But possibly the best example of something I did buy from a clearance bin that's been surprisingly good has to be the animated series based on The Neverending Story. Well, so far at least, we're only one episode in and there's only three on the disc.
Let's dive right in to episode two titled "The Meek And The Mighty."
The episode starts at a picturesque field where two gazelle-like creatures are feeding. Their dinner is disturbed, however, by a bellowing across the hills alerting someone (or some thing) that it's time for lunch. I might point out that initially I thought the voice had a striking resemblance to Roseanne. Just slightly more upbeat.
The two animals shrug it off and resume eating, but are disturbed again as part of the hillside detaches itself and reveals itself to be the Rock Biter! We all remember the Rock Biter, right?
Man he was awesome. "Big, strong hands..."
That scene really choked me up.
Anyway, back to the show wh-
...urgh. I forgot that they completely redesigned him (along with Falcor and pretty much everything else) for the third movie. But at least they gave him a great gravelly voice. Even his laugh sounds pretty good, though a bit diabolical. You know, I swear I've heard that laugh before. Now, where was it?
...sonuvab-
...okay, not a big deal, the series isn't ruined yet. King Koopa was pretty much the best part of that show, so maybe he can do wonders here.
Mr. Rock Biter returns home to his wife and the two of them prepare for a nice sit-down dinner when they realize that "Junior" is missing. Panic immediately sets in, because, after all, Junior is just a baby and could get into real danger!
Or it could simply crawl/stomp its way through the village inhabited by Gluckuk and his people. You remember Gluckuk right? He's the guy with the racing snail. Gluckuk lures the baby out of the village, and after apparently causing the death of a random rabbit (it's supposed to be humorous, but I don't see the rabbit getting up after the baby falls on it), the baby spots some crystals inside a crevice in a nearby hill and climbs in to begin eating at its leisure.
Back in the real world Bastian is playing a classic game of "toss the pigskin around" with his father. He gets distracted by the faint sounds of Mrs. Rock Biter calling for her child. This allows his father to drop him to the ground with what I can only describe as a "flying tackle."
This actually feels like a nice moment between a father and his son, and whoever does the voice of the father does a really good job at sounding like how you'd want a caring cartoon father to sound. This just makes it suddenly really awkward when his father says the two of them can quit to have dinner and Bastian asks if he can instead run down to the book store.
I seem to recall the father actually knowing about Fantasia and the Neverending Story in the second film, but if this one goes by the third movie's logic I guess it's still forgotten about that in continuity.
Man I hate that third movie. I hate it so much.
Bastian starts reading from the story and finds himself inside the village where Gluckuk is attempting to rally his people against the "biggies" of the world. Bastian attempts an intervention but only helps make things worse when he accidentally kicks over a statue. Gluckuk incites the crowd to a full scale mob (well, a tiny mob) and they start marching to declare war on the giant stone "biggies."
This is essentially the same as the Smurfs declaring war on Optimus Prime.
Bastian and the tiny angry mob arrive just in time to find Mrs. Rock Biter bawling her eyes out while her husband scoops out dirt from a hill to widen the passage. They found the baby's rattle outside the cave entrance and fear the worst for their baby made out of solid rock and weighing hundreds of pounds. Bastian and Gluckuk volunteer to go searching for the baby, though Gluckuk seems determined to do it just so "that baby can get what's coming to it."
Somehow "saving the baby so we can get revenge on the baby" seems like a pretty terrible plan.
In fact, "get revenge on a baby" in general sounds like a stupid plan.
You know, if only there was a magical artifact held by someone who was obviously friendly towards Bastian who might loan him the artifact so that he could wish the baby to safety.
Oh well.
Bastian and Gluckuk head into the cave system and soon find themselves moving perilously along skinny ledges over chasms that there's simply no chance the baby could've maneuvered. However, we do get to see that babies have the same sense of self-preservation as a moth near a Tesla coil because he starts wandering around between pools of lava. Junior barely manages to not get his head crushed by a falling stalactite, but he promptly hugs it and calls it "mama" before realizing he's all alone. This is one dense kid.
