Watt Poe

Watt Poe feels like a Konami NES game with one-two paragraphs of a rough story outline on the back of the box was adapted into a 50-minute adventure anime with a crammed plot, mostly expository dialogue, and scenes resembling levels more than anything from a movie. Even the zestiest of animation segments—the most exemplary being churned out by Yoshinori Kanada—tend to look like those old cutscene-based scrolling games like Time Gal or Captain Power or whatever other crap, which is not a bad thing, as those relics had proficient and sometimes even impressive animation despite the pulpy throwaway appearance. The art is nothing special, andother than a few quick scenes and the bigger action pieces, the movement is minimal. It follows a kind of cargo cultish paganism where they're like "Oh, the harvest is bad, let's sacrifice some children to rectify that," only instead they need their magical narwhal Watt Poe in the ocean, so the fishermen can be blessed with an abundant haul of fish before humans wreck the oceans. Where is Watt Poe? Bird people yanked him out of the sea and tossed him into a small pond on a mountain prior to the beginning of the story... because... umm... to bless the pond? As a declaration of war upon their mortal enemies? Haha... shhhhhhh... Don't worry about it. The conflict between the two sides is painfully contrived, and there's a sudden reveal where they're like, "OH, WE'RE BROTHERS FROM THE SAME MOTHER ALL ALONG! Why have we been fighting all this time? I love you, you love me, we're all a happy family..." NO! I DO NOT CONSENT TO THIS! Technically, this is a spoiler, I guess, but the scenes are so devoid of weight that no tidbit of information could equate to a spoiler, and I think this is the greatest insult I can sling at such a fumbling production.