Best friends Yuu, Haru, and Kotona enjoy a tranquil high school life together. One day, however, a suspicious man pursues and stabs Kotona—a catastrophe that Yuu and Haru fail to prevent. While hastily carrying the girl to the hospital, the two boys are nearly hit by a truck but miraculously remain unharmed. Instead, they find themselves in a fairy-tale-like kingdom with an exotic diversity of people and wonderful creatures.
To their surprise, the boys discover that Yuu, who has been confined to a wheelchair since childhood, can now walk! Yet they have no time to ponder the puzzling situation, as their friend is gone. Setting off to find Kotona, Yuu and Haru stop at a local pub to inquire about her. But upon inspecting a picture of Asha, the kingdom's princess, the two have a shocking revelation.
Narrating an extraordinary adventure in a magical world, Ni no Kuni demonstrates the special connection between two separate yet parallel worlds and its manifestation of the bonds between individuals.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
anime-prime
1: You are being chased by a guy with a dagger through the streets. You call your friend but he doesn't pick up. What do you do? A: Call the cops to come and help? B: Call an adult to come and help? C: Call your other friend who is in a wheelchair to come and help? If your answer is C, then you will probably love this movie. If it isn't then you will probably enjoy watching this show to laugh at other dumb things the characters did. 2: You find your stabbed girlfriend on the streets in the arms of your best friend (not in that way, getyour minds out of the gutter). Your girlfriend is losing blood and your friend who can't walk (because he is a cripple but is still trying to carry her and save her) is holding her too tightly. What do you do?
A: Rush over and help carry her?
B: Call an ambulance?
C: Ask your friend in an angry voice why he is holding his girlfriend like that?
If your answer is C, then you will probably love this movie. If it isn't then you will probably enjoy watching this show to laugh at other dumb things the characters did.
Ni No Kuni is as cliche and over dramatic as it gets. So much so that I called every single plot point and surprise twist reveal. Cliche doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it does lead to a lack of enjoyment when you have seen everything it does done better in other movies. Nothing is really bad but nothing is really good either besides for the art. It will entertain kids though and that is enough. This movie was made by an animator employee of Studio Ghibli, Momose Yoshiyuki, and while you can tell that by the animation and sound (by another Ghibli employee), it fails to do what most Miyazaki films do, and that is to touch your heart. That is probably because of the generic script from Akihiro Hino. The script is definitely the falling point of this movie.
Story:
Ni No Kuni is about two friends named Yusuke (Yuu) and Haru who both like a girl named kotona who suddenly gets stabbed and when they to rescue her they end up in the middle of traffic and get transported to a fantasy world. The only difference is that they got transported before they got hit by a vehicle. In this world they find that there is a princess named Astrid who looks like their Kotona and is in critical condition just like her and they need to try to figure out the connection between the two girls and the two worlds, and they need to find a way to save both of them since they are both injured.
Art:
The art and animation are the best things in the movie. It almost looks like a Ghibli or Ponoc film. The art is pretty and clean and the animation is smooth and explosive. The CGI actually looks pretty good in this movie.
Sound:
Nothing of note here. It fits in and does its job but there is nothing memorable about it. It is slightly surprising since the music composer is done by Joe Hisashi, otherwise known as the musical composer for pretty much every studio Ghibli movie. The soundtrack is good and keeps me invested in the atmosphere of each scene but it is one of his weaker works. My personal favorite songs of his are "My Neighbor Totoro" (the Totoro song) and "Carrying You" (from Castle in the Sky). I saw the movie in English on Netflix and the dub was good. The British-like voices from the other world annoyed me a bit but everyone was well cast.
Characters:
There is nothing unique about the characters. they had emotions and names and faces but besides for one being in a wheelchair (for only part of the movie), there is nothing that I could say about the characters that would distinguish them from other characters. Haru was just a badly written character for most of the movie and the other leads were just generic characters with no motivations besides for protecting those they love.
Enjoyment:
While I can't say that I didn't enjoy it, I might have enjoyed it for the wrong reasons. I laughed at some of the stupid things that the characters did throughout the movie like what I wrote in the opening paragraph. There were a lot of other times that dumb things happened. Dumb, but entertaining to watch.
Overall:
I enjoyed the movie and that is what counts the most. But overall the movie just suffers from a bad script. For what it is, from the studio behind Pokemon, studio OLM, kids will enjoy it and it is for them that it was probably made. Unlike with Ghibli movies, this movie didn't have a lesson or moral to give over, and that may actually be its biggest sin.
Score: 8 (Good and had some great elements, but I wouldn't rewatch it).
I don't think it deserves an 8 but I enjoyed it too much (for whatever reason) to give it a 7.
caleb3817
Am I the only one who strongly disliked this movie. The 2d animation was good but the CGI was downright awful. Models looked worse than videogames from two generations ago. It's hard to get into specific details without giving away spoilers but the world history and logic created in the games are completely shattered in this movie. The timeline is all mixed up. The story is often predictable. I think as a stand-alone movie it would be ok for someone who hasn't played the games but as someone whos put 30+ hours into Ni No Kuni 1 and 2 each this movie feels like aninsult that hurts my perspective on the series as a whole.
