with Pocahontas becoming less popular overtime, while A Goofy Movie has kind of become more beloved. So, I'd say good on them for nominating this, but it's also kind of like the only good choice this year because the only nominee from 1994 is The Swan Princess, and that movie sucks.

Snubs:

To be absolutely fair, it's not like 1994 had a killer line-up, but it had some good stuff that... if they were able to nominate them, would've been really cool to be nominated. Pom Poko was released in 1994, though stay tuned folks, it won't be long for a second anime film to get a nomination, though it won't be from Studio Ghibli. There was an Asterix movie this year, Asterix Conquers America, mostly a direct-to-video release in Europe but it was a thing. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was also released this year, though even if that was nominated, I wouldn't have put money on it winning. Speaking of movies that definitely would not have won the award even if they were nominated, 1994 was the year that a little German animated movie called Felidae was released, and quite frankly, if I were making my own list of nominees, you'd better believe I would be behind this movie one-hundred percent.

However, 1994 was also the year of Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park and The Pagemaster, so it obviously wasn't that great a year. Still, there was a good selection of films released in 1994, it's just that none of them were released in America, or at least not released in that year. Which is a shame because, I absolutely would have loved it if Felidae got a nomination.

And I think I'm gonna stop it here for now, trust me we still have a lot of weird stuff to go over, so I'm not done. However, I do need to keep this to a reasonable length, and four years is the half-way point for the Annie Awards in the 1990s, again they didn't have this category in 1990 or 1991, so what could have been the nominees for those years, we just have to speculate. Actually, put a pin in that idea, I may do that speculating some day in the future. As for now, let's put this little blast from the past on hold. See you guys for 1996 to 1999.

Why is The Amazing Digital Circus Absurdly Popular?

Absurdly is probably not the right word for it, in under a week the second episode of The Amazing Digital Circus reached not ten million, not twenty million, but fifty million views on YouTube, currently at ninety-three million, and as of June 13th, 2024, the pilot is at three-hundred and twenty-seven million views. Now, I loved the pilot and the second episode as much as the next person, but there is a question that is sticking in the back of my mind, something I've wanted to ask with the pilot but never really got the chance to. All in all, it really isn't a big question, frankly it's inconsequential, but I got to know, does Caine ever accidentally bite down on his eyeballs? Okay, in all seriousness, the question I really wanted to ask is, why this show? Specifically, what is it about this show that makes it so popular?

Somethings, it makes sense why they're so popular, SpongeBob, Superman, Minecraft, Star Wars, I get why these properties are so popular, but a lot of that is hindsight and years worth of fans taking about every aspect of these things to death. The most recent example in that selection was Minecraft, which was officially released in 2011, thirteen years ago, and it was available to the public since 2009. The Amazing Digital Circus pilot was released in 2023, just barely a year ago. Yet it already has more views than the Nostalgia Critic's review of The Room. Hell, the Angry Video Game Nerd episode on NES Accessories as of writing this has only eighteen million views. Is It a Good Idea to Microwave an Airbag, one of the most well-known episodes of the webseries that got me into web-content, is at two and a half Million views. Actually no, I think the only way I can really illustrate how crazy insane popular The Amazing Digital Circus is, is by stating this fact; The Amazing Digital Circus pilot has amassed more views in less than a year, than Don't Hug Me I'm Scared did in twelve years. So, why is this show so popular?

Well, let's start with the very basic; the show is accessible. The Pilot is available in eighteen different languages and has closed captions for sixteen. Granted that is not anywhere close to the amount of languages there are in the world, but that is still an amazing amount. It goes to show the obvious, accessibility is a good thing. However, I don't think this is the full story. I'm sure the accessibility helps, and I'm sure it helps quite a lot, but all that accessibility wouldn't matter if nobody was watching it, and clearly people are, so I ask again, what is it about this show that appeals to people, to the point that it does actually matter that it's available in other languages?

Well, let's move from the very basic, to the very obvious; The Internet loves horror. "Oh, but I'm on the internet and I don't like horror", hey, I was like that too, but I still read Creepypasta, I wasn't too good for Jeff the Killer and Candle Cove, Hell I got my start in reviewing by talking about creepypasta on DeviantArt, don't go looking for those journals, I have honed my craft so much since those days. It goes way beyond Creepypasta though, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared was a sensation to the point that it was referenced in children's cartoons, Five Nights at Freddy's was such a viral sensation that it spawned a whole generation of horror games entirely made to be played by talent-less clickbait Let's Play channels, Hell it's not even just true-horror that gets popular, the most popular Homestar Runner toons are almost always the Halloween toons, to the point where those are pretty much the only thing we get out of Homestar Runner anymore. So horror and Halloween vibes are practically worshipped on the internet in the same way that Led Zeppelin is worshipped in rock and roll communities.

