Beauty and Warrior is a 2000 animated film directed by Sukma Romadhon and produced by Rudy Chandra. In this film, one of the daughters of what may or may not be a king named Mahadewa is kicked out some unnamed country because she married a human being. One of her sisters, Mayang Sari, follows her, they talk a bit about splitting up, and the banished sister, Nawang Wulan, leaves for who knows where. As for Mayang Sari, she becomes the queen of a water palace, and a group of five jinn serve as her bodyguards/courtiers.
Next, two brothers, possibly soldiers from Mataram
based on two brief references, meditate in a cave, and this is where things get confusing, if they aren't already. One of the two brothers, Batara Tantra, enters the water palace as an ethereal spirit, fights some of Mayang Sari's jinn bodyguards, and has a baby with her after defeating them. Wait, what? How, why? Never explained! Mayang Sari gives him a magic sword. However, back in the real world, the other brother, Mega, wants the sword to himself, and the two brothers fight. Batara has Mega beaten but then gives him the sword, saying that he doesn't want to fight. Mega leaves, Mayang Sari shows up, and Batara immediately says he needs to go back to Mataram and defeat his brother before he destroys the world. Mayang Sari tells Batara his brother can not be defeated and he must be convinced to give up his ambitions so the two of them can defeat "the monsters" and "dark forces". With a brief scene of Batara standing on a cliff covered in jewelry in some unknown location, possibly Mataram, the movie stops.
An English dub was produced in 2002 and is licensed by Joseph Lai's company IFD Films and Arts. It was released on DVD in 2005 by Digiview. You can watch it in its full beauty (and warrior), in all five parts, here. There's also a trailer for it for those who want to see a peek at how truly awful it is.
While relatively unknown online, it did receive heavy riffing from The Annotation Station.note
Beauty and Warrior provides examples for the following tropes:
- Aerith and Bob: Mayang Sari gets banished by a "god" named King William. His name in the credits is Mahadewa, meaning "Great God".
- All There in the Manual: The plot, such as it is, can be found here and here. As MarzGurl points out in her review, even the back of the DVD box explains the plot better than the actual movie.
- Animesque: The anime influences and art style are there, but it's made in Indonesia.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Defeating Mayang Sari's bodyguards means her instantly falling in love with you and Babies Ever After!
- Dull Surprise: None of the actors even try to emote.
- Flat Characters: While there are works that feature World of Ham or World of Badass, Beauty and Warrior presents a World Of Flat Characters.
- Gainax Ending: The movie doesn't so much end as stop.
- Grandpa God: Mahadewa. Some reviews even straight-up call him Zeus.
- G-Rated Sex: Apparently, sex involves spinning around fully clothed in a multicolored void until a baby is formed.
- Hong Kong Dub: The movie is blessed with a dubbing job that makes the viewer long for the quality dubs of old Kung Fu films.
- Inconsistent Dub: Are the two brothers' names Mega and Batara or Megan and Barta?
- Limited Animation
- Mind Screw: Good luck trying to understand anything about this movie.
- Nipple and Dimed: Partially averted; we see Mayang Sari nursing her child with her areola visible. And they're
orange for god's sake! - No Ending: The closest this movie comes to a resolution is a brief scene of Batara wearing jewelry and standing on the edge of a cliff.
- Only Six Faces: One of the biggest offenders. The only differences between the various goddesses are the colors of their clothing and hairstyles; and the only difference between the two brothers is eye color.
- Overly Long Fighting Animation: This is not helped at all by having the two brothers looking almost exactly the same, nor by re-using the same exact ten seconds of the fight about six times. Batara Tantra has a scarf of some kind wrapped around his waist though.
- Also Mega is always attacking and Batara is ever defensive, at least until the very end.
- Reaction Shot: A common trope in Indonesian works; animated or not, and it was used here when the goddesses are shocked that one of them wanted to marry a mortal human. With dramatic sound effects and extreme zooming-in-and-outs.
- Recycled Animation: Used a lot. The tunnel scene and the scene with the two brothers fighting each other were used a lot, and the scene where Nawang Wulan gives Mayang Sari her part of the dress is used twice. Not to mention most of the characters are duplicates of one another, so they reuse poses.
- Say My Name: Batara at the very end.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Or of jinn. The first is the water jinni who binds the hero for a moment and beaten. Then he fights the second jinni who can...fly and doesn't even hit the hero. The tiger-striped jinni seemed to have the hero on the ropes for a moment and the last jinni is beaten pretty easily.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Where did Nawang Wulan go? Who was her human husband? Where did Mayang Sari go after Batara left? What happened to the water kingdom? What happened to the plot? Never explained.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Batara just lets Mega take the magic sword even though it could mean The End of the World as We Know It.