Firechick12012
What we have here is Level-5's attempt at making a movie, and on the surface, it looks promising. Ni no Kuni is a game series that got started in the early 2010s, and it was famous for one thing: It was the first video game that Studio Ghibli worked on. No, really. Level-5 actually brought Ghibli on to animate various cutscenes and had Joe Hisaishi make the music for it. Needless to say, everyone who played it really liked it. I've been wanting to play the game myself for years, but it was on the PS3, which I could never afford. It did get re-releasedon the Switch, so I wasted no time buying it, but I never got to sit down and play it yet. Getting back on track, Ni no Kuni eventually went on to get a sequel game and, as of last year, a movie with an original story. When I heard about the movie, I was really excited! But then I actually got to watch it.
Good lord, I've been disappointed before, but this was just...painful. I really want to like this movie. I really do! It does have a lot going for it at first...and it crashed and burned. Hard. So what's the story? Well, it focuses on three kids: Yu, Haru, and Kotona, who are great friends and spend a lot of time together. One day, Kotona is stabbed by a mysterious pursuer. Haru and Yu try to save her, but when they're nearly killed in a car accident...they wake up in another world called Evermore. But Kotona is missing, and the princess of this world they're in happens to look almost exactly like her. In their quest to save the princess and find Kotona, they learn more about Evermore and what it has in common with Earth, but the friends' loyalty to each other get tested and strained when their actions in Evermore have consequences in the real world. Yu may have to make hard choices, especially when Haru begins acting strangely when Kotona's situation gets more complicated.
Sorry if my summary of the story isn't that great. There's a lot that I can't mention without spoiling the entire movie in the process, so I'll try to hold back as much as I can. But man, do I really want to rant about this movie! However, I don't want to be too negative, so I'll go over the positive aspects of this movie first: The animation is quite good. The world's overall look is really breathtaking, the character designs are varied and interesting, the fight choreography is top notch, and some of the fight scenes were actually pretty clever in some ways. I also really liked Yu as a character. Not only is he NOT an overpowered bland isekai protag (And he has no harem. Thank God!), he actually has a backstory, has good chemistry with his friends, and is smart and competent. He could have benefitted from more depth and had more flaws, but I'm happy with what we got. Plus, having a main character in a wheelchair who is portrayed decently well, doesn't bemoan his disability, and isn't solely defined by his disability, is pretty cool. His friend/adopted sister Saki was pretty awesome too. She got some great moments in the movie, both in the real world and in the other world. I kinda wish we had seen more of her.
Unfortunately, those are the only good things I can say about the movie, because the rest of it really doesn't fare well. While I admit I haven't played the games much, they delve into the world the kids go into in a lot more detail than the movie could even scrape, so what little we see of it is just kind of there. The setting isn't developed well enough to make its audience feel invested in it, even with the animation making it look as beautiful as possible. And that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of this movie's many, many problems. With how well loved the games are, and how the movie is telling its own story, you'd think the creators would be able to do them justice and create an intriguing story out of it. Unfortunately, the movie is little more than a generic fantasy isekai movie, with the main kids trying to save their girl friend and the princess who is a damsel in distress. The villains are so cartoonishly evil that you'd think they'd have come straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, and the real big bad is so obvious that you can tell who it is straight away. The whole movie follows the same story beats and cliches that have plagued other stories for centuries, and doesn't really do anything new or exciting with them.
And that's not even getting into the characters. Other than Yu and Saki, every single one of them is extremely bland and one-note. Kotona's the energetic girl whose life is in danger, Astrid is the damsel in distress princess who tries to be more active, the main villain is the chessmaster manipulating everything who hams it up when exposed, but all of them pale in comparison to Haru. Seriously, watching him made me feel like the writers really didn't know what to do with him most of the time. He starts out as the cheerful friend archetype, then gets needlessly angry at Yu for little to no reason (Case in point: Early in the movie, when he sees Yu with an injured Kotona, he doesn't ask if he's alright or offer to take them both to the hospital, you know, like a good friend would. He yells at him for holding her in an intimate way, takes Kotona away so he can run her to the hospital, and JUST LEAVES HIM THERE! Knowing that Yu's in a wheelchair and can't move! Dude, what a dick!), his motivations are laughable and poorly developed, and he's constantly being a reckless idiot who can't stop to think (Which Yu actually calls him out on in the movie!). Any development he gets is really unnatural and rushed, like the writers couldn't agree on what to do with him. Honestly, as a character, Haru is the biggest dark spot on the movie, and the other characters, while slightly more tolerable, are still too bland to really connect with on an emotional level, since the movie's only under two hours long. There's a lot of characters to keep track of, and I think the movie would have fared better if it had cut a few of them out to give the writers more wiggle room to strut their stuff.
