Howl's Unicorn Wars - Renegade Animation #103

In this episode, Captain Kaye and the Animation Guru discuss writer and director Alberto Vázquez's Unicorn Wars, and continue the Ghibli Journey with Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle!

What’s going on, everyone? This is your Captain speaking, and get ready for a fascinating double feature this week! As happy as I am to be back on the Ghibli Journey for this podcast, I promise we didn’t intentionally plan to cover two anti-war films in the same episode. Fortunately, they’re different enough in style and tone to make this a worthwhile discussion. Now, without further ado, here is the latest episode of Renegade Animation!

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Howl’s Moving Castle

Out of all the Miyazaki movies I’ve seen so far on this journey, this one is probably my least favorite. It’s not because it’s bad, in fact even a weak Miyazaki film is still leagues ahead of his contemporaries at their best. The problem is just that I find there to be too many additional subplots that distract from the film’s heart. However, I can see why so many others choose this as their favorite, because it still has a great ensemble cast, and Howl’s character arc is emotionally resonant.

“While the war plotline takes up way too much of the film's runtime, there is still a beautiful story about learning to love life no matter how old you are or if you happen to give your heart and emotions to a fire demon voiced by Billy Crystal and the drive to persevere in tough times.“ -The Animation Guru

Unicorn Wars

You want to see what happens when you combine Apocalypse Now, Bambi and the Bible to create a bleak, hyper-violent splatter war tragedy juxtaposed by the rainbow color palette of our main teddy bear protagonists? The result is Unicorn Wars, a movie that is visually stunning, but narratively overwhelming. Much like Vazquez’s previous film Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, I would not recommend this to children unless you want them to be scarred for life. However, movies like this need to exist for the health of the medium, to prove Guillermo del Toro’s point that animation is cinema. There should be as much room at the table for movies that appeal to all demographics, not just what’s appropriate for kids and families.

“Whether you can gel with the premise or not, Unicorn Wars is an example of a film that deserves to be talked about when bringing up the conversation of how animation is film/cinema or what have you. Being supportive of animation is both supporting the big releases as respectfully as whatever gets released during the award circuit, and it also means animation fans need to venture out into animated fare that’s not just from the US, not just for families, and ones that might be unnerving and experimental. If you don’t, then when you use the “animation is cinema” argument, then you aren’t really for it if you don’t try and watch everything. Unicorn Wars might be a bit blunt and a lot with its messaging, and will definitely leave you speechless, but every animation fan should give this one a watch. It’s coming out on Blu-ray in May but is right now available to purchase or rent digitally. While his films might not be my favorite from each year they are released, I am always going to be excited and down to check out whatever Alberto makes next.“ -The Animation Guru

That’ll do it for this episode! Thank you all for joining us, and stay tuned for more on the horizon!

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