Tag: Nineties

The Prophylactic Predator: Killer Condom Review

Hello once again mortals and welcome to another Halloween movie review! By the forces of collective chanting, or close enough .. a twitter pole, you have collectively commanded me to watch WEIRD monster and spooky movies! The previous review was about a tire that kills called Rubber. However.. Another thing that shares the namesake of that movie spawned a movie of it’s own! A foreign  film. So join me while I review the German movie Kondom Des Grauens, or as it is better known throughout the world…. Killer Condom.

The Big D

Killer Condom had a 1998 (limited)  cinematic release and became available for purchase and later streaming in 2000. The movie is defined as a Horror Comedy and thus is a viable target for me to watch during the Halloween month. Also allow me to reiterate that this movie has indeed seen a cinematic release. It was even a selected candidate for the Berlin Film Festival. It is based on the comic book stories Kondom des Grauens by Ralf König who along with the big man himself the director Martin Walz also wrote the screenplay for this movie. Actors like Udo Samel, Peter Lohmeyer and Leonard Lasink might be unfamiliar names to you all  but I can assure you.. for a movie named Killer Condom they did a mighty fine job! In fact I was really stoked on the acting in this movie! But what I loved more here is the directing.

If it wasn’t already clear… campy movie alert!

The Big man behind the screens or the Big D as we call him in line with this movie’s sense of humor is Martin Walz.  A director who mostly directed short films and a German tv series here and there.  The most  stand out title of him being Apokalypse Pink… I want to see that now. Regardless.. while the movie is absolutely ridiculous the director manages to bring it into frame as if everyone in this movie is deadly serious. Even the plot is fairly serious.. so it never feels Scary Movie like levels of cheap.  This is more of a dry humor and WTF is happening kind of humor. It knows it pulp of the highest level but it leans so heavily into this that it actually feels quite distinct. I was expecting American Pie levels of infantile humor but despite being very in  your face but instead  the jokes feel more clever and flowing. There is this sarcastic undertone in the movie that one would have if  you are dealing with this situation so while I almost never give credit to a director.. I really think this movie makes a lot of good choices! … For what it is of course. This is no masterpiece by any means but it is kind of like midnight kebab. You don’t want some fancy kebab after a night of heavy drinking, you don’t care about the flavour profile.. you just want some greasy meat on a bun with rich sauces.. the greasier the better. Mister Walz here choose to make a midnight Kebab rather than a fancy meal.. unlike Rubber who sold midnight kebab but tried to sell it as luxurious dish.

However this post does not promote unsafe sex! I dislike children anyway!

 While obtaining a copy of this movie, I stumbled upon the movie on YouTube where at the time of writing this movie it is still available for watching. It has been there for almost two years now so it is fair game! Well fair enough!.. I still will try to pick up a copy from Germany if the world goes less gaga because I really enjoyed myself with this movie. I must give you a warning though, I speak a fair bit of german, while I did need the subtitles to guide me, I must say I did thoroughly enjoy the  german dialogue. At times it is sharper there is more cleverness to it than the english subtitles show.So some dialogue I might love , could be a tad less entertaining for you if you lack the ability to understand German. It is  mostly a “modifier” though. Bonus points as I had a lot of fun with the subtitles as well. Fun fact H.R. Giger functioned as a creative consultant for this movie. Hansruedi Giger is known for his work in movies like Aliens and Species. So that is a pretty big name! Finally I would like to confess I have not read the comic. So I will not compare how they hold up next to each other and review the movie as it’s own thing.

That news station really needs a better artist!

One “Nutty” Movie

The protagonist of this story is called Luigi Macaroni..which according to IMDB is spelled differently but we never see the name so I will spell it like this so you hear how it sounds correctly in your head! How sweet am I.. thinking about your heads! Luigi is a detective in New York..which already is incredibly funny because he is super Italian in the movie, super german in real life and acting super american. However Luigi is quite special.. he is your run of the mill gruff “noir” style detecive.. but he is heavily into the gay scene. When he meets a young man named Billy at Hotel Quicky, a love hotel in the seedy underbelly of New York he instantly falls in love. However he also has to work a case. In Hotel Quicky 7 guys have had their penisses bitten off by the hookers..but all of them deny it and say it was the condom.
Luigi decides to investigate and to do so he takes Billy to this room .. where stuff went bad. To have a little fun while he investigates. Then he sees a creature looking like a condom. It bites off his left testicle and after that Luigi swears revenge against the creature because no one bites of the Macaroni family jewels and lives.

I woul make that face as well if someone told me that subtitled line!

Not even kidding that is the basic plot of this movie. It goes even stranger by the end so from here on out you have a spoiler warning. The first part is literally the synopsis in my own words but as we go on… we find out that it definitely earns a spot on the list of weird movies. The plot does go over the top ridiculous but manages to stay clear from normal tropes  like “it’s aliens” or it’s a curse. No this movie is surprisingly original in a plot that dare I say it makes some weird form of sense unlikely as it may be.It is a story that deals with themes as Transgender people , Transvestites, Gays and the Adult companion industry. While it has fun with the scenes never does it ridicule them and strangely enough all characters react very realistically to one another. For example Luigi ends up in a weird form of triangle relationship with the young boy Billy and former cop, gone crossdressing entertainer Bob, who now likes to be called Babette. Babette is in love with Luigi and desperately tries anything to get him.  Babette has a cheap shrink who told them that Luigi sounds like a type that is attracted to people like his mother.. so Babette tries to be that, while Luigi can only see her as Bob still, in part because they had a night together and he is gay.. and loathes the idea of having to be with a woman…as his tradional italian family tried to push it on him very much.

And I don’t care much for either! I like girl’s minds and personalities though!

There never is too much of a joke about being gay, instead it is very solidly done. At one point a cop has to go undercover and he is dressed up in a leather gimpy harness and you think this is where the movie oversteps its boundaries but we find out that it is Luigi having his fun because the other cop Sam has been kind of rude and lame to him before! The two even bond over the weird event. This movie was made in 1996 and the comic is even older but the themes are still relevant today.. and I think they are explored in mostly harmless and sometimes even entertaining ways. In fact speaking about foresight they have a presidential candidate with comb over hair a red tie and a much much younger trophy wife whose catchphrase is ! Let’s make this country strong again! A hypocrite who adheres to old very old values while being quite a sleazeball himself. Huh!…

So it’s not just the Simposon that predicted this!

Regardless of it’s sober tone the movie also dares to go way beyond in terms of plot.  This involves killing the first killer condom in a creative way.. by creating a fake dick out of a gas hose, then when they bring the thing to a coroner’s office they discover it is actually a living creature that seems to have been artificially designed.Research is needed by they discover a link between a missing scientist and elements of this research. The man made organic rubber for military purposes but killed the project and decided to focus on genetics as well but soon after no one heard of the man before.  Suddenly more condoms show up around the city, mostly still targeting hookers and gays…but eventually even the presidential candidate. Who then of course is out of the race because no one would want a president without a male reproductive organ to lead the country!

I bet the camera man who filmed this wondered what he was doing with his life!

Standing Tall

The story goes completely wacky at the end, involving even things like the Millenium Bug into the main part of the plot. There is this very christian hospital director lady who believes the world will end on December 31 of 1999 as the lord will come and judge them all. She wants to have cleansed the city off all all the Sodomy that happens in the city before then. No more homosexuality, no more prositution. So when the professor came to the hospital she kidnapped him and made him use both his sciences ot create the ultimate weapon against Sodomy. To keep him under control she creates a drug filled jelly, which he always craves and he can get in in return for compliance. and by using his genetic skills to splice his living rubber, some sort of pupa and a virus the vil killer condoms were invented. Including a Magnum Queen.

