I am of course talking about Unleashed, which was called Danny the Dog outside the UK and US, probably because it sounds like a heart-warming animated Disney flick, I like to think they were just messing with audiences at this point trying to see how many families they could lure to this film.

The movie stars Jet Li as the sometimes titular Danny who has been raised as a sort of kung-fu attack dog by a bunch of cockney gangsters in Scotland complete with a collar that only gets taken off when he’s supposed to kill people. It’s only when he meets a blind piano tuner played by Morgan Freeman that he finds himself being treated like a human being.

Why is this film set in Glasgow when everyone’s cockney? There’s a bit where Morgan Freeman called a supermarket ‘The best shop in Glasgow’ and I thought he was making a rather witty joke without hammering the punch line that they were actually in London over the audience’s head… But no, apparently American’s don’t care what accent we have as long as we sound quaint and British. I should write a movie set in America where everyone speaks in Cambodian accents and see how they feel.

D'Awwwwwwww!

One thing that quite surprised me about this movie was how few fight scenes there were. I picked this movie because it was Jet Li and I thought it was going to be about him having a magic collar that unleashed his power and let him beat the shit out of people… Instead we’re shown his tortured broken life and how he comes to terms with himself… and then he beats the shit out of people.

I was genuinely impressed by Jet Li’s performance in this film… he actually saves this mediocre, flaccid mess. He’s as brilliant as ever in his fight scenes but outside the combat he conveys a childlike innocence and sadness from his horrible upbringing that I found myself wanting to give him a hug, his performance made me forget that he’s a professional martial artist who could break me with his fingers. Morgan Freeman is rather bland in comparison…

Let me rephrase that.

Jet Li gives a better performance than Morgan Freeman!

Was Morgan on an off day? Did he just decide to phone it in? I don’t know, but he should be ashamed of himself because Jet absolutely outshines him in this film. It’s not his best film, not by a long shot when you have films like Fearless, the Forbidden Kingdom and Hero under your belt. But sometimes it’s the bad movies that really show you a good actor when they don’t have a good script to back them up. Jet Li took this piss-weak film and wrung a captivating performance out of it!

For a martial arts film, it has way too few fight scenes. But the ones that are there are fast, brutal and cleverly done, and it’s not like Jet’s not done other movies with fighting in them. It’s offensively stupid in some parts and you’re better off with Mr Li’s other movies if you have the choice (Kiss of the Dragon is another good one!) But if someone puts a gun to your head or something, you could do much worse.

What I got was one of the most interesting shows this year. Think Muppets, but filthy and with an anarchic Family Guy twang thrown in for good measure and you’re half way there.

The show follows the misadventures of animals like the metrosexal fox Nelson having a forbidden romance with a chicken, Marion the Persian cat facing surgical castration at the vets or the dippy Afghan Hound Destiny trying to get sent to a dog obedience class to try and get with the bad dogs. And there’s a musical number where a cockney fox sings a song called “F**k the chickens.” Where he compares them to illegal immigrants…

Yeah, it’s not exactly got a cogent, linear plot. But that never stopped people watching Family Guy. It’s the jokes that matter. So the question is, is it funny?

Oh… Hell… Yes!

I knew I was going to have at least a few laughs when I saw one of the trailer clips about poor Marion’s plight which left me laughing helplessly for a good minute.

Just see for yourself.

This show has some serious teeth, and it doesn’t mind laying into its guest stars like Toby Anstis or anyone they don’t particularly like, like Michael Buble.

The puppetry and effects aren’t particularly groundbreaking, but they do a perfect job of making the jokes funny and the characters likeable. I don’t know why, but I always find myself more impressed by the simpler effects where you can see how it’s done. I played both Final Fantasy 13 and Final Fantasy 6 at around the same time, and I found FF6’s opening more impressive when it cracked out the Mario Kart style faux 3D than any of the shiny CGI shite that FF13 offered. It’s not the size of the budget that counts, it’s how you use it, and The Mongrels uses it to crack a few utterly filthy jokes, who could ask for anything more? Someone like James Cameron or Michael Bay probably would, but they’re twats.

I’ll be watching to see how the rest of this series pans out; if you’re British you can check out the episodes Here on BBC iPlayer. I’m afraid my lovely non-British readers will have to wait for the DVD release in August or see if they have a Hulu release or something.

It’s good to see a series that tries to do something a little different considering the BBC is usually as tight as a ducks arse with the TV Licence money. It’s not the second coming of Firefly or anything, but it’s a good way to spend a Tuesday night if you can get the TV free from Big Brother for five fucking minutes.

These were the thoughts I narrated out loud while playing Alan Wake because I have no inner monologue ‘cos I’m thick!

Alan Wake is a horror/action game by Remedy that follows Mr Wake as he goes to an unusually sinister looking village in the countryside in order to get away from the terribly hard life of being a writer… You know I said I hate writers? I hate it when they think the audience will have sympathy for their problems despite having a job where they literally sit around in their jim-jams and make stuff up. Alan Wake is a best-selling, highly respected author who seems to have the problem that people always recognise him and tell him they love this work… boo, bloody, hoo! He gets in a spat with his wife because she turns out to have brought a typewriter with them on this holiday in case he wants to, you know, do his job, and while storming off he blacks out and finds her gone. And it’s your job as the player to resist throwing this bastard off the nearest cliff, which I failed… several times, satisfyingly. All the while you will be listening to him narrating his own story like a running commentary. Yes Alan, we know you saw the guy swinging an axe, we saw it as well, we were there.

The gameplay is actually not that bad. Remedy have designed an extremely nifty lighting engine that makes some of the best shadows I have ever seen in a game, and most importantly they realised how pointless this would be in any other game so they designed the rest of the game around it. The evil force that has possessed the town of ‘Bright Falls’ (subtle innit) is afraid of the light, so when the darkness possesses the townspeople or inanimate objects you have to find a way to shine light on them, making it possible to kill them. It’s very atmospheric and the game does a brilliant job of capturing the feel of being lost in the woods in the dark. If only there was a way to turn that bloody narration off.

Maybe that’s the real reason there isn’t a PC version? I mean, yeah, everyone says it’s because PC gamers would just download it like the thieving little sods they are, but what if it’s because the modding community might have tried muting Alan’s narration and realised it made the game so much better? Alan’s constant narration reminded me of Max Payne, and it turns out it’s even from the same writer. But while Max’s monologues added flavour to the story and were entertaining to listen to, Alan Wake just feels like you’re playing the game with a voiceover for visually impaired players!

