Hellboy: Sword of Storms

'Part 1 of an Animated weekend'

Hellboy is everywhere. That is my official mantra now. The comic book series by Mike Mignola became popular a while back due, in my mind, mostly to Mignola's amazing sense of art. Each page is beautifully drawn and created in a style I could only hope to dream in with jagged edges and long drawn out caricatures that never seem to make sense realistically, but which meld together to form a mood using a minimalist style of color. I came a little late to the game, but I have read one of the Hellboy books at least and I have to admit that Mignola is also very talented at writing scripts. In fact, he has convinced me to like Hellboy. The concept of Hellboy previously had never appealed to me. A giant red apocalyptic demon that clobbers things and looks slightly like a monkey becomes good and works with a team of paranormal investigators to fight evil. Honestly, looking back over what I wrote, I don't know why it didn't appeal to me, but the concept just seemed too cheesy. Which is how it should be since Mignola meant it to be a throwback to the pop art and characters of Universal's monster days. Guillermo Del Toro has often compared Hellboy to a modern day monster worthy of Universal's golden monster halls. In fact, Del Toro loved the character so much that he directed the first Hellboy movie with Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, and Selma Blair in the main roles. He will be returning to this role once again soon since his next project now that Pan's Labryinth is complete, is to direct the sequel to Hellboy. How does all of this tie together? Well, apparently when making the first film, Del Toro really pushed to get the series made into an animated series. He pushed so hard that they are making several animated films, the first of which is the subject of this review.

What's important to remember is that Mignola has made sure that each incarnation of Hellboy stands on its own visually and continuity wise. Stories might be interchanged between mediums, as one segment of Sword of Storms animates a popular short story from the comics of Hellboy in Japan fighting body-less flying vampiric heads. Even though this idea irks me because I want just one continuity, the change of styles in each of the incarnations is so complete that each incarnation of Hellboy is beautiful and uniquely different enough to feel that they warrant their own universe. At first in this film, it is slightly sad to be watching the movie only to realize that it is not done in Mignola's signature art style. But this small sadness is soon rectified by the quirky Ben 10 art style and the amazing detail put into tyhe coloring and shading. Visually, the animation falls between new age cell-shading and japanime and old fashioned caricatures. It's beautiful. Thankfully, the animation is in the hands of the veteran animator Tad Stones who is better remembered for Darkwing Duck and the two sequels to Aladdin. The character designs for this new universe, now to be known as the Animated Hellboy universe, were made by relative newcomer lovingly referred to as Cheeks. Tad Stones has expressed a lot of interest in doing multiple movies of Hellboy, the next one being Blood and Iron, and I have to agree. I hope they are able to keep up a continuing series of these DVDs. Not only are they shown on Cartoon Network, but the DVD contains loads of valuable extras about the creation of the animation and story behind the film.

Now as for the story itself. It involves Japanese folklore, a favorite of mine, and it does a pretty good job with it. The folklore and the traveling samurai idea of Hellboy in ancient mystical Japan is very eye-catching. The wandering samurai tales presented in the film are done beautifully and are fun to watch. The real flaw in the story comes from watching Hellboy's sidekicks without him around. Abe Sapien and Liz together just can't seem to carry a scene. Also, the writer tends to fall back on Liz's ability to just burn the hell out of everything. Sapien is an interesting character but his ability is eh and he is really quite weak. Their stories are too comical and pathetic in comparison to Hellboy's classic nonchalant beat the crap out of everything plan. My only other complaint is that the script couldn't decide whether it was for grown-ups or not. It's true that Hellboy doesn't curse a lot and rip out throats or anything. He's not Lobo. But, the content and themes and styles of the comic book and both incarnations are so dark that it needs to be written more for adults and it should leave out more of the "knowing looks" actions and little cutesy moments that are in a lot of traditional children programming. If any American production has the possibility of becoming the first animated movie to be taken seriously, this is it, and I feel that Stones and Weinstein don't enforce that enough. At times, Matt Wayne's script feels very adult action oriented and then at other times it drifts back to children land. In other words, the tone is wishy-washy, an understandable mistake for a first film, that hopefully will be fixed by the second film.

As for voice acting, all of the original actors from the film reprise their roles and it proves in this film more than ever that Ron Perlman is Hellboy. He just is, that simple. The one liners are perfectly delivered and every one does a marvelous job. The real problem is that Selma Blair doesn't have a very distinguishable voice. She could have been any voiceover actor and I wouldn't have known. Doug Jones however is great as Abe Sapien and I was glad to hear more of that character since it was such a smallish role in the Del Toro film. The voice acting brings the characters to life, although the sections that I mentioned as being cutesy and annoying, is reflected in the actor's speech that they also realize how silly those scenes are. It makes me unable to bear waiting to see Hellboy 2.

Conclusion:
The story is great, the animation is great, and the voice acting is wonderful. Now if only they could make Abe Sapien and Liz's tales either more interesting or of more importance. Also, they need to decide what tone to take with the animated version and its targeted demographic. Despite these flaws, Sword of Storms is a welcome and wonderful creation and addition to the collection of Hellboy universes.

4.2 out of 5

Wannabe