Once again, I don't think this is the full story. The internet loves horror, but that doesn't mean every horror thing is beloved. A lot of those old creepypasta stories are, rightfully, dunked on and mocked online, and bad horror games are practically a dime a dozen and often ignored, and terrible horror movies are almost never talked about, in fact I took part in one of those Twitter Retweet Response Thread things which asked for terrible horror movies, so while the internet loves horror, it also clearly only loves good horror, and bad horror is mocked, criticized and forgotten about. Besides, I don't think I'd call The Amazing Digital Circus a full on horror series, not like The Gregory Horror Show, honestly not even in the same vein as Courage the Cowardly Dog. It definitely has horror elements, but the kind of horror it reminds me of is more like The Stanley Parable, which... I don't know if you would call a horror game, but it certainly has a bleak, almost psychological horror vibe at points. So if it isn't the accessibility, or the horror, what makes it so popular?

Is it just that the show is THAT good? Well... of course, people wouldn't watch it if it wasn't. However, that's not the full story either. "Good" content doesn't always explode in popularity, especially not instantaneously. Many creators will talk about having that one video that opened the floodgates so to speak, some creators will even have a video that completely revitalizes their channel. So the excellent quality is definitely a factor, but it doesn't fully explain the immense amount of views.

There is also the possibility that the show is genuinely so eye-catchingly unique and different that it had to stand out and become popular. Which is a fair argument... except for the fact you could say the same about most internet content. Again, I must bring up Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared. It has significantly less views than The Amazing Digital Circus does, and I'd argue it's just as, if not maybe more unique. Really, the entire reason that internet content is more popular than traditional television or cinema is entirely because it is different, new and arguably groundbreaking. Any old fans of Game Theory or James Stephanie Sterling will recognize this comparison, it's like pasta sauce, there is always a market for a chunky sauce. Well, the internet is filled with that "chunky sauce", and all manner of pasta sauces that you can't watch on a television station or in the movie theatres. So, if The Amazing Digital Circus is not popular solely because of accessibility, the fact the internet loves horror, the show being of excellent quality, or the fact that the show is unique, what is the reason?

Well, isn't it obvious? It's all of that and more. It's kind of the perfect storm really, the description of the pilot describes it as a "Psychological dark comedy", so people who are into horror and horror adjacent content, i.e. the internet, would check it out, they would be impressed by the quality of the video and the fact that they haven't really seen anything entirely like this before and share it around, and because the show is available in multiple languages, anyone who is interested in it can check it out no matter what language they speak, it was the perfect storm of right idea in the right place at the right time, because... 2023 was not a very good year for animation. I say that like I am an expert on everything that was happening at the time, but no, 2023 was pretty bad, in fact the 2020s has not been a good decade for mainstream animation. However, independent animation, now the 2020s has been a fantastic decade for that. It blows my mind that The Amazing Digital Circus came out in 2023, because it feels like the kind of thing that would have been released in the absolute golden year that I did not give enough credit to, 2022. 

Honestly, I can see The Amazing Digital Circus being one of those shows that inspires the next generation of artists, like a lot of animations, comics, video games and short stories are gonna come out in the next few years that have such obvious traces of the Digital Circus in them, that it stops being funny. The popularity of The Amazing Digital Circus is an interesting phenomenon because, on the surface it is very obvious why the show is so popular, it's a really good show, but when you really look at how popular it is, that is where it becomes fascinating. If it was just a good show, it wouldn't be this popular, and I don't think it is just one thing that makes it such. If there is one thing I can say however, is that we want justice for Gummigoo!

