Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week we’re greeting the spring anime season, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s actually a couple shows I’m interested in checking out. Both Tengokyu Daimakyou and Hell’s Paradise look pretty interesting, and from last season I’ve still gotta catch up on Tsurune and Vinland Saga. Having concluded Dragon Ball (don’t worry, we’re covering that today), I’m also continuing my personal journey through missing classics with Dennou Coil, a show I’ve been meaning to get to literally since I first plotted out my key anime gaps almost a decade ago. And yet, among all the tumult of fresh anime and anime gone by, I still managed to fit in a fresh stack of feature films. You ready? Let’s do this. It’s time for the Week in Review!

First up this week was the original 1978 Superman, starring Christopher Reeves as Clark Kent and Gene Hackman as the nefarious Lex Luthor. Though I’m not particularly compelled by superheroes on the whole, I do have a bit of a soft spot for Superman, as I find his whole “hope for humanity in spite of itself” shtick pretty compelling. Superman embodies an earnest sentimentality that feels more thematically rich than self-aware cynicism; his dream is an impossible one, he is doomed to fall short of his ideals, and that itself provides a conflict more compelling than “can our guy beat this big monster.”

Unfortunately, Superman’s theatrical debut turned out to be a general disappointment. The film is noteworthy principally for its special effects, but time has not been kind to the rolling backgrounds and dubious composite of Supe’s flying escapades. Some stunts, like martial arts or the physical wizardry of Buster Keaton, age like fine wine – others, like those relying on novelty and post-production trickery, tend to spoil with age. Superman’s techniques fall into this second category, meaning a significant portion of this film is dedicated to “look at this dazzling spectacle” sequences that fail to be either dazzling or spectacular.

Special effects aside, Superman’s story is more of a summarized series of vignettes than an actual dramatic narrative, with little sense of developing tension. This puts it up to the actors to sell the drama of the proceedings – fortunately, both Reeves and Margot Kidder (playing Lois Lane) are fantastic, each embodying both the iconic and the personal in their dueling roles. Kidder’s fatigued humor is basically the only thing grounding this story in human emotions, while Reeves is an absolute delight as both Superman and Clark Kent, easily selling our superhero’s boyish charm and simple wisdom. Less fortunate is Gene Hackman, who is stuck performing gags ripped from the Adam West Batman serial for the entire film. A disappointing film on the whole, but Reeves and Kidder’s iconic performances made for a relatively easy ride.

Our next screening was The Church, an ‘80s italian horror film directed by Michele Soavi and produced by Dario Argento, the same dynamic duo who brought us the delightfully pulpy Demons. The Church was actually intended to be the third film in the Demons franchise, but Soavi apparently decided this film was to be more “sophisticated” than its predecessors, and thus removed any ties to the franchise. What Soavi seemed to mean by “sophisticated” is that the film would take thirty or forty minutes to get to the good stuff instead of ten or fifteen, but worry not – the payoff is more than worth the price of Soavi’s misplaced ambitions.

The Church centers on a vast cathedral, which was initially constructed to seal the graves of a community of devil worshippers. In the present day, the cathedral has become a popular tourist destination, though new librarian Evan is suspicious of its true history. Digging deeper and deeper into the church’s catacombs, he eventually uncovers a stone seal bearing a goat with seven eyes. And of course, being an inquisitive sort of dude with an underdeveloped self-preservation instinct, he proceeds to break the seal, thereby unleashing a fleet of demons on the church’s unsuspecting inhabitants.

The last third of The Church is pure folk horror goodness, as visitors to the church are each corrupted in turn by ominous demonic forces. There are shocking and impactful kills, wonderful practical effects, and basically every goat-headed ritual you could hope for, escalating into an ecstatic conclusion that would make Cronenberg blush. The Church’s dark compromise between pulp and folk horror reaps incredibly generous dividends, marrying the incomparable imagery of old rituals with the crowd-pleasing excesses of a slasher movie. While the first act could definitely be trimmed a little, The Church is otherwise close to a perfect B movie.

I then checked out Neo Tokyo, a bubble-era anime anthology featuring short films by Rintaro, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Katsuhiro Otomo. All three films are visually stunning, though it was Rintaro’s opening sequence that most dazzled me. Centered on a girl who’s exploring a labyrinth of dreams, the sequence offers a parade of nightmarish wonders that would feel right at home in a Satoshi Kon film, though illustrated through a playful, warping style more reminiscent of Yuasa’s early work. The sequence embodies animation’s power to bring the delirious experience of a dream journey to life, and through doing so offers one of the rare successful examples of horror in animation.

Kawajiri’s sequence is classic Kawajiri, featuring monstrously intricate design work and a fascination with physical contortion and destruction. Set on the course of a scifi death race, the film’s narrative is little more than an excuse for its scenes of beautiful destruction, as both a car and its driver are dismantled piece by piece. And then Otomo soars in for a dash of tech-minded prognosticating, inviting us to explore a massive, decaying, and largely automated construction site.

Just as his Memories sequence Cannon Fodder foresaw a war that would eventually become its own perpetual justification, drawing every element of society into an unthinking war apparatus, so does Construction Cancelation Order foresee a future where automation becomes untethered from human value, with robots simply working because working is what robots do, and humans largely being excised from the process. It’s an excellent companion piece to Cannon Fodder, and a fine conclusion to this highly recommended collection.

Last up, our journey through classic anime took an ambitious turn for the past month or so, as we charged through the entirety of the original Dragon Ball. Having only seen scattered episodes of the show on Toonami as a teenager, watching straight through was an engaging and illuminating experience. You can absolutely see the bones of modern shonen structure assembling across Dragon Ball, but at the same time, much of what I found engaging here was how it deviated from the formula, and let Toriyama’s wild imagination fly.

The initial setup of “Goku and Bulma play out Journey to the West” is undoubtedly some of the show’s best material, in spite of Toriyama’s perpetual insistence on getting one or the other naked. Episodes of actual dragon ball hunts are freewheeling and inventive, with Toriyama’s gift for strange creatures and gags finding ample fuel among the familiar beats of the monkey king’s tale. These early sequences demonstrate an understanding of how comedy and action align that seems a clear predecessor of One Piece’s own alchemy, while the tactics and trickery-driven execution of arcs like the tournaments or hell visits would clearly influence Togashi’s works.

When Dragon Ball is humming along, it possesses the same freewheeling momentum as One Piece’s early material, where you truly can’t guess what will happen next, but have faith in your storyteller that it’ll be a delightful time. The biggest shortcomings of Dragon Ball’s early material reflect Toriyama’s frustrating blind spots – the sex comedy ranges from tooth-grinding to much worse, while every black or southeast Asian character is depicted as an absurd caricature. I’d say this “hasn’t aged well,” but in truth I’m surprised this passed even when it was released; plenty of Dragon Ball’s contemporaries handled other races with grace, so I can’t really give Toriyama the benefit of ignorance.

Aside from those unfortunate designs, Dragon Ball remains fun until it begins transforming into Dragon Ball Z. Persistent humor and invention is replaced with grim grunting, creative solutions for defeating enemies are replaced with Powering Up Harder, and by the end we even reach those flashes of still poses that are supposed to represent characters sparring too fast for the eye to see. Dragon Ball’s end is thus a touch more melancholy than it intends to be, as it also signifies the period of Toriyama straying from his strengths into a realm of self-serious and generally tedious action. Still, if you shave off the moldy bits, Dragon Ball remains an iconic, wildly creative, and altogether engaging adventure.