Another twist in the plot is that Alan keeps finding pages of a manuscript he doesn’t remember writing, and they seem to narrate events that happen later on in the story… I’m already ignoring them because I prefer to not have my stories spoiled ahead of time, it would be different if Alan obviously took notice of these and tried to defy them, but no, he just accepts his fate and somehow manages to be surprised when these things happen exactly as they were written! The only time I’ve ever seen this plot device actually work was in Chuck Palahniuk’s Diary which managed to be genuinely chilling and compelling, here it just feels annoying because nothing surprises you.

WHEEEEERES MYYYYYY WIIIIIIIFE!!!!!

The combat in the game reminded me of Resident Evil 4 with the lights turned off, except not as good. I’ve only faced three or four enemies at a time so far and they’ve only been a threat to me when I get blindsided or my magic torch ran out, which rarely happened because I just calmly walked away from the minions of darkness while waiting for my batteries to recharge, not exactly spine-chilling terror. I’m playing on Hard and the only time I’ve used anything other than the pistol you start with was by accident. Resident Evil 4 made you use everything to hand in a desperate struggle to survive, and it wasn’t trying to tell a good story, it was trying to be a good game. I think we can learn something from that.

All in all, Alan Wake makes me feel much the same as Mirrors Edge did. It looked great in the trailers, it had a ton of potential to be brilliant and had a load of great touches, but ultimately it fell flat on its face due to poor writing and a few weak elements. Worth a tenner, but not much more.

Enter Ninja Assassin. A movie that starts with a room of people being killed in the most gruesome ways you will have seen outside a slasher movie, and carries on in much the same way.

The film follows Raizo, a young man who was raised by the ninjas to kill for his clan. The training is brutal and he has flashbacks of the constant torment the teacher put him through in the name of making him a better killing machine. It turns out to have worked too well when Raizo finally decides he’s had enough and sets out to kill every last one of his clan for basically being a bunch of murderising dicks. There’s a woman from Interpol, Patrick from Coupling and about a hundred SWAT soldiers, but they’re not as important because, you know, NINJAS!

It’s a simple enough concept, and an even simpler story, but it’s the execution that matters, in some cases literally.

Your first impression is that Ninja Assassin is gory, really, really gory. But presumably either the props department started to run out of severed limbs and blood or they decided to pace themselves a little more and the rest of the movie tones it down a little with the occasional limb severing and usual blood spraying. It’s still more gore than most other movies nowadays, but it’s still a pity, I’d have loved to see the amount of offal the Saw movies throw around in a movie that isn’t, you know, shit.

The fight scenes themselves are beautifully performed by Jeong “Rain” Ji-hoon, managing to play his killing machine part extremely well considering he was originally famous as a pop star. Can you imagine Robbie Williams or Will Young cutting anyone up with a knife on a chain? I didn’t think so! The action is beautifully shot, which makes sense when the Wachowski brothers are producing it and the writing and pacing manage to make the visceral combat entertaining every step of the way. It’s also surprisingly imaginative for its genre, like having a tense fight scene in the middle of a road suddenly being interrupted by the bad guy being run over mid-fight, which manages to be both surprising and utterly hilarious!

If this movie has a real flaw, it’s that the story is a bit thin in places. It’s implied that Raizo has a major rival in the ninja clan, but since they’re all wearing face masks half the time you can’t really tell who he is and why we should really care. You won’t really mind when you’re watching Raizo fight fifteen ninja at once with a sword in each hand, but it would still be nice to have more than one main villain.

If you were wondering where all the good action movies went in the last ten years, they’re all right here! If you wanted to go back to the glory days of Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone then you owe it to yourself to buy this movie and Shoot Em Up on DVD several times.

In what might well be the last thirteen weeks of her career, Davina is back in full force. Grinning, gurning and downright leering her way through the show, at one point during her antics I wondered if she’d just upped and had a stroke on camera. Thankfully she hadn’t, and they went through the process of picking out the housemates live on TV.

Yes, this time Big Brother brought eighty hopefuls down to watch as thirteen were picked out of the crowd. It shows just how much Big Brother’s playing to its strengths when the first contestant to go in was Josie, a Bristolian farmer who went up to the front door and just started crotch-thrusting at the already booing audience, makes you proud to be British doesn’t it?

Funnily enough, I actually vowed to get a similar glass eye if I ever needed one.

This also had the added bonus that quite a few of them already knew each other when they went in. The look on professional Beyonce lookalike Rachel’s face was priceless, especially when cockney tosser Nathan walked in and hugged everyone but her. I’d like to say it’d be interesting to see what that’s all about, but I’m sure it’ll be bitchy and nauseating.

The house itself is carnival themed this time around, with various Circus paraphernalia and wherewithal scattered around the rooms that seem to conform to non-euclidean geometry and with even less privacy than before, so the contestants will have even more opportunity to piss each other off. The highlight of the house itself is the evil tree from the last series making a comeback as a chest of drawers, I’ll happily put up with this show if he’s still fucking with the housemates heads with his foul language and even fouler sense of humour, and he has more than enough material with the fourteenth housemate Mario.

I'd make a joke like 'Shabby by name, Shabby by nature,' but it's probably better to not give her any attention.

Poor, poor Mario. He was picked out of the hopefuls at random by tombola and given an impossible task where he will have to act as a mole amongst the housemates sabotaging tasks and generally annoying the others, if he is discovered, he gets evicted… Oh and they weren’t finished… they gave him a special costume to enter in, he went into the house dressed as a mole… with a placard hanging from his neck with the words “I AM A MOLE” in big red letters. Well, at least they’re making me laugh. And I personally hope Mario stays in and escapes from this horror, he seems like a better person than any of the others.

I can’t say I won’t be glad to see it go. But I can’t say I won’t be able to escape it for the next four months either… Maybe if I buy and review more videogames I’ll be too occupied. Win win for both of us, You get more stuff on the site and I get to pretend there is actually a shred of decency in humanity!

Or is there?

Meet Armored Core, a game where you build your own giant robot and rocket around levels firing unhealthy amounts of missiles at enemies or slicing them with a laser sword if that takes your fancy.

What could possibly go wrong?

The story is the annoyingly prevalent “The future is unpleasant so everyone’s fighting each other” template where the world has become so damaged by pollution that corporations do battle over the planet’s increasingly scarce resources with giant robots, as the player you pick a side and then just start fighting everyone regardless of who you chose. I know with videogames it’s the mechanics that take precedence over the story, and maybe I’ve been spoilt by the Ace Combat series that combined similar jet fighter action with complex, epic storylines (even if the last one was a bit stupid), but this just feels so cheap. You have no reason to be fighting other than for its own sake and that serves to only feed my second biggest gripe with this game.

