Julien Neaves, Caribbean Head Writer
We haven’t done any music video articles here at Red Mango Reviews, which is not surprising since we are a film and television review website.
But I just had to talk about the Trinidad and Tobago music video A Better Tomorrow, which has been an official selection for ten festivals including the Tokyo Shorts Film Festival.
Let’s talk about the song itself first. A Better Tomorrow was composed by musician Mark Loquan and performed by reigning Calypso Monarch (the top calypso title in the country) Terri Lyons with backup vocals by Gerelle Forbes.
It is a catchy, light soca tune about facing challenges and crafting a brighter future and it benefits from Lyons’ vibrant, confident vocals. And those vocals combine with the music to create a soundtrack for a grand anime-inspired adventure.
The animation was done by the husband and wife team of GemGfx Animation Studios, Dixie Ann Archer-McBain and Everard J. McBain Jr. I first met the McBains years ago when I interviewed them in my them journalistic capacity about their superhero, Sci Fi animation project Celflux. And I have followed their career up to their most recent project, Trinidad and Tobago superhero Jumbie.
The duo are quite talented and it is most impressive the level of work they can produce with just the two of them.
And that talent is on full show with A Better Tomorrow. McBain in his social media has commented that he grew up watching the work of Japanese animators and that love for anime comes through clearly here.
The story is about an unnamed female warrior (designed to resemble Miss Lyons) who is on a quest to battle large monsters and recover gems to rescue a mysterious woman encased in a transparent substance.
The animation here is really beautiful. The rich, deep colours pop and the movement is smooth and energetic. Our warrior woman puts on a few cool-looking outfits with different abilities and she is a tower of strength and fierceness. We rarely see black women in these types of roles so that was refreshing. We are treated to warrior woman battling some awesome-looking monsters, with my favourite being a creepy, tentacled beastie which looks like he leapt out of a Shonen anime series and right into the video.
The anime-inspired fight scenes are fluid and highly entertaining. As a Trini, it was also great seeing local locations and the incorporation of images of the steelpan and Carnival. The ending also has a strong and valuable message which I appreciated.
I could go on and on but suffice to say that A Better Tomorrow is a delightful video which should bring a smile to the faces of Caribbean music lovers, anime fans or combinations of the two. I highly recommend checking it out.
You can watch the video for yourself by clicking here. And you can check out more outstanding Caribbean animation below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by Freddy Krueger, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “12 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.