Animation Unlimited

Brutal.

Anakin's fall to the dark side is not pretty. It's brutal, it's heavy, and it's done very well. How he falls is quite a ride, but you should not expect to walk out of Revenge of the Sith with a happy feeling. You should, however, walk out of Revenge of the Sith very satisfied.

We all know the story and what to expect. In this film Anakin Skywalker will become Darth Vader, more machine than man ... twisted and evil. The Republic will fall as Palpatine becomes the dreaded Emperor. The Jedi will be hunted down and extinguished. Luke and Leia will be born and Obi Wan and Yoda will end up in exile. To get there, Lucas pulls off the best storytelling of the "prequel" trilogy and some of the best storytelling of the entire Star Wars Saga.

Without a doubt, Revenge of the Sith is the most grandiose of all of the Star Wars films. It has the biggest space battles, the biggest lightsaber battles, and the most to lose as it ties up all the loose ends from both sets of films. And tie them up it does. The key elements of both sets of films are present throughout Revenge of the Sith, and although there are a few continuity problems that carry into the original trilogy (one glaring, not easily explained away), the technology gap is bridged and the stories are brought together well.

As for the long and short of it, the acting is much better in this film than the prior two prequels, the story is more believable, the action is incredible, and the special effects are out of this world. Anakin's fall to the dark side is a more complete and complex story than his his love affair with Padme was in the last two, and it rounds out the entire saga. He truly makes a deal with the devil and descends into hell ... a hell he will live out for the next twenty years until he fulfills the prophecy of the chosen one by destroying his master - finally bringing balance to the Force.

In the end, if you have any interest at all in Star Wars or big action films, be sure to see Revenge of the Sith on the big screen. This is not one to be missed in the theater. However, I do suggest you leave the kids at home. Revenge of the Sith richly deserves its PG-13 rating - it is, as I said in the beginning, a brutal ride.

Overall Grade: A-

It's been another busy week at work and home, so we are totally missing the mark on having three updates a week.

The good news is I have three articles on deck, two reviews and another feature. The bad news is that it may be next week before they surface on the site. If I'm lucky, I may get one done by late Friday - so check back then.

Oh well, can't win them all I guess. Stay tuned...

Things may not look very active here the last couple of weeks, but I have been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work ... software updates, coding, and reorganizing on the site.

One thing I have been working hard on is trying to get us higher visibility in the search engines. So far Yahoo! loves us, MSN likes us, and Google ignores us ... or at least they did until I made the changes.

It seems like some of the updates helped, our daily site traffic in the past 5 days is triple last month's average, hitting close to 1,200 visits total (for those of you that recall, that was about how many people visited in all of February). It would be nice if it kept up, I'm waiting to see.

I did find some time to finish watching Robotech Remastered, Extended Edition, Volume 2 a few nights ago... so expect a review soon. Now that these back-end changes are complete (at least for now), I can start concentrating on content again.

Oh and comments are re-enabled on a trial basis. They may go away again, we'll see if my commentspamfilter works well enough.

To all my regular readers, thanks for your continued support. To all of my new readers, welcome! Have a look around and stay for a while. Things will only get better as time progresses, and I look forward to sharing my hobby with all of you.

That's right, you can now buy all of your animation needs in our searchable storefront, the Shop @ Animation Unlimited.

Shop for cartoons, shop for anime, shop for manga, shop for comics, shop for toys... shop for anything! It's all here through our association with Amazon.com. Simply go through our storefront, add items to your cart, and when you are ready for checkout you will be redirected to Amazon for shipping and billing.

We will continue our association with other retailers because great deals do come along. Of course, we will be sure to announce deals as we find them in the forums and here on the front page.

In the mean time, check out our new store, and thanks for your continued support!