I bet who-ever wears this sleeve drives a Peel P50 car (google it)

The final encounter is not a gunfight but it is this gloomy/old timer cop making a speech about tolerance, about accepting people who make different life choices than what is said in the bible.  He tells us that god created these people as well ,  while he understands that god wants them to live a good live, isn’t loving another person and caring for them what makes you a human in the first place. The rest of the speech is interrupted by a film noir narration of Luigi saying he did not know what came over when he was speaking and that he hoped that annoying Angelic light and Angelic hymn in the background would stop soon.Since this hospital has a big mental ward a person dressed like an angel also walks in and nods at him approvingly as he continues the speech, while we only hear complaining.

Not part of the speech ..but a nice time stamp!

The movie ends incredibly cute as well with the detective going on a small vacation and he gets the boy!  Billy called him Cop as nickname (though in  german it’s a bit more a slangy nickname)  and then Luigi ponders if he wants to quit after this weird case.. he tells Billy he would miss Billy nickname him Cop.. Billy tells him he loves the man and he would call him  Cop for as long as he wants. While the two do a little love play.. “you you say it again” .. Cop.. “again please” Okay.. Cop”  … “One more time please” Kiss me…..Cop.. we pan out for the ending. So while the two also have one of the funniest sex scenes I have seen n a moviie there is also room for cute romance.  In the end i was left with a very weird but strangely engaging movie. I don’t think I could imagine a better story about killer condoms.

The Flacid Stuff

Now this isn’t a perfect movie by any means, it is very one note and rarely veers away from the Killer Condom plot. When we see real live stuff it is mostly complaints about the bitten of Nut.. or how a man with no Penis can not possibly win a presidential election campaign. This movie has no chill or cooldown; it’s 1 hour and 45 minutes of scrotum related jokes.  Oddly entertaining ones but still we never see Luigi kick down with a beer, go watch a game with friends. Either we talk about him being gay, we talk about his transgender friend.. his feelings for Billy, somewhere in between lust and love and of course the Killer Condoms.That can come across as stale…yet they also explain this by making it a Macaroni family trait to get so obessed.Don’t expect deep characters and more so a list of which person slept with another.

Well Babette Identifies as a woman now and we always were known for being able to multi-task!

Of course this movie tells about the seedy side of the gay scene and not your regular run of the mill standard couple. This isn’t Mitchell Pritchett and Cameron Tucker from  Modern family. No this is about the guys who sleep around. I know that here at least those guys are still part of the active gay scene. They are just as real and out there as the monogamous romantic ones but it can be a bit confronting how straightforward they are about this. Love comes into play but Luigi is still “that type”. The stereotype people look down on the most. Given his looks and age though.. it seems very plausible that he would fall in that “seedier” side of things.I should not even count it as seedy as to each their own and if that makes them happy good on them.Still these are not the type of guys you want in the front and center of your picture, these are the guys you kinda try to hide in the back. That might make the protagonist a tad unlikeable.

He is a bit of a sarcastic prick! I kinda love that about him though!

Sometimes the humor goes a bit too far. Luigi for example has a 32 centimeter dick!  The idiotic size is used as a plot device for a few things.. like the existence of the condom queen monster, it is the reason Billy falls so very hard for the man and it is probably the reason why the first Condom could only bite off one nut! So once more it isn’t pointless and I doubt this is a writer self insert..but it does feel a bit cheap. His personality screams out that he is a top and that is very much established throughout the movie so again it oddly “fits’ ‘ as both Babette and Billy have clear bottom persona’s and tendencies..but still it feels like too much.. though I doubt Billy would say that.

Would you kindly subscribe to Pinkie’s Blog?!


Then there is the issue of the condom noises. They make almost gremlin-like noises, with shrill laughs and then yelling “wee” when they are launched.  It  feels really weird in comparison how stoic the rest of the movie is. It is very funny to see no one believe the guy that a condom bit of his testicle even though he saw it and was of sound mind.. and the way he just yells “F you guys t wasn’t Billy who bit it of it was a condom creature”  I love that deadpan humor…but then we get condoms that ride rubber duckies while  humming a cheerful song on their way to their next meal..it clashes so heavy with the dryness of the  rest. I would have preferred if the condoms just growled or had some weird insect like sounds like the thing they were based on. Condooms going Woo, Woo.. Teeheehee is kind of adorable in a strange way, in fact at times they kinda sound like Jawa’s I just think that might be a tad too much. Even for a movie about killer Condoms.

They do swim in blood at their home though so they also have some edge!

You don’t need Protection

I expected to hate the rotten guts out of this movie but for what it is I think we pretty much got the best of what we would have gotten. It’s message is still relevant and it is kind of funny to see a 90’s take on that.. even for that alone it is worth a view. The humor is often cheap but there is a cleverness in both the choice of words and it’s delivery that honestly reminds me a bit of the way dialogue flowed in the anime Keijo!!! Admittedly this is way better in german than in english but even with subtitles it oftenly works. Just .. Germans have a fair bit of extra words that can be combined into a pun. While it really never ever gets scary.. and I don’t think we get more than one fatality this is a funny and unique monster movie to watch. It gets about a 58%  on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5,3 on IMDB but honestly if you can shut off your brain and just enjoy the weirdness this easily provides you a 6.5 out of 10 entertainment.. midnight kebab!

When the Hooker heard “Blow your Nose” she put a condom out of it from habit (not how it happens in the movie.. this is my joke)

Watch this with some drinks and with some friends and don’t take its impact on a community too serious!  This is a 90’s B movie trough and trough but one that is oddly consistent in the world that it builds. You can see it’s comic roots pretty well because the dialogue is very VERY to the point and that in this movie has it’s charm for me. I did not get scared but..as an grey-sexual , homo-romantic female I have little to do with condoms as it is! Oh right I am single as well.. so yeah pretty good movie for me that kept me entertained… I never had to Troyawn during my sitting but it never got Durexciting either. 

I did not expect the movie as much as I did! While it is easy to point out it’s flaws and cast shade at it for the themes and it’s infantile subject matter.. I don’t feel that is justified! This movie is called Killer Condom… we already know it would be THAT which I could arguable hate about the movie! For what it is I think it does a great job! I dont think anyone could do better. And lucky for you this movie is on YouTube! And since I pay for my blog… I can share this with the world now!

Thanks for reading and if you liked this blog please consider supporting my Ko-Fi. My current movie is gaining some extra cash for my move and get some money to give me an actually blogging workspace! That way I can keep reviewing strange movies for you in the future! Of course I will also do that if you just leave a nice comment!

Pink Tracks Suits, Pixelated Cats and LOTS of hairspray: The 90’s Tag

It was the age that Dutch people massively saved their heads bald, put on track suits and spasmed to the beat of music like they were controlled by some unskilled puppeteer. It was the golden age for quiz shows and making people do weird stuff for money.  Like there was a show where people had to do like a challenge like.. pee in your pants for a 1000 bucks you have 10 minutes to do so or find 11 people to slep in the face. It was the age where the adults did not wonder  about YouTuber X tweeted or which , vaguely half assed celebrity cheated on their spouse and now they had to be destroyed for it.. no they sat on the couch ate some crisps and wondered if Ross and Rachel would ever get back together.  I was a kid.. from the age of 4 up until 13.  I did not know about those things, I just hoped that Shredder would not harm April O’Neil or that the Biker Mice from Mars would find their way home! Today we take a look at my 90’s!

I want to to thank Winst0lf Portal for tagging me for this one! I am going to have some fun with this one! Also a note, due to it requiring many clips from YouTube this post is not WordPress-Reader friendly.. please use the actual website to enjoy this post!

