The confusion about 'demons' is because Unico is dubbed from Japanese. There are a couple of possibilities what the original word was, either yokai or mamono, both of which are often translated as 'demon' despite neither aligning very well with the western concept. Yokai is a blanket term that lumps together what we would call demons, nature spirits, demigods, ghosts, monsters, and other such things. If English had a word for a category that encompassed every supernatural creature of religion and folklore from angels and demons to monsters like dragons and trolls to fae creatures like faeries and dryads to ghosts and spirits, that word would be used to translate. Since English has no such word, someone decided at some point to translate yokai into 'demons' and that has persisted. The other possibility is that the word was mamono, which is slightly closer as it implies evil or at least mischievous spirits, but still would include a lot of things that no westerner would identify as demons. Most fans of anime or Japanese culture in general eventually encounter this problem as a lot of wildly different characters and creatures that aren't remotely similar to each other besides being supernatural in some way are all referred to as demons.
I remember this movie from when I was a kid. They had it in the local video rental store and it was one of my favorites. Saw something on Reddit about the most horrifying, scary animated villains and it made me think of this insane movie. There were a lot of movies like this in the 70's/80's I believe. The Brave Little Toaster is another nightmare fuel movie for kids, without the excuse of cultural dissonance.
***(your editor John is absolutely correct)
Framing this, Jeremy
The confusion about 'demons' is because Unico is dubbed from Japanese. There are a couple of possibilities what the original word was, either yokai or mamono, both of which are often translated as 'demon' despite neither aligning very well with the western concept. Yokai is a blanket term that lumps together what we would call demons, nature spirits, demigods, ghosts, monsters, and other such things. If English had a word for a category that encompassed every supernatural creature of religion and folklore from angels and demons to monsters like dragons and trolls to fae creatures like faeries and dryads to ghosts and spirits, that word would be used to translate. Since English has no such word, someone decided at some point to translate yokai into 'demons' and that has persisted. The other possibility is that the word was mamono, which is slightly closer as it implies evil or at least mischievous spirits, but still would include a lot of things that no westerner would identify as demons. Most fans of anime or Japanese culture in general eventually encounter this problem as a lot of wildly different characters and creatures that aren't remotely similar to each other besides being supernatural in some way are all referred to as demons.
I remember this movie from when I was a kid. They had it in the local video rental store and it was one of my favorites. Saw something on Reddit about the most horrifying, scary animated villains and it made me think of this insane movie. There were a lot of movies like this in the 70's/80's I believe. The Brave Little Toaster is another nightmare fuel movie for kids, without the excuse of cultural dissonance.
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the context, Steve. And yeah, they really would let kids watch anything back then as long as it was animated.