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Are You Afraid Of The Dark’s Sardo & Dr. Vink Recurring Character arcs

10/27/201802/05/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Unlike Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark didn’t really have recurring villains or even characters outside of the kids who told the stories. But there were indeed two characters that we got to see plenty of times and they were Sardo the magic shop owner and Dr. Vink who got to appear in more than one story through out the shows run and were fan favorites so let’s talk about them for a while.

Not only the owner of Sardo’s Magic Mansion but also a bit of an amateur magician, Sardo. He is most famous for his catchphrases “That’s Sar-DOH! No Mister, accent on the do!” and “All right!, but I’m losing on the deal!” and he usually had some type of item that the character of the story needed. His store usually featured both phony stuff as well as real stuff which would usually get either him or others in trouble. He appeared in the following episodes: “The Tale of the Super Specs”, “The Tale of the Dark Dragon”, “The Tale of the Carved Stone”, “The Tale of Cutter’s Treasure: Part 1”, “The Tale of Cutter’s Treasure: Part 2”, “The Tale of a Door Unlocked”, “The Tale of Oblivion” and “The Tale of the Time Trap”.

Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Animated Trilogy Holidays & Crossover w/ Cat in the Hat

10/25/201802/05/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

The Grinch is pretty much the only character of Dr. Seuss that I ever grew up with and most of us are familiar with How The Grinch Stole Christmas? But this character has a few more animated specials from that era and once I knew I had to see them all. The Grinch may have leaked the Smash roster but let’s take a look at the Grinch animated trilogy of holiday specials and if they hold up to the name the X-Mas special did.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Let´s begin with the one that started it all and added a bunch of details the book did not have but became iconic and essential to the character. I first watched this as a kid and likely my first taste of the world of Dr. Seuss. I won´t talk about it much since I think everyone is familiar with it so instead I´ll mention it´s indeed a classic and deserves to have made the Grinch a household name and in general a synonym for disliking things.

I’m sure they never expected it´d be this evergreen when they made it in the 60s and even the live action adaptation I feel did a decent job in adapting a book you can read in 4 minutes into a full length movie. There is a ton of untapped potential with this character and hopefully the love for this X-mas special will mean someone realizes it one of these days.

Elvira Mistress of the Dark Specials A look back

10/24/201802/05/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

I never grew up with Elvira Mistress of the Dark even though I knew exactly who she was in a similar way to Vampirella, hell I didn’t really know the difference between both of them really other than they were horror icons. I somehow started to see some Elvira interviews and I loved her style even though I’m not huge on horror movies her character did everything right that I wanted to check a little more about her. Since she mostly hosted movie intros and commentary there isn’t as much media by herself that I could check out but I was able to find these three Elvira specials.

Elvira Halloween Special 1986

We begin strong with MTV’s Elvira Halloween Special from the awesome year of 1986 and here we get to see Elvira do all kinds of stuff from doing random short skits around Salem along with her usual style of presenting stuff in this case Halloween themed music videos. Add in some fake commercials here and there, her usual witty responses and we have a winner.

Secret Cutting Painful Secrets USA original movie a look back

10/18/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

Being a big fan of the WWF in 1999 so I would watch a lot of commercials from the USA Network, especially when they started promoting their crappy TV movies which were from pretty much any genre like horror to what would be more appropriate as a Lifetime original movie drama and this is exactly what Secret Cutting is. The marketing in Raw is War worked as I watched many of them before giving up but this one stuck with me and I decided to check it out if it was worth any.

The movie uses all the High School stereotypes mixing the drama you’d expect in Degrassi with caricature bullies you’d see in a Disney film. The movie drops you right into her cutting ways and the problems in her life and as usual they’re normal teenage angst. The movie didn’t shy away from cutting or sex, nothing too graphic but enough to get the point.

Vampirella 1996 Live Action Movie is mostly ok

10/10/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

Vampirella is one of those characters that I recognize without question event though I know absolutely nothing about her, I’m surprised with how iconic she is that we’ve never gotten some type of animated film, I mean even Lady Death had one. But when I realized that she got a movie in 1996 I had to check it out, bad reviews or low budget weren’t going to stop me from checking out some type of media based off this character. I think Halloween is the best time to check this out and see what this is all a bout.

Now as I mentioned I’m not familiar with any Vampirella lore or continuity since I just thought she was just a sexualized character for posters with no actual background. But here she is apparently an avenging alien some type of Vampire aliens from another planet called Drakulon and after Ella’s father is killed she goes to Earth to find the killers which include Vlad who is Dracula himself. So yeah plot is not going to be its strong point based on this setup but I definitely didn’t expect Vampirella to have the best origin so yeah I can easily ignore that.

Lady Death Movie you didn’t know existed is well Lady Death

10/07/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

I had no idea who Lady Death was but the character design seems familiar so I’m guessing I’d seen her plenty of times before and when I found out she had an animated movie I decided to check it out. Looking at reviews online it is apparently trash but I can say that it’s rather mediocre but never truly bad.

The story is really not that great but I guess its serviceable since the movie is only an hour and change. We see Lady Death with an army and from there we get a flashback to how things got to that point and she used to be a blonde innocent woman who apparently was the daughter of Satan himself.

First Wakfu cartoon Revival

10/05/201802/04/2021 Luigi Kawasaki

Looking back on..

Wakfu Season 1 and 2 were cult classics but things slowed down after that and it wasn’t until a successful KickStarter campaign for an English dub that the series got a second wind of life since part of the campaign was getting new OVAs and that lead to Netflix wanting to stream the show and an eventual season 3. With Wakfu’s uncertain future let’s take a look at this second wave of adventures that we got with this revival. As with the original show and the spin-offs I watched the original French version of the show which I prefer overall.

The Quest for the Six Dofus Eliatropes – Book 1: The throne of ice Book 2: Ush Book 3: Dragon Mountain

Despite only being three 40 minute OVAs and feeling like a side story in an anime this story is definitely important in the Wakfu canon. Not only that but all the random world building that this mini series does has always been a part of the Wakfu / Dofus universe and doesn’t only help make sense previous stories and bring it all together but also sets up the later adventures. We see how our heroes have evolved since the last time we saw them and things haven’t remained in the status quo for example Tristepin and Evangelyne have kids now and get married, in that order.