I’m participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, where I post every day in the month of April (except Sundays) and each day is a letter.

My theme for the month is a series of posts about the things that shaped me.

Unico

Technically, the name of the movie is The Fantastic Adventures of Unico, but it’s all about a little unicorn named Unico, so that works out fine.

Everyone seems to remember The Last Unicorn, but to me, Unico was wayyyyyy more interesting. A basic recap, for those unfamiliar:

He’s a baby unicorn (SO freakin’ adorable) who spreads happiness and joy to everyone he meets. So, of course, the gods (of the Greek variety) decide they are the only ones who should be able to affect emotions, so they (of course) decide to murder the cutest thing in the entire world and send the West Wind to do their dirty work.

But the West Wind takes one look at Unico’s little face, and can’t do it. And instead, she transports him to various places, and every time he makes too much happiness and the gods start to notice, she wipes his memories and moves him to a new spot where he makes new friends. Otherwise the evil Night Wind is going to do the job the West Wind completely bailed on.

I don’t know how old I was when I watched it — I don’t even know how it came to be in my house, because it wasn’t like my parents were super-interested in anime (if they even know what it was). But this is one of those movies where certain scenes stuck in my brain, and it took years of google-digging to find it again.

I remembered the tiny adorable unicorn, as well as the tiny adorable baby demon he befriended, and the tiny adorable kitty who wants nothing more to be a human (and a witch). And then there was the very disturbing rich dude who wants to seduce kitty-girl and turns out to be a psychotic monster who does battle with the cutest thing in the entire world.

And why in the world does every good kids’ movie have to have some WTF moment, or just some creepy-ass nightmare fuel? Because it wouldn’t be an 80s kids’ movie without it.