Bright: Alma de Samurai

Where do I start? This anime has the worst animation I have ever seen and I used to watch 'Clutch Cargo', I have seen better animation in 60s anime. The character art is poorly done, and the characters do not seem to be a part of their environment, nor do any of them move naturally. This movie looks worse than the back screening of 50s movies, the background is completely separate from the characters. The story line is average, the voice acting is good, and the best part of the movie is the music. The movie feels incomplete though, as if they put together the first few episodes of an anime. It also feels a bit rushed. This anime was made in 2021 and should be much, much better.

First off let me say for the record that I am one of the rare anime viewers that loves CG anime. But just because a studio opts for a 3D approach doesn't mean they can skimp out on coloring. This movie looks like it was done in technicolor. The shading is so poor that the forest scenes look like they were done by one guy using Adobe flash.

The fight scenes are very well done, but they are so few and far between that you have to suffer through the movie just to see them.

This is a dark and tragic story involving prostitution, sex slavery and rampant racism. Every character is a bad person and some varying degree of unlikable. It may be called bright, and be brightly colored, but there are no happy endings to be had here.

As much as I enjoy samurai flicks and cool sword fights, I cannot rate this higher than a 4. It feels unfinished. The lord feels randomly thought out. This is not the best intellectual property and I think Netflix ought to just move on.

Anime should have been a bit longer to establish some backstories, some motivations were unclear but the action and art style were good but the score was terrible.

"Backstories missing" pretty much covers this review. Tremendous lost opportunity. Unlike some other reviews, I did like the 3D cgi and the choice of using earth tones for the colour scheme, which provided a warmth to all the scenes. In fact, it was beautiful! The musical score, although uninspiring, was adequate. The characters were probably engaging but it's hard to tell when you don't understand their motivations. In all, I did want to give a higher rating but couldn't, even though the story was good. It's just that context was missing on why the characters did what they did. Another 20 minutes would have added a lot and could have placed this in the top tier of anime. Instead, I watched a medium tier effort that barely made an average grade. Sigh! I am honestly saddened as this could very easily, with very little effort, been so much better. :-(

Decent animation, good action, and a simple but effective story. Like the original movie, the growing bond between the human hero (a Samurai in this case) and an orc is interesting. And their protection of a young elf girl is heartwarming :-)