Based On Mythology Archives | Otaku No Culture

Unleashing Colum Eastwood’s The Morrigan. Just Who Is This Phantom Queen?

A slow-burn folk horror with teeth, The Morrigan reframes the goddess as something older and sharper than pop culture’s “wicked sorceress” shortcut. Through a mother and daughter caught in a modern system built to drain women dry, the film turns possession into sovereignty, and rebellion into something sacred and brutal.

2025 The Morrigan Movie Poster Cineverse
Now on VOD and Digital

The worship of the Morrígan is nearly as old as time, dating back to roughly 3000 BC. In terms of raw elemental power, she rivals a force like Gaia, the very breath and blood of the land itself. Yet, history has been unkind to her. In Irish lore, she was a terrifyingly complex sovereign; in modern literature, her role was flattened to fit the needs of the “wicked sorceress” trope. While pop culture often lazily grafts her onto Arthurian legend, those who hold The Mists of Avalon as the best may need to head back to school to “unlearn” the sanitized version of the goddess they’ve been sold.

Colum Eastwood’s expansion of his short film proves he’s done the homework. He frames the Morrígan not as a simple adversary, but as a goddess of death, regeneration, and rebirth. This is the core belief of Fiona (Saffron Burrows), a woman battling a modern world designed to “steal a lady’s thunder.” The film’s strongest thematic tissue lies in the parallel between the ancient and the modern: Fiona is reeling from a husband who has abandoned her and their daughter, Lily (Emily Flain), while being professionally bled dry by Professor Jonathan Horner (Jonathan Forbes). He is a leech who steals from his TAs while the world turns a blind eye.

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All Hail, Or Fear The Great Metal God As Chūgoku Mythology is Remade?

In Great Metal God, artist Iwakuni Kogyo delivers a rare, fully silent mecha one-shot where a colossal metal visitor descends on Tokyo like a Galactus-sized omen. Drawing on ironworking myth and Kanayago-kami, it’s a wordless apocalypse you feel in your bones.

Great Metal God Cover Digital edition: Available now
Print edition: Coming Dec 16, 2025

Artist Iwakuni Kogyo may not be the first to attempt a “silent” comic, but his approach to crafting Great Metal God is unusually quiet. There’s no dialogue, no captions, not even sound effects. The way he frames the tale centres on a mysterious, towering machine descending to Earth and—much like a Galactus-sized omen—prepares to make the world its. And unsurprisingly, it begins in modern-day Tokyo.

Although early marketing from Manga Mavericks suggested there might be explanatory text, that appears only in the introduction, solely to outline the inspiration and intention behind the work.

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When “Bonds” Are Important, We Also Need To Know Zenzo, The Creative Talent Behind This Reimagining of Monkey King

ZENZO’s debut manga Bonds offers a visually stunning and emotionally nuanced retelling of a portion of Journey to the West, focusing on the complex relationship between Sanzo and Son Goku.

Bonds Manga Cover — **Available to read digitally (Kindle).**

Manga Mavericks Books

ZENZO is a promising new artist whose enigmatic pen name stirs curiosity. With Bonds being his debut let’s hope he’s not a one-hit wonder. All we know about him so far is that he studied under Takafumi Adachi, the creator of Beyblade: Metal Fusion, and he won both the Japan Representative Selection and Candidate Award in the Featured Manga category for the 2019 Goku Cup manga contest.

His debut work reimagines a small part of the Chinese version of The Odyssey, and as a standalone work, it’s a fitting reintroduction to one of China’s most revered heroes! This adaptation takes one chapter from Journey to the West and dives into examining the intricate relationship between Sanzo, a Buddhist monk, and Son Goku. The latter has not yet become The Monkey King.

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When The Demoness Declares All’s Fair in Love and Lust, Just What Can Horror Fans Expect?

The answer is lots of T&A action in an otherwise Scooby Doo style attempt to save a handful of relationships from The Demoness! Nothing will go wrong, really.

Well GO USA
Available to view Digtally/VOD

When Valentine’s Day nears, there will always be a group of filmmakers and storytellers wanting to explore the darker side of the tradition. When facing The Demoness, maybe Russian filmmaker Serik Beyseu and writers Oleg Kurochkin and Dmitriy Zhigalov have a good idea to show what it takes for any relationship to survive against evil. I think changing the film’s original title to something more generic was a bad idea.

Had this film stayed with The Succubus, everybody will understand what this movie is about. When this evil force is in charge of an island retreat, things will get bad. While couples think they’re headed there to repair their ailing relationships, there are other forces who will want to help numb it further! Here, the focus is on Stacy (Angelina Pahomova) and her boyfriend Michael (Anton Rival). Technically, the only reason she’s here is to find out what happened to her sister. When she’s doing her own Scooby-Doo style investigation, that’s when this film gets interesting.

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Moana 2 Is Better Off As A TV Series

When sequels take too long to get made, the momentum has to be kickstarted again in Moana 2 and all fans can hope is the wait won’t be long for the next instalment.

Spoiler Alert

The world being set up in Moana 2 feels more suited to be a television series than a film. That’s because when Disney knows they have a hit, they better get on it fast otherwise it might get Frozen behind. Making computer animated films takes a long time, especially when it concerns figuring out the right story to tell. Here, what’s manufactured feels like it’s done by committee rather than from Jared Bush, the only individual who shares writing credit in both films.

Also, the songs aren’t as catchy as those from the first, and felt too loaded to keep the momentum going. After Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) sings about how much has changed since the events of the last film, she also pines for more adventures with Maui (Dwayne Johnson). One night, she reveals to her little brother that once upon a time, all the island’s various tribes were united, but over time, something caused them all to split apart. Afterwards, she gets a vision to learn why, and she wants to help bring everyone back together!

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Top Five Animated Films To Look Forward to this Fall/Winter

Just how many animated films getting released world-wide needs to be counted. While I’m still anxiously waiting for White Snake 3, I have this guide to the American made works that will be out soon and later this year.

As my review of Transformers One have shown, not every film is worth checking out. That’s because I’m a die-hard fan of the original and Prime series. When this work completely changes the lore around, it’s fallen out of my list.

Also, there’s two films which have yet to make a North American side debut. They deserve an honourable mention, and nobody should be surprised that White Snake 3 and The Royal Cat, both Chinese animated movies needs to get marketed here. And there’s also Mononoke: The Movie from Japan!

THE WILD ROBOT
Sept 27

The Wild Robot Movie Poster - Animated Films Chris Sanders is back, working at DreamWorks and I couldn’t be any happier. He’s done wonders with fond properties like Lilo & Stitch as well as How to Train Your Dragon. Whether that’s as an illustrator or director, there’s something about his visual style which makes those works stand out. Now that he’s helming this adaptation of Peter Brown’s bestselling illustrated book of the same name, and how he’ll apply his trademark should be exciting.