Speaking of writing, I'm not even done with that portion yet. Late in the movie, a lot of stuff happens, but most of it is characters spouting about random plot points that were never mentioned before, are barely explored when they're introduced, and they just appear without rhyme or reason. Like, at one point, Astrid mentions that the only way to defeat a villain is some magic sword, but her father tells her it's been gone for years, and later, we see the sword again because some old guy gave it to Yu, who can activate it even though he has no reason to be able to do so at that point, and all is suddenly happy happy joy joy. Can you see how badly planned and written this sounds? Basically, the only reason the sword is even used again is because the plot demands it. Furthermore, there are a ton of other plot threads that get little to no deep exploration, such as an old man who Yu met when he was a kid. We never know his name, we never know who he is or why he's there, but when the story writes itself in a corner, he appears and gives the heroes the tools they need to save the day, and then leaves again. He's basically a Deus Ex Machina in human form, and that's not good writing. Seriously.
I don't have much to say about the soundtrack, as its Joe Hisaishi, and from what I've heard, he re-uses tracks from some of the games. Again, I haven't played them, so I can't judge them on how well they fit into the movie, but I kinda feel like Hisaishi overused his orchestra to the point where the BGMs were so loud during certain scenes that they just got obnoxious. And at other points, the music swells and gets dramatic, then suddenly just stop. Oh, and the CGI made no effort to actually integrate with the animation. My God, close-ups of various monsters walking through rugged terrain don't even try to blend in with the 2D animation, making them stick out like a sore thumb, even worse than how Granblue Fantasy did it. It's jarring and takes you out of the movie. Think looking through a closet of all black clothes and a random pink dress suddenly flies in front of your face and blinds you. That's how bad it is. It's especially obvious when important characters, who are traditionally animated, are the focus of a scene, while obviously CGI soldiers flail around in the background, their limb movements all herky jerky and the texture so computerized that you can tell they're not even trying to make them mix with the scenery.
So yeah, the movie's not great. It's poorly written, the characters are bland, the story is cliche in all the worst ways, the CG is terrible and makes no effort to try to be less jarring than it is, and any drama it tries to pull off comes off forced and artificial. But in all honesty, if Ni no Kuni had been just a generic isekai movie, I wouldn't have minded. It would have been just a generic but still serviceable movie...but then the ending happened. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is absolutely one of the most awful, badly written endings I've ever seen in any form of media, not only by just how out of nowhere the final twist is, but how little sense it makes, and how it completely spits on everything the movie previously established all for the sake of forced drama that didn't need to happen. Seriously, I haven't been this infuriated at anything since the Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card anime's just as God-awful ending, and this one stoops to a whole new level of bad writing. I mean, you really have to TRY to be that bad.
I really don't want to hate this movie. I really don't. If the writers had made more of an effort with it and smoothed out all of its issues, it could have been a fine movie capable of standing on its own merits. Alas, what we wound up getting was a complete mess with a God awful ending that ruined an already flimsy premise to Hell and back. So don't waste your time with this one.
Lycanhunt3r
And here I was thinking that I wouldn’t write anime reviews again because of the time that I consume doing so, then NiNoKuni appears on my Netflix. In first glace I wasn’t interested at all, the art style wasn’t appealing, the animation was just OK and the story shown in the trailer looked unoriginal, until I saw them going to a new world, and as an Isekai fan I immediately clicked on it to start watching. Well, at the end of the movie I regret it. First of all, let’s mourn screenwriting. I would need a couple dozen hours just to talk about all the mistakesof logic, coherence or just ways that a scene could be improved, that’s the magnitude of lack of work in screenwriting, I like to believe that they gave the guy two weeks to work on a one-and-a-half-hour movie’s storyline, and that’s why a teenagers’ fanfic of 100 chapters of the forbidden relationship between Naruto and Sasuke in the high school would have less mistakes than this movie’s.
I’ll be superficial and direct, it is bad. The things that aren’t wrong are just unoriginal. It’s just sad how the budget of this anime got trashed solely by the storytelling. Everything else was kind of acceptable, even the story’s mistakes were forgettable, but in the near 1:20:00 mark the storytelling got downhill without control, like the script creator just gave up, maybe it was too difficult for him to rise the climax and then end the story, so he made it poorly without care or giving a shit.
If you are the type of person that doesn’t care about the story being completely illogical, in a script building way, then this might be a good movie for you to watch, if not, don’t see it or you’ll end up like me: angry, sad and disappointed.
JDbbx
I don't write reviews. Here we go (?) Ni no Kuni (2019) is a cash grab. This nearly two-hour shambles of a feature length animated movie is, at best, a mediocre isekai. For those of you who are familiar with modern renditions of the isekai genre this should be off-putting as-is. If not please continue reading. This is quite frankly an absolute monstrosity of an attempt at art. The story is non existant aside from some poorly executed tropes mixed in with your standard quid pro quo of two best friends fighting for the same cause on two different sides; the resolution of which islackluster and abrupt to the point of rapidly removing the viewer from any semblance of suspension of disbelief that may remain after the first hour of drivelling nonsense.