You will spend about half your time in the menu screens poring over the different parts you can install on your robot weighing up the pros and cons of more armour or greater mobility and trying to work out what all the other numbers mean. It manages to run the gamut between fascinating and dull as all hell depending on how much you think you know what you’re doing at the time. The rest of the time you will be piloting your lovely machine, and while the mecha themselves are rendered in lavish detail, everything else looks like absolute arse. The levels are barren and hideously rendered, which frees the console to make them huge and destructible. It’s a fair trade when if a building is in your way, you can just destroy it with a push of a button, and you should be too busy zooming around destroying stuff to care, but if you stand still it’s just shocking. The levels themselves try their best to be different from each other, bless their little cotton socks, but there are only so many variations on the ‘fly around and kill stuff’ setup you can really do. Ace Combat dealt with this by making you care about the people in your planes and even your enemies. Armored core just falls flat on its big metal face.

Recent instalments have offered online play as well, allowing players to pitch their creations against each other. Unfortunately, hardly anyone’s online with it at the moment. So unless you know someone else with the game, or you wait for Armored Core 5, you’re not going to have much luck. On the other hand, there is a split screen multiplayer, allowing you to beat the crap out of each other with giant robots of your own creation, which is a lot of fun if you take the time to make a nice selection of robots to play with.

The interesting thing about this game is that it swings back and forth between amazing and mediocre, sometimes within the same sentence. While it feels a little empty and unfulfilling some times, at other times you get to take on giant walking aircraft carriers by yourself. Armored Core 4 and the latest version Armored Core: For Answer are knocking around in game shops for anywhere between eight and fifteen quid and for that price it’s certainly worth a look. For all its gripes I’m still itching to play it again every half an hour purely to watch the pretty patterns my missiles make when I fire them all at the poor sod that had the misfortune to try to attack me from the air.

An Armored Core 5 has been announced with an unspecified release date, we’ll see if they give any good details at E3 this June, and when they release it I’ll certainly let you know if it’s any good.

This week it’s the turn of another well-known franchise in the spotlight, famous for it’s toys, comics, and also one that has had a live-action movie made.
It’s the Real American Hero, GI Joe.

GI Joe started out in the USA  as a series of 12-inch articulated action figures, thought up by someone during the 1960’s as a counterpart for boys to girls’ dress-up-and-play dolls. The figures came with removable clothing and varieties of weapons, and as time passed, the line grew more diverse, and the figures became smaller following the great success of Star Wars toys, which were in a similar size.
For their size, the figures were extremely well articulated (although had ugly joints), and there was a bewildering array of vehicles available for both the good guys – the Joes – and their enemies – Cobra, a snake-themed terrorist organisation.

Over time, the original aim of GI Joe as a military force became less and less realistic, as the character ideas grew steadily more outlandish. However, this didn’t seem to dampen kids’ interest at all, and comics and cartoons of the toys were soon spilling into the spotlight during the 80’s, on the wave of merchandise-based cartoons that were so popular.

Cobra Commander

GI Joe at one time was as popular as Transformers, with it’s own cartoon, comics, figures, and so on – but I always come up with one curious anomaly when remembering this. Despite most people knowing of GI Joe, and even knowing most of the theme tune, or some things related to it – Nobody I knew ever remembers watching it!
I found this a curious anomaly, but then I also don’t remember seeing it myself until I was much older, so perhaps it wasn’t just me, and it never did have much of an airing in the UK.
One other curiosity about the GI Joe in the UK is that it wasn’t GI Joe at all!

When the series was localised to Europe, and especially the UK, it was re-branded as ‘Action Force’, and was pitched as a spinoff of the Action Man toyline that had always been popular, and filled the same niche as GI Joe toys did in the USA and elsewhere.
Action Man had always had comics and suchlike, usually telling tales of military adventure and derring-do (Oh how the mighty have fallen…), and Palitoy, the company who produced the Action Man figures, also took the step of producing smaller figures following Star Wars toys’ popularity. The line took off well, and many figures, vehicles, and such were released, in several yearly waves, with a few molds borrowing from GI Joe ones initially, but the majority being brand-new.
However, things changed when one of the toy companys’ owners died, and Palitoy allowed Hasbro to take over. They began rebranding GI Joe as Action Force, and tied the storyline into one whole.
Over time, the distinctions disappeared, and the two became one and the same thing, with Action Force, INTERNATIONAL HEROES sadly disappearing, and the REAL AMERICAN HERO taking over.

Oh, and just for the record? The Action Force theme tune sounds way way less crap than the GI Joe one.

Anyway, looking at that should give you the hint that it wasn’t really especially a ‘conventional’ military unit, being as how it contained a variety of people – soldiers, sailors, wrestlers, models, and American Football players, and Cobra was equally ‘varied’ with their army of soldiers, robots, and biker gangs.
Similarly, the cartoon dealt with Cobra’s plots being less actual military or terrorist plots (Kidnapping, extortion, suicide bombing, car bombs, insurrection, etc) and more Saturday morning cartoon friendly, such as taking over the world by stealing things like solar energy converters or other such MacGuffins of the week, or some other fantastically outlandish and rediculous plan – despite having a huge army of fighter planes, tanks, and robots, and never resorting to all-out warfare.

The GI Joe cartoon was all the same solid material for Saturday Morning cartoons, and continued for two syndicated seasons totalling 95 aired episodes, as well as three mini-series of four episodes each under the Sunbow company, who also made the Transformers cartoon. A further series was aired in 1999 under a new animation and production company, DiC, and lasted for two seasons for a total of 44 episodes, and several other incarnations as mini-series or one-offs have appeared since then.
An animated movie was also produced, and was originally planned for a theatrical release, like the Transformers  and My Little Pony movies. But the  GI Joe movie was instead released direct to video instead, as the other movies performed poorly at the box-office.

Which is a blessing in the case of the GI Joe movie, as it was fucking terrible, involving some idiotic plot about an ancient society of snake-worshipping mutants who lived in the Himalayas, and of whom Cobra Commander was secretly a member. Various other idiotic things were also mentioned, all of which contradicted established facts (such as they were) in the cartoon, and ultimately the film is regarded poorly on the whole, and disliked by fans and non-fans alike, and the movie has become a curio on DVD and the internet.

