Shorts! MGM: An Optical Poem & Silly Symphonies: Farmyard Symphony

(Spoiler Section Length - 7min 5sec)Anime movies attached to shows can be a mixed bag, often struggling to stretch characters and concepts out into a feature-length format, and struggling even further to work as stand-alone films. While many anime movies struggle because the anime they're spun off from are adaptations of manga, and thus they cannot contradict canon, the Cowboy Bebop movie doesn't have that particular problem. All it has to do is slot into its parent series, which was already very episodic in nature. The result is a movie that, to fans of the series, just feels like an extra-long episode (complimentary), but with a much higher budget. Does it still hold up today, if your memories of the original series are hazy at best? Listen to find out!

It's well known that Fantasia could only happen because of the success of Walt Disney's first big feature-length gamble, Snow White. What's less well known are these two shorts that preceeded Fantasia's release, one featuring an important Fantasia collaborator and the other being a bit of a test for a more 'Symphonic' take on a cartoon than the Silly Symphonies often actually exhibited. Are either of these cartoons worth watching on their own merits, though? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 49sec)You don't need us to tell you that the Pokemon franchise is a phenomenon. And while the games are the biggest, most important part of that phenomenon, the anime was no slouch either, especially back in the late 90s. So when they made the very first Pokemon MOVIE? Kids went wild! Two of the three of us were kids back then, and you better believe we went wild too! But all these years later, does the English dub of the original Pokemon movie still hold water? Listen to find out!

Are you a groovy kat? Have you got rhythm? Can you move to the beat? What if your answers to all those questions were 'no', but everyone else at your kollege said 'yes' and they're judging you for it? That's more or less the plot of this weird little kartoon. But is it worth watching? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 8min 20sec)We reach the end of our Looney Tunes movie marathon with the film that inspired the marathon in the first place! This movie came out very recently, but you'd be forgiven for not knowing about it, given how little it was advertised. It's a cartoon 50's sci-fi B-movie starring Porky, Daffy and Petunia, involving a space invader and a copious amount of bubblegum. It's also a premiere example of how little Warner Bros-Discovery values animation in this day and age. But company mismanagement aside, is the film actually... good? Listen to find out!

By the late 30s, Disney had accrued multiple big cartoon stars, but Warner Bros still really just had the one: Porky Pig. Then Porky went on a duck hunt and the studio started to think... maybe we've got the makings for a second star. 1938 is the year they would try to make Daffy Duck a star, and what better way to start than by having him co-star with Porky? In these two shorts we explore Daffy's earliest cartoons where he's a headliner star, and ask ourselves... do these still hold up?

(Spoiler Section Length - 2min 8sec)Looney Tunes Back in Action started life as a Space Jam sequel, but ultimately evolved into its own thing. The true sequel wouldn't come for another decade or two, and rather than switching genres, it shows the Looney Tunes playing basketball yet again, just with a different star athlete this time around: LeBron James. But the Looney Tunes aren't the only Warner Bros properties appearing this time around... no, this time there's a few more. Do they improve the movie? Worsen it? And how's the whole thing hold up, only a few years later? Listen to find out!

While both Disney and Warner Bros created duck characters who would go on to be popular to this day, they weren't the only studios trying to use waterfowl to create memorable characters. Enter Terrytoons, covered on this podcast for the first time! Their creation, Gandy the Goose, isn't exactly a household name these days, but is that because his cartoons are bad? Let's watch and find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 13min 6sec)After Space Jam's success, attempts were immediately made to create a sequel. None of that really panned out until close to 30 years later, but back in the early 2000s a new Looney Tunes live-action hybrid film WAS made... to much less success than Space Jam. But success, critical or financial, does not actually tell one whether a movie is good or not, and the extra screen time for the toons, casting of Brendan Fraser and world-tour vibe of the film certainly all seem promising, so... does this film hold up?

It's time for ducks! And maybe some other forms of foul. But today specifically, it's a lot of ducks, with Disney's very own Donald and his three new co-stars: Huey, Dewey & Louie! These two shorts, the first two released starring the trio, show two very different ways of incorporating them into a Donald Duck short. I think it's ultimately a mix of the two styles that ends up sticking, but listen to find out if either of the two are still worth watching!