The art is mediocre at best, awful at worst. The CGI is jarring and poorly done. I won't dwell on this point, it's objectively lacking.
The sound is the high point of the anime in that it doesn't actively cause me to want to gouge my sensory receptors out with a rusty spoon. 2/10
The characters are terrible, cookie cutter "no-one-knows-why-he's-one-this-side" main character and "basically the same" secondary. The girl/main love interest serves as nothing but a plot device and is so underdeveloped that I finished this film with little to no idea of how she behaves or what she's like. The main villain is... there I guess.
Enjoyment: no.
Overall I give this anime feature length film a solid 1/10 because there are no 0s here. It is a waste of time. I have not played the games it is based on but to be frank I consider this and any other piece of art to be a work of art in and of itself and this is quite frankly a draft at best. Perhaps the fans of this game would enjoy it more but I am wildly incapable of justifying such a position as it is quite frankly an almost-two-hour void where a movie should be. It is terrible. If you have nothing better to do I suggest you watch a two bit hentai and at least get some form of gratification from your time because you clearly won't get any from this disaster.
HelloHinnie
As someone who has played both Ni No Kuni's major games (Wrath of the White Witch and Revenant Kingdom) this movie does not correlate the game's storyline, it's an alternative storyline at best. The story is very mediocre, very predictable (I knew the villain the moment I saw him) and does not follow the game's logic. It's like, trying to be Ni No Kuni, but it is not. The 2D animation is good(as you expect when you consider it's heavily inspired by Ghibli's work), but the CGI is very bad. The sound is good, many soundtracks are from the original games, andmost of the time fit well.
The characters... are complicated. I enjoyed them at the beginning, they made me want to continue watching to see how they end up, but it seems they became less and less important at the end.
I felt it lacks a bit of exploration of the world, Ni No Kuni's world-building is fantastic and it makes you want to see how much this world is so different and magical, the different creatures and places. But this doesn't happen here, as it is almost kingdom and citie landscape and as for creatures, it has a tiny creature that follows the characters around, but it was completely unnecessary
I like some of the references to the games, life the flying boat, Evermore, King Tom, Oliver outfit, Mornstar, the puppet spell, and some themed songs of the games. It gives the feeling you're still watching Ni No Kuni, even though it doesn't look like it.
Overall, it is an enjoyable movie, it is for sure flawed and misses some of the game logic so it doesn't look a Ni No Kuni film, but the characters are enjoyable and the story isn't really bad, just don't expect to be enchanted to this movie as you would be from the game story. If you like the game, you may like this film.
Meowmeow1
Continuation of a previous reviewer (because I thought it was hilarious) 3: After saving a princess from another world (whom had a dagger in her stomach just like your girlfriend from your original world), you learn that she has a malignant tumor that may kill her within the next 3 months. Your best friend tries to reason with you by saying that the princess in the other world must be in danger because their lives are linked in theory. In response you: A) Use the 3mo of time to test the theory before jumping to conclusions B) Agree with you friend and go back to the other worldto save the princess
C) Suddenly go into a fit of rage and vow to murder the princess
If your answer was C, You'll love this movie. If not then be ready to facepalm so many times that your face becomes a hand.
Anyway, Not the best movie but great fun if youre watching with a friend and want to poke fun at a movie <3 It had good potential, especially with the ending.
Sleepy_ash____
I dont know why some people dislike this anime ... But I loved this . It has a really unique plot . Nice ending .(First of all I havent played ni no kuni games , maybe thats why my view of point is different that some others). This anime is on top of my anime list now . Fantasy lovers should probably watch this . Im not into fantasy a lot but this got me addicted The characters are good , especially yu is nice . Im addicted to him . Their looks are really fine , the art is amazing . When I startedwatching it and saw the main characters at first I was like "This is gonna be good there are some hot guys" . And it actually turned out to be good .
The other thing is the plot is easy to understand , it wont leave u in confusion in parts in the middle and the ending totally made sense . ( Im pointing this out cuz Ive watched some anime movies with confusing endings )
OhsnapitsDavid
I can not believe people hate an anime movie because it uses 3d models. It is pathetic. I am an author, movie critic, scholar, and writer. I found this movie to be absolutely well done. The hardest part about any story is in its execution. This movie had a script that delivered. The characters were well planned. The Story was well thought out. Even the fight scenes were enjoyable. Anything less than a 10 rating would be downplaying this timeless movie. It is a standalone classic. Not many films can be strong enough to stand alone in its performance. All credit should go to the animatorsas well as the script writers.
Again, it sickens me because "anime fans" are so quick to hate on any studio that uses modern graphics. Do they not know that animation and 3d modelling is a masterful combination?
