This movie aired about half a year ago. The promo-art looked interesting, so I was looking forward to seeing this. When I started playing this, I suddenly found out Gonzo was involved…. ouch.
Still, if you’re expecting the same crap that is Gin-Iro no Kami no Agito, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. This movie didn’t contain the flaws which plagued Gonzo’s previous attempt at a movie so much, and actually turned out into an enjoyable watch. This movie definitely was focused at a young audience, as it’s about a young boy who winds up in an adventure inside a fantasy world, in order to save his parents. The crappy teenage romance has luckily been left out.
Still, that doesn’t mean that this is something I’d recommend. It’s a decent movie, the story is nice, but it’s really nothing special. This movie really knows its audience, and therefore its cases and stories have been kept simple, and not too deep. There’s one clear theme: sacrificing others, and the major focus of this anime is aimed at this. The plot also contains a few rather clichéd elements (for example, a couple of characters end up joining our main characters journey for no good reason at all, and in order to save his parents, our main character has to collect the infamously overused five crystals. The last, of course, being the crystal of darkness).
Still, there’s one thing I can be really positive about: the graphics. As this is a movie, it’s gotten a big budget for the graphical department, and the results are clearly visible. The animation looks very good, the character design turned out very interesting, the CG looks gorgeous, and the background art really was beautiful. The only thing is that the fights could have been better, as they were rather standard.
I’d say that this is definitely not the best movie around, but if you’re bored and need a couple of hours to burn, you could want to try this one out.
I rather enjoyed this movie. It had a lot of theme to it in terms of the dark side of human nature; something Japanese love.
I was thinking it was more cliched in the direction of the animation itself. Many of the scenes were taken directly from Miyazaki Hayao’s Studio Ghibri movies.
I found the crystals to be interesting, because it actually seemed to be depicting a real video game.