Nahuel y el Libro Mágico

Being honest, I watched this because the villain design was lovely.

South american animation hasn't been in the best spotlight for the last three decades, so I was interested in seeing a passion project which had a pretty drawing style and a different story to tell.

But, I was quite dissapointed.

The animation usually works, but the CGI and cel shading use felt very akward and forced, it didn't blend well with the 2D animation. Although the framerate was higher in intense scenes and usually with the villain on camera. I also liked the alternative style scenes when they told a different background story. There were a lot of talented people involved but I believe they were very limited with the budget they had.

Also, I was able to spot some animation errors for a movie which was shown on cinema.

My biggest complain is the audio. There was no audio technician and it's very obvious (in the spanish dub at least). Some microphones sounded weird, like they were covered or low quality, sometimes the characters spoke and there was no audio, the SFX were almost non existant when people talked. The dub had also weird parts, there were talented actors and starters but no direction.

Finally, the story was enjoyable. Although the characters were quite plain and the relationships between them weren't developed properly. They looked liked exagerations of themselves. And I felt more intrigued about the villain and the talking dog than the protagonist himself, that's a bad signal in a movie.

Give it a watch if you'd like to see a different movie or indie animation, but not if you want a serious film.

I still love the villain/10.

The story is very interesting, albeit too much cliché. It deals with some forms of magic and people who perform them.

However, the villain completely plain and lacks any motivation besides power and ruling the world. The hero being too naive was a thing I didn't like but it's tolerable.

Now comes the defect that bothered me the most: the dialogues and speeches. "Nahuel!" is the most repeated sentence throughout the movie. After the tenth or fifteenth occurrence, it started to become insufferable. Then, in the middle of the movie, comes one of the worst pieces of info dump in one of the worst ways possible, when Fresia tells a man turned into a dog by a curse his own story.

All said, a good idea with a failed execution: plain characters with cliché motivations and horrible speeches.

I want my time back.