There are several answers to this question. What would be my favorite 90’s show in hindsight. That would probably be Friends! I still enjoy watching that so much! While it carried on into the 2000’s most of it was 90’s as heck. Back then I think I would have either said DuckTales or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but those are cartoons so I am no sure if the count.  But  in the end.. all things considered I am going to have to say the one that shaped me most and the one that I really went all out on was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. It is the perfect amalgamation of 90’s and what basically is anime! Kids with superpowers and giant combiner robots including multiple transformations and monsters of the week! I wrote Tommy Oliver if he wanted to be my boyfriend after Kim dumped him… I was young but I’d make a great pink ranger!  I went to a life show in our concert halls! It was the best thing i had ever seen. While in truth it was not a lot better than the Turtles coming out of their shell tour!  .. You really should watch that! Luckily you an right here! (If you are not reading this on WordPress Reader)

Power Rangers stuck with me until this day! I still like it! Ducktales I see got outdated and the new DuckTales series is soooo friggin good it ruined the old show for me.  However while I have seen  a lot of Power Rangers series and kept updated with more of them even if I could not watch, nothing beats that time capsule feeling of the original. Don’t get me wrong. Power Rangers in Space is like the absolute best series but MMPR is the closest thing to live changing. It introduced me to the concept of soap opera acting and I to this day think there has been no better Blue Ranger than Billy Cranston.  Portrayed by David Yost. While Amy Jo Johnson’s Kimberly Hart always has a warm place in my heart I have to admit that my favorite Pink Ranger is Kendrix Morgan played by Valerie Vernon but now is not the time for that! It’s about the 90’s and yo do not get more 90’s than MMPR. The way we have socially grown since then, the outfits, the visual effects, the lessons and what ever kept our minds back then.. there is just so much in this show to remind me of those good old days! I also hate like a  treasure chest full of Power Ranger toys so I must have really liked this show.

Honorable Mention to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the way! I discovered it late.. which isn’t uncommon for us Dutch to get something fairly late but that is another thing that had me hooked and one of the first times I had a girl crush! Season one is from 1997 so I’d say it does count.. though the majority of it happend in the 2000’s But hey.. the winner still is MMPR! Another honourable mention is there for Pokémon, the anime aired here really soon and like Power Ranger it changed my live. Yet like with Buffy , the majoirty of it’s lifespan happend in the 2000’s so just a mention!


That time has come again for me to talk about THAT song! But before we do I am going to show you guys a few other songs.  You see as I lived in the Netherlands.. back then we did a lot more “our own thing” rather than dub your shows or post all of america’s top hit songs in our charts.So while doing my tag I am showing you a bit of the dutch 90’s as well!  The first song I am going to pick here is a bit more international. Of course I wanted to pick something some of you guys might have forgotten so no Barbie Girl from me! I love how much pink is in that clip though! Not even Toy Box with Best friend.. no instead we go with Bewitched with C’est La Vie!

Okay that one was not my favourite song.  I mostly listened to dutch music as it was a lot  easier for the by then still mono lingual me.  When three Soap Opera Stars formed a girl group using character name to become the Netherlands most desired girl group , I was playbacking and singing along with this song! A song about the breathlessness after sex, but back then I did not know that. I just repeated the words and took it in the most innocent way possible.

I am sure that one was not very interesting to your guys though! It’s a bland clip and the words would make no sense. The other dutch song I am putting up here is something about a dutch group called Gabber’s. A variant of Ravers who would shave their heads, put on a lot of golden chains and would go do a dance named Hakkuh! Which basically would translate to something as Chopping. This got parodied by a dutch comedian and a group named Hakkuhbar and it resulted in this weirdness that I do hold dear. It is a pretty good  representation of the “Gabber” Lifestyle.. though the music doesn’t reflect it that well, the Gabbers are still a thing today.. though a lot less of them! This is a real life style to people.. and this clip.. shows it’s quirks very well.

As for my favorite piece of 90’s music!  Well in 1990’s a certain video game dropped here in the Netherlands and Japan. It was in America Early..but hey 1989 counts!  My  love for this song has been mentioned in many tag post and will continue to be mentioned so here it is!

While I don’t know many international adds from back in the time, again the Netherlands did a lot more of their own thing back then so here is a dutch commercial. This is a great commercial for an insurance company that .. despite the “victim” being outdated, would work today, just replace this man with anyone relevant of your choosing!  I hope you enjoy this one!

Spice Girls! Girl Power and all!  But if I had to choose between the two  it would definitely be Back Street Boys! I never liked boy bands all that much but Backstreet’s Back was  one of the better songs. I really never liked Justin Timberlake, like ever!  Though in the 90’s he had some seriously Giorno Giovanna hair! But yeah Boy Bands always were aimed to make girls dream about boyfriends and make them feel a weird form of ticklish! I never got that so this appeal was lost on me! Not the biggest music fan either! I preferred the Smurfs cover famous music!… or video game music.

I guess Spice Girls here then?  Maybe the smurfs?!   I honestly do not really idolise music artists at all, Bon Jovi was alright! Robbie Williams had some nice songs.. but yeah I was not  really a fan of anyone.  I always had a thing for one trick ponies like Eiffel 65 and to lesser extend Lou Bega and of course Los Del Rio. A song captures me not an artist. I am going to with the Spice Girls! I think they would make an awesome anime.. maybe even a JoJo series with them as the main cast! Then again.. a Jojo with Los Del Rio Might even be better! They even already pose!

I was an avid Flippo collector, I am not sure if those existed overseas or if they were exclusively a dutch thing but they were super hype here. I think I saw some with other language prints.. but back then the world was a lot smaller so who knows! Little disks with Looney Tunes characters on it that you played a sort of slamming game with.  You threw your Flippo on a stack of your opponents Flippo and everything that fell of the stack face up was yours to collect everything face down including the one you slammed with ..would belong to your opponent. 

No one did that though it was just a trading commodity! We send our mothers to buy us the folders in which we could collect them and they came in bag of crisps so we ate like 2 bags a day and begged old ladies for their flippos. They spawned many incarnations including Pokémon spin offs, heavier variants in special flavor of chips and flying flippo’s which you could launch and something called topshots which were flippo’s but of soccer players. I even collected those even though I hate soccer. I once got two air packs of crisps in a row with tose as they really got poorly packaged and they just send met the entire set as an apology! I was so mad they ruined the fun of collecting for me now as well!

If we count the official ones not a lot, if we count the brandless ones about five. Not five different ones though, me and my sister would get one at the same time, and she would always end up abandoning them and I would try to save hers as well.  So we got one  of those things that grow up from blob into dino things, though I had a more chicken like creature. I lost that one on a vacation and then I had my sisters dino for a while ..but that one could no longer be silenced anymore after one of the buttons broke and one day it disappeared from my room never to be found again ..weirdly enough.. I guess it went to go live on a farm.  The third and fourth one was a really weird dog like thing with a hat.. me and my sister got the same thing. That one did not die if you left it alone either, it would take a little handkerchief and tie it to a stick and just walk out of the tamagotchi, it would abandon you.  The problem was that thing was super fickle!  Like even if you took the best care of it in the world it could still decide to walk out on you for no reason at all.  So my sister quickly gave up on hers and I tried to maintain two! Eventually their batteries ran out and that was the end of them.

Sorry for the Stock Image! Try finding the image of a bootleg Tamagotchi!