Dark Souls and the Difference Between Movie Genres and Video Game Genres (Or fixating on an argument I heard once several years ago and writing about it because I have a blog now)

I don't know if this is still a big topic, but back in the 2010s one of the biggest controversies in gaming was, weirdly not microtransactions in video games, I mean that was big, but it doesn't seem like it was as big as whether or not Dark Souls should have an easy mode. Yeah, this was a weird argument, because there were two sides arguing for something "bad" in general, one side wanted "to remove the point of Dark Souls", and the other side "didn't want it to be accessible", in fact accessibility seems to be a dirty word in gaming for some reason. I don't know, you'd think people would want their favourite hobby to be more accessible so that hobby could... you know, keep existing. What I think about the idea of Dark Souls having an easy mode, honestly it's irrelevant at this point, I've made it my life goal to never play Dark Souls to spare my wallet, my game controllers, my sanity, and probably someone's safety... I have anger issues. Yet it has always been nagging in the back of my mind, and there is a really good reason for it.

Dark Souls is not a game I can ignore easily, beyond the fact that it is a popular franchise. Dark Souls appears to be a game with deep lore, unique characters and a very intricate theme, which is what people point to when they say Dark Souls should not have an easy mode. This is stuff I want to experience because I am a big proponent of games being art, but again... anger issues. It's like wanting to watch a horror movie despite the fact that you're easily scared, which is one of the arguments made in defense of Dark Souls not having an easy mode, and that makes sense. I mean, you can't really make a "Not scary" horror movie, right? Oh wait... they have.

I remember seeing this argument on a Tumblr blog ages ago, and it irked me then, but I didn't quite know why. At the time I simply brushed it off as "Video Games aren't movies, stop comparing them", but now I think I know why that argument irks me. Yes, video games aren't movies, because they treat genre as two separate things.

What is a genre? A genre is essentially a category with tropes and mechanics that denote which movie, game, book or whatever, is. Really it's a label with expectations, for example a Gross-out Comedy movie is going to be a movie that is hopefully funny with a lot of bodily jokes, and a First-Person shooter video game is gonna be a video game from the perspective of the player character where you shoot things. Immediately I think you can see the difference, video game genres focus more on mechanics while movie genres is more about content, which is not to say that video games can't be labeled by content, but I think most people will say that Telltale's The Walking Dead is an "Episodic Adventure" before they say it's a "Drama".

Video games tend not to be labeled as "Comedies" or "Thrillers", not because there aren't games that can be labeled as such, but because those labels don't describe how the game works, the term "Metroidvania" may be confusing to gamers who don't know what Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are, but if you're even vaguely familiar with how those games work, a game like Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, Dead Cells, or Cave Story can be understood. Likewise, if you're familiar with how Dark Souls operates, you'll be able to understand how other "Souls-likes" work. Movies work in a similar but different enough way, for example rather than knowing how a "Gross-Out Comedy" or a "Slasher Horror" would "Work" per se,  it's more of what to "expect". To put it simply, Video Game genre labels imply how the game works, Movie genre labels imply what to expect. Arguably they're similar things, I mean, you know what to expect when I say "Metroidvania" and you know how a movie will work when I say "Slasher Horror", but specifically looking at what they mean for their respective medium, that is where the differences begin to matter.

This especially matters a lot with "Genre Mixing", which is when a movie blends two genres together. The example I'm going to use is gonna destroy the notion that you can't make horror movies for people who don't like horror movies, because there have been movies like that made, usually they blend comedy in with the horror to make it less scary. Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, we can even throw Young Frankenstein in there even though that one is more of a spoof comedy than horror comedy, I mean these aren't traditional horror movies but they have elements and tropes of horror in them. On top of that, it isn't just comedy that you can do this with, you can make a horror superhero movie (The Crow), a horror musical (Repo: The Genetic Opera), a horror romance (Warm Bodies), horror fantasy (Pan's Labyrinth or Coraline), and the best thing about it is that they can all ease viewers into more traditional horror.

You can also mix some parts of video game genres too, like you can have a Fighting game that's also a platformer (Super Smash Bros.), or a First-Person Shooter game that's also a Hack and Slash (Red Steel 2), or a First-Person Shooter that's also a puzzle game (Portal), but those are more exceptions to the rule, as most fighting games are more like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, most First-Person Shooters are more like Call of Duty or Doom, and most hack and slash games are like Devil May Cry or Dynasty Warriors. Each game may have their own twist on the mechanics, their own identity from each other, but at the end of the day, they are still within their genres.

