Star Wars Visions Review: The Village Bride

Writers: Takahito Oonishi & Hitoshi Haga

Director: Hitoshi Haga

Summary: On a remote planet, a village chief ‘s daughter named Haku and her lover Asu wish to surrender themselves to bandits who have reprogrammed Sepratist droids to raid their village, despite her sister’s objections. A fallen Jedi named F and an explorer named Valco intervene when Haku’s sister faces execution.

Review: One of things I love about anime is how beautiful it can be. Kinema Citrus gives this story a rich palette.

The music for this short was the best I’ve heard in the entire series. Not to sell any of the others short, because they had excellent scores too.

As for the story, it was great. I liked the relationship between Haku and Asu. Their selflessness for their village made me want them to be together. I loved F and Valco’s fight with the droids.

Two more to go, and in reality, they could be tied.

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Couch Potato: Duck Tales Reboot Recap

Last year, I blogged about the pilot episode of the Duck Tales reboot. Now that season 1 is over, I thought I’d talk about my thoughts so far.

First of all, I really like what they’ve done with the nephews and Webby. Huey, Dewey, and Louie each have their own individual actors. This is important because the writers want us to think of them as individual characters rather than a trio. (In fact, no one is doing voices for more than one character this time around.) Huey is the leader and the planner, the smartest of the three. Dewey is the bravest and most heroic. Louie is a bit on the selfish side and greedy. This is not the first time this has been done (it was also done on Quack Pack, but I feel that wasn’t as successful.), but I think it really works here. Webby has also been changed. I want people to understand something. I never hated Webby like some fans apparently did. (I didn’t even know she was hated) I just thought she was bland. She moved the story along. Maybe bland was a better word for how I felt about her. But now, she’s been changed to an energetic girl who seems to enjoy danger a bit too much. I like this new change, and it makes her much more engaging than the original.

David Tennant is doing great work as Uncle Scrooge. He doesn’t seem all that different from the original portrayal, and that’s good. If it worked before, don’t change it.

Donald Duck is much more a part of the show than he was in the original. I love this idea! I hated that he spent so much time with the Navy in the original Duck Tales. I like him being this overprotective substitute father, as it’s a more favorable portrayal than he usually has with the nephews. They seem to have more respect for him this time, which I like.

Film Freak: The Killing Joke

One of my all-time favorite Joker stories is The Killing Joke. The story was controversial because it brutally changed the status quo: Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) was now paralyzed from the legs down. Because of this, she would later become the hacker Oracle. It also recounted the Joker’s origin, building on how he started out as The Red Hood. I personally believe this story helped Batgirl become a better character, more than just a female, younger version of Batman.

I was excited when I learned that an animated feature was being made. When I learned that Mark Hammil, Tara Strong, and Kevin Conroy were reprising their roles as The Joker, Batgirl, and Batman, I was even happier. The movie even became DC’s first animated feature to have an R-rating. That’s really the only way the story can be done. This is the Joker proving that everyone is as twisted and sadistic as him. He believes all everyone needs to push them over the brink is a “bad day”. And this is him giving Commissioner Gordon and Batman that “bad day”.