Grizmelder

1. an impact font meme featuring a picture of dathon, the alien captain from the star trek: the next generation episode “darmok.” text reads “blorbo from my shows”

OKAY OKAY GUYS I KNOW THE STANDOUTS THIS YEAR FROM CHINESE ANIMATION ARE NEZHA 2 AND THE LEGEND OF HEI 2 BUT I NEED TO PUT IN A GOOD WORD FOR THE FILM NOBODY!!!! 🥺 🥺 🥺 🥺

Finally got to see it tonight (I am SO glad I live near a city with a big Chinese population so the film was still showing; I heard it only got to show in LA for like 2 weeks and it was during a road trip I was on so I was scared I’d miss it). 🥹

It’s an expansion of episode 1 from the short collection Yao—Chinese Folktales, which can be watched here:

Yao—Chinese Folktales Episode 1:

The film is focused on the life of the small-time yao that get no names and are basically henchmen in Journey to the West where they’re basically cannon fodder for Sun Wukong ADKFJSKFJSKSH.

In the movie, the plot is that the main characters (a boar and a toad) decide to impersonate Sun Wukong and his gang to try and be respected but also gain immortality, gathering two other yao to help them on their journey. 🔥

It’s a very funny movie but also pretty low-key—less flashy in terms of action than The Legend of Hei 2 and Nezha 2 and also sillier than the former but less immature than the latter!

It also has a very hopeful message and themes since it’s focused on the underdog and kind of more clearly reflects our reality (since the yao suffer from the hierarchy system and struggle to keep/find jobs).

I even forced my younger brother to watch it and it’s actually his favourite donghua film this year out of the other 2 I similarly forced him to watch in theatres. 😆

Here’s the trailer!:

Official MV:

Behind the scenes:

And kind of depressingly, we only have one video on YouTube reviewing it… 😭

But they really liked it too!:

Plus it has legacy too since it’s animated by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which was practically responsible for all animation in China after the 1920s-1930s in the 20th century before China opened up in the 1980s, and they evidently have tons of important historical animation under their belt like Uproar in Heaven (1961-1964) and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979).

Nobody even references SAFS’ work with the Journey to the West characters, along with the iconic 1986 adaptation. ^^

Evidently Nobody itself is not doing too hot in western theatres and has already left some theatres, but I’d encourage you guys to watch it in theatres if you can! It is quite a pretty film and it’s cute and funny and honest and subdued and heartfelt and adds a really fun new dimension to Journey to the West.

It actually makes it so that this story doesn’t mess up the JttW canon at all despite using a villain directly from the story, so it can totally be taken as canon. 🔥

My favourite character is surprisingly enough the weasel ALFJSKDJSKS. HE’S ANIMATED PRETTY CUTELY AND HE HAS A FUN LITTLE PERSONALITY AND ARC TOO!

(Actually all the characters have pretty strong character arcs!)

OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THIS BUT NOBODY IS NOW CHINA’S HIGHEST-GROSSING 2D ANIMATED FILM EVER!!

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

^ I stand by this.

and then she raised the bar again 

i mean, surya did not pioneer the backflip. she herself stated that her coach suggested that she start doing backflips on ice because of a skater named norbert schramm who was performing them in europe at the time. scott cramer pulled off 10,032 backflips over the course of his career, and he retired seven years before surya even began competing. surya is THE FIRST AND ONLY skater in history to perform a backflip and land on one skate in competition, but the most important part of it wasn’t the feat itself but WHY SHE DID IT. 

and ok, the first person to successfully do a backflip on ice was skippy baxter in an ice show in the 1940s. there has only been one legal backflip performed in actual competition by terry kubicka in 1976. immediately after he pulled it off, the isu banned the move from competitions. please note that yes, terry kubicka was a white male figure skater. and for context, surya was born in 1973. i sincerely doubt that the isu was banning the backflip because of a THREE-YEAR-OLD. 

the isu had very good non-racism related reasons for banning the backflip because well, figure skating is fucking hard. i think we frequently underestimate just how difficult it is because of how easy they make it look. i mean top figure skaters are still working on consistently landing quad jumps in competition. it’s so easy to flub a jump and get injured, and it’s super common for skaters to spend huge chunks of the off season not training because they’ve injured themselves.

SO DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS IT WOULD BE IF BACKFLIPS WERE ALLOWED IN COMPETITIVE SKATING???? if you mess this move up, you’re not just going to break an ankle or fuck up your muscles, you’d break your neck on the ice. you could FUCKING DIE. and this is by no means the first or last move to get banned by the isu for being too dangerous. (the one that comes to mind is the head banger death spiral because seriously what a name).

the reason why this is just so upsetting to me is because i feel like you guys are really simplifying surya’s narrative. yes, surya was a FUCKING BADASS. LIKE HER FIRST SEASON IN SENIOR COMPETITIONS, SHE LANDED A BACKFLIP DURING PRACTICE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MIDORI ITO, THE FAVORITE FOR THE 1992 OLYMPICS. IN THE SAME COMPETITION, SHE BECAME THE ONLY WOMAN TO EVER ATTEMPT A QUAD TOE LOOP IN COMPETITION, and the first time anyone had even successfully pulled that off was a mere three years earlier. 

