Will Unico safe Katie The Girl Who Isn't A Cat Anymore? Will the forest return to normal? Will he ever see Beezle again? Does any of this make any sense to anybody who hasn't been watching this movie?
Can things possibly get any weirder?
You better believe it.
Let's get into the third segment.
You know, while watching this I realize just what a huge difference in quality and production there was between something like Unico and the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. The voice quality, the animation quality, the editing quality, everything is just so clean in Unico that it makes me feel better about the taste I had in cartoons when I was a little kid.
I mean, sure, it hasn't really been a "macho boy" cartoon yet like Transformers or G.I. Joe but just stick with me, if I remember this correctly it's about to get awesome.
When we rejoin Unico, he's still licking that monkey back to health (a sentence I never thought I'd type), and it scurries off once it's completely healed. I don't know how unicorn spit heals animals, but I'm just going with it. Unico looks around for Katie, and just now realizes that she wandered into the forest after he warned her not to.
At the huge ...castle? Mansion? Looking back at that picture from last time, I have no idea what this place is supposed to be other than a twisted and demented version of Downton Abbey.
Back at the estate, Katie invites herself in when nobody answers the front door, but her marveling at the decor in her hazy state is interrupted when "Baron de Ghost" shows up and starts laying the charm on her.
Unico, meanwhile, is having his own problems. The forest itself is attacking him in waves, starting with thorny vines that entrap and move in to crush the tiny unicorn. However, this isn't really a problem because Unico simply uses his magic to grow his horn out further and starts hacking his way through the plant growth.
When the trees get in on the act and attempt to crush him between them, he simply poofs himself down to the size of a bug, sprouts wings, and flies to safety.
This is really happening.
Unico spots the trail of lit mushrooms on the forest floor below, and then notices the giant house off in the distance that's taller than any of the trees.
While Unico starts to investigate the- well, he calls it a castle, so I'll call it one, too. Katie sits slumped in a chair while the Baron pours her a glass of wine and then drops another one of those fruits she had earlier into it, where it promptly dissolves.
This, kids, is called "slipping a girl who, at best, is a young teenager a mickey."
It gets even better when, after she polishes off that glass of wine, he promptly refills it. Her eyes get heavier, her hiccups get more frequent, and she starts to sway, but the wine keeps coming.
Obviously, this is a terrible person.
Unico gets to the room just in time to see the bottle emptied and Katie start to drunkenly sing her song to the Baron. He even comments she's "had too much to drink," meaning the moral of this whole story is "don't drink too much, kids!" Or perhaps that's just the cynical look.
Katie sings herself to the point that she passes out, and the Baron scoops her up and carries her to a giant bed he happened to have in the room, wh-
You know, I'm pretty sure this isn't that kind of anime...maybe my memory just isn't remembering it right.
The Baron looks down at the sleeping Katie, and his inner monologue says what I remember to be one of the most awesome lines I heard when I was young: "I hope your dreams are pleasant, they'll be the last ones you ever have."
As Unico watches, the Baron undergoes a transformation, revealing him to not even be human as he ... turns green?
...oookay, anyway, Unico creates a distraction to lure him out as he tries to rescue Katie. She's slow to respond, and as the Baron comes back up to the room, Unico decides it's time to take drastic action and turns his horn into a spinning drill and bores through the wall, under the floor, and makes a tunnel to the forest.
That's just brilliant.
However, they aren't safe yet, as the Baron suddenly appears near them and starts to reach for Katie, just to have Unico start to glow with magical power. This, understandably, freaks the Baron right out, meaning he's the only person to have a reasonable reaction to seeing a horse with a horn coming out of its head so far. He draws his sword to try to kill Unico, leading to a sword fight of horn against sword. Just when you thought Unico couldn't get any more awesome, after a few parries and thrusts, Unico's horn breaks the guy's sword in half.
Unfortunately, the Baron has mastered the art of "glowing eyes" which is enough to send Unico tumbling out of the way and he reclaims Katie while Unico passes out.
Hey, remember Beezle?
He gives the West Wind a stern talking to and demands to know where Unico is. The West Wind confides that Unico is in trouble, leading Beezle to demand to be taken with her to help him. However, other dark tidings are coming as the sky grows darker in the horizon, leading the West Wind to comment that the Night Wind (remember her? We saw her terrify the Gods for all of about fifteen seconds earlier) is coming.
Two evil forces, a unicorn, a friendly demon, and a girl who used to be a cat. This film has everything.
The Night Wind overtakes the West Wind and tries to trap them in "night" but the two manage a last-minute escape into where daylight still shines. The two manage to get to Unico, who's being poked by the baby monkey from before. After a warm greeting, the West Wind announces it's time to take Unico away before the Gods can catch him, but Unico refuses to go until he's saved Katie and runs off with Beezle following behind.
At the castle, they find Katie chained to the top of the spire of the tallest tower (I'm...not really sure why) and the Baron standing on a nearby rooftop. Unico sprouts his wings and takes off to save Katie (at full size, no less). Beezle shouts that Unico doesn't stand a chance against the power he's sensing from the Baron, and we know we're in for an epic fight.
