Over at Fantasy Magazine today, I cast my granny-eye across the room and tackle some of Fantasy’s Weirdest Relationships. Jareth the Goblin King gets first pick, but he’s far from the only creeper on this list.

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list; if I tried to make an exhaustive list of all the questionable relationships in fantasy movies, I’d be here twenty years from now. This is the Whitman’s sampler of uncomfortable dynamics, with one exception: The Sea Prince and the Fire Child. That movie is one of the best examples of weird relationships ever. It is just an endless cocktail party of interactions that are Not Quite Right.

This is one of those things, like The Red Shoes or The Linguini Incident, that I spent my childhood thinking no one else had ever seen. (To be fair, that might be because whenever I said, “Have you seen [movie]?” the other person would pull a face and say, “What? No.” in that tone you reserve for people who ask you if you’ve ever eaten a roach.)

If you’ve seen this movie, you know what I mean when I say that this movie messes with you. For those of you who are new to it, be prepared to make one or all of these faces:

Let’s do this thing.

First, a brief summary:

Long ago, Oceanus the Sea God and Hyperia the Fire Goddess lived together in a state of love (they were also brother and sister – hat tip to Greece!), but their shitty brother instigated a fight that made them hate each other forever, so they split up and now fire and water live apart like a couple of pissy six-year-olds in their magnificent respective kingdoms, one of which is like the Great Barrier Reef on acid, and one of which is like a Mucha painting gone berserk.

Many years later, Syrius the Sea Prince and Malta the Fire Child meet by accident and fall in luuurve, and he takes time off from his very close friendship with a six-year-old mer-unicorn to pursue her, and she ditches her good friend Piale to go make out with this dude she hardly knows who only wants to meet her at night, alone, in secluded areas. Sounds safe!

It’s exactly like Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo and Juliet had a turtle mentor named Aristurtle (not kidding) who tells them to hop on the huge dandelion seeds that will float up to some other planet where they can be together forever, except they miss the huge-dandelion-seed takeoff because they get busted by their parents, and then Syrius dies because the sun blinds him because it’s fire and whatever, and Malta, who has shed her pubescent form and now is a totally naked butterfly woman (oookay) picks him up and carries him into the sea where SHE’LL die, and then they’re both dead.

Sleep tight, kids!

This is one of those movies where I am sure there is a lot of appeal, and I just miss all of it. I mean, parts of it are lovely.

But what I mostly remember about this movie is that Malta cried ALL THE TIME. ALLTHETIME. When she saw Syrius, she cried. When she couldn’t see him, she cried. When her mom caught her out and put her on her own little throne-cloud in her throne room, she openly sobbed at a pitch only dogs could hear. Even when I first watched this movie as a very young kid, I remember really disliking all the crying. I mean, Beezle from Unico was a comparative bastion of fortitude, since there were at brief interludes where he was tear-free. No such luck here!

Note: I don’t think she ever cries for Piale, the best friend who gives up her life to try to cover Malta’s ass because the sacred flame went out when Malta broke curfew. Way to be the WORST FRIEND EVER, MALTA.

Basically, I disliked this movie intensely as a kid, and on a rewatching a few years ago, I may have disliked it even more. On the other hand, I also remember this being one of the first movies I ever saw where the heroes didn’t get what they were after. I think that is actually a very important lesson for kids to learn, so that is one small bonus for this movie, at least?

I don’t know; I think it’s perfectly possible for a movie to make an impression of quality on you even if you dislike it, and to dislike a perfectly good movie, and knowing that I have never been hugely into animation I think it’s unfair for me to judge some of its tropes, except that I would like to see a little less crying, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. (Also, maybe slap some animated clothes on these kids so their pubescence during the solar eclipse could end with a nice halter dress or something instead of her sobbing naked in front of a crowd of 500 fire sprites and/or merpeople. That would be good.)