I think my ultimate point is the very obvious, "Video Games are not Movies", which... quite frankly nobody needed a long blog post to be convinced of, but I wanted to go more into the "why" of it. Why aren't video games the same as movies? Why should we treat them as separate entities? I think this may also go to explain why a lot of Video Game Movies and Movie Based Video Games just straight up suck, you know, other than the obvious "Nobody cared to make something good and just wanted to strike while the thing was popular" answer. I think I also want to stress that accessibility is more than just features in a game, it's being helpful outside of the game. If you see someone who is struggling to get into Dark Souls, maybe you should help them by giving them hints and tips, or you could offer them a game that is similar but probably more their speed. After all, if you can't make someone a horror fan by immediately showing them John Carpenter's The Thing, how could you make someone a Dark Souls fan by doing essentially the same thing?

Also, don't expect me to talk about video games that much here, this is just something that's been on my mind and I wanted to write it out.

Editorial: The Amazing Digital Circus Pilot is Fantastic

 

The 2020s have so far been a pretty fantastic decade for independent animation. Thanks to animation software reducing the barrier to entry for many users, and the viewer-base for online content only really going up, a lot of people are taking a stab at creating their own animated series, this isn't new to the 2020s, people have been making online animated web-shows since the 1990s and it has become much more popular with channels like Eddsworld, Mondo Media, and the Disney of the internet, Rooster Teeth, and no that is not mean as a compliment. Honestly, it's kind of because of this that I've stepped a bit away from internet animation, save for the shows I'm already a fan of like Death Battle or Red vs Blue, it's kind of that we're spoiled for choice and short on time so we have to pick and choose what we want to give our time to, we all have our preferences to what we want to spend our time on. Yet, something drew me into The Amazing Digital Circus, and if I'm being frank, it was entirely the response the pilot has received, people are going crazy over this show, excited about the amount of views it's gotten in three weeks, already making fan theories and so much Rule 34 art already... just so much.

To be fair, I absolutely see why people have been going crazy over this, because this is such a fantastic pilot. It advertises itself as, if I may quote the video description, "A psychological dark comedy about cute cartoon characters who hate their lives and want to leave", and frankly, I don't think I can sum it up better than that. It's kind of like a cuter, and funnier version of The Gregory Horror Show, a cult anime that is also a psychological dark comedy, but it's a very different kind of show. The Gregory Horror Show is very much shrouded in metaphor and symbolism, and it is very dark. The Amazing Digital Circus, as of now, isn't as full of metaphor and although it definitely has a darker edge to it, visually speaking it is very bright and colourful. It also reminds me a little of one of my favourite video games, The Stanley Parable, which also has a bit of a psychological edge to it.

Speaking of the visuals, let's start there, because the animation is absolutely amazing. When people talk about stylized CG animation, this is the kind of stuff we're talking about. It gives off the vibes of an old uncanny computer game, the kind of games that stuff like Baldi's Basics took inspiration from, but a lot more polished. Which is amusing, the opening splash logo look like a PlayStation One title screen, and the whole pilot could have looked like that, honestly the fact that they chose not to go that route is very respectable. Anyone could have made it look like an old PC or PS1 title and claimed "Stylization", but that trick doesn't really work for animation like it does video games, and even then it doesn't work all the time for video games. I think where the visuals really shines is the character design, each character looks distinct, unique, and memorable. I've been watching MrEnter tear into High Guardian Spice, and for the life of me I can't remember which character is Parsley, Sage, Rosemary or Thyme in that show, I just remember them as "Pink", "Blue", "Elf" and "Dwarf". Not here, I can easily put a name to the design of Caine, Jax, Pomni, Ragatha, Gangle, Zooble, Kinger and Bubble, and can list of personality traits, like Kinger being a nervous and unstable wreck, and Jax being an unapologetic jerk... I think he's my favourite.

Which is a perfect segue into the comedy. I think my main issue with dark comedies is that they focus a lot more on the "Dark" than they do the "Comedy", though honestly this one kind of skews in the opposite direction, but there are two things I have to keep in mind; Firstly, this is a pilot, more episodes are potentially on their way and we may get some much darker episodes in the future, and secondly, even if we don't, the show is still funny. Jax is probably my pick for funniest character, but Kinger and Caine both had equally hilarious moments. Pomni herself is a great protagonist, I do want to follow her as she tries to escape the circus, or slowly becomes consumed by it. Ragatha is probably my favourite non-humourous character though, that is my favourite character beyond how funny I find her, you can tell she is clearly as sucked into this world as the others, but she still tries to be kind and friendly, I hope nothing but good things happen to her, they say knowing full well nothing good is going to happen to any of the characters in the future. It also helps that the voice acting is perfect, all the characters were perfectly cast. Lizzie Freeman as Pomni, Michael Kovach as Jax, Amanda Hufford as Ragatha, and Alex Rochon as Caine? Alex Rochon, former Countdown YouTuber, formerly known as The Autarch of Flame, was Caine? Well that is just point number "Okay I've lost count of how many points this bloody pilot has" to add to why this pilot is awesome. All the cast did an excellent job, absolutely disappearing into their characters.