The final one was a birthday gift my sister had gotten.. it was a dog that could talk and it had a lot more functions.. but the twist was.. it did not walk around on your screen.. it was the device the screen was just it’ face. So instead of playing games you had to wipe crummies off it’s face  and do a sort of Simon Says with it. That one I loved the most but  eventually that one ran out of batteries as well and I could not be stuffed to begin all over with it all again. Not that long after that Pokémon would come out anyway so I had now virtual pets that were just as cute but a lot less stressful to maintain.

This was your screen on the final one.. minus the colour and the sleep at night.

Ducktales for NES is one of the contenders of favorite video games but my favorite console definitely was the SNES! My glory days of gaming!  While I loved all Nintendo Consoles to bit up until the Wii , which almost made me renounce Nintendo for a while, the SNES is always my highlight.

While Nowadays I’d arguable say Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI/III are my favorite games in quality I am going to have to say Donkey Kong Country takes the cake for my favorite 90’s gaming experience. I was so proud when I finally beat it! The music the graphics and the overall gameplay was so amazing for it! I vastly preferred it’s platforming over Mario’s. Beating an enemy felt so much more satisfying and the level design back  then to me was unparalleled. While there are games I acknowledge are better this is one of the games I could always be asked to play and I will always enjoy myself with even if it’s just to look at it!

I can’t remember if we ever had cereal toys, I do remember that for quite a while though I was really into the rice based cereal. Like Coco Puffs or Rice Crispies but I really alternated.  One of the best cereal memories I have though is that of Kellogs Frosties. Back in the 90’s I would stay over and my grandparents , who lived in the same town,  a lot.  It would often be a break from my sister. I was always a kid that really thrived on some alone time.  While Grandma was always overly caring she would often let me wander her big garden or the big house alone! I could play hours finding some old board games she had trying to understand the rules, or wandering on the 7 meter sound wall her garden was edges off with, I would always be up fairly early because she woke up very early and she would make me a soft boiled egg and I would get this beautiful little crystal bowl with super cold milk we got in a very special supermarket in Belgium where I could eat my Frosties from.. after the soft boiled egg was finished.  We always made our egg super salty so the milky and sugary stuff afterwards were really good! I would come back home so relaxed and thoroughly overfed.

I was 13 when the 90’s ended! I wasn’t very feminine  and mostly into geek stuff. Like Power Rangers but also Dark Wing Duck and I had a big thing for classic monsters. Horror books but also pseudo-scientific books on how Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies worked. I wasn’t to busy with a crush back in the days.  So no one really. Maybe Really late in the 90’s I began picking up Buffy the Vampire slayer and I realised much much later that it might have actually been a crush I felt towards Buffy.. and later when I became more self aware for Willow.. though as the series progressed into the fifth season and beyond I’d  lose those crushes on both of them. Phoebe Buffay is another 90’s character I ended up having a bit of a thing for but again .. not in the 90’s !… They are 90’s characters though so you can decide if they count. I never got into that Backstreet boy love thing though! Nor did I ever had a Celebrity crush aside from  Deborah Ann Woll. 


Ducktales the movie! We did not have the Disney Channel but I am pretty sure that one would count right? The one with the magic lamp? The scorpions!  It once aired belgian tv and we videotapes it and I watched the heck out of that!  Those wishes, that ending.. I loved it so much! The villain scared me for a bit but I watched this movie until the video began breaking. The sound began to go off key and more and more wear began to show on the tape from rewinding it so much!  I loved it more than the show and that already was very dear to me!  Not my favorite show back then because some episodes weren’t all that good but this movie made me happy every single time!


Now this one is tricky, we had none of those networks in the actual 90’s they all came to us much later, or required some expensive additional package for tv to access. The shows that did reliable air where the Disney shows that usually aired on the Belgian public access channel that me as a kid living near the border could view without any trouble. I loved Gummi Bears, Rescue Rangers and Duck Tales but I guess I have to say my favorite one was Darkwing Duck! It was so funny and zany! I really liked that almost “fake” hero  thing he had going on for him. It was cool to see a hero who is often plagued by bad luck. His analogies stuck with me for a long time as well!  Darkwing Duck is the reason why I hate Talespin..as it was the show that replaced it. Back than I was really fickle and just replacing my favorite shows was enough reason for me to hate you with a passion!


Velcro shoes!  I know that isn’t as zany but I was hardly going to shave my head and put on a track suit now was I?! I was bullied for a large part of the 90’s as well, (like from 1994 onwards) so my clothing was usually to be as stealth as possible , also something that would not be to bad to ruin when kids threw their juice boxes at me or squished worms all over…so I wore very casual stuff with shoes I could not trip over.. It was not enough to run away as I had a weird motor dysfunction that made me slow and clunky.. but at least I managed to run away a few times when I was absolutely terrified..so a good practical trend. Poor worms that died to bully me! Of course shoes back then had to have light in them so you had to turn that on before you ran away! So that is kinda weird?!

Power Rangers…with barbie/ mini clothes on! I never liked playing with barbies or something like that to much. She always felt like a shallow girl to me! Kimberly and Trini  were much more interesting people! I would play the wedding between Tommy Oliver and Kimberly heart a million times dressing them up in barbie clothes which either were way to large or we had adapted. It would not always be a happy wedding though.. Lord Zed would come over and turn their wedding cake into a monster or send Pudgey Pig to eat their wedding buffet. Or they would go to a movie date together and I would just sit them next to me and watch a movie! …Most of the time that Ducktales one.. Sometimes my stories would also be a bit more messed up.. like when Kimberly got stung to death by Grumble Bee which was actually a Bee on a bouquet given to her by Tommy. Tommy who caused her death killed himself from guilt but also in the hope he can find her in the after life. But he gets send to hell and now has to use his ranger powers to battle an army of demons..which were the small soldiers from that terrible movie! I had all those as toys as well.

None of the above we did not have them as channels here! We did get Fox Kids though! Which would be by choice!  I remember on wednesdays they had this block of action cartoons named Power Rock which had shows such as  Spiderman TAS and X-men TAS. The Tick was also part of that solid line up. During the day there was amazing stuff like Eek the Cat! It also had Power Rangers and Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog!


That really depended on my mood, we had three major cartoon sources. We had Kindernet, which had awesome shows like Earthworm Jim, Bouli de Sneeuwpop (Bouli the Snowman)  Maple Town and Star Street. While some are actually 80’s show they ran until deep into the 90’s. I could not get rid of Nils Holgersson even if I tried!

Telekids had stuff  Animaniacs but also a lot of ecological stuff like Seabert the Seal , WNF Ranger kids, and of course Captain Planet. Their sunday would be a bit “nature” themed. While on Saturday they would hold a big live show filled with skits, and games , it was super fun. For example there was this segment where kids had to ride derpy cowbot-hatted horse named Harry. Just before afternoon the hosts would do a skit show of our most famous soap opera!

Fox Kids finally would hold the cartoons that one might identify most with Saturday Morning Cartoons, shows like Kidd Video, Biker Mice from Mars, Street Sharks and Inspector Gadget. Fox Kids was usually my go-to but it all depended on my mood. 

I actually never really liked McDonalds, I did not like the food and I never really got the toys I wanted. One I remember very vividly was a Flounder from The Little Mermaid that was like a squirt gun! I wanted that as a Bath toy but all I got was stupid Prince Eric! One I did kinda like was  those disney figures of Beauty and the Beast and most of their disney stuff.
I loved the dress changing Belle Toy a lot!  I was upset though there was no Lumiere toy! He was my favourite character! I liked show people and the singing and dancing.. perhaps that’s why I like Idol Girl shows this much nowadays?! I also loved those Disney Characters in a car or train thing.. but those were hard to make a nice story to play with!

