Batman vs Robin Review

Dawn of...a really bland animated movie...

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with a new review. Today we'll be taking a look at Batman vs Robin: The latest DC Animated film. Let's not waste any time and dive on in.

Blast From The Past: The Life & Times of Juniper Lee Episode 1

You can't stop the girl

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with another Blast From The Past. Today, we'll be taking a look at The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: a series I was sure Cartoon Network had all but forgotten until it got a mention in the Steven Universe/Uncle Grandpa crossover.

Shaman's Ten Favorite Episodes of 'The Flash' Season One

Love this pic, but am I the only one that thinks Barry's left hand looks broken here?

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with more Superhero talk. Folks, tonight marked the season finale of CW's 'The Flash'. As I more or less said several months ago The Flash went from a series that I really didn't care about from its first announcement to what is, in my opinion, the best Superhero series on T.V. today. The quality this series brought with just one season has been amazing. And in celebration of the season finale tonight, I decided to give a list of my five favorite episodes from the season. Warning: Spoilers ahead and much like my favorite Dragon Ball moments List, the episodes listed aren't in an order of most to least favorite. Without further ado, let's speed on in.

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Polarization

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with some more superhero talk. If you've been living under a rock the last three or so weeks, the teaser trailer to Batman vs Superman dropped and much like WB/DC's previous movie Man of Steel, it has fans split down the middle: Some absolutely love it and claim that it's the downfall of Marvel movies as we know it, while others, myself included, weren't all that impressed. But, it's this polarizing nature that comes with not just BVS, but Warner Brothers and DC's whole cinematic universe, that's been a topic of discussion...or slander in some cases. With this trailer out, and with the movie less than a year away, I figured now would be the time to discuss my feelings on Batman vs Superman, why I think some fans aren't all for the movie, and the best things that Warner Brothers could do to help this movie, and to a certain extent, the cinematic universe, flourish.

Dragon Ball Super: Thoughts & Hopes

They're back baby...

Greetings Ladies in Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back once again! Earlier this week, the minds of the entire Dragon Ball fandom was BLOWN when this piece of news dropped: A new Dragon Ball Series, titled Dragon Ball Super, has been slated for July. To those that don't fully know the significance of this (Although it was trending on all social media sites at one point so I'm sure you all know by now), the last Dragon Ball Series was Dragon Ball GT, which finished airing eighteen years ago. So yeah...this is pretty big news. As for what I think, I'm super excited, I love the world of Dragon Ball and I was just happy that we were in getting new movies in recent years after going two decades without them, so hearing that there is a new series coming is...amazing to put it frankly. Of course with a new series, there comes new hopes for fans and things that they would want to see, and here are some of my hopes for Dragon Ball Super

1) Expansion on the 12 Gods of Destruction

This isn't an official picture of the Gods, just REALLY good fan art

Now when DBS was first announced there was a snippet of information of what the series will entail. Fuji T.V. Producer Osamu Nozaki when asked about the series said that there was going to be a villain in the series stronger Buu or Frieza. Some fans were a little concerned on this issue and they had a right to be. After all, Dragon Ball GT has kind of proven that when you try to go bigger and go on a much larger scale than previously done before, you lose quality; some fans were already calling foul in Dragon Ball 'Resurrection F' when Frieza came back and trained himself to be on par with Goku and Vegeta. But I do believe that the series can go larger than Buu and Frieza. I do recall a certain movie two years ago that revealed that the DB world as we know was it only the seventh in twelve different universes. My suggestion is that if Super is a sequel and it is to have a villain stronger than Buu, then we have to see more of the Gods of Destruction and possibly, the different universes they come from. my pitch for it is that maybe the higher tier Gods caught wind of Beerus not going through with destroying the Earth at the end of Battle of Gods and decided to finish the job he couldn't. So now the Z-Fighters have to get together and possibly team up with Beerus (Beerus joining them because he doesn't want anyone else trying to steal his job) to stop these new gods from destroying their planet.

2) More emphasis on the Next Generation

This one's admittedly more wishful thinking on my part

I remember a line Goku said when he fought Kid Buu near the climax of the Buu Saga in DBZ. That he wanted the kids: Gohan, Goten, and Trunks to be ones that would save the planet and that he wouldn't be around forever when things went South (Of course this was from the old Funimation dub which could have been wrong for all I know...). But that line still speaks out to me. So my pitch for the series is that the first villain of Super that's stated to be stronger than Buu will be the final villain that the current generation of Z-Fighters, that being Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, etc., will take on and beat, and that will serve as sort of a last hurrah for those characters. Then following those events, they will play more background/secondary/mentor roles while you have Goten and Trunks stepping up into the roles that Goku and Vegeta filled. The way I have this pictured in my head is that this takes place shortly after the end of the original manga, where Goku left to train Uub. I think if you do that, you can scale back on the power of the villains and focus more on developing Goten and Trunks into their people and not just clones of their dads. 

3) Delve into the characters' personal lives

Now I know that this is Dragon Ball, a franchise known for its martial arts antics, and I'm also aware that Akira Toriyama is a very simple writer and that he didn't spend too much time on the characters getting together outside of: 'Hey. There's a bad guy, we need to stop him.' But I think Super can do something that DBZ didn't do (I'm talking about the manga, not what the anime added in); and that is to give us more insight on who these characters we know and love are when they AREN'T training or trying to stop 'dangerous threat to the planet Number 626'. One of the reasons why I really enjoyed Gohan in high school and as the great Saiyaman was because for a short amount of time, we got to see Gohan be a normal kid for the most part; it's the same reason I loved Goku and Piccolo learning to drive, because we got to see these powerful people just do everyday stuff, and it was fun. And I really hope we get to see more of that in Super; to play into my number two hope on this list, maybe we can see Goten and Trunks entering school themselves and trying to fit in with all the other kids, or we could see Gohan and his family life with Videl and Pan, or hell, maybe we could see Krillin and him enduring the pain of his daughter going through puberty. Small, personal stuff like this could make the series that match better

And finally 4) NO VISUAL F**K UPS!!!