The Amazing Digital Circus is a wonderful show with loads of potential, I really want to see where this show goes. Will it get darker? What is in store for the characters? What is Caine's deal? Very much, this is a show I will have to keep my eye on, and the fact that it's an independent internet series, allowing it to have few restrictions, means that it is bound to be a very unique show. I'm really hoping this series becomes the next big piece of indie animation, it was funny, dark, had wonderful characters, fantastic animation, there really is nothing bad I can say about it, I mean I guess I could nitpick, but you know what, I don't really want to. I want to see more of this show, I want to see a home media release in the future, and I want to have one of those Pomni plushies... I know what I'm going to pester my family for Christmas for. I'd say "Go see it", but at 78 Million views on YouTube... you already have! If you haven't, this pilot gets a High Recommendation from me. I eagerly await more, MORE!

Editorial: Disney Dreamlight Valley Updated Review

 

Eighty-three, that is the number of hours I have put into Disney Dreamlight Valley since October 25, 2022. That was when I published my initial impressions of the game as an Editorial. In that review, I outlined some of the major flaws with the game, including the bizarre character inclusions, weird bugs and and how the game forces you to progress in Friendship quests before you can freely explore the world. Well, a lot manages to change in a year, and there have been some announcements about Disney Dreamlight Valley, and since I have, for all intents and purposes, finished the main story of the game, I figured now is a good chance to update my review, and talk about the announcements.

And I think the first thing to talk about is stuff that I... didn't get wrong, but are wrong about the original review. Like saying that Belle was in the game and I haven't come across her yet, straight up, she wasn't even in the game, she was added much later and is in the game now, but as of writing, while she was advertised as being in the game, she was not. Also to bring up is the story, as it ended up becoming more... complex is too strong of a word, but it was more than just "tidy up Disney Town", it introduced a darker version of your playable character and... yeah that is about it. The way they let you progress was kind of weird, and I probably should have brought this up when I said that "a lot of the game was gated off", but straight up, when I wrote that review, they did not let you progress until the next major update, like you could access the biomes, but until they released the update you could not really fix those biomes by doing what the game wants you to do. Okay, so a big part of the game I neglected to mention was that you needed to find and restore a bunch of magical orbs and put them back into pillars to fix the world, and when I originally wrote the review, the pillars for Frosted Heights, The Forgotten lands and I think Sunlit Plateau were unavailable to do, and that irritates me to no end. I hate the idea of game companies selling incomplete games and finishing them with updates and DLC. No! Sell a complete game, add to it later, because that is how you should do it. If I worked at a sandwich shop and gave you two slices of bread and told you to come back next year for a piece of lettuce and two tomato slices, you'd boycott my place and get me shut down.

But now the game is complete... I hope, and I've put in plenty more hours, so what is my updated opinion? The game is... mediocre at best. Honestly, a lot of my complaints have not changed, but I've added plenty of new ones since. The first major complaint I have, the biomes just aren't fun to explore. Let's take another mediocre at best Disney game to compare, Disneyland Adventures, that game has you wandering around a simulated Disneyland Park, and you know, it's kind of fun to explore because you have items that you can use to interact with the world, you can find items to use your magic wand on, you can find hidden mickey's around the park to photograph with your camera, find hidden secrets in the park and on the rides. It's a really mediocre game, but it gives you a reason to go looking throughout the park, Dreamlight Valley doesn't. The main reason I keep going around the world is to pick up stuff to sell to Goofy, and that just gets tedious, picking up the same flowers, gems, herbs, it's so boring. Sometimes there's a chest you can open, but that's about it, there aren't really any secrets to explore for until you get a quest that makes you find something that only appears once you activate that quest, come on, maybe I want to catch eels for more reasons than coconut trees.

