mister_popo01

If you've ever said to yourself, "Gee, I've always wanted a Hong-Kong-produced kung-fu flick with untalented actors, illegally-used music tracks, and poor dubbing", then this film is for you. Beginning with an opening song or sorts, which seems to be based on the Madonna's hit song "Like a Virgin", accompanied by a montage of ninja kid fighting scenes. But wait! this video gets even worse. The voice-over actors sound like rejects from a Saturday-morning cartoon, and the plot is about as deep and as an average episode of "Full House". Suitable only for MST3k-style viewing.

Perhaps the greatest anime movie of all time, this film blows the competition out of the water. Some people complain about the violence in this movie, but compared to other titles like Fist of the North Star and Urotsukidoji, it's almost tame by comparison. To add to this, in Canada this only obtained the "14a" rating, which is supposed to be equivalent to the USA's PG-13. Hurrah for the liberal Canucks!

I used to watch Heathcliff & co. on the local networks back in the mid 80's. What I didn't know at the time (and most people still don't know this) Is that DIC's version of Heathcliff was actually an anime! more precisely, it was a France/Japan co-production based on an american cartoon Icon. the Tokyo Movie Shinsha animated it, and many anime legends worked on this, such as Tetsuo Katayama & Shigeru Akagawa(Space Cobra, Lupin III), Shingo Araki(Saint Seiya, Versailles no Bara) and Michi Himeno (Amon Saga, Sukeban Deka). on the French side of the Production were Jean Chalopin, Bruno Bianchi, and Bernard Diyrese. The English dub was recorded in Canada with the late(but great) voice actor Mel Blanc playing the title role. The storyline was pretty stereotypical, but then again, weren't most cartoons of this genre? I recommend this series to the young, the young-at-heart, and collectors of Retro-anime.