I can't... take my eyes off of this picture...

Toei Animation, the same company that did the adaptation of the original series all the way back in 1986 are back at the helms of this new series. Why am I making note of this? Because the series was announced to be in the summer of this year, and yeah...Toei has a bad reputation for inconsistent and shoddy art/animation. If by some ungodly miracle that someone at Toei animation is reading this then let me say it: Toei, this is Dragon Ball: a franchise that A LOT of fans hold near and dear to their hearts, myself included. do not, I repeat, DO NOT take shortcuts with Dragon Ball Super like you did with Sailor Moon Crystal.

If I see sh*t like this in DBS, someone's getting a Dragon Fist rammed right down their throat!!!

But that's all I have to say on Dragon Ball Super for now. Will it be good? Will it be bad? Only time will tell. But as for now, expectations are high, and my excitement is through the roof. If there are any things you wish to see from Dragon Ball Super let me know.

Til next time folks, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying: Toei you better not F**K up with Digimon Adventure Tri either.

Yeah, you delaying the series better mean you've learned to not just copy and paste one facial expression on all the characters...

Take care...

Avengers: Age of Ultron thoughts

Big Thanks to my friends that hooked me up with the ticket to watch this movie

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, the Shaman of Animation back again with some more Superhero talk. Last night, I saw Avengers Age of Ultron and needless to say, it was AWESOME!! I had to get my thoughts on the movie out. No worries people, I will keep this as spoiler free as possible.

After a mission to retrieve Loki's scepter from the first Avengers movie, Tony Stark gets a crazy idea and with the help of Bruce Banner uses the scepter in an attempt to create artificial intelligence in an attempt to have in Tony's words: "A suit of armor around the world". The end result of this experimentation is Ultron, who wants the same thing that his creator does, to help the world and keep it in peace. Except Ultron's idea of helping the world is to completely wipe out human life as we know it; and The Avengers ain't having that and now they have to stop this machine.

In the weeks building up to Age of Ultron, I definitely felt there was some pressure on Marvel to deliver. After all, the first Avengers movie is three years old and the novelty of seeing these characters come together has worn off; there needed to be something there to shake things up. Combine that with the fact that this movie introduces three new characters to the MCU (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and The Vision) and that it also needed to be something that helped foreshadow to Marvel's Phase 3, you'll see that there was a LOT of stuff that could have gone wrong in this movie, but luckily AOU is a movie that fires on all cylinders.

A lot of the stuff that you loved from the first Avengers movie is still here in the sequel: the comedy and witty banter is there and better than ever, the visuals are still great, and the fights just make love to your eyes (Hulk vs Hulkbuster...Yes...). The movie manages to do all that and more as it dives a little deeper into who these characters are. We see more of the team's personal lives, we get to see their fears and we get to see them challenged in a way that they weren't in a way they were in the previous film. To add to this little tidbit, to everyone who thought Hawkeye was lame in the first Avengers movie, AOU does a great job of redeeming him.

The New Kids on The Block

The new heroes in the movie to join the Avengers are Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and The Vision. There was a lot of concern in regards of how Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch would be portrayed in the movie considering they are both X-Men characters...and the rights to the X-Men belong to fox, meaning that these characters histories were changed to fit in the MCU. Despite all this, these two were fun to watch on the screen. Their origins fit in perfectly with what the MCU wants to do with them. Both Scarlet Witch's and Quicksilver's powers looked great on screen and while The Vision didn't have a lot of screen time in the movie, he definitely left a great first impression. I'm very excited to see where all three of these characters go in the future.

And now let's talk about the big bad himself...

From the trailers of the movie, I had the impression that Ultron was this big bad menacing villain, and while he still was, the movie's portrayal of the character was something I wasn't actually expecting. In a lot of instances, the character feels a lot like he's an ordinary person and he believes in his mind that removing the Avengers and humanity itself is what's best for the world in order for it to move forward. In a way he's like the Kingpin from the Daredevil Netflix series, except he's nowhere near as developed as the Kingpin, but he's still one of the best villains we've seen from Marvel.

 It's been confirmed that Joss Whedon was stepping down from Marvel and The Avengers movies while the Russo brothers (The guys behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier) will take care of the two part Infinity War movies. If Age of Ultron was Whedon's final hurrah with the MCU, he definitely went out with a bang. Avengers: Age of Ultron, like the rest of the MCU, to me represents why we all love superheroes and superhero movies: you have a bunch of guys in colorful skin tight suits trying to stop an army of robots from trying to destroy the world. Does it sound silly? Yeah, but it's also a fun experience, one that screams to your inner child and action movie lover and I think the guys behind the movie understand that and they made the best movie possible that celebrates what superhero stories are at their core. It's a must see movie for everyone.

Til Next time folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation, and I'm patiently waiting for when Spider-Man shows up in the Avengers movies.

Everyone reading this get #IronSpiderSuit  Trending on Twitter. I want to see that sh*t in a movie!!

Take Care...