It also doesn't help that the world map is pathetically small. Small worlds aren't inherently bad, but they need to be packed with content to be worth exploring, but that isn't even the main problem with this game's world. It's packed alright, packed with crap, so much of the biome space is taken up by trees, rocks and other natural objects that you can't really place anything in them, much less another house. "Oh, but you can remove all the things", but I shouldn't have to, there either needs to be less crap in the biomes, or the biomes need to be bigger. I don't want to have to keep removing foliage to place houses.

Another big part of the game is collecting fragments of memories, which are really just screenshots of iconic Disney movie moments, and you get this randomly by doing errands. You'll get pieces of specific memories by catching fish, or digging in the ground, or feeding critters, or mining, and the problem is that they are too random to even really be worth getting. Like, you'll get a piece of memory after making one meal, but then you will get another piece of a different memory after making fifty meals, and you may not even get a memory piece, you may just a small amount of coins instead, which really makes the memories not really worth it. It also doesn't help that to get some of the pieces, you need to feed critters, which is difficult because they each have different ways to getting close to them, different foods they prefer, different favourite foods that will give you better rewards, and different critters will appear of different days at different times, sorry that I can't keep playing this game 24/7 guys, I guess that critter that appears from 6AM to 8AM just isn't worth not having a life over.

But let's get to the meat of all of this, the big announcements. The biggest announcement made in regards to Dreamlight Valley was that it was leaving Early Access, come December it will no longer be an Early Access game, which is kind of confusing to me because, A) This isn't an Indie game, I mean it's backed by a major company, so while the dev team may not be a Triple A studio, the association with Disney definitely restricts from being an Indie game. It also, B) means that this game isn't an original IP that needed Early Access sales to fund the game's development, this is a Disney game, they could easily have pumped a fraction of the money they withhold from Writers and Actors to give this game some more funds. It's also worth noting that this game is, C) not a Steam exclusive, so this game will also recieve money from sales on consoles, which means that the only reason I can see for this game being Early Access is entirely because Disney didn't want to fund it but still reap profits from it, which let's be real is a Disney thing to do. It's probably also why this game isn't going Free-to-Play when it leaves Early Access like it promised.

So with all that said, I must really hate this game right? Honestly, a mediocre at best game is not worthy of being hated, at least not by me. The big problem is, I can see a good game in pieces of this one, a fantastic game even. Interacting with different Disney characters and collecting fragments of memories that are Disney screenshots, I can see a fantastic game being made with that concept, it's just that a fantastic game wasn't made. Sometimes, I wish I could get into game development, as a writer or concept artist, because there are ideas that just seem so obvious that it makes no sense that, instead of a Kingdom Hearts style RPG where we collect memory fragments, it's a life-sim where we run errands and do busy work, and after a while it just kind of feels like a chore to play, and nobody likes chores. I can't say I hate it, but once that better game is made, I'm probably not gonna come back to it.

And really, why isn't Winnie the Pooh in this game yet?

Editorial: Ten Bad Posters for Animated Movies

Movie posters really don't get that much credit. The movie poster is another form of advertisement for a movie, and unlike a trailer it has to give you a feel for the movie in one image. So while it is absolutely nice to see some posters get an extra amount of effort and care put into making them look nice, representitive and appealing, it's also really funny to see when that just straight up did not happen. So, yeah, today I'm looking at posters for animated movies that ultimately just don't really work. Why? Because I've always been of the belief that knowing why something doesn't work is just as important as to knowing why something does. When you look at bad art and know why you don't like it, you can incorporate that into your own art. So, let's see what we can learn from these ten examples of pretty mediocre and lame attempts at advertising.

I really want to stress this is not a ranked list, just a list of examples.

10. Kung Fu Panda 2

You know, I can forgive the first Kung Fu Panda movie for having a silly poster because, yeah, let's be real it sounds like a silly movie and that was probably why people were interested in it. It's just that beneath the surface of the silly Kung Fu movie for kids, was actually a very deep movie. So, Kung Fu Panda 2 comes out, and what poster do we get? Something that literally screams "We're the exact same thing the last movie was". In fact, it may actually be worse than that because ultimately, since the depth and nuance of the last movie was a bit of a surprise to people, now it seems like this movie is going to have even less of that, because just look at it, if this poster doesn't scream "The same but less" than I don't know what does.