Back then it was definitely horror , I was a big collector of those Goosebumps books by RL Stein my favorite one was Horrorland which got sold so short in the tv series adaptation the book was so much better. Yet my favorite book would definitely be “De Griezelbus 2 or 3”
Griezelbus was a dutch book series written by Paul van Loon, in which a writer by the name of P Onnoval would lure kids into a trap to eat them. In the first part he is werewolf  and by telling them horror stories he tries to wait for the full moon to eat them. 

He travels around in a bus that holds props that each tell a story but secretly he is trying to isolated these kids. Part 2 is set in a car graveyard, kids stumble upon the bus as a radio voice begins to tell them stories to stall them until Onnoval now a vampire can rise from his grave and feast on them. In Part 3 he is even further destroyed and is now a  virtual presence.. the bus now has become a museum piece and as a special the museum hosts a fake story telling by the dead writer.. and all the kids experience horror stories in virtual reality. In each story a character dies or nearly dies.. but what the kids do not know is that one kid.. experiences the story they see first person.. they are tricked into thinking they are dead. Once weakened Onnoval can choose the body he wants to possess and dispose of the others without resistance.  

This book came out in 1997 and while Book 4 had my absolute favorite short story I think the virtual reality and forcing children to experience their own death trough horror experiences was the strongest book to me! 

Like I mentioned earlier Power Rock on Wednesday was my jam. Power Rangers, Mystic Knights of Tir na Nog! I loved that stuff, but I think it  was on Tuesdays but I can not remember there was this show called the Droom Show on our public access channels. In this show kids would compete in about an eightish number of settings.. each episode had another set.. like Medieval, Undersea or Candy Factory and Horror, each “dream” had its own games where kids could compete for the highest score and in the end they could participate in a price game. Which could win them gameboys, tv’s but also stuff like a day to a theme park or new pyjamas  and cool notebooks. Tests of agility , intellect and strength would come into play in one of the best children game shows I saw and I was  completely silent when watching this after school! Sure nowadays this would not fly anymore but to a kid this was amazing!

I miss a lot of things, some I can’t even say without trouble. I guess the best way to summarise it is I miss the inconvenience of the 90’s in some cases. How hard it was to get a copy of a game. You had to go out to the store to buy a game, you could only multiplayer by having friends over.. there were only so many screens people in house could watch so  you had to make compromises. Video games weren’t always good but if you made a bad buy you just had to suck it up and try again.  Nowadays we don’t have to put any effort into anything anymore.  A bad video game can be so burned to the ground because you have a new video game within seconds. People who play Fortnite are often so insanely toxic to another because it no longer is hard to see what exactly happened, people have access to how they humiliate you, in slow mode and normal as well in high quality, they can stream it online with the push of a button and there are millions of others who play that shitstain of a game with them so if you suck.. they can just bully you out of there and only have a penalty for like a second.  In the 90’s .. matchmaking was a hassle non existent if it was .. it’s a huge hassle. You could not ridicule your opponent because if they left.. you had no one to play with. Even if they picked Oddjob in Golden Eye!

To rent a video or a game you needed to go to a store, talk to people  learn about other cool games.. now you can just type the name in a search bar tab a button on your phone and your playing exactly what you want.. this has resulted into a lot of people having a super small world.  An anime is only good if it scores a certain MAL rating right now, a movie with a Rotten Tomato score below 50% isn’t worth watching.. back then we did not have that we had to experiment as a result we would be much more grateful to the good stuff. I really wish that we had the social-cultural understanding of today mixed with the gratefulness for any shape or form of content of back then.. only then I think people can be really open minded..

This had SOOOO Many questions! This took me a lot time! I was afraid the next 90’s might have come! But it was very fun to do! So time to tag some people!

First of all I would like to tag my Blogging Bestie Foovay! Who I am sure will have a different look in this than me!

Second I wouild like to Tag Geek Girl Joy. I am curious to see what her childhood is like!

Thirdly I would like to tag Lita Kino, who I know is a Pokémon and Power Ranger loser like me! So I am eager to find what else we have in common!

If you want to participate you can answer this question! What is Pinkie’s Power Ranger?
Of course all my Coconuts are automatically tagged so check out if you are a Coconut or become one by supporting my Kofi! I will see you in the next blog! Now I I can finally get out of this ridiculous outfit!

https://ko-fi.com/pinkiesparadise

Pinkie’s Guilty Series Pleasures: Power Rangers

Normally I have this reserved for movies that deserve some praise but this week I thought I would change it up. Today we look at a series of my childhood that I really got into. I love some good western fantasy series as well as some anime and secretly I also enjoy teen comedies like saved by the bell or even Lizzie McGuire. Luckily there is one franchise that combines it all in one hilarious and captivating mix.

Zyuranger

Now it is commonly know how this show came to be. In order to adapt the Sentai genre for western audience, which of course would not be very relatable to western audiences in its pure form  some very smart tv makers decided to splice footage of the original sentai show, of the costumed heroes, with shot in america footage with western audiences so that we as the viewer could connect to these heroes. The  Sentai show chosen for this was Kyouryuu Sentai Zyuranger which translates as Dinosaur Squadron  Beast Ranger, which aired about a year earlier as Power Rangers. Zyuranger was the 16th season of the Super Sentai series and features some significant differences from it more well known western counterpart. 

The most well known difference is that the yellow Zyuranger is not actually a female  but rather a boy named .. well Boi.  This is why Trini does not have a skirt unlike the pink ranger. Which is kinda funny because the season before that DID in fact have two female rangers.. but I guess based on Birdman it seemed less cool. The most notable difference however is in the way things are themed. Power Rangers is not just an acted out dub it is a completely different series with a very different tone. Where the Sentai series focuses on ancient magical powers, Power Rangers usually spin their series with a very technological aspect. Which kinda makes more sense to me given that for the biggest part is about combiner robots.

Zordon does not exist in Japan, the team is assisted by the immortal sorcerer Barza, whose footage is used for back when Zordon was NOT an interdimensional being. The rangers are not random teens but ancient warriors of five clans kept in stasis for 170.000 years until the witch Pandora escapes. Pandora and Rita are the same person however in Zyuranger she is not the ultimate villain of their season.. it’s a floating head called Great Satan. There is no command center, no alpha 5 and no Angel Grove High. These are fairly serious warriors. The Green Ranger is the brother of the Red Ranger and he eventually ends up dying, so this series had a bit more consequence something that would take power rangers five seasons to really kick in. In the first Sentai series one of the team members already permanently died.

Another difference is between the tone in narrative. While Power Rangers is episodic with only a mild tread going through their show, the Zyuranger have a much larger journey to go trough. They do not get their signature weapons right away they have to find them. Also they have to find their power crystals to combine their robots. They earn their powers as they go on.  Which makes a much more compelling show to follow compared to the rinse and repeat power ranger format that seems to borrow more of it’s narrative structure from Sailor Moon than the actual Sentai show. This is usually the argument that Sentai fans throw in your face for liking Power Rangers, their show makes more sense.. which is fair.

Yet I usually reply “If A super powerful being has the power to bestow you with magic power to fight of great evil, why would he hide the keys to your weapons and zords?’ In the world of Power Rangers that set up would make very little sense. Since they are american they can’t really go with the asleep for 170.000 years either.. or else by the first series standards they would all have to be native americans and all red rangers. While the Sentai Series is definitely worth a watch and does indeed make more sense, I am on team Power Rangers. Though I  might see if I can track down Battle Fever J the third season of sentai based on great nations!
Can you imagine if these were our first rangers?

