Reviews of the Ignorant: Princess Mononoke

Do you know what I hate? No, well, yeah, I hate Nazis, but that wasn't what I was thinking of. Do you know what else I hate? Yeah, ok, the designated hitter. But do you know what else? Yeah, Fat-free Pringles, but that- well, yeah, pre-fab pop groups, ok, but that still wasn't what I was thinking of. Ok, yeah, Court TV. That's- yeah, well, that's true, too, scrambled eggs for dinner. Again, though, that wasn't what I was thinking of. What? Yeah, car insurance, but- ok, already, enough! Yeah, I hate pinatas, but that wasn't what I was thinking of, either.

Seriously, do you know what I hate? Well- what? Yeah, poaching on game reserves, stores with bad return policies, and hypocrisy, yes, yes, and yes, I hate all those things. But I was trying- tuna salad, I'll give you that, that's something else I hate. But I was trying to prove a point, to introduce this ignorant review. So, with that in mind, do you know what I hate? Ok, this is ridiculous. Yes, I hate SUVs. Yes, I hate squirrels. Yes, I hate "Home Improvement". But I'm really- ALRIGHT ALREADY!!! Yes, I hate wasps. Yes, I hate having a hole right in the big toe of my sock. Yes, I hate people who drive in the passing lane. Yes, I hate ink jet printer cartridges. Anyone else? Anyone? Really now, anyone else want to contribute something I hate? You're done, now, then, right? You're all done? Ok, then, let's get on with it. Time to be serious.

Do you know what I hate? Mucousy discharge? Oh, for Pete's sake, let's just get on with the review already.

Princess Mononoke

Ok, now that you've had your fun and you've all driven the blogger crazy with your "What about tornadoes?" and "What about those wind-up monkeys that clap the cymbals?", it's time to move on to today's ignorant review. Do you know what I hate? Anime! I hate it! I mean, first of all, it doesn't make a lick of sense. There's always some teenage girl who meets up with monsters and demons and spirits and little creatures and what not while she's trying to finish some quest for something that not even the people making the film seem to know what it is. And none of it matters, anyhow, because as soon as you start to think there might be something as inconsequential as, oh, I don't know, PLOT, then some dancing bear or giant baby comes in and parades around and hijacks the entire story, at least until a train being driven by a talking frog crashes through the whole thing and releases a flock of doves from the mouth of a sleeping prince who falls in love with the teenage girl. And then they walk off to a castle on a green hill, leaving the viewer with the lingering, important question of "What the hell did I just watch?"

Now, apparently, some people (and you know who you are)(and you are a bunch of greasy weirdos who sit on the Internets all day arguing whether the teenage girl from whatever is the latest anime disaster is is hotter than the teenage girl from last year's anime disaster, and then you write horrible, pornographic fan fiction where said cartoon teenage girl comes to your mom's basement where you are hiding out all day and does things to you that even Bill Clinton wouldn't dream of doing OUTSIDE of the Oval Office) find anime enjoyable. Of course, some people also find getting hit by a board enjoyable. Some people might even find reading this blog posting enjoyable. Ok, that might be going too far. But some people find anime enjoyable. At least enough people enjoy it that they keep making the crap. Well, anime geeks (and, yes, I'm talking to all of you who know the thirty-two different types of anime by heart, and could have an intense discussion on whether sentai (or, as they say in France, le sentai) is better than hentai (or, as the French would say, l'hentai)) let me give to you, free of charge (donations accepted, though) a little PSA for Y-O-U: writing pornographic anime fan fiction in your mom's basement while eating Cheetos will not EVER attract a real live girl. Never. You are dooming yourself to your mom's basement for eternity. Get out. Get some sunshine. See that real girls do not all wear plaid skirts that flash their underwear every time they turn. Come on, do you really want to find yourself at sixty-eight typing fantasies about you making love to teenage cartoon characters with one hand while your mom screams down from upstairs that she's pooped herself again? Listen and listen well, if you want to save your lives: Anime sucks.

And not only does it suck because it has nonsensical plots built around the sketchiest of characters, but it sucks even harder just based on the hideous design of the animation. I mean, these things are UGLY with a capital UG. What if, in the real world, everyone you encountered had eyes the size of manhole covers with pupils the size of basketballs, noses like fish, and crooked slits of mouths with no lips that flash into "o's" and back to slits whenever they talk? And, what if everyone's heads had swollen to encephalitic portions and their hair stuck out in random clumps and spikes and could just as easily be purple or green as brown or black? And all the girls wore Catholic school-girl uniforms that were never long enough to cover their underwear and all the boys wore shiny track suits left over from an ABBA concert? It would be like living in the world of Strawberry Shortcake, only without the sexiness of Lemon Meringue. I mean, not that I find Lemon Meringue sexy. Or, I mean, not that I even know who she is. Or anything about Strawberry Shortcake. Not like those Internets nerds. Yeah, they think Strawberry Shortcake is sexy! Yeah, they photoshop naked pictures of her! Stupid Internets Nerds! Perverts! But not me, that's them.