and yes, surya had to deal with A LOT of racism. because of her skin color and her build and her athleticism and her style, she didn’t fit into the “ice princess”. they pegged her as a rebel, and they treated her as such. the judges were constantly nitpicking her skating style and criticizing her artistry because she wasn’t this light and graceful skater that they thought female figure skaters should be. (black ballerinas suffer from the same plight). she was constantly pushing the boundaries, but she consistently got lower scores than her white counterparts. and despite that, she was A THREE-TIME WORLD SILVER MEDALIST, A FIVE-TIME EUROPEAN CHAMPION, AND A NINE-TIME FRENCH NATIONAL CHAMPION.

in the 1994 world championships, surya’s final score tied for first place with yuka sato’s. it came down to a tiebreaker vote, and the judges picked yuka because she fit in better with the ice princess image. surya knew why she the judges didnt pick her. during the awards ceremony, she refused to step onto the medals podium and took off the silver medal. she was crying, and the crowd was booing at her.

the 1998 olympics was going to be surya’s last hurrah. she knew that the 97-98 season would be her last. when the judges gave her a low score on her short program for surprise surprise racist reasons, she knew that there was no way that she could win. 

so surya decided to make a point. 

she hadn’t planned to do this from the start because she knew that the move was illegal and doing it could get her disqualified, but after seeing her short program score, surya basically on the spot decided to replace the triple in her free skate with the backflip landing on one skate. she hadn’t been training for this move specifically, she just pulled it off right then and there on the olympic stage. and while the backflip was banned for being too dangerous, another reason for it to be banned was because the skater would land on both skates, and jumps are always landed with one skate.

surya pulling off this banned move was basically her last FUCK YOU to the judges because they’d been screwing her over since the start of her career. she was challenging them by making a previously illegal move technically legal. the judges didn’t disqualify her, but they didn’t accept the move as legal either, and they deducted points from her score, so surya placed 10th overall. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER. when surya finished her program, she turned her back on the judges (a huge no-no because it is highly disrespectful) because she didn’t care about their opinion at this point. SHE’D MADE HISTORY. their decision wouldn’t change that.

(surya performs the backflip at 3:28)

My faves in case you need any recommendations. (Some of these are really not appropriate for children, so keep that in mind lol).

The Dark Crystal - 1982 - the Skeksis will give you nightmares. I am honestly very proud of the remake for being just as disturbing if not more so than the original.

Watership Down - 1978- NOT FOR CHILDREN - Jesus Christ why did so many of our parents show us this film at a formative age? It's all about trauma and death and displacement and there's literal blood and murder. Not a G Rated Film. Still, it's very good. Loads better than that CGI remake from a decade ago.

The Secret Of NIMH - 1982 - Incredible movie. Minor disturbing elements. Probably my favorite on the list. It's just a great adventure story with real world issues (animal experimentation, mental health problems, disabilities) and there's even a lovely romance. Highly recommend.

Legend - 1985- This film is just straight up disturbing. Yes, there's a lot of beautiful shots of unicorns and sexy, 20-something year old (insane Scientology wack job) Tom Cruise and gorgeous Mia Sara, but there's also torture, madness and literally the Devil (Tim Curry is the entire reason you should watch this film)

Labyrinth - 1986 - I only really have two words. David. Bowie. My 10 year old self found out about a lot of burgeoning kinks while watching that man prance around in eyeliner and a codpiece. It's a wonderful adventure as well - if you ignore the blatant romantic and sexual tension between Bowie and an underage Jennifer Connelly (none of us could)

The NeverEnding Story - 1984 - Lots of disturbing imagery in this one! The Nothing was fucking terrifying, and the creatures in this world seemed uniformly creepy, but still incredibly well done. Love the adventure of it.

The Princess Bride - 1987 - Not technically a kids film maybe? Lots of adult themes and adult jokes, but safe for kids imo. I adored it and still do. Incredible performances by Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. R.O.U.S, Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! (need I say more?)

The Last Unicorn - 1982 - A beautiful film with stunning representations of innocence, good and evil. Just gorgeous really. I should rewatch it as it's been 20 years or so.

Adding a couple...

LadyHawk.

A romance / Action film about a knight and a maiden who are cursed. Her to transform into a hawk during the day & him into a wolf at night. Forever keeping them apart.

DragonSlayer

A coming of age tale about a wizard apprentice who must save a village from a dragon & the sacrifice lottery the village has established around it.

(Rare example of 1980s genderfuckery)

Willow

LOTR before we ever thought a LOTR film would ever be possible. You've probably seen this one, but just in case.

The Flight of Dragons

Transplanted into the body of a dragon a scientist must come to terms with magic, even while explaining it.

Krull

Classic adventure story severely undervalued in its time.

Some of the creepiest spider stop motion to ever exist.