Yes this was an Actual season

Power Rangers

Now enough talk about Sentai for now it is time to look at the Western product. Apparently to make colourful superheroes in spandex and helmets interesting to us we needed something else. No not giant combiner robots that still was not good enough! Saved by the Bell! That’s it we need some highschool drama about bullying, school projects and dating. We need teenagers with attitude…  and with attitude we mean that they have to be so squeaky clean they could be on the Disney Channel. Their favorite hangout is a juice bar and they all take sports and are very well performing students, that on the side do a lot of charity work as well.

Kimberly Hart is the only Power Ranger that actually has some attitude. She would rather go back to gymnastics and read fashion magazines when this show starts but after their first move she also flips over like a leaf. However throughout the show she keeps at least a slight bit of pettiness making her the most teenager feeling in the show. To know surprise this makes her my favorite ranger in the earlier episodes. Amy Jo Johnson portrays a wonderful character that we can see and grow. While the Zyurangers grow as a team, I rarely see them grow as people. 

Billy Cranston is another good example of this growth.. while definitely not having Attitude as promoted he grows throughout the series so much. David Yost to me is the BEST blue ranger ever to this day. It was such a shame when he was bullied to leave the show. Even when he stopped being a ranger he was such a welcoming and warm presence. In the first episodes he talks needlessly complicated and completely unhuman which is so stereotype and cheesy.. I love it.. it feels wrong.. but in the right kind of way. The auditory stimuli of this  social gathering hub is perceived as pleasurable and I wish to express this sensation by applying motor skills to said output..  would be a way Billy says he wishes to dance. In fact he even talks more complicated than that.. so I could not remember an exact example.

MMPR has it issues but these are part of the beauty of the show. While Trini Kwan and Zack Taylor are oftenly subject of debate because of the colour of the suit they were put in let’s not forget that  the yellow ranger was hispanic first, but got recast because of failed contract negotiations a theme that would follow the series. Regardless wether you find some choices offensive one can not help but be amazed by how iconic Zack’s Hip Hop Kido was.  Back than it was super cool. Zack was my favorite guy in the team. I liked his zord the best as well.. but hey I got a thing for clunky animals so it makes sense I’d choose a Mastodont. Because of the anime-esque stereotyping of characters all these guys became dear to me.

I never played with barbies when I was a kid, but I kept had a lot of barbie like dresses and some Ken clothes I used them to dress up my Power Ranger figures, and most of what I played was romance between Tommy and Kimberly because I was a big Tommy fan, like the rest of the world. Jason David Frank plays the most iconic ranger ever. To this day he is deeply involved in the franchise and loves the character so much. No matter if it’s the comics , which are quite good too by the way, or the newer series, we can always wait for Tommy to make an appearance.. and even though he is such a 90’s product that tells you how well this series has aged.

Dinosaurs Lighting and Metal

In a weird way this show has aged well by aging poorly. While the Ranger action itself has clearly aged and has long been surpassed, the teenage drama the weird scenario set up are so dated they become timeless.  Set in the 90’s  has become part of these first four seasons.  It gets a bit Wonky when we enter age of Zeo and nearly came crashing down when we enter the Turbo season. While Power Rangers in Space saved the series with some actual amazing storytelling and belongs to the top seasons for me and many fans, this first one i’d classify as cult. It’s zanier, more repetitive and not always acted out the best but something about it is just so fun to watch.

I’d even argue this show is better now than it was before Power Rangers was so in your face nineties and cheesy that back than it polarised people but now… it’s like Fudge Yeah that’s the sound of the nineties. If we compare the opening of Zyuranger to Power Rangers there is not a shadow in my mind of which is the best opening. Zyurangers one is forgettable while Power Rangers one is iconic. Now you can blame Nostalgia for this but I actually prefer Head Chala over Rock the Dragon so I would say I have an open mind about this. When you hear the Zyuranger theme you think “Oh dear Arceus this has not aged well” when you hear Go Go Power Rangers you are like “Heck yeah 90’s’.  Synthesizers metal, the clothes , the simple mindset it was something I really appreciate.


Where the, at times ,  hammy acting, bad effects and clunky dialogue  often annoyed me in Star Trek TOS and caused me to drop it here, I find it much more tolerable Again part of it is the setting but also the pacing. With 20 minute episodes and two to three stories to tell per episode this show doesn’t linger it rushes past everything. Some episodes are very strangely cut together, like the rangers being transported out their zord for no reason..the giant monster “won”  and apparently shrank without damaging their zord.. he just allowed it to leave, now being in tiny form again the rangers defeat it with new weapons.  It made no sense  to see all those lighting filled transport effects within a minute but I sure was entertained.

It’s ……..

When I watch this I feel like a kid again. I can shut down my brain because “it’s Power Rangers’. It’s like how you do not question the logic in a Jojo series or apply fluid simulations to the debate on how to eat chocolate croissants in Lucky Star. Power Rangers is in the so Bad that it’s good kind of category when it comes to world building yet if we look better it’s ALSO actually good. The whole lore of the Morphing Grid that was later tacked on still kinda makes sense today. The whole reasons how rangers are chosen, what the colour of their suit represents still matches up. Tommy Oliver always being an exception. Tommy has been a green, white,  two reds and a black ranger by now as well as becoming the iconic villain Lord Drakkon in the comics. That being said extra rangers are always except from the colour rules so even he makes sense.

Power Rangers is filled with clichés but there is so much commitment to these that  they can get away with so much. A monster based on traffic lights would suck in just about everything but Cute Earth Defense Club Love… yet  in Power Rangers it works too. A piece of wall that turns the team into bricks from which they are freed by treating them with pollution sounds like a very bad Captain Planet episode yet with Power Rangers it works.

In fact it’s something we WANT  to see from this show. We dont care about the episode with this dark edgy knight guy.. we want to see a the rangers face a lipstick martial artist, a turkey in an armor made of an oven, using a baster as a blaster or a  evil tentacled pineapple that turns people into cardboard cutouts… these are all real examples by the way. This show made a candle threatening. Where like half the episode is images of a green candle slowly burning down… we all watched in horror as it became smaller and smaller and we lost our beloved icon. Because obviously Ranger powers can be linked to candles.

In many ways MMPR introduced me to staples that would cause me to fall in love with the anime  genre. I loved the randomness and over the top storytelling. How it was more imaginative than anything i saw before. While the Japanese story in part is responsible for that .. much also comes down to the american writing giving us something truly unique.  As a kid that is what I saw in power rangers. It wasn’t like anything else. It was different from Turtles, it was different from Saved By the Bell. It helped me learn English AND German. 

Sentai as a genre is unique in western media. Though VR-Troopers tried (which almost cast Jason David Frank as the main character after Tommy lost his powers)  and Masked Rider made a fair attempt.. only Power Rangers really stuck. While I enjoyed Big Bad Beetleborgs, nowadays there is only one contender. It is a show that has been running for 27 years now.  While not everything is as good as In Space, or Time Force , I am looking at you Mega Force,  it is hard to deny the work the first season did. Heck in fact Jason shows up for the new season of Beast Morphers and people are really excited about it. The classic theme is still being used in mash ups and even main themes. The show has adapted and grown.. and dialogue even for MMPR would get better as the show goes along.. but some things never age. While not all do it..plenty of rangers still shout out  “It’s Morphin Time”

Did you ever watch Power Rangers? Have you ever watched A Sentai Show? Let me know in the comments! I will look at a certain Sentai show next… a very unique one at that. Once I am done with the first season expect a review coming up! Until then, Keep smiling! May the power protect you!

XO
Pinkie

She just will not stop ruining our Childhood! Pinkie takes the Light Novel Title Challenge Again!