9. Horton Hears a Who

You know, DreamWorks face barely works for DreamWorks movie posters, it works even less for what amounts to a lesser Pixar/DreamWorks movie studio. No offense to Blue Sky, but they did not have the best filmography before they were shut down. Anyway, this poster is hilarious, like change the title to "Harold and the Elephant" and you have a movie about a man who is having a psychotic episode trying to escape an imaginary elephant who is also a sex offender. Look, I'm just saying, making faces like that while behind someone is not something you do unless you're thinking about slithering in-between that person's buns.

8. Princess Mononoke

What does a movie about the war between man and nature and a looming threat of a dark entity really need to sell itself? A woman riding on the back of a wolf, that's what! Okay, truthfully, I can see this being appealing, like someone might look at this poster and think, "Wow, who is this badass riding the back of a large wolf?" and on that level, I can see this poster being good, but again, a poster needs to be some kind of representation of the movie itself, and I'm fairly certain that there's something a lot deeper in this movie than a woman riding on the back of a wolf.

7. Kubo and the Two Strings

You know, DreamWorks face barely works for DreamWorks movie posters, it works even less for... Actually I think the biggest issue with this one is that it just looks like a very generic action movie.

6. Zootopia

Ah yes, Zootopia... Zootropolis. Crowded shots for movie posters are usually a bad idea, but at least they have the main characters as the most prominent in them. In this poster, Nick and Judy are shoved off into the side, not even in the front, they're behind two random characters. This crowded shot does make this place feel like a big city, but this look like a poster for a slice-of-life film, not a comedic mystery. Even then, this poster doesn't really make me want to explore the Zootopia world, it makes me remember why city life kinda sucks, overcrowded and noisy.

5. Missing Link

There is an awful trend of DVD covers just being close-ups of a character's face, it honestly kinda looks like Laika was just gonna cut out the middle man by making this the poster so they could make an easy DVD cover with minimal editing. On the bright side, the actual DVD covers are a step-up from this.

4. Tangled

Well this looks like the most generic adventure Disney has ever given us. We got a movie about Rapunzel, so why not have a poster that focuses on her long hair? Maybe her climbing out of the tower? Maybe her tying up the other characters? There is another poster with her and Flynn and the lantern festival thing, that was a beautiful poster, so why is this the poster I will see in most places? It just... looks so generic and bland.

3. Ratatouille

This is kind of the Kung Fu Panda principle, where it looks like they're making a silly poster to advertise what is in actuality a much deeper movie. One thing though, this is Pixar, you know, Toy Story Pixar, Incredibles Pixar, A Bug's Life Pixar, silly movies with depth is kind of their bread and butter, so why not instead of a poster that is essentially just "You're probably wondering how I got here" as a still image, why not have a shot of Paris? Remy looking over the beautiful night sky in Paris with his idol's restaurant in the distance? Why go in this direction?

2. Kiki's Delivery Service

Okay, we got a movie about a witch who is trying to adapt to life in a small Japanese town, what is the best image to advertise this movie with? I know! Kiki slumping over the counter of a bakery. Thankfully other posters had the right idea and used an image of Kiki flying over a city, which is definitely a better image. I dunno, I know this is a more slice of life movie, and it's based on a slice of life book (Which is actually a really good book by the way), but I just look at this poster and think, "So this girl delivers bread, wow...".

1. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

I... really should not count this one since, as of writing this, this movie isn't even out yet, but my immediate reaction to seeing this poster was, "Oh gosh, that is bad". It is simultaneously too much, and yet too little at the same time. There's a big battle going above, and a character just chilling out below, I mean, what? It really does appear that DreamWorks has no idea how to market this movie, because nobody really knows exactly what it's about, and this poster really doesn't help, hopefully the movie will be good, but this is easily one of the worst movie posters I've seen.

The movie poster is an important part of the movie going experience, they are often one of the first images we see of the newest movies, and in and of themselves are works of art. There are so many movie posters out there that are as enticing as the movie trailers, just with one still image. There are lots of pieces of art that I feel a lot of people overlook, like Movie Posters, Video Game Box Arts, Album Covers, and I want us to learn from it all. If you were making a poster for a movie, what kind of things did you see in these posters would you not do? Is there anything in these posters you would incorporate into your own work? Looking at and studying bad art is just as important as studying great art, and I think that is ultimately the thing I want you to take away from this post. These posters may not be great, but we can still learn from them.