Oni: Die Geschichte der Donnergöttin

I started the series for the adorable visual style, it's cute but not simplistic, there's great sophistication of details and texture. The slow frame rate makes it a little choppy (I assume budget limitations? Maybe if it gets enough viewers they'll go back and fill in frames?), but the overall aesthetics make up for it.

I stayed with the series for the story, which seems simplistic at first but then takes quite a deep turn at the end, and is quite moving. I won't give any spoilers, but it's a lesson that much of the world needs now, in our polarized fractured age.

All in all, amazing film! (I guess long film or short series.)

I've been taking Schoolism lessons for a long time so I will say that I have a mild bias towards Tonko House, but based on how little publicity this series has received I assumed that it must've been a dud.

However, it turns out that Oni: Thunder God's Tale is a sweet and pleasant movie mini-series that has gorgeous visuals and a fun story that works for the most part, but we'll get to that later.

First things first: This is clearly a film made by Dice just from looking at the color palette's alone. He's pretty well known for his use of diffused lighting and very specific color palette choices, so it's nice to see that all in here. The film is supposedly a blend of stop-motion and CGI, but as far as I'm aware the movie was all CGI (based off of interviews with the producers and director) so I find it a little odd how many reviewers claim this is a stop-motion film. Regardless, the effect is beautiful, saved some money, and works for the most part. There are just a few scenes where it can be visually confusing as to what is happening, but those are far and few between.

In terms of story, I think it works for the most part and has the structure of a really good movie, but it just has some pacing issues. Since it is a mini-series and not a movie, it is not meant to be watched in one sitting and I would strongly argue against doing that as there is A LOT of repetitive dialogue. This is probably one of my biggest gripes about the movie is that there are a ton of instances of characters repeating dialogue they have already spoken or reinforming the audience of what their character motivation is.

I know this is probably because the movie is intended to be watched by a fairly young audience (which is fine) but I think it beats the audience over the head just a few too many times and there are several emotionally engaging scenes ruined by characters interrupting the scene with redundant dialogue. Possibly, the reason for this is due to the fact that the intended audience (English speaking Children) probably doesn't know what Oni, Kappa, or Kami are, so they're trying their best to overexplain the plot? Who knows.

The voice acting itself is also a little hit or miss. All of the child characters sound great and Takei sounds good, but everyone else seems to be just a little bit off. It's not bad or anything but it becomes more apparent when they are also speaking redundant dialogue.

The other minor gripe (and I'm glad the movie doesn't double down on it) is that it ALMOST tries to pull a Ferngully narrative and I about turned it off when I thought the movie was just going to do a "machines bad, nature good" but fortunately the movie is a bit more clever than that.

All in all, Oni is a pretty good film/series that definitely deserves more attention for the amount of love and quality put into it. I must applaud the series for having some really great moments and ideas, even though it is held down by some strange pacing choices.

Give it a watch.

I'm not going to rate this one, since I don't want to skew the ratings for something where I'm not remotely the target audience. This is aimed very much at young children, of which I am not one.

I watched this because the animation in the trailer looked cool, and the animation really is very good. There's also a wonderfully imaginative collection of characters - the weirdest I saw in ten minutes I watched was a guy with a water dish for a head who passes out every time his water splashes out, at which point someone has to refill it for him. Seems like an evolutionary dead end, but it's certainly creative.

I like a lot of cartoons that are ostensibly for kids, like Infinity Train or Pixar movies. But those films have a certain sophistication, whereas Oni has got that cute, simplistic kids vibe. It doesn't mean that nothing interesting will happen, or that there won't be a good story. It just means that my adult brain almost immediately said, "nope, not gonna watch *this.*

But if you've got a kid and want to watch TV with them, you could certainly do worse.

This is such a lovely story of self discovery and dealing with internalized feelings of fear and self doubt. I appreciate the art style and mix of tradition with modernism. Please watch this while you still can. It's a great series for the family to enjoy and a bit of a tear jerker towards then.

The character development and pace is great. Nothing is shown to fast, they don't leave questioned unanswered. Just simple sweet and wholesome. I love the diversity of this film between human struggles and the struggles of the mythical creatures.

This is one of Netflix's gems that comes along every so often.

Beautiful art & beautiful story.

Simple story with great characters, about finding something wonderful that is unique to every child, but also a story of a father and daughter.

Nice character development, pace is great, nothing too slow or too fast, everything is just right. Only 4 episodes so can be finished in 1 or 2 sittings.

Again, the visual style is just amazing. It's a mixed style of CG animation with stop motion style that somehow really works well for telling this story.

Highly recommend this to anyone with a kid, or someone who's into good animation, or like japanese mythic tales, or just someone looking out a good wholesome story.