Or Unico will simply do a drive-by stabbing to the guy's shoulder and he'll stumble and fall and be impaled on another spire.
Well, that was brief. After that exciting sword fight before, I'll admit I was expecting a bit more from th-
Geezus.
Maleficent, take note. THIS is how you take on a more powerful form.
Can we get a close-up of this guy's face now?
Geezus.
Remember I said before I really loved the Unico movies but they also scared the bejeezus out of me? I present Exhibit A for what haunted my nightmares for a long time.
What-Used-To-Be-The-Baron gestures with a wave of his arm and turns the entire area around the heroes into a volcanic wasteland with geysers of lava and crumbling ground they have to leap across. It also turns the trees into bat-winged serpents. Fortunately Unico is there and is able to rip through the serpents with his horn like they were made of tissue paper.
This is where the whatever-it-is stops messing around and simply floods the forest with what seems to either be water so hot it glows orange or molten lava. Either way, this is now serious business. Unico attempts to confront the giant beast, but between multiple blasts of lightning from storm clouds and a swarm of blood red bats that fly from the monster's mouth, he doesn't seem to be having much luck. Unico makes one more desperate dash against the monster, but with a swing of its giant axe (did I mention it also had a giant axe) it cleaves Unico's horn in two and sends him plummeting back down to the ground.
Unico lies still as Katie and Beezle rush to him, but despite their efforts he doesn't stir. Katie breaks down crying, saying she'd be willing to give up being a human girl to have him back, and Beezle rips off the horn he was so desperate to get and sticks it onto Unico's head.
I guess somehow this works, because Unico starts to glow, and instead of the tiny little unicorn with bug wings we get this:
The monster tries to swat Unico away, but Unico rips through him like a bullet, sending the monster plummeting into a chasm of lava and returning to whatever demonic realm spawned it.
The forest returns to normal and Katie and Beezle run to make sure the old woman in the woods is still okay. Unico starts to follow them, but the West Wind shows up and tells him it's time to go. Unico sadly agrees, and is taken off to a new land even as the old woman explains the legend of the unicorn ("who can never stay with those whose lives he touched") to her, which leaves me wondering how she heard of the story since this just started a few days before.
Katie and Beezle call out to Unico as the West Wind carries him off, and as a last parting gift Unico gives Beezle a new horn. Beezle swears to catch up to Unico one day as Unico and the West Wind sail off.
...excuse me, I have something in my eye. I'll finish this in a moment.
The Good:
This movie has everything kids would like. It has fantastic creatures, great humor, wild action, heartwarming moments, important lessons, and a monster to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who sees it. It also manages to circumvent the "and they lived happily ever after" ending by letting the main character's story actually continue, but managing to point out how rich the lives of others were for having known him.
I keep saying it, but the animation is absolutely gorgeous and holds up to animation today with how colorful and detailed it is. You can see when someone slid a cel of a tree across a forest background to indicate it was moving, but somehow that just adds to the tension and mystery of the story.
The voice cast is also superb, and where normally a voice like Unico's would be somewhat annoying, it matches the "cute" animation style the character has. Wendee Lee also does a great job as both the voices of Beezle and Katie (yeah, I forgot to mention that last time), and unless you really listen you wouldn't be able to tell they're the same person.
The Bad:
Man, there are some aspects to this story I never picked up on as a kid. The fact that the "Baron" was slipping Katie roofies and getting her drunk on wine somehow went right over my young head, and just how violently his original form died was completely lost on me. To be fair, a lot of Disney films have deaths about as equally violent (The Lion King, Tarzan, Sleeping Beauty, Enchanted), but how the camera shows the spire actually penetrate his body just makes me flinch a bit even now.
The story can feel a bit slow to get started, but once it gets going in the second act, you wind up deeply involved. Beezle's part of the story feels slightly tacked on at the start, and it seems like a pretty big coincidence that he's able to rejoin Unico later, but for a kid's animation, it's not the most outrageous thing I've heard of.
There really aren't that many negatives in this, except to say that the "Gods" really come across as shallow without any real reasoning as to why they do what they do. They seem more huffy and pompous than divine beings, though they seem to follow the mentality of the ancient Gods of Greece and Rome. "Hey, that creature does something better than me, it must be punished!"
Oh, and the Night Wind's appearances really don't live up to the hype. We get one moment where it almost captures the West Wind, but we don't know what it was going to do then, and the fact it gets held back when the West Wind emerges into daylight just seems to end the confrontation.
Overall:
This remains one of my fondest memories from my childhood, and it still holds up today, which is great considering how the last animated program I looked at probably didn't even hold up when it was first on the air, I was just too naive and/or desperate for television to notice. I cannot recommend it enough to anybody who thinks their child can handle seeing one of the most absolutely terrifying animated movie villains of all time, or anybody who just wants to get a solidly built taste of early 80s Japanese animation. It's got something for girls, something for boys, and something for parents. It's just an absolutely solid film.
If I did ratings, which I don't do, I'd give it an A+.
Next time we'll continue our look at Unico with the first part of Unico In The Island Of Magic, and if you thought this story was crazy, you haven't seen anything yet.
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