(Of course, it would be argued that, in any discussion of anime, I'd be a stupid idiot if I didn't take a moment to mention all the -mons, such as "Pokemon" and "Digimon" and "Dragonballmon" and "Pubismons" and all their sword fighting ilk. To that, I can only say, "Duh! I is a brain!" 'cause I am not going to dedicate one extra pixel or flex of my fingers from the home keys to these retarded bastard animated children of the WWE. You might gotta collect them all. Me, I gotta blog to write)

Anyhow, once you get past the fact that every inhabitant of Animeland looks like they have a syndrome, and the fact that there will not be any plot or story development or conflict or even sense, and the fact that a two story mouse wearing a diaper could appear at any time and the movement of the lips does not match the words AT ANY TIME EVEN WHEN SPEAKING JAPANESE, anime is pretty enjoyable. Wait. No, it's not. It's pretty horrible. To demonstrate this, I have chosen a film I have never seen, "Princess Mononoke", to provide an ignorant review.

Ok, what's the plot of this film? Well, I think it is safe to assume it is about a princess. And this princess, dressed in a plaid skirt and suit jacket and showing her underwear whenever she moves, must free her kingdom from an evil spell in the form of a black cloud with a dog's head that blocks out the sun. So, she sets out to find the witch, an old woman with amazing wrinkles and an enormous rear end, that can remove the spell. To get there, she must take a flying bus driven by a monkey in a hat. But, the bus crashes into the side of a mountain filled with waterfalls where the princess meets a prince in a tracksuit, carrying a sword, who introduces her to a talking spider. The spider takes the prince and the princess to the steam powered center of the mountain, where gears clang and steam hisses, and the spider insists they must work there forever. But a fish swims into the mountain and transforms into a horse that the prince and princess ride out through a tiny doorway. Then, a giant, lizard-like creature shows up wearing a diaper and parades around while some kids fight at it's feet. Then the witch releases a comet storm. Then a ten-foot tall spirit that doesn't talk but moves all hurky-jerky takes everyone into a forest of mushrooms. Then a subway crashes through the mountain, and the witch falls to the sea, where she transforms into a turtle and is washed out to an island, where she shakes her reptilian fist and curses the mainland. Then the people celebrate and the prince transforms to a flock of ravens and the princess transforms to a sea serpent and the prince transforms to a wolf and the princess transforms back to a human and shows off her underwear. And none of the lips match the words at anytime. And actors you have heard of but couldn't recognize their voices even if they were wearing name tags, such as Kirsten Dunst and Alec Baldwin, dub the English versions with all the passion that can be mustered for a five-day paycheck.

Ok, so that may not be the 100% ACTUAL plot, but why argue over a few little things like facts that don't matter anyhow. That's close enough to catch the idea of the thing. Besides, facts are tiresome things that require "research" and "care", and, for our long-time reader, you know that we here at the Frog Blog never get so hung up on facts that it prevents us from posting. Besides, what really matters is that this snoozefest is directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is known as the "Japanese Walt Disney". This label, though, assumes two very offensive things. First is the racist implication that the real Walt Disney was not, somehow, "Japanese" enough. Second, there is the assumption that Walt Disney would ever make a movie while sitting in a steam room high on peyote. Well, other than "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros", I seriously doubt that "Uncle" Walt would do that to us. He might lecture us about American History, but he'd NEVER make a movie in a steam room while high on peyote, which is pretty much how I think "Princess Mononoke" was made, along with every other piece of anime.

So, to sum up, what is the difference of the product quotient when we check the remainder of our review? Oh, yeah, "Princess Mononoke" sucks. And how is this anime-inspired suckiness calculated? Big-eyed, swollen head character design? Check. Lips don't match the words? Check. Vaguely familiar actors that we honestly don't care about doing the English dub? Check. Talking animals and witches and spirits? Check. Nonsense? Check. Plot? Uh, noncheck. Put it all together and what do we have? Something only a fanboy, hands stained orange with Cheetos residue, musty smell of basement seeping into his pasty pores, could love. As for the rest of us, I'm gonna make like a giant diaper-wearing hippopotamus and get the hell out of here.

My Rating: 0 Stars, all of which fall down to the Earth while the Princess watches from a cliff at the edge of the sea just before transforming into a hawk, and showing her underwear in the process

Trivia: "The Three Caballeros", the only movie ever made by Walt Disney while high in a steam room, is also the only movie to ever use the tagline "Thrilling Beyond Words! Amazing Beyond Belief". Coincidentally, with the addition of a few more lines, "Acting Beyond Decency!" and "Fluids Beyond Viscosity!" and "Humans Beyond Depravity!", and you then have an exact transcript of the police report from the hotel where my wife and I spent our wedding night.

Bonus: "But wait!" you all say (and, if you didn't, I'd appreciate it if you could say it now so that we can move on). "How can you leave the topic of anime without a picture of the way Jennifer Connelly would look if she was an anime character?" Fear not, me buckos! Uncle Matteo wouldn't let you down! His wife and family, maybe, but not you! So here, due to unpopular demand, is an actual created picture of what Jennifer Connelly would look like if she were an anime character. (Her underwear flashing out from under her dress, unfortunately, I will have to leave up to the fanboys to write in their fiction).

P.S. I just looked it up on your precious Internets, and, for your information, "Strawberry Shortcake" WAS for girls OR boys, so there is nothing wrong with a BOY who wants to play with them. It's not even wrong for a boy to know that middle name of the Peculair Purple Pieman (which might be "Percival") or that Huckleberry Pie's dog's name is "Pupcake". So there. I'm gonna go brush their hair now, and there is nothing wrong with that. Go back to your anime porn, freaks. Leave me and Blueberry Muffin alone.