Of course, it’s the series that everyone remembers most, and that I’m here to review. To do it some justice, I’ve decided to review one episode from the original Sunbow run of episodes, and one from the DiC run of episodes too, and see what the difference (if any) is.
So, without further ado, let’s get into things!

Lights, Camera, Cobra!

So, the episode opens with the theme tune, as above (still not as good as the Action Force one), and then Cobra and the Joes (Yo Joe! – though makes me wonder what they said in Action Force?) are engaged in a fight – and here’s one of the things I remember the most.
The Joes and Cobra never used real guns that fire bullets, despite, or perhaps because of, being an elite military force and the world’s most powerful terrorist organisation, oh no – they had LAZORS! PEW PEW PEW!

The Joes arrive in 1950’s vintage helicopters, and the Cobras are using curiosly realistic looking vehicles too. Duke (leader of the Joes) jumps Cobra Commander (Leader of the… well his name gives it away), and they both tears through a wall… and it turns out it’s all a movie set!
Gosh! What a surprise!

Anyhow, the producer, or whoever he is – it’s not made clear – storms off, declaring he won’t film unless he’s got authentic equipment and some advisors from GI Joe.
At Cobra HQ, Destro, the Cobras’ arms dealer (Yes, apparaently they have one specifically), arrives in Cobra Commanders’ office to tell him that they’ve tracked down a captured Cobra fighter jet at the film lot, and he’s worried about it giving away their location. Cobra Commander hires a bunch of his allied Mercenaries, the Dreadnoks and their leader Zartan (a master of disguise) to recapture the vehicles, and put a stop to the shenanigans. What a party pooper!

Also worth noting is the fact he hires the Dreadnoks for 4 million dollars in gold ingots.
If the man has that kind of money to throw away at his disposal, the question begs, why the shit is he a terrorist?
It’s never made exactly clear what Cobra’s ideals and goals are. Terrorists are usually defined by having some set goal and ideal to achieve – the IRA wanted Northern Ireland to be part of Ireland again, Hezbollah want Israel to be gone, the Basque seperatists want the Basque lands of France and Spain to be a seperately governed area – but there’s no clear indication of what exactly it is that Cobra wants. But whatever it is, it apparently allows them to have masses of money, resources, and manpower at their disposal, as well as the ingenuity to hide all of this somewhere where no-one has bombed the living fuck out of all of it so far to stop them.

Anyway, logical reasons for violence aside, the Joes also send an unlikely bunch of  ‘advisors’  for the movie, who look not unlike the village people, especially as one of them is a sailor, with most unexpected voice ever – i.e. – he looks like the stereotypical sailor, with a little hat and everything – but does not sound like a salty sea-dog at all. One of them is also ‘Cover Girl’, who is a Fashion model turned special forces soldier, which is the weirdest career change I’ve ever heard of.
They go along to the movie set, where the nefarious Cobras have set up a nefarious trap… or they’re going to, anyway.

Shipwreck (the sailor) makes up an excuse to go and get some movie equipment, instead going to a bar and getting in a bar fight (you actually see it!) and Cover Girl follows him to keep him out of trouble – which she fails at.

Meanwhile, Zartan, who is using his mastery of diguise to appear as… himself, but being played by an actor (STUNNING), antagonises one of the Joes so much that they have a motorcycle race using their respective sides vehicles.

Oh, that reminds me – according to the movie director, the authentic Cobra vehicles were turned over to the move by the US Government.
Yes, that’s right – after capturing advanced military hardware from the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisation, the US Government gave it to a movie producer.
Imagine if that happened in real life.

It looks like this

Anyway, the two Joes are injured after the Dreadnoks attack and cause their bike to crash, leaving Zartan and the others to topple a wooden water tower onto the Director and the other film crew, and Shipwreck about to be in trouble with the police!

OH NOES!

The Dreadnoks attack, and cause utter chaos on the film set, destroying the filming equipment, but Junkyard sets his dog (imaginatively named ‘Mutt’) on them, and the remaining Joes drive them off, stopping Zartan from destroying the Firebat jet.
The others return, and Shipwreck is bailed out. They take the Cobra jets to look for the missing Joes from the race, while Cobra Commander scolds Zartan for the failiure to destroy the jet.

Around this scene, I suddenly realised something about the incidental music – it sounds awfully familiar, almost as if… Sunbow used the same music from the transformers!
In an awfully cheaptastic move, the incidental music is actually the same music reused from the animated transformers series, creating a weird sense of deja-vu in my case, being familiar with both series!

So, Dusty and Rocondo (if that’s how you spell it?) are being stalked by Coyotes, where they’re both still stuck in the desert. Shipwreck rescues them in one of the Cobra flying pod vehicles, but then leaves them behind (which is reasonable, as there’s no passenger space), but is ambushed by the Dreadnoks as he gets back, and through a series of unlikely events, ends up getting stuck in the plane as it returns to Cobra HQ under remote control.

Ho Joe?!

Anyways, Shipwreck ends up at Cobra HQ, and proceeds to put up a reasonable accounting of himself, slugging Cobra Commander and Destro in the face, before getting a rifle butt to the back of the head. And then Cobra Commander announces to have him taken inside for their ‘amusement’…

….Snigger. Maybe that’s Cobra’s goal – recognising Man-love throughout the world. Although that would suggest Shipwreck in his little sailor’s hat is on the wrong side.

So, the Joes come up with a plan to get Shipwreck back by using the Hollywood studio magic, while Cobra Commander uses elaborate torture methods – Shipwreck standing on a steel beam over molten metal, while Cobra soldiers shoot at him – and miss, though I’m willing to believe it’s deliberate to try and make him fall in – and a James Bond pastiche quote to ‘Amuse’ himself with Shipwreck.

I also noticed that Cobra Commanders’ voice is very familiar too…

So, Cover Girl’s plan is to use their captured Dreadnok to bring Cobra running, by showing him being tortured, which is an elaborate deception using camera trickery.

The message is sent on Cobra’s Ultra-Secret Frequency – By one of the Joes. Which means it can’t be very secret at ALL – and even if it was, the cobra soldier reporting it, does so in front of Shipwreck.
This does indeed bring Cobra running, as Cobra Commander is worried about their location being revealed – despite having a Joe on the base – and then the Joes also come running, and there’s a big ‘ol fight.
The movie crew also finally get their battle footage, as the Joes Conduct an airstrike on a civilian target to get rid of the Cobra, and we see the other thing besides Lazors that GI Joe is famous for – guys coming down on parachutes after their planes are shot down, which is laughably going to lengths to avoid showing anyone being killed in the show.

