Ni no Kuni

This was an enjoyable film but I feel there was too much important info that is missing for the story. The movie tells of a city called Beladon, where many important events took place, but it never goes into detail about why these events took place. If this were a game, the events would have been given greater attention. The studio had to cram as much as they could into a nearly 2 hour film but it left too many unanswered questions.

I love the games, I love studio ghibli art, but this movie was pretty boring.. the very ending was interesting, but not enough to be worth the watch. It fell flat unfortunately..

This movie follows in the footsteps of the video games, has an equal potential to tell a great, sometimes complicated story. It straight up throws away so many scenes that could've been made to both improve the bond between the characters and to strengthen the plot. Instead, they seem to take a shortcut on explaining or showing things by inserting a really lazy written dialogue - usually a size of a sentence at max, to simply let the character notify the others why she arrived late.

It feels like there would've been enough story to make a two and a half hour movie, but everything that wasn't strictly related to the main plot was just cut off entirely. I did not get to bond with any of the characters in this movie, and the ending would've actually been an amazing twist if they'd shown a bit more passion and time to introduce even the two main characters to the audience.

Story aside, audio was great and visuals were okay. Only reason why I just have to rate the visuals down from what could've been great, is the fact that even that feels so rushed. Animation part is gorgeous and has very notable touch of Studio Ghibli - yet doesn't really hit the same level of detail - especially in motion.

What gives the visuals a huge negative hit are the CGI that is used in the majority of bigger fighting scenes. It is also used as an effect at some points, but I did not find it that disturbing - although I would've preferred those effects to be animated instead. During fighting scenes, you can see how the movement and visual part of the characters stands out as being notably different to those that are animated on the foreground. It's kind of giving this movie a tiny hint of probably unintended humor, as looking at the two CGI characters fighting on the background with the world's laziest and most repetitive movement patterns around really made me laugh. I wouldn't have minded the lazy moves if it would've been animated like the rest of the movie. It would've fit in - as for the CGI rendered characters stand out way too much and kind of force you to pay attention. Needless to say, the CGI parts feel very, very lazy and rushed.

Budget probably wasn't where the studio hoped it to be, but because of that I really hate to see another movie based on a video game fail. I'm a guy who watches even mediocre movies repeatedly over the years - this I would not watch again, not even to show it to someone else.

This is a decent anime movie for young and old. Based on some ideas of the 2 video Games "Nino Kuni". Although with some tweaks it could have a lower age rating and could have been enjoyed by even younger audiance aswell. But there is some war and blood so the 12 rating is understandable.

Story and Characters As I didn't play the 2 Video Games I can't tell if it's something from the games. The Story feels standalone but based on some ideas from the Nino Kuni Video Games. Love, Magic, Fantasy; although that most things aren't really explained it feels structurated like a game. Bit by bit you learn more about the world after the characters did something. But other then in a game you can't question more you are stuck by the "main story" which somewhat annoyed me from time to time. You get confronted with many questions about things you want to explore but can't as it's a movie and you have to follow with the story. The given plot twists are well done and understandable. Some you can forsee a little but nothing bad spoilers by the movie itself. The happy end of the movie ist enjoyable and doesn't leave one wondering why. It's a good end without a cliffhanger or anything.

Animation Effects, Characters, Backgrounds and all is pretty good. An up to date look which is fitting with the video games.

Music The music pieces are mostly matching scenes but I'm missing Ghibli feeling here (Joe Hisaishi) it is not the best of the best and I after watching it once can't really remember any song of the movie.

The characters are probably the most consistent part of the movie. They seem well developed and I started to care for them a bit by the end. The other writing really starts to fall apart, haphazardly throwing items and historical events at you in the third act then acting like you've been given enough context to care about them.

Ni no Kuni works very hard to recreate the Studio Ghibli aesthetic - bringing on some Ghibli staff and composer Joe Hisaishi - but the animation budget here is clearly not enough to hold the illusion for the movie's runtime. As it goes on, it starts to feel more like a mid-budget TV anime with flat shots and static animation.

Overall, it's an okay movie with not enough time or money to flesh out all of its ideas. There are worse ways to spend two hours.