Tag: Epic Fantasy
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“Fullmetal Alchemist 2003” Anime Review
I guess it’s time for me to talk about Fullmetal Alchemist 2003. This should be interesting. In my last article I showered a fantastic manga with praise. That manga is Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, and in 2009 it was adapted into a sixty-four-episode anime called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, considered by many to be the…
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“Fullmetal Alchemist” Review
For the longest time I was never able to really get into graphic novels of any kind. Even as everyone I knew raved about the latest Batman issue, I just couldn’t force myself to be interested in looking at panel after panel, bubble after bubble. Obviously I’ve always loved reading traditional novels with sentences and…
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“Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” Movie Review
What can I even say about Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole? It was based on some great books, but sadly Zack Snyder directed it. All Snyder’s films are bad—only one even approaches being watchable—and this children’s film continues the trend. In my last review I praised Kathryn Lasky’s Guardians of Ga’Hoole series,…
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Review of Rankin/Bass “The Return of the King” (1980)
This cartoon… This is the one that broke me… I feel drained after watching this. Before there was Peter Jackson, there were three cartoons almost unrelated to one another, and I made the mistake of deciding to review all of them. The first was a children’s animated TV special by Rankin/Bass that removed almost every…
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Top 10 Worst Book-to-Film Adaptations
There’s been some controversy concerning Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit, with some criticizing decisions such as making a three-part movie, the addition of original background characters, and many even pettier complaints. Some have even gone so far as to say that it “wasn’t very true to the source material,” despite staying far truer to…
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Review of Ralph Bakshi’s “The Lord of the Rings” (1978)
Last year I reviewed the 1977 Rankin/Bass cartoon adaptation of The Hobbit. Today I’ll be taking a look at another such cartoon: Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 attempt to bring The Lord of the Rings to the screen. As I did with the Hobbit cartoon—and as I’m planning to do with the final instalment in the cartoon…
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Review of Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit (1977)
In the first article I ever wrote for this site, I reviewed a 1966 cartoon loosely derived from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Now, this cartoon was actually calculated to be as faithless an adaptation as possible for use as a tool of blackmail, and this eventually led to the existence of a…
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On the Heroism of Hobbits
Happy Hobbit Day! In case you weren’t aware, the twenty-second of September is the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and among Tolkien fans it is a time to celebrate Tolkien’s greatness. Although Tolkien’s works are well-known, few are aware of just how great an impact they have had not just on literature but…
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Epic Fantasy vs. “Sword and Sorcery”
I’d like to shed some light on a misconception concerning the genres of Epic Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery. For those who don’t know, the genre of Sword and Sorcery was created primarily by Robert E. Howard and thrived for many years in pulp magazines. Epic Fantasy (at least Epic Fantasy as we know it…
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Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Greatest Show of All Time
After I reviewed The Nutshack, one of the worst cartoons of all time, I said I’d talk about a good cartoon in my next review. There are so many great cartoons that it’s taken me quite a long time to decide which of them I should discuss first. My first thought was to talk about…