The huge battle is captured on film, and Cobra Commander escapes thanks to Destro, and the Joes are annoyed he escaped, but get to see the movie all the same – but the Director doesn’t credit the Joes, much to Shipwreck’s annoyance, as he threatens, in an almost perfect imitation of Scrappy-Doo, to ‘murdilise ‘em’, while the othes hold him back.

So, all in all, a none-too-special episode. A lot happens in it, but as a result it feels kind of jumbled, and the plot is a bit lackluster and dull, compared to some of the more exciting and wider-scoped ones found in comic books or other Joe episodes. It also focused on some of the less interesting cast, and I was disappointed I didn’t see Flint, Lady Jaye, or any of the Joe characters I remember from my young days – and had as figures – although I did have one of Shipwreck, now I recall.

So, let’s move onto the next episode and see if it’s any better.

‘Chunnel’

Well, this is going to be hilarious already – it’s about the Eurotunnel.

The episode opens with a hilariously inaccurate depiction of London, with GREEN London buses going back and forth, and a badly-realised Tower Bridge shown. The Chunnel is also shown in London, rather than being anywhere near the Channel, while a voice supposedly belonging to the Queen conducts a speech opening the tunnel.

One interesting piece of difference that comes up right away between this series by DiC and the previous Sunbow series is obvious immediately – the animation is far more primitive in the DiC series, and looks completely different. The colours are all far brighter, and the designs less technical or detailed than the Sunbow show.

So, the hilariously inaccurate Chunnel visuals continue, with there apparently being a station underground, and a character who is presumably supposed to be Queen Elizabeth II (there’s a Corgi shown at her feet) reading the dedication. A rumbling occurs, and for some reason, rather than being accompanied by Armed Police, MI5 or any other security forces that would accompany the Queen, instead five soldiers of the Coldstream Guards, for some reason equipped also with bolt-action rifles, instead of assault rifles, react to the sudden, and completely expected appearance of Cobra Commander through a wall. Cobra Commander abducts – oh, sorry, Cobra Commander – Queen-naps, the Queen – and then escapes into the opening credits – which are Awful.

After the horrendous noise, the terribly English -what-what-what-cup-of-tea-shine-your-shoes-guvnor- (ARRRRRGGGHHHH) ‘Big Ben’ (ARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH) calls some other Joes in to help rescue the Queen. Duke and Scarlet are shopping in London in their full combat gear, and are stampeded to death by shoppers, leaving only a russian guy, and some other dude as well as Big Ben to rescue the Queen. Despite the odds, Big Ben announces in his painfully bad accent

“Come on Lads, let’s save the Queen!”

So, off the merry band of fuckwits go.
I already hate this much more than the previous episode. What did they do for research? Read the word ‘England’?

The horrible parody of the Queen wonders if Cobra Commander is a circus performer, and then a snake charmer. BECAUSE IT’S FUNNY. HE WEARS A MASK. SHE IS THE QUEEN, AND KNOWS NOTHING, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry, let me find my medication.

…

Yes, despite Cobra being the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisation, and having threatened the security of the free world on several dozen separate occasions, apparaently the state leader of the United Kingdom, one of America’s staunch allies, has never heard of them. GO FIGURE.
Starscream Cobra Commander is less than pleased, of course, and follows the Queen as she walks off. Meanwhile, the rest of the Cobra play with the dog, for no good reason.

The Joes show up, and a small and stupid gunfight happens, with the Joes doing some fancy and improbable driving to get past.
Ugh, I so don’t care anymore – this episode is dire, and the DiC series is so much worse. Everything is more comedic, and the colours are so BRIGHT, it hurts.

Anyway, the tunnel is breached, and water starts to fill the tunnel, causing trouble for everyone, as Cobra Commander escapes with the ‘Queen’, leaving the Joes in a tunnel filling rapidly with water. Hopefully they’ll drown.

Sadly, the return after the ads does not start with a funeral service for the lost Joes, so on we go.
The SCUBA equipped Joe manages to close the tunnel safety door, and use the abandoned Cobra vehicle to get them out of the tunnel. Meanwhile, Cobra Commander and the other idiots are being attacked by the Corgi, while Cobra Commander scrapes and grovels to the Queen, for some reason. She berates him, and he finally reveals his plan to steal the Crown Jewels… for some reason.

Duke and Scarlet are apparently at the Tower of London (still wearing full combat gear..) and end up meeting the bad guys who are armed, yet do not instantly decide to fight armed terrorists in the heart of London, and are somehow defeated by the bumbling and incompetent Cobra lackeys. Cobra Commander and his goons escape, with Cobra Commander deciding he wants to be King of England.
Duke and Scarlet escape from the Tower, while Big Ben (AAAARRRRGGGHHHH) escape from the Chunnel, and are attacked by a Cobra jet, piloted by the most incompetent of all Cobra Commanders’ minions, and the Corgi.
The diver guy shoots down the plane with a rifle, but not before it damages the train and shoots out the brakes (very precise shooting…), leaving the Joes ‘Special’ team on a crazy train.

Duke and Scarlett use one of the Joes vehicles to ram the train to a stop in a fairly reasonable representation of Waterloo station. The Joes go after Cobra Commander, who is idiotically not realising that the people in the palace are bowing to the Queen not him… not that everyone bows to the Queen anyway…

The Joes storm the palace, while the Queen tells the Cobra that they’re basically useless and smell bad. Cobra Commander reveals he has bombs planted everywhere across London, which ought to stop them. Cobra Commander goes crazy and starts appointing the idiots with him into royal positions.

A random battle takes place outside, as the Joes decide that assaulting the Palace isn’t a priority, and instead engage in a physics-defying dogfight with Cobra, including slowing a jet down enough to open the canopy and pick someone up, before they decide to stop Cobra Commander again. They get into the palace, and corner Cobra Commander, who holds the Queen hostage. However, she fights her way out by stamping on Cobra Commanders’ foot, and setting a Corgi on him – which is evidently enough to cause him to retreat…
Wow. He’s a pretty shitty terrorist.

Anyway, the Queen congratulates the Joes, and they accept an offer for tea, as well as letting Scarlett spend the states’ money on shopping, before the end credits roll.

