PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*
The second and last UNICO feature film from Japan's Sanrio company is a marked improvement over the first entry. It succeeds in large part because the story is new rather than an adaptation of one of Tezuka's tales. The only thing the screenwriters took from the "God of Manga" was a lookalike version of Piro from this story. The only commonality with Tezuka is that Piro-- renamed "Mars"-- is said to be a sphinx. Otherwise, he's just there to provide a little extra comedy relief.
As in the series proper, Unico starts out getting dumped in s new realm, this one being a forest full of animals. Strangely, the first creatures Unico encounters are a bunch of housecats, led by a bossy feline named (in English) "Magnificat." The mean cat runs Unico off, but he's then drafted into the service of a sorcerer named Toby, who serves an unknown lord of magic.
Unico happens across a house in the woods, occupied by a little girl named Cheri, her mother and her father. Cheri immediately bonds with Unico and the little unicorn shows her some of his magic. Cheri mentions that she also has an absent brother, who turns out to be none other than the good-looking Toby.
Toby's basically a nice guy who made a Faustian deal for power. His master Kuruku-- who looks a little like someone's nightmare after watching YELLOW SUBMARINE-- has an explicable desire to turn all the people and animals into ambulatory puppets. And they're not even puppets with individual features; just huge creations of nondescript paper.
Though Unico and Cheri go through a lot of time-killing motions, ISLAND keeps tension constant in that Kuruku's peculiar crusade isn't explained until the last half hour. Unico is a little more combative here than in the previous movie, and thus closer to Tezuka's model.
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