CaioOP1985
Story: 3 So, the initial premise was actually quite good: People in each world are connected in some way, so what happens in one world affects the ones they are connected to in the other. So when Kotona, a girl in our world, is about to die, it seems like the only way to save her is by killing Astrid, a princess in the other world. So the two main characters, Yu and Haru, go against each other to defend the girl they fell in love with. The first act is pretty solid, introducing the cast, the two worlds and apparently the main conflict of the storyset in trailers and whatnot. The problem starts when the second act begins and things escalate way too fast. In less than ten minutes of screentime, Haru and Yu go from best friends to enemies and go to freacking war against each other. It felt extremely rushed and poorly paced and really hard to believe those seemingly best friends could go to war with each other.
Things only get worse when the final act rolls around and not only we get a giant exposition dumped into the audience to explain the true villain of the story and why everything was happening in the first place, but we also get a lackluster final battle and resolution to everything.
Overall, the wasted potential of a more gray story where the protagonists must fight each other for a believable reason is lost, replaced with a very cliched and overuses narrative.
Art: 4
The 2D art and animation are overall decent enough, with the addition of some really bad and distracting 3D animation thrown every now and again. The biggest problem comes when characters have to move around, like in fights, which are poorly made and animated and very uninteresting to watch. Characters also felt very stiff and showed little to no emotion, either by facial expressions or body language, so they ended up looking like clay dolls with very poor movements.
Sound: 4
The sound design and music do their jobs, but there's nothing in there that catches your attention either. You will probably forget all the songs very quickly and sometimes even forget they are playing. As for the sound design, they are decent and do their job well enough, so no real complains there.
Character: 2
There are no interesting characters here, either because they have absolutely no personality, flaws, conflicts or are just plain stupid.
Yu is a really generic and boring character, having nothing interesting aside from being unable to walk. And even that is not used fully, as upon arriving into the other world and finding out he can walk normally, he doesn't react at all to it, despite never having walked for as long as he could remember. If you watched Avatar (the giant smurfs one), you'll remember how Jake reacted when he, a disabled guy, first walks with his Avatar. And he hadn't spent his whole life unable to walk around.
Haru is just plain stupid and I can't say anything else without giving spoilers. Kotona does nothing aside from almost dying, so we don't get to spend much time with her. Astrid is the only somewhat interesting character, yet she does pretty much nothing over the course of the movie.
And as for the villain, he is really bad, only being introduced for real almost at the end, despite some very weak foreshadow to who he was. His motivation for being the villain felt weak and uninspired and came out of nowhere as well, so more negative points.
Enjoyment: 2
As I said before, the initial premise the movie hooks you with, two friends fighting each other for different beliefs, is a really strong one. Yet the execution of it is really bad and useless at the end when the third act begins.
And this is more personal, but I hate it when the story lacks internal logic. Like, why wear armor if a sword can still kill you as if you didn't have it in the first place? Why make walls to protect you kingdom when someone can get a bloody rhinoceros-like creature to smash it without any trouble? These and many other moments take away my enjoyment way too much and become distracting at times.
Overall: 3
In short, this movie is a piece of hot garbage like no other I've ever seen before. It's less due to being a bad movie (which it totally is), but rather thanks to the utter disappointment I felt while watching it thanks to the very strong premise it makes you think you'll get.
reredundant
Its another isekai, and not a good one given this was inspired from the game The animation is passable but, most of the characters were either unlikable due to being incredibly stupid, or barely even relevant to the plot, along with that the movie refuses to explain things like how Yu is crippled in the city world but isn’t in the fantasy world, along with that he is linked with his friend so he should’ve also been crippled, or why they were even transported in the first place since the villain could’ve easily killed the king and everyone else, he already was in the process ofmurdering the princess so what was the point of bringing them there?
The villain was barely even featured in the plot at all so there was no feeling of threat
There is almost no build up to the plot twists, and the show tries to make it sound like it was obvious this entire time, literally the only 2 hints i could find from my first time watching was the guy being named “Yu” and how they say they fight as if ‘they were the same person’(or something like that) yet one is clearly more skilled as well as being clearly smarter, i really don’t understand how stupid the plot is. However this isn’t entirely bad, it had a few redeeming qualities, and like 1-2 likable characters(excluding the characters that are linked together since Haruto is bad).
They also had an aspect they just ignored, they had other species/races and they barely even talk about it, none of the important characters are any of those
kanaida
I've never played the games, so they have no bearing on this review. The only good thing about this film was the art style. The detail in the monsters was good, and the fight scenes are relatively easy to see (as opposed to lots of flashing lights constantly covering the screen). Everything else was cliched and/or boring. The characters aren't fleshed out, and the choices they make often make no sense. After spending a brief time in a parallel world, Haru suddenly decides that murdering the world's counterpart will save the girl he likes in his world, and is completely convinced by this. Beyond the2-D characters making no sense, the story never explains how the parallel world works. OK, Yu can walk in the alt world, but suddenly both boys know how to outfight monsters and fighters? Plus the fights aren't even well done. The end boss gets taken down by a 20-foot leap in the air, where he stands there gaping for several seconds and gets stabbed in the head rather than either swinging his sword or taking one step to his left.