So. The DiC cartoon was a big pile of DiCs, and far more silly and comedic than the Sunbow one, which was hardly a rigid and gritty depiction of Cold War counter-terrorism and hi-tech warfare itself. All in all, I’d say that GI Joe deserves to be remembered with a sense of humour and as a campy item of ridicule way more than the other things I’ve reviewed so far.
The reincarnations of GI Joe in comics for the fans who’ve grown up some more and now have better ideas of what makes a good story and good action are apparently a lot more mature and well thought out, as are the original comic books, which also have more deep and involved plots, as well as more realistic action and combat, as well as simply better characters.

There is also the GI Joe: Resolute series which came out in 2009 as a short series of episodes available only online, which are aimed at a PG-13 audience, and forgo the lazors and parachutes for more realistic and dramatic action, with real danger and a better storyline by Warren Ellis, which I would recommend checking out.

While GI Joe might be remembered in the same breath as Transformers, I wouldn’t say it holds up as well in it’s animated form, and while it’s fun to remember, it’s nothing special, after all.

Besides, Action Force was a much better name.

]]> http://unbored.co.uk/reviews/2010/05/22/retro-reviews-gi-joe/feed/ 3 http://unbored.co.uk/reviews/2010/05/13/all-tomorrows-parties-2010/ http://unbored.co.uk/reviews/2010/05/13/all-tomorrows-parties-2010/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 06:00:12 +0000 Jack Clarkson http://unbored.co.uk/?p=1268 So I went to ATP last weekend. And much like last time I was introduced to a slew of musicians I had never heard of before, personally hand picked by our curator, Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. Some I liked, some I loved, some I… well. Let’s take a look at the ones I can remember.

James Blackshaw

Hunched over his guitar like it was a dying child, he played with the beauty of an angel and the charisma of a very uncharismatic thing. His songs were good and he played well, but the live performance didn’t really add anything you’d get from playing one of his CDs really loud.

Broadcast

When you say ‘Avant Garde’ you tend to think of something incomprehensible and borderline offensive to your ears. And that’s pretty much what you get with broadcast, except I listened to the whole set when I could have gone and done something else. It was almost hypnotic. The sounds in the speakers and the lightshow on the projector they had on stage reminded me of the music of the future they have in museums, or whenever they talked about atoms. If you like your music weird, give these guys a go.

Cold Cave

These guys combined a lilting, dreamlike feel with the energy of club music. I quite like clubby music, so I really liked these guys.

Iggy and the Stooges

This is what most people came here for. And I now see why. I didn’t really know much about Iggy Pop apart from those adverts with the puppet. But Iggy is a force of nature on stage, no wonder he’s still going at over sixty. He strikes me as one of those rock-stars that should have died of an overdose or a crowd-surfing accident when he was about thirty but instead decided he couldn’t be motherfucking bothered with dying.

Iggy not only played well, he played the crowd and when one of their drums broke he called a random person from the crowd out on to the stage and talked to them for a bit while they taped it back up. In between songs he’d start handing the microphone around to the audience and he played like he was just happy to be there on stage. There’s a reason he’s still going!

Jill Sobule

I knew nothing about Jill apart from the fact she did one of the songs on the clueless soundtrack. Don’t ask how I know about that. What I found was not just a great musician, but a performer on a par with Iggy himself despite working in a dinky little room compared to Iggy’s massive stage.

She had us singing along, asked us which songs we’d like next and acted like she was onstage rather than just playing her CD out to us. And you know what, if I wasn’t playing Scandinavian Metal at full volume on my computer while I type this, I’d probably still be humming one of her happy, upbeat tunes about things like the apocalypse, jetpacks or waiting for the rapture.

Shonen Knife

A Japanese Punk band you say? I am so there! And I was not disappointed. If you enjoy the energy of punk music but sometimes wish the bastards would just cheer the hell up sometimes then these girls are right up your alley! They played punk songs about things like Sushi, banana crisps and how awesome barbecues are and I loved every second of it.

Amadou and Mariam

These guys were bloody brilliant, mixing traditional Mali sound with Rock and the sheer force of their performance. Their set had an enormous amount of energy to it and I enjoyed it immensely!

Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston is a brilliant songwriter, but he’s really not a performer. It was almost painful to watch this mentally ill man stumble through his set.

Viv Albertine

Her opening song was about the fact her dad never loved her. I left ten minutes later having to stifle the urge to tell her to stop moping and cheer the hell up. Only look into her if you like your music depressing and dull.

Juana Molina

Her sound test managed to be better than her actual performance. Her music is bad and she should feel bad!

Panda Bear

You know when people try to parody pretentious music? It usually sounds like this. The ‘songs’ pretty much consisted of one note droning for about ten seconds before the guy played another note. He held a guitar in his hands, and didn’t use it. This was fucking abysmal and it was almost an insult to ATP itself that he had even been allowed on the premises!

Overall, it’s still a great weekend and a great way to find new music you like and everybody should try it at least once. Even if it’s so you can say you saw something as awful as Panda Bear or Juana Molina and lived to tell the tale!

The series became a bone of contention, as well as a trend-setter for several years to come. Opinions were sharply divided as to whether it was a thing of amazing depth and complexity or of pompous windbaggery, inscrutable and too complex for anyone other than a dedicated fan to follow, and forever isolating many people from Evangelion for a long time.
Either way, it’s hard not to acknowledge its’ influence on many series that followed, making landmarks in both it’s animation style and artistic direction, the themes it presented, the ideological ideas, it’s plot and design, and many of the other elements.
It also gave the ’super robot’ genre of mecha anime – as in, the shows with super-powered, super-heroic robots – something of a revival, giving them more complex characters and plots than before after deconstructing and putting a twist on the ‘monster of the week and secret society’ formulas so beloved and staple of those shows.

But despite it’s popularity, both fans and critics alike had problems with Evangelion for it’s immensly dissatisfying ending, which was full of meandering introspection and endless talking heads, rather than any form of real resolution.
This was later improved upon by the release of the theatrical movies ‘Evangelion: Death and Rebirth’ and ‘The End of Evangelion’, which presented a more complete ending, but one that was still esoteric, complex, and required a lot of either background information, or leaps of imagination to make ones’ own conclusion.

As such, the ending was still seen as dissatisfying by many, and while other versions, such as the ‘Platinum Collection’ with remastered sound and other tweaks were released, things went quiet for quite some time, bar rumours of a live-action film, and even some pre-production art, which never came to anything.

