bbshockwave

This is the only good episode of the season, I think. CEL shaded animation, but has the look and feel of a Mike Mignola Hellboy comic, especially due to the lighting - everything being shades of red, most of the time.

The story is simple - a lone US Air Force bomber is sent on a special mission to bomb a church in France, where occult nazis are performing a blasphemous ceremony. The characters are simple and most of them are just monster fodder, but it works well, with the focus being on two - Zeke the devil-may-care atheist who fears nothing, and grizzled veteran Pat, as well as Preacher the religious young irishman. Soon they find out that what has been summoned in the church is "one of the Fallen", a fallen Angel, and I absolutely love the horrifying, indescribable look of the monster - yes, it has wings, and a golden Cherub mask, but it has no distinct shape, has way too many arms, that seem to reach out from anywhere and stretch to insane lengths, and when shot, instead of bleeding grows screaming mouths that scream so loud it makes people's nose bleed.

Most of the action is set on the plane, which is portrayed accurately to the era, with spotters and gunners, and the cramped environment against a monster that can almost fill the hull is claustrophobic. The weakness of the creature is fitting, and while it takes a while for them to take advantage of it, I quite liked how it was finally brought down. Overall, a very gory but nice action flick with some great lovecraftian imagery.

Seriously, all this talent and money, wasted on shorts that tell NO story. There is no deeper meaning, no grand concept. It is just naked gladiators fighting each other and a T-rex while riding Triceratopses on a wheel shaped space station to please some generic nobles. There is not even a surprise about who wins, you would never guess, it is the japanese chick who had any dialogue, unlike the others. But of course first she teams up with the black chick to kill the men, because girls gotta support girls. Not the white chick of course, she can die. And then black chick gets instantly eaten by T-rex. Also took no genius to figure out that maybe the nobles should not fly too close to the ground where a giant Dinosaur is.

I often wonder this rather lackluster series that only produced so far, maybe 4-5 good episodes in 4 seasons, could have been so much better if they took to the classics. Have them animate short sci-fi stories written by Lem, Asimov, Bradbury. Even short horror, written by King. Anything would have been better than wasting our time and their money on blood and nudity.

EDIT: I only learned by checking other reviews that the announcer guy was voiced by this Mr. Beast youtuber, a guy whom like Pewdiepie, I have never watched before, just hear people talk about him. I'd never have recognized him, he is just generic announcer guy. So for what it's worth if you do not know who he is, you'll never guess he is in this.

As a hungarian and a fan of animation, I knew it was a matter of time before I checked this out. Scriptwriter Géza Bereményi is a big name in Hungary, he has written many importan movies here, like Eldorado and Bridge-Man. The director is less known, but overall the movie is well written and directed. The animation is very unique, fluid yet with a sort of angular look to many character, especially the humans, while the animals are more fluid and life-like, except for the titular Coyote - who looks more like a cartoon character from an 90ies Nickelodeon show, on purpose.

The story is mostly about creation, and the negative effect people have on their environment and nature. That'd be all right and good, after all many movies from Ferngully to Avatar had an environmentalist message. But those were original stories written for that purpose. Unfortunately this one tries to squeeze this heavy forced message about the evils of humans (but especially men) and the repercussions of greed, lust and selfishness into a native american creation myth. As a result, the titular Coyote, who in those legends is more of a trickster figure who either educates people or helps them (such as by stealing fire) or does a foolhardy venture that fails and helps people learn from his mistake (and laugh at his folly) rather turns into a Satan-like figure, the source of literally all evil in the world. I have read my fair share of creation myths, and Coyote was never the source of evil, or did he create humans just to spite the Old Man (the wise creator figure who follows dreams sent by the Manitou). During the course of the movie, he commits the first murder just to sate his appetite, tricks other animals to deadly accidents so he can eat them, frames his own creation, the humans, for his own sins, causes animals to want to reproduce, wants to rape his own creation, and so on. He is less Loki and more Mephistopheles here, always looking for a way to replace the Old Man or ruin his creations, even if he has nothing to gain.

The movie even portrays the first creation the same way as an idealized Garden of Eden where all animals lived in peace and ate plants before Coyote introduced killing to the world, causing everything immortal to be finite. He created the first native american man and woman from clay stolen from the Old Man, while his first discarded creation ends up thrown in the sea and becoming the white, african and asian man's ancestor, apparently.

The titular "four souls" refer to Coyote's quasi-immortality, as he can come back from the dead 4 times - unlike the real mythology, where he is permanently immortal. Unfortunately you will care little about his plight because he causes his own deaths himself with his petty lechery, greed and evil. But the humans fare little better, as they themselves are easily led astray (though the woman less so than the man, another modern view) and cause harm to the environment. The Old Man is shown as an irresponsible creator god, who gives little forethought to his actions and more often just goes with the flow and tries to mitigate disaster instead of having any foresight into what he does.

Overall I wish the writer would have made the story more similar to the real creation myths, and had not forced this hard to fit message into the movie. It is not a bad movie, but with few people to actually root for, not really that interesting. Also due to the gore, murders, female nudity, and a rather graphic depiction of childbirth, not really recommended for children.