Basically this feels like a bunch of D&D tropes got slapped on forgettable characters with a cliched story of saving a princess. It was nice to look at but otherwise I wish I hadn't wasted my time.
mowsea
As an avid lover of the Ni no Kuni series, this movie was dreadfully disappointing. They did a great job at reusing some of the game's original soundtrack, and the movie itself was visually quite nice to look at (for the most part) but the actual plot was terrible. The only reason I sat through the whole thing was because of my love for the games, otherwise I would have dropped the film before the 30 minute mark. The storyline eventually became so haphazard that I put the film on 1.5 speed just to try to get it over with. If you're someone who doesn'tcare much for following a coherent storyline and just want to see people run across cool landscapes, then feel free to watch the film. If you're hoping for a worthwhile addition to the video game series (or even a random good movie to spend your weekend enjoying), then don't bother wasting your time.
ATCkit
felt like a mediocre version of 12 kingdoms, Fushigi Yuugi and other Isekai of the 1990 and early 2000s. with all the shortcomings that that time works where knowen for. to know why I say this watch this video from Crunchyroll's official youtube channel "History of Isekai" https://youtu.be/siZ1Swh4LWk?t=280 the movie had all the makings of a great anime but it felt condensed forcing conclusions that would have felt more natural if given more time to develop and would have been better executed as a series rather than a movie. I liked the ending and it did fell complete just wish that it was better passed.
jonnyaut
This is one of the most uninspired movie I've ever seen. Most characters are bland and forgettable. Haru`s actions on the other hand are completely unbelievable. Nobody is this dense. He also switches his mood in an instant. Story is super predictable but it doesn't flow naturally. Everything happens because it needs to. Haru gets mad for no real reason, magic sword appears out of nowheres, and so on. Also those massive plot holes... The writing is definitely the worst thing about this movie. There is no world building, nothing gets explained. I haven't played the games so I was completely lost. Those other races arecompletely unimportant. Who is that old man? What are his motivations?
I don't get it.
The animations were stiff and CGI straight up bad. When you see those faces you expect Ghibli quality but you don't get it.
The two things I liked were the art and the music. Those backgrounds where beautifully drawn and the characters at least decent. A bit more contrast for the characters would have been nice though. It didn't look like a 2020 anime.
I'm a big fan of Joe Hisaishi. His music was easily recognizable and it was pretty good. Unfortunately it was very memorably.
Gandheezy
This is a Studio Ghibli movie in all but name, and the closest we'll get to one now that they've closed down. Based on a game that Ghibli made a while back and realized into a movie by OLM with the help of some Ghibli veterans, you get a taste here of what the studio would have continued to put out if they stayed open past Mr. Miyazaki's retirement. The result is not bad, but it is almost aggressively mediocre. I think if this is the kind of thing the Studio would have put out without Miyazaki at the helm, maybe it wouldn't have beenworth it to sully the name that brought us actual 10/10 masterpieces like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind. It does make you long for those days waiting to see what Studio Ghibli would cook up next, though. There is something missing here, an X Factor, that I can't quite define. If Mr. Miyazaki takes that X Factor with him when he goes, well I guess that's what happens when you build an entire genre of film around one man. The movie is probably worth watching on a lazy Sunday night, but don't be too disappointed when it isn't Ponyo or Princess Mononoke.
myabandonedacc
Story (6): It was a somewhat unique plot that touched on lives being parallel to each other in different dimensions and how the events in one can affect the other. The way it was implemented was rather mellow though and the world building was rather non-existent. However this movie was made to promote the game, which I have not played, but I am assuming that if you are a fan of the games then seeing the world in the movie was probably epic. Art (6): I have 2 issues with the art. One, the cgi was horribly blended into the anime. Two, the art tried veryhard to mimic Ghibli, since Ghibli was behind the animated scenes in the game, which left me comparing the two art styles and how Ghibli was superior. That being said the art itself was pretty good but when it tried to be an inferior clone I can't exactly rate it highly.
Sound (7): Nothing good or bad to say about the sound. There were sound effects where necessary and the voice acting was good. Where it felt a bit lacking was in the ost.
Character (7): They were rather bland. Character connections seemed superficial. However there was a plot twist at the end that had me go 'whoa' and that bumped this from a 6 to a 7.
Enjoyment + Overall (7): I was able to thoroughly enjoy the movie for what it was. Some nice plot twists kept me engaged.