However, in 2007 a new project related to Evangelion emerged, in the form of ‘Rebuild of Evangelion’.
Director Hideaki Anno stated that this was to be a complete rebuild of Evangelion, with masses of new animation, retouches and computer additions to the original animation, re-writing of the plot adding new scenes and characters, redesigns of the titular Evangelion (or ‘Eva’) mecha, and the Angel foes, and many other alterations and additions, in order to utilise new technologies available, and to make the series accessible to new fans, and to truly ‘realise his original vision’ of Evangelion.

The Rebuild is envisioned as a Tetrology of films, with the first three being a retelling of the series adding the new elements, and fourth and final movie being a completely brand-new ending to the series.
The first movie, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, was released in 2007 in Japan, and has now been released in the UK with an all-new and specifically engineered dub, and a good amount of promotion (I even saw a trailer for it on YouTube!)

As I have been anticipating the release of the Rebuild Movies on DVD since I first heard they were coming out, I snapped up a copy as soon as I could, in order to provide this review, as I picked up the series on VHS when it first came out, and have followed it’s fortunes and misfortunes with great curiosity since.

As soon as the movie began, I could see the differences, and they weren’t small. Cel animation has been enhanced with brighter, crisper definition and colours, flat and plain looking models for aircraft, tanks, ships, and buildings have been replaced with detailed, intricate and beautiful cel-shaded CGI models, creating a world with more depth and beauty than before. And there is also more evidence of the great disaster of the ‘Second Impact’ that befell humanity prior to the show, with cracked pavements, ruined and abandoned vehicles and more – and this is only the first few scenes, mind, and background details.

The plot proceeds the same as I remember, but with new details and elements, new discussions and conversations amongst characters to better introduce them to new fans, and to concede to the shorter 90-minute running time and movie format – but they do not cheapen the presentation. Instead, it keeps things moving, and gives us a more concise insight into Shinji, the main character, and the people around him.

The fights between the Angels and Eva units, when they come, are familiar, yet full of exciting new elements and twists. More emphasis is made on the conventional firepower available, and the sheer amount of it being thrown at the alien and unknowable enemies, which only serves to show how deadly and dangerous they are, before the Evas themselves go into combat – with the fights made more exciting, visually and in terms of plot, by the addition of new animation, new weapons, and redesigns of existing elements.

Most of all, the climax of the movie, where episode 6 of the series would be, Operation Yashima, where the lead character and his Eva unit-01 have to snipe one of the enemy using a gigantic energy weapon, powered by the electrical output of all Japan, is given a lot more emphasis on the sheer mind-boggling amount of support and undertaking needed for such an insane plan to even be attempted, and massive amount of destruction the redesigned angel wreaks on the city and it’s surroundings.
The entire sequence is newly animated, and redesigned, giving more of a dramatic and pulse-pounding excitement, that even knowing the original plot, made me watch eagerly to see the outcome.

Rebuild vs. Original

If there are downsides to be pointed out to the new movies, they come from the dubbed cast – some of the characters sound flat or unconvincing, but they do not distract from the overall goings-on of the plot.
Some elements could do with a little more explanation, but this could also be seen as setup for the next movies in the series – but also as an oversight. Some elements of Shinji and other characters’ lives could also have been pleasant to see – such as his first days at school, meeting his classmates and their situations, and more time spent on introducing secondary characters could also have been appreciated. But, given the faster pace of the movie and it’s efforts to focus on the main characters in greater detail, again this could be a conscious choice.

The movie keeps much of the series’ humour as well as it’s drama, and it will be interesting to see how the next one comes, as it features all new characters, and the introduction of the redesigned Evangelion units and more angels. The plot is set to diverge further from the series in the second movie also, and this will also be a further source of excitement.

Unfortunately, as the second film only came out in Japan in October 2009, there will likely be a significant wait – but hopefully not as long as the first one!
I suggest Evangelion: 1.0 to anyone who either liked the original series, but found it unsatisfying, or anyone who has been interested in Evangelion, but never managed to get into it, as well as anyone simply looking for a good anime movie that is exciting, as well as something to think over once they’ve watched it – but be prepared to have patience for the next installment.

Like the other cartoons featured previously, My Little Pony existed to promote a toyline of plastic or felt-covered cartoony ponies with soft brushable manes and tails that could be styled, as well as a range of accessories, both pony-themed (like stables) and person-themed (like ice-cream shops).
Obviously, I myself didn’t own any ponies (SHUT UP), as I wasn’t that kind of guy (NO REALLY, SHUT UP!), but my sister had a couple of them. I didn’t think much of them, but then I wasn’t the target audience. They didn’t have many points of movement or anything, and they all looked pretty similar. However, my sister and her friends liked them, and apparently so did a lot of other girls, since there’s a huge collectors club for them, and if you google

PONYTHULU HAS A SOFT MANE, AND EYES THAT BORE INTO YOUR SOUL.

‘My Little Pony’ you’ll come up with a wide variety of custom themed ones people have made – including the Master Chief my Little Pony and this collection of excellently realised movie ponies. So, there’s still a lot of interest in them, even now – and some apparently change hands for hundreds of dollars or pounds on Ebay and other auction sites.

But what about the cartoon? My memories of it are extremely vague, as I don’t even remember it being on UK TV when I was younger, aside from the occasional special episode during school holidays. So what happened in it? what was it all about?

"That's right little pony, you're hallucinating again!"

Well, apparently the ponies lived in Ponyland, which was a magical place. And it must’ve been, because they don’t have any opposable thumbs, but yet have houses, ice-cream, fences, furniture and all manner of normal conveniences.
I for one, am concerned about this. I think it needs an explanation! Are the ponies all massively powerful telekinetics? Are their human friends (a trio of children) their slaves

"Help, I'm trapped in Ponyland!"

off-camera? Did the ponies inherit their civilisation from a long-extinct race of benevolent aliens? Sadly, we shall never know.

Anyhow, there’s also three species of ponies too. The normal ones who are regular ponies, and have no remarkable attributes (well, other than talking, and being brightly coloured, anyway), the flying ones, who are like the Pegasus, with little wings, and the horned unicorn-esque ones. All three groups get along in a utopian and racially-equal society, which is a model to us all, along with a variety of similarly fluffy and cute creatures, but there are also a menagerie of trolls, goblins, and evil witches and wizards who want to capture or enslave the ponies for various ill-defined reasons, and the ponies have to keep out of their clutches, and occasionally teach them a lesson of sorts. I imagine it has very little to do with stampedes or caving in a skull or two with their hooves, though.

The cartoon began with several prime-time specials, and a theatrical movie

How's she going to use that hammer? with her face?

