Oni: Thunder God's Tale

It's short, it's cute, and visually appealing!

A beautifully stop-motion animated 4-episode story with decent messaging for kids! Like the dangers of trampling over tradition, not taking care of nature, fear against things that are different, and losing one self to emotions and the enemy being within ourselves.. or something. Still, it is energetic enough to distract younger audiences (target demographic)!

I've seen this done better in other places, which makes it hard to stand-out, even with a Japanese Yokai theme. The choppy framerate certainly gives it personality and style.. but also made it very distracting, and hard to enjoy. And overall, doesn't overstay its welcome, but doesn't linger enough to be memorable or recommendable.

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.

Part stop motion, part animation, the style of this short 4 episode mini-series was fantastic and the story was adorable to boot. A bit predictable, but it is of course mainly for kids. Following Onari, a young girl being raised by her magical father in the land of the Kami who must prepare for the coming blood moon when the evil Oni will attack. The frame rate of the stop motion suffers in certain scenes and feels a bit stiff, but generally the animation is fantastic and each of the characters is cute in its own way. I had a lot of fun and I could certainly see how kids would like it. I did, was good.

The story is beautifully written, with great meaning for everyone (child or grown up).

So great to see quite a few references to other wonderful anime films! A must-see for any anime/studio Ghibli fan!

It's beautifully directed and acted. I don't want to give away any spoilers but the ending was quite emotional for me. There is a beautiful lesson, as you would find in any Japanese tale.

Highly recommended viewing. You must watch all four episodes at once, you will not be able to leave the mini series without getting to the end.

Enjoy this beautiful story with stunning animation. I can't wait to see more productions from this studio!

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.