animated – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Dog Man

Note: I will be pausing the blog for a few months. I’ll certainly be back, but there are a lot of things Ariana and I are getting in order as we go through a big life change.

Dog Man (2025)
Written and directed by Peter Hastings

While making the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas was asked why so many elements seem directly lifted from the original trilogy of films. His response to this was, “It’s poetry. It rhymes.” I’ve come to find that life as a whole is like that. The older I get, the more connections and parallels I can draw between one event and another. In reality, these are just moments that happen to me, but the meaning I personally derive from them turns these interactions into a kind of poetry. I recently had a moment that reminded me of another from nearly four years ago.

TV Review – Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop (1998)
Written by Shinichirō Watanabe, Keiko Nobumoto, Michiko Yokote, Ryōta Yamaguchi, Sadayuki Murai, Dai Satō, and Akihiko Inari
Directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, Yoshiyuki Takei, Ikurō Satō, Kunihiro Mori, Tetsuya Watanabe, Ikurō Satō, Kunihiro Mori, and Hirokazu Yamada

Last year, after a lifetime of not finding anime TV series really appealing, I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion. I enjoyed it and decided to check out another anime series. I’ve been well aware of titles over the years but never felt like sitting down and watching them. One show I heard about over and over in the early 2000s was Cowboy Bebop. I watched a lot of Adult Swim comedies, and I can recall a vague image of Cowboy Bebop, but I don’t think I had ever seen an entire episode. I saw reviews later of people claiming it was the best anime of all time, in their opinion, and several people I know adore it. This seemed like a good choice for my next watch.

My Favorite Television Watched in 2024

X-Men ‘97 Season One (Disney+)
Read my full review here

I was skeptical of the animated X-Men revival. Like many others, I have been burned out on superhero shows and films for a while now. However, this was the one Marvel thing in 2024 that I actually enjoyed. It was probably aided by reading Chris Claremont’s 16-year run on Uncanny X-Men this year, where so many stories on X-Men animated old & new drew from. Stylistically the ‘97 revival felt like the 1990s version, but with slightly more sophisticated storytelling and some major upgrades regarding the animation. There were a few duds; the Jubilee/Mojo episode was meh. The season overall was fantastic. I was very happy to see characters like Nightcrawler added to the regular roster; it always felt odd that he wasn’t included as a regular. We get a big cliffhanger that suggests some twists for a second season. Hoping they can keep the quality levels just as high going forward.

PopCult Podcast – Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point/Flow

A family gathers at the matriarch’s home for the holidays in the early 2000s. A cat finds itself caught in massive flood and relying on a group of other animals to survive.

PopCult Podcast – Halloween Spooktacular 2024

Frankencows, J-Horror, Little Wednesday, and the Sanderson Sisters are all here to make this Halloween a scare of a good time.

PopCult Podcast – Robot Dreams/Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

A lonely New Yorker mail orders a companion but a series of complications split them apart and they dream of being reunited. A woman haunted by strange encounters in her adolescence returns to the old house where it all started.

Patron Pick – Inside Out

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Inside Out (2015)
Written by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley
Directed by Pete Docter with Ronnie del Carmen

Pete Docter has been a significant part of Pixar since their feature film debut with Toy Story in 1995, being one of the contributors to the script. His feature directorial debut was the well-regarded Monsters Inc., followed by Up. Inside Out was his third feature, with his most recent entry being 2020’s Soul. From just a little reading about Docter and seeing his work, I can tell he’s very introspective and thoughtful. Inside Out was inspired by his watching his daughter start internalizing her emotions as she began adolescence and wishing he could know what she was thinking. He and his team consulted with psychologists throughout the process to ensure their anthropomorphized portrayal of the human psyche was true to science.

TV Review – Batman: The Caped Crusader

Batman: The Caped Crusader (2024)
Written by Jase Ricci, Bruce Timm, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Adamma Ebo, Adanne Ebo, Hailey Gross, and Marc Bernardin
Directed by Christina Sotta, Matt Peters, and Christopher Berkeley

Does the world need another Batman adaptation? Probably not, but that won’t stop Warner Discovery from pumping it out to make money. Thankfully, this animated series is helmed by the legendary Bruce Timm, the showrunner responsible for Batman: The Animated Series, a program that redefined superhero media on television. He brings that same moodiness and sense of place to this series, which follows Batman in an alternate 1940s/50s noir setting. With writers like Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker onboard, that means you’re in for a show that focuses on Batman’s detective work and surprised me by making it more about the characters than big action set pieces.

Movie Review – Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Written and directed by Isao Takahata

Not all the horrors in Japan were the result of the two atomic bombings. What gets less coverage in U.S. history books are the ongoing firebombings of civilian areas. The same B-29s that would eventually drop the horrid nuclear weapon would also drop standard bombs and burn neighborhoods to the ground, creating orphans and widows. What made this so much worse was the fascist stance of the society. There was some community, but certainly not the level needed for people to recover. Whereas now we can see those who still survive in Gaza keep hope alive by caring for one another, these sentiments were not nearly as widespread in imperial Japan. Some people even found it within themselves to walk by dying children and not think to help them.

Movie Review – Barefoot Gen

Barefoot Gen (1983)
Written by Keiji Nakazawa
Directed by Mori Masaki

The moment when the bomb drops in Barefoot Gen shakes you. The film does an excellent job presenting itself as a slice of life initially. We follow a Japanese family. Learn their relationship dynamics. The parents discuss worries about the future. Mom is pregnant. Dad feels powerless in this fascist society. The kids argue & play. Then, without warning, the world turns into Hell. Flesh melts off bone. People are crushed to death. Some keep living, and we wonder if it might have been better if they died. You start to think about how little we’re taught in the United States about what happened after the bomb was dropped beyond “the end of the war.”