As most of you already know, we in Bankai Crew will host a new VAFFANCULO party in Norrköping April 24th. The lineup is set and the webpage is soon to be launched. Tickets will be out in a couple of days – and they are limited, so be on your toes!

http://bankai.tomfury.se

A kind of christmas special. After a derelict Santa Claus is fired on Christmas Eve, he finds a mysterious bag that gives out presents. With this bag he sets out to fulfill his one wish – to see the less fortunate inherit the bounties of Christmas.

Not really the season (when I’m writing this) for such an episode, but it was quite ok anyways. The moral of the story may however been a bit too obvious…

In this episode, a couple of small-time criminals get hold of a mysterious camera that takes pictures of things to come. They try to exploit it by taking pictures of the horse track results. But it isn’t always good to know too much about the future; a fact that these criminals soon will be familiar with.

I liked it. Go see it.

In The Trouble With Templeton, a nostalgic actor revisits his late wife and friends at their old haunt, only to find that he is now out of place there. Uninspiring, boring, hard to follow episode. One of the worst, I think.

“When our world ended, their mission began”.

After an apocalyptic war between human and machines, the world is completely destroyed and without human life. The burlap doll 9 awakes without voice and finds a weird object in the middle of the debris that he brings with him. While walking through the ruins, 9 is attacked by a machine called Beast but he is saved by another doll called 2 that fixes his voice. 2 brings 9 to meet his hidden community, leaded by the chickenshit 1. When 2 is captured by a machine, the newcomer 9 convinces the other dolls to go with him to rescue 2. However, 9 places the device that he found in a slot and activates a lethal machine called Brain. The burlap dolls are chased by Brain and despite the advices of 1 that they should hide, 9 organizes an attack to destroy Brain.

9 is one of the better animated movies I’ve seen in a while. I really love the post-apocalyptic, junkyard-ish style that is used throughout the movie. The characters are a bit shallow and the dialogue is often lacking credibility. But even considering these two (usually major) flaws, I still enjoyed this 1 hour and 15 minutes show.

Give it a shot. The scenery and playfulness in animations make up for the flaws in character depth.