WitchyCat
I watched this on a whim. I thought the plot was quite interesting. I didn't see the twist coming, but I usually don't. Though it's labeled as a fantasy movie, the world building and magic system are pretty flat. We actually know almost nothing about them outside of what we need to know to understand the plot. The movie is more based around the characters' relationships to each other and their own selves than anything else. I found this movie somewhat entertaining, but somehow it just didn't get me feeling anything. I feel like this movie is one of those movies where the idea ortheme is more important than the actual story.
henrylists
I really don't know how to start this review. Sorry it's so long. tldr: This movie is not very good. If you think that this movie will be full of fun references to the games, it doesn't have much in that regard. I would not recommend unless you love the series that much. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is one of my favorite games of all time. I love the characters, the world, the music, and of course the art. This movie however, does not encapsulate anything about the game series at all and leaves a lot to be desired. I know thismovie is not an adaptation of the games, but it tries to add a lot of references to the games so I'm not sure I can count these as completely separate entities.
Spoilers ahead if you care.
First off I want to say that while earlier I did say that nothing encapsulates the games, however that isn't necessarily true as the art style really does feel Ghibli like. The reason why I gave the art an 8 is solely because the 3D elements are kind of atrocious. I am extremely biased against 3D elements in most anime, but in this movie especially they were super out of place.
This section is a very long explanation of the plot with all of the major plot details, don't read it if you've seen the movie, and don't read it if you want to see the movie.
I guess read it if you don't fall in either category.
Now let's talk about the movie itself. I actually don't mind the start of the movie with the main characters Yu and Haru hanging out with their mutual love interest Kotona. I just watched this film and I had to look up the girls name lmao. Anyway, Yu and Haru are supposedly best friends but it just seems like Haru is an asshole to this disabled kid, and he just puts up with it I guess? Kotona gets chased by a monster man and then gets stabbed. Haru blames Yu and then they get hit by the Isekai truck and transport to NiNoKuni, the other world. This is where the movie immediately goes south. This movie has very very strange pacing. So almost as soon as they show up in this other world, they are able to see Kotona's look alike, the Princess Astrid. Astrid is afflicted with this cursed shadow dagger than stabbed Kotona and then Yu just pulls it out and all is well. This kinda sucks, it really gets rid of this initial tension too quickly and makes me think that Yu can do anything. (Spoiler he can.) I'm not sure why the writers decided to make both of these characters suddenly the most important people in this world but I guess whatever. I'll try to sum up the rest of the movie in the next few sentences so bare with me if I miss some details, not that they matter imo. So Yu and Haru become suspects of being these Black Banner guys and everyone believes it, so the two jump through some fire and discover they can travel between the two worlds. In Tokyo, they find out that Kotona has cancer now! Both boys are sad and Haru decides randomly that if you save someone in the other world their counterpart will die, when that literally has no basis whatsoever? Anyways, they get attacked by the stabber from before, Haru is sent to the Black Banner HQ and very clearly manipulated to become a dark knight general guy. This next part is fucking insane, so Yu is brought to the king and the high council wizard guy, and they say "hey, you're probably a bad guy cause you saved the person that the bad guys are trying to kill." He says "no that's fucking stupid." They say, "oh okay then you should be her bodyguard so that you can kill your friend and that way you can prove that what you say about being from another world is true." And then they just give him a sword and armor to protect the princess. Even with the big reveal at the end, this still doesn't make sense, but I will get to that later. Then the CGI monstrosities come rampaging through the fields and just walk through the walls of the city, why haven't they done this before...? A lot of people fight and the bad guy keeps saying to Haru, "hey killing people is how to save a loved one in a way, don't forget, but if you do I will say this again in around 15 seconds so don't worry about it." Haru believes him and starts to attack Yu, they fight, the lady connected to Yu's big sister is about to be injured, and because they are in danger from each other, Yu and Haru transport back to Tokyo. They are mad at each other, Kotona is dying of cancer at an extremely rapid pace. Yu suddenly remembers that his sister's soul partner is about to die so they run to where she is and protect her from the stabby assassin who turns out to be a big spider. Yu discovers something while fighting the spider and then their car plummets into the bay and they transport again. Not sure how the sister survives this but whatever. Finally the climatic battle begins. Yu says to the high council wizard guy, "hey you're clearly the bad guys cause obviously." He responds, "no." Yu says, "Well I smelled the dagger smell when you grabbed my hands earlier so that proves it." He responds, "wait what the fuck magic has a smell?" The princess then says, "yeah it does you should know that, that's your fucking job." He then pulls off his cloak and says, "Haha it was me all along. You guys were so fooled." Haru shows up and says he knew because the bad guy was fishy, except he blindly followed the bad guy. Oh also the bad guy is the bad guy from the Black Banner, and he also happens to be the rightful heir to the throne because he is the older brother of the King. The brother was mentioned like once and they mention the war that he died in like 300 times, but without any context, "Beladon" means fucking nothing to me. They then explain what happened to both this prince guy and Beladon. After that last bit of exposition, the fight begins, Yu gets stabbed, Haru and Astrid try to ward off this evil ex-prince wizard evil man but can't. Yu then is visited by the old man from the beginning of the movie, who is referenced by Yu throughout the movie because he knew about the other world and shit. It was an interesting allusion at the beginning of the movie because he was trying to cast Gateway, a spell from the game. This old man is wearing the same outfit as Oliver from Wrath of the White Witch. He gives Yu his walking cane and says that he finally was able to pass it down, and then goes back to the hospital where he started, even though he was desperately trying to get to the other world again. This cane is actually the great sword Mornstar that was destroyed while it was used to obliterate Beladon. Yu is healed of his stab wound, and he and Haru eventually kill ex-prince wizard man. The princess informs them that they were only able to travel to this world because of the evil guy and that the portal is their only way back. Yu wants to stay but the princess also says that visitors will die if they stay too long???? fuck this. Haru and Yu go through the portal, but at the last second Yu lets go and travels who knows where. Haru is back, he was in a coma for a month, Kotona is cancer free and as he mentions Yu, everyone forgets who Yu was. Then Haru comes to the realization that Yu was in fact, Haru's counterpart the entire time. He explains how that's possible and the movie ends.