Meanwhile, Bastian and Gluckuk have their own problems as they face off against... I have no idea what to call this thing.
Now normally I'd think "how clever, they combined a rat with a spider." However, they not only combined a rat and a spider, but they then made it as big as Bastian. That's...kinda terrifying, really. Oh, and there's two of them. Gluckuk tells Bastian to hold very still as he deals with them, and he marches out to face off against the two. He taunts and teases the two into a total ravenous fury, and when they both leap Gluckuk yells for Bastian to duck...because for some reason they're going after the boy instead of the guy who fits in the boy's pocket. Bastian ducks, two heads connect like ripe coconuts, and Gluckuk points out that they're "very deadly, not too bright."
A rather ridiculous mishap involving a cave-in later, and Bastian, Gluckuk and the snail find themselves hanging perilously over the edge of a cliff when Junior shows up and pulls the three up with ease. Normally I'd play up the drama, but I saw that coming a mile away. Now reunited, the three start trying to make their way to the surface, but wind up in trouble when Junior runs smack into a shiny wall, having taken the distorted reflection to be his "mama." The wall cracks and releases a flood of lava that chases the characters up an incline to a large chasm near the exit. Gluckuk, being the honorable soul he is, hops on his racing snail, slides across the ceiling, and escapes!
And without a word to either Bastian or the baby. Way to go, jerk.
Bastian and the baby manage to make a crude rock wall to hold back the lava (I'm not sure how that works, to be honest), but things look their bleakest when suddenly Gluckuk and the rest of the people from his village show up with the other two Rock Biters. They assemble a crude rope harness for Junior and Bastian to swing from, they get to safety because it's a kids cartoon and they aren't going to kill a kid and a baby on a program like this.
The Rock Biters help rebuild the homes of Gluckuk's people, up high on a ledge so that Junior can't reach them. However, this doesn't stop Baby, being held by his mother, to accidentally reach out and tip over a statue. Gluckuk storms out of a house and starts ranting, because I guess that's what he does best. The book closes, and we roll credits.
The Good:
Again, the artwork, voice work, and story line are pretty interesting. I've seen the "save the lost child" plot before and the "the smallest of us will save the day" story line before, but the fact that the character who is there to save the day is also the one who wants to wage war on the people he's helping gives it a new twist.
The monster designs are also great, and the "rat spiders" actually look like they'd be scary to run into in a dark alley, especially with their cartoon villain masks on. I have the nagging feeling I've seen those cartoon rat heads before somewhere, I just can't place where.
Having the primary Rock Biter voiced by the same guy who did Koopa was interesting, though. The voice really does work, and he gave it additional depth.
The Bad:
I still really really hate the redesigns of the Rock Biter from the first movie. He was built more like a mountain, one that relied on a giant rock steamroller/bike to get around because he was glacially slow by himself. Now we see them simply walking around like it "ain't no thang" and performing acrobatic feats (read: swinging from a rope) with ease. He's lost some of the slow thoughtfulness that he originally had, and where the original one knew what he was good at ("big strong hands") and how unnerving it was for him when that trait failed him, this one seems more like a cariacture of that, and more like something you'd see in a more goofy episode of Dinosaurs.
Plus, I really don't like that baby.
Overall:
While not as overall enjoyable as the first episode, this one didn't make me feel insulted or talked down to, which is more than I can say for the Mario series. The designs were extremely inventive (especially one cave I didn't post a picture of where all of the rocks and columns looked like they had facial features trapped in eternal expressions of horror and dismay), and it was good to see some more of Fantasia fleshed out.
I'm still enjoying this, but I can't help but wonder if we're actually going to get to see Atreyu and Artax in one of these episodes. We're two out of three in, and so far there's no sign of our (for some reason) purple-haired warrior. Here's hoping we see him next week, because I don't think I can find another DVD with more episodes on it very easily.
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