(gladly, not live-action), before progressing to a full series of two seasons, with a revival in the early nineties, and apparently another oneis airing currently. Wow, those ponies know how to keep going.
Since most of the stories are multi-part adventures, in this review I’m going to concentrate only on the season two episode ‘The Ice-Cream Wars’ in an effort to lower my dentist bills from tooth decay, and preseve my genitalia from wasting away due to lack of testosterone.

So, let’s fire up the Unbored Retro-Reviewatron to channel a hole back in time and space and have a looksee…

So the episode opens with a variety of technicolour ponies babysitting four of the baby ponies. I note now that they are all in a nursery, and not a barn, and that the little babies are tucked up in a wicker cot, and the other two are in a baby chair.
One pony (I dunno her name yet) has a technicolour rainbow mane, which is pretty cool. However, her voice is also pretty dumb.
The babies are behaving badly, throwing their food and toys at the ponies, so the pink pegasus one breaks out into a song, which seems to cheer them up.

ARGH WHY AM I WATCHING THIS

The babies then almost commit suicide by riding skateboards (why do ponies need skateboards?!) into a wall. THEY ALL CONTINUE TO SING

The Baby Ponies

So, they decide to go out for a walk to calm them all down, and head to the ice-cream store – and oho, it turns out that the little-little ones are the ‘newborn’ ponies and the baby-babies, and the ones looking after them are also babies, as ’scoops’ the owner of the ice-cream store is bigger and has a more grown-up voice. Aha, the plot thickens. And so does the custard…

Anyhow, Scoops reveals that there’s no Ice Cream! Catatrophe!! Has there been an embargo on ice cream shipments to Ponyland due to the child labour and bad parenting? Is it due to a lack of workers with thumbs?
… No, apparently the ice-cream works of Rocky Ripple (Ice Cream works… what?!) have been shut down to drive  Fudgey McSwain (teehee) out of business.
The two fierce business rivals apparently used to be friends, with one supplying the ice cream, and one the toppings, between them supplying Ponyland with a golden era of Ice-Cream.

It was a time when all across ponyland everyone would know the names of Rocky Ripple and Fudgey McSwain, and not a pony in the land would go without the glorious melding of topping and ice-cream. People came from far and wide to sample their delicious work, and their business partnership served as a model for all – until their disasterous breakup, which I’m sure we’ll learn about in a minute, once I stop making shit up.

The baby ponies decide to do something about it, so I suppose this episodes’ going to be about them – which is irritating, because their voices are really annoying.
So, they go to visit Rocky Ripple, who is either a troll or goblin of some kind, or just incredibly ugly, and he rants about developing his ultimate ice cream before he was put out of business – Double Banana Marshmallow Colada – which to be fair, does sound pretty frickin’ awesome.
It turns out that his recipe has been stolen, and he thinks Fudgey McSwain (snigger) took it.
Fudgey (chortle) is a bit of a dumbass, but agrees reluctantly to talk to Rocky Ripple, and apparently hasn’t stolen the recipe. They make up, and decide to look for the recipe together.

Oho, but it’s a LIE, Fudgey McSwain is actually out to frame Rocky Ripple! ONOES!
He gets hit in the face with ice-cream, and then accuses Rocky of being out to humiliate him, and then runs off to his factory for… some reason. I’m not entirely clear on this. Anyhow, the baby ponies follow him, still carting the newborns around with them – and all the adults are apparently okay with this.

Perhaps the ponies are like some kind of master race, and defying them results in death by ice-cream overfeeding. Or maybe they’re like sacred cows, and if you hurt one, you get beaten to death. Or maybe they turn carniverous on a whim.  Or somehow support the cosmic balance of Ponyland.

Anyhow, they park the babies in their carriages on a conveyor belt for some reason, and then act alarmed when it starts up. But the worst that happens if they get fed some toppings, and put in handy infant pony-sized ice-cream containers, so it’s all good.
McSwain and Ripple then start an all-out ice-cream based artillery duel using giant tanks that fire globs of ice-cream and toppings at each other… and still nobody intervenes. Also, there’s noticably an animation error in this scene, as two of the baby ponies talking to each other are the same pony, which is a bit glaring.

The ice-cream tanks go to war, and the ponies retreat in fear of becoming casualties of war in the quite literally messy battle. They go back to the sweet shop, and Scoops feeds the newborns the last of the Ice Cream to shut up their incessant wailing.
And lo and behold! All is saved, as they discover the recipe, carelssly dropped into a tub of ice cream! THE DAY IS SAVED!

The baby ponies race back to the war zone to deliver the message, but the war is in full swing, with thousands of casualties on both sides, and mass depopulation, the destruction of industry, and organised society and the beginning of an ice-cream holocaust for Ponyland. Refugees are fleeing the area, and the UN are poised to intervene as the death toll mounts.

Luckily, that’s not true, and the flying baby pony (Northstar pony, apparently) flies into the fight, risking her own neck bravely to stop the ongoing battle. The two enemies become friends again, and then say the

What's wrong with her neck?!

ponies can have all the ice-cream they want!
However, understandably by this point, the baby ponies have realised that both the ice-cream makers are fucking nuts, and could go over the edge at any minute. So instead, they calmly say ‘we’ve had enough ice-cream for one day’ and, as was the tradition back in those days, they all laugh their way into the sunset.

So, that’s an episode. It was only about nine minutes long, and it was pretty much what I expected – simple, sweet, kind of silly and straightforward.
I’m guessing My Little Pony was aimed at young girls rather than older ones, and I’m also guessing most of them would’ve been content with this. But it’s still kind of sloppy with things like animation, logic, and storytelling – but again, the audience wouldn’t really notice or care by that point, and as long as it sold toys, I’m guessing the production company and the people holding the cash – i.e. the toy company – didn’t really care.

It is still fun to wonder about the bizarre logic of ponyland, where everyone only ever eats ice-cream or cake, and all the ponies live in houses and have shops, yet no one seems to have money, have hands to build anything, and there aren’t any boy ponies either… so where do the babies come from? Spontaneous budding? Are they some kind of freakish race that shifts gender when in heat? Am I thinking about this too much?

All in all, I know I’m not the audience for this kind of thing, being far too old and entirely the wrong gender,  but it was fun to watch it, and you know – you read these things to see what jokes people make.

The ponies are actually kinda cute (like fluffy kittens cute, not the other kind! it hasn’t warped me that much!) and sweet, despite their silly names and antics, and the whole thing is pretty harmless. and that’s probably why the franchise has kept going for so long.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see what would actually happen if you feed ice cream to a horse.

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