My dear island guests, I have been a busy bee lately and I had little time to prepare some posts! Luckily it is tag week which means I can now update my backlog on all sorts of tags. One of the most fun and unique ones was Dewbond’s give it a Light Novel Title Challenge and soon after I did That Random Editor nominated me for the challenge again. Well I feel creative today.. and in short supply of time so it’s time to do it again! This time I chose to ruin some of our favorite childhood shows! But this time we do it a bit differently. I will start with my Light Novel Title.. then discuss  the show and then reveal what the original title is. Can you guess them all?! Let’s play!

The Rules of the tag and the rules of my game!

Tag Rules

Choose up to five anime, manga or visual novel series that have a short title

  • Light novels that have shorter titles (Date A Live for example) are also allowed.
  • Give these series a new title based on those classic overly long Light Novels we love!
  • If someone has already picked a series you wanted. It’s ok! Let’s see your own take on the title!
  • Link back to the original post
  • Include Give it a Light Novel Title in your tags so everyone including myself can find them all easily.
  • Nominate around 1-6 bloggers.

Rules of my super fun game!

Now how do we play my guessing game it is very simple! All light novel titles will be featured in purple blocks with yellow letters. (My sunset colour scheme) After which a small paragraph of why I chose this title will follow. If you can guess the correct anime by only the purple thing you get 2 points. If you need to read the text you get 1 point and if you need the picture right before the answer you get half a point! Leave a comment telling me your score and win absolutely nothing!

Score Meaning:
0-2: Thanks for Playing
3-5: Whippersnapper
6-7: So you know your classics!
8-9: Pinkie thinks you are cool now
10-11: Messed up that third one didn’t you?
12: Virtual Head pats and Cookies for you!

Guess that Title: The Game!

That Time I became friends with an Edgelord and my Spinning Top got Possessed by a Dragon!

This show used to run on tv when I was a kid. Following the adventures of Tyson who fights for fame.. and the safety of the world by letting it rip.Along with the juvenile delinquent Kai and his phoenix, Martial Artist and cat fanboy Ray with his tiger and… well Max and his…purple turtle, Tyson has to compete along with his spirit dragon to be the best spinning top team in the world…which of course also saves the world.

This was such a fun show in the day and I watched all of the orginal series even getting a fair while along in the “spin” off series Metal Fight. Not sure if it’s an actual spin off but it’s still fun to call it that!

The Answer was: Beyblade

All of this is to sell cards?! Grandpa’s Soul got stolen by a 24 year old loon. Now the voice in my head must cheat at cards! A lot!

Promotional anime usually aren’t very good, however many card battle anime are surprisingly well done. The first season of this show (not including season 0)  is NOT really that good. There are barely any rules, there is no rhyme or reason and every single match was just a big rule of cool kind of thing. A card destroying the actual moon.. but also  a tank tunneling through mazes or swords of revealing light that hold up a castle whose floatation rings get destroyed.. so it falls down on other monsters… what?! 

Pegasus and his silver locks and majestic disposition is the antagonist of the first season. Yet did you know that that time he was only 24 years old? I’d always imagine him way older. How can he call the protagonist and the deuteragonist boys when he still is one himself? Regardless. .. fun anime but i call hax!

The Answer Was: Yu-Gi-Oh!

Why is that Referee everywhere? Our Storekeeper is A Master thief!  He lost this medal and made me a robot-battler!

Ah more memories. The adventures of Ikki Tenryou fascinated me when I was kind of to old to be fascinated by it. Along with his trusty robot pal this battle of the week kids show brought so much joy to my world! Each episode we saw another opponent which often included dudes dressed up in skin tight latex suit with a big horn on their head. I am pretty sure one of them was a baby!

Unfortunately this show was dropped by dutch tv before I ever could finish it. It was dropped 6 episodes into the new series with a new villain and a different kind of robots! I have since finished this show but this was one of the few shows that actually had a very solid dutch dub!
At least the dutch people pronounced Erica like it should and not go for that weird E’Ry’Kah stuff. She isn’t an elf you know!

The Answer Was Medabots!

I didn’t wish for this! My best friend got blown up and in anger .. I became an Aryan man.

Now this show was well on it’s way before the titular event happened and while I do not think this show had any ill intentions in it’s message .. I live to ruin your childhood.  In this show we see a dark haired character we all know and love transform into a character with blond hair and blue eyes. Even referring to this state as ..surpassing that of his regular  standing. “Super People” as of sort. So there at least enough similarities to damage your childhood.

In reality famous mangaka Akira Toriyama made this form a reality because it took him to much time to colour in the protagonists hair. He got tired of doing that.. so he came up with a transformation of sorts that allowed him to leave the characters hair blank and he would just have to do the outline. It’s a practical effect that would have made the last part of the story so much easier to draw. As originally Planet Namek was supposed to conclude the series. Of course e wall know more would follow so that blonde hair really turned into a time saver. Especially when the hairdo’s got bigger!

The Answer Was : Dragon Ball Z

That’s not a Jelly Filled Donut : My ten year old son got a mouse to travel the world with! Now the mafia is hunting him down!

Ah even more childhood memories ruined. In this anime set in a wonderful world each ten year old gets either a frog, a turtle a lizard a baby fox or in this case a mouse before they are exiled from their homes trying to win a tournament.. tournament that mostly hold contenders that are twice their age.  Sometimes they are even younger?! Of course it is dangerous to walk through a world filled with monsters all by yourself.. so take this!

So our protagonist is awarded with his first battle pet that turns out to be so strong a criminal organisation that shows a lot of similarities with the Mafia is hunting him down to gain that creature.  This same organisation tries to use a clone of the “ancestor creature” to rule the world. The adventure would kill the protagonist several times (currently around 8) and most seasons do not get a very happy ending! 

The Answer Was : Pokémon

Bonus (Not an actual anime)

I AM READY! This Burger Chef is such a square! His Aquatic Adventures are F.U.N!

F is for friends who do stuff together.
U is for U and me!
N is for Nywhere and Nytime at all 

Downhere in the deep blue sea! 

Should you for any reason have failed to gather points this one should basicly give you some for free.

The Answer was: Spongebob Squarepants

My nominees

Mallow
Geek Girl Joy
Anime as a Cup of Tea
Iniksbane
As Told By Carly

How many points did you get? Do you want to be nominated yourself to give this one a go? Feel free to poke me and I will add you and we all pretend like I nominated you in the first place! I do this because I love you all and remember to keep smiling!
Stay Positive

XO

Pinkie

Blue Blur , Green Hills, Happy Pinkie: Sonic The Hedgehog The Movie

I have always preferred the red plumber over the blue hedgehog. Sonic has never been my defacto platformer hero. Sonic Adventure 2 changed that because I had my Chao Garden. After that it would take me until Sonic Mania to fall in love with a Sonic game again. When the movie was announced I and many people to expect a disaster of the likes of Sonic 06. Yet what we actually got was one of my favorite Sonic products ever.

Why Are Asian Movie Posters always the best?

Rolling around at the speed of sound

As a kid sonic always confused me, the multiple path to the finish were something I did not particularly enjoy.  No matter what route I took it all felt kinda samesy and the jumping felt stiffer than Mario to me. The two player mode in the second part felt odd to me and it took me until the third installment to thoroughly enjoy the blue bluer. I liked the first two just fine but I played better. As a result  I mostly grew up with the old cartoons. Yet I can happily say that no matter what incarnation of sonic you grew up with, if you have had any encounter with OG sonic you can get behind the hero in this movie. So maybe for those who grew up with that scarf wearing monster from Sonic Boom this might feel a bit odd but if you play some Sonic Generations this Sonic will suit you just fine.

