Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
This might be Mamoru Hosoda's most disliked film thus far. Reactions so far have been pretty mixed with many describing as repetitive, messy, or somewhat pretentious. I can understand where the reactions are coming from, however, there is no doubt that Hosoda is an ambitious animated filmmaker and I did throughly enjoyed this one.
With this tale taking inspiration of