Okay so that was more than a few sentences. My bad. So my majors problems with this movie are the decisions made by each character. I don't honestly care that the plot was predictable. I knew from the start that the wizard council guy was evil, it was obvious imo.
The characters in this movie have some of the strangest thought processes I've ever seen. Haru immediately makes decisions that have literally zero basis. Everyone else besides Yu has like their own headcanon about how the soul link thing works too. Everyone just decides that, "Yeah I guess saving someone means killing them in the other world." Like what, why the fuck would you think that ? Every time you see people die in the fantasy world, they die in Tokyo! These characters just throw out all encompassing rules non stop and none of them are true, or they are just not applicable in the situation. Astrid's stupid fucking Royal Aegis is the weirdest choice in this movie. They explain more than halfway through that anything that tries to hurt her, is reflected upon the attacker. So if you thought Yu and Haru did it why don't you check for the same wound that she had? The wizard guy wants the magic that is inside Astrid, so he plans for Haru to kill her, not a bad plan, he would take no damage and be able to take her magic. Except the fact that apparently, nothing can kill her except for the knife that her dead mom made to stop her protection spell... But right at the end, Astrid is being squeezed by the Power Rangers giant version of the villain so that he can kill her. Wouldn't that kill him too? Would that kill her anyways? Why bring up the knife if it never comes back? What's the point of the protection spell if it doesn't reflect anything? Why would you try to kill the princess yourself at the end if it did kill you? You wouldn't get the magic because you'd be dead!
One decision that really is the worst is that Haru is a douchebag the entire movie. Not once does he do something on his own to be selfless or a hero, or even the protagonist. He is treated like the bully character throughout, and at the end, is suddenly treated like he and Yu were the same. No he's fucking not, he used his friend to get better at basketball, then ditched his ass, and then when his girlfriend is stabbed, he blames Yu for not doing anything when he was trying to call the ambulance??? Like my man is in a wheelchair what is he supposed to do? Also one thing about the wheelchair... why the fuck is his disabled in the Tokyo world? What point does it serve if he was actually from the other world and he can walk there? Why can he walk there but not in Tokyo even though he is from the other world? The villain isn't disabled when he travels to Tokyo, why is Yu the only one to have that problem? Back to the point, Haru is just a prick the entire film and the only thing he does to redeem himself is have Yu carry his ass to the end fight, and he steals the finishing blow. God just like thinking about how everything went down is frustrating, it feels like a fever dream.
I think the writing of this movie is like very safe on the surface, except when they try to add in some much lore. Like I said previously, Beladon is mentioned so often, and the brother is foreshadowed too, but I don't know what they are talking about so I don't care. When they explained I still didn't care because it's so lazy to just relegate everything to off screen lore and then explain it in the last 10% of the movie. If they dumbed down the plot and the details, I think this movie would be not that bad.
One last thing before I stop thinking about this movie for the rest of my life. The references to the games are pretty fucking lame. They mention a couple spells and show off a statue of King Tom, and the old man might be Oliver. That's it. If you've seen Detective Pikachu, the references in that movie were fun to spot because they were abundant and each to find. In this movie they're sparse and hard to find at that. There's almost no mention of names in this movie aside from Gateway. Even the spell used at the end, Puppet String is just shown rather than spoken. The old man, who I assume to be Oliver because of the clothes and having Mornstar is a weird addition because how did he get to Tokyo? He's from Motortown and I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound all that Japanese to me.
I really can't say that I enjoyed this movie all that much. I had more fun writing about it here than actually watching it. If I had to give it a rating, I'd say a 4, because if you turned your brain off it's kind of fun I suppose. I kind of enjoyed the game references, but they weren't many. The only really fucking awful stuff was the CGI monsters and when I did pay attention to the plot. Sorry if I mentioned something earlier on and didn't expand on it, I'm too tired to read through this. Hope you enjoyed, might write some more reviews in the future.