The movie opens with a young sonic back in his homeworld. Through some forces of evil in his homeworld Sonic is forced to flee. Since he has a lot of power evil will always be drawn to him. It’s made clear to us that Sonic has been bouncing around many worlds and Earth is the first planet he really seems to have taken a liking too. However Sonic is also very lonely using his speed to be undetected.  In a moment of loneliness, sonic runs away his sorrows.. causing an EMP pulse of immense power. The Army sends the weird Doctor Robotnik played by Jim Carrey to investigate and within the first 15 minutes the movie sets up their entire plot, shows us the motivations of all the major characters It makes clear that this movie like sonic will move fast. Like it should be. The story is very basic like a sonic story should and it doesn’t linger or pad out screen time with exposition. We are here to watch sonic go fast and maybe see Jim Carrey be Jim Carrey.. and that is exactly what we get.

(I always knew Jim Carrey was a Fun-Guy)

It’s Hedgehog not Edgehog

Sonic is a delightfully light hearted movie aimed at the young but with enough visual jokes to entertain those who grew up with Sonic as well. It takes them back to their childhood trough visual jokes, nostalgia and old school cartoon humor. We don’t really get inside jokes that us adults will get but the kids won’t. No innuendo jokes, no weird looks between actors that we as adults can respond to with. “Oh he ain’t gonna get anything tonight!”  Sonic’s comedy is all about going over the top. Sonic is a kid..which is in line with how he was in the 90’s cartoon and the earlier games. Humor comes usually from movement. Fast movement or the fact that Sonic is so Hyper he rarely ever shuts up. 

(There goes the saftey deposit for that room)

The 3D Sonic.. the one we have known since Sonic Adventure , is a minimalist he acts all cool through minimalism. A rocket is launched at him and he will just take a quick sidestep in the split second before he is hit. Movie Sonic is much more a kid, when a missile is fired on him he plays with it, rides it for a bit, uses it as a drumstick or runs to the other side of the world just to find a silly item to use in a convoluted plan to stop all attackers , kinda thing. It’s a bit like how Dante from Devil May Cry would yawn when a train is derailing moving to him as a projectile. He kicks his chair against a brake while taking his jacket off the chair and putting it on. DMC Dante.. you know the black haired kid would flip his sword 27 times in the air, would do an acrobatic jump create explosions and other and somehow the train is stopped. Movie Sonic is like the later.. stuff is done in access and whether that is sonic or not sonic to you is what will make or break this movie for you. Sonic has  zero edge in this movie. This IS Sonic but it will not be everyone’s Sonic.

Clearly they Played the Games

Sonic is a nineties movie trough and trough. It uses tropes from that era, it uses storytelling of that period it even uses actors from that period. Jim Carrey plays Jim Carrey in this movie and he is great… Wait.. he plays Ivo Robotnik?  Nah! Jim Carrey plays Golden Age Jim Carrey and he is just called Ivo Robotnik. We get Jim Carrey from his classic days. He shines in this role like he did in Ace Ventura, The Mask or Dumb and Dumber.. mostly because it’s that exact same type of character again…but evil. Which in my opinion works even better. Like the Mask for example it gives Robotnik a sense of loonesy it makes him more unpredictable and dangerous. In his own way a villain as weird as this can be menacing.. in a child friendly and funny way. For example if we go back to the Edgehog universe, Eggman is made out to be some kind of dark brooding evil genius.. which makes no sense on account of how easily he needs to be defeated. Jim Carrey’s variation is an incredible nutjob. While potentially very dangerous his weirdness makes him flawed and credible to be easily defeated. It really worked for me in this movie.

I can easily imagine Jim Carrey shouting PINGAS

This feeling of understanding is met throughout the entire movie. They know what game elements do work and do not work. Robotnik in a Ufo with a giant Wrecking Ball would probably not work. So they made him a master of drones. Which is up to date and makes the “boss fights” still against him.. but more credible. Sanic is there! The meme drawing that is rather beloved and took on a life of it’s own! Yes they put Sanic in this. A boss fight against robotnik where Sonic has to hit the cockpit of his flying device? It’s in there. Logically you can’t have Sonic lose all his rings when he gets hit… but believe me it’s in there. Of course it’s not as in the series that as soon as he gets hit his rings scatter anywhere, no they are an important plot device this time and each time Sonic happens to get hit he has a good reason to hold them at that time. It’s  great that little things like this are woven into the plot. I really loved the creative ways they managed to do this. Of course they will not be able to keep this up in sequels if there will be any, but darn they sure went all out in making this feel Sonic. These people love the orginal games…they do almost completely ignore the 3d era though, they must not like them. The opening flashforward would have been the perfect place to play City Escape.

Gangsta’s Paradise

After having seen the movie I do get why they made the first trailer with the Gangsta’s Paradise  music. This like I said earlier is not a product of the current times. It celebrates the age of Sonic’s glory days in its fullest. From it’s road trip comedy roots to 90’s superhero is final act. This movie hits that nostalgia beat for beat. Doug Walker the Nostalgia Critic reviewed this and told the movie came out 30 years to late.. and I think that he misses the point.  No it’s not 30 years to late. It takes you back 30 years to the mindset where Sonic was the hottest thing. Where Sonic was cool. Nowadays Sonic’s name isn’t exactly stain free. All those years ago he was new and hip and there was no Sonic 06 and no Sonic Boom, and no .. Werehog.. and .. well I can go on for a fair bit more but you all get my point. Genesis Sonic was the best sonic or at least the untainted one.

Yes the story of this movie is extremely basic.. to a point that it is barely existent. “Sonic gets detected and has to go to another world.. but he lost his rings because he got hit and now he has to find them before the evil guy can get to him”  That is it.. and yes it’s predictable, we all know Sonic will face off against Robotnik.. whom he calls eggman because because guy uses numerous egg shaped drones all the time. Yes the human characters are super predictable as well.. blablabla critique , critique ,critique. Yet again.. that’s kind of the point. The Sonic 2d games never had a deep story.  Yes Edgehog Era sonic games do have intricate plots about ultimate life forms, falling in love with a princess and being cursed to turn into a sonic with an incredibly annoying companion but what this is based on was simple. Get from point A to B and beat a boss. This movie nails those beats so is it a valid point of critique? I did not like that Sonic does a Fortnite dance when he is happy.. because I HATE Fortnite , but I will not expand that on my blog. Does that mean I should say this movie is bad because he doesn’t do his traditional finger waggle thing instead?  This movie is intended for younger kids so obviously there will be childish jokes and I am sure some gamer kids will like that reference.

Crazy Carl definatly made my favorite refferance

Super Sonic Rating

Sonic by no means is a perfect  movie but clearly it is not trying to be either. It won’t win any oscars and the human characters, except for Robotnik are a bit throw away but that again is partially intended. We do not go see a sonic movie for the story of officer Tom. We want to see Sonic fight Robotnik, that’s what we get. If you you want to see a modern superhero movie this flick may be something you pass on. In fact I could come up numerous reasons why this movie is not for you. That’s not how this movie is made. This film not made to to be larger than life. It’s not made for people who think the first h in hedgehog is silent. Will you like this movie can be answered in three simple questions.

1.
Did you ever play and at least liked a 2d sonic game? (Spinball and the slow one don’t count)

2.
Do you like Jim Carrey in his classical roles like Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber and the Mask?

3.
Do you still enjoy 90’s movies along with their cliché’s and despite their flaws?

If you at least said yes to one of these questions Sonic will be  a fine movie to visit. If you selected at least two I am sure this movie will be something that you will thoroughly enjoy from beginning to end. This might not be the best movie ever.. but I am pretty sure it is the best Olive Garden commercial ever. If you answered yes to all my three answers with yes.. the conclusion is very easy. You GOTTA go so see it… and you Gotta go fast.

How should sonic look like? Take your pick and find out rating for this movie!