Earwig y la bruja

CGI was terrible, the movie wasn't good, the characters were terrible this was just horrible.

Saw this during the world premiere, an NHK broadcast (I'm in Japan and speak Japanese) and, while the CGI was initially off-putting - it looks like every other Japanese cartoon-to-CGI adaptation but with occasional Ghibli Eyes, and plastic SF5 Ken Banana Hair on everyone - it gradually started to win me over. Then, right when the story progression suggests that the third act is going to begin, as the past catches up with everyone, so that we can bring everything to a satisfying narrative conclusion... instead, we just get a smash cut to black and the credits.

The ending 100% feels like the cliffhanger to make you want to watch the second half of the movie. Unfortunately, so far as I am aware, there IS no second half. So instead, the movie just kind of tosses a bunch of narrative threads out, ignores all of them for nearly its entire runtime, and then remembers them all juuuuuust long enough to remind you that it ignored them entirely, before suddenly grinding to a halt.

Reasonably charming at times, if you're willing to accept that basically nothing that happens in the movie matters at all, and that there's no ending. Or, in other words, it's a modern Ghibli movie, I guess. Goro Miyazaki has inherited his father's knack for telling two thirds of a story.

Whyyyyyyy did Ghibli go 3D computer-animated?! This just felt uninspired. A really boring witch, especially for the main villain. There's no soul here. Rewatch Howl's Moving Castle instead.

Devoid of all the simple aesthetics, elegant touch & magical qualities that fans have come to expect from a Studio Ghibli presentation, Earwig and the Witch marks their first foray into 3D computer-generated feature filmmaking but the story in itself is so dull, bland & uninspiring that the film as a whole turns out to be the studio's first real misfire and is a disappointment on all fronts.

Directed by Goro Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea & From Up on Poppy Hill), the film simply fails to create any sort of intrigue or excitement from start to finish, and is so uneventful & unimaginative that despite it being about magic & witches, it never for once feels magical. The narrative has no sense of direction or purpose and there is barely any effort to make the characters compelling enough to garner our interest.

In addition to that, the studio's patented animation which over the years had played an essential role in infusing depth, richness & resonance to its hand-drawn imagery is unceremoniously replaced by computer-generated animation that not only seems rather ordinary & outdated but is also hollow, lifeless & soulless from within. There's a glossy, synthetic vibe to its images that just doesn't feel right plus the rendering is also lacking an organic flair.

Overall, Earwig and the Witch is absolutely unworthy of Studio Ghibli banner and is hands down the famed animation studio's worst entry to date. It is a departure from everything its production house stands for, and it doesn't even have the storytelling basics covered. One can't even argue that it aims for something ambitious but fails, for there is hardly any story at all. Putting a blemish on Studio Ghibli's unblemished legacy, Goro Miyazaki's latest is nothing less than an embarrassment.

Started out with a great premise, then lost sight of it in the tangles it wove. The CGI characters had the look of those on cheap TV kids' shows, but the backgrounds in which they moved were Ghibli quality (of the past) in detail. As one of the other reviews mentioned, this was 2/3rds of a movie. That might be fortunate - character development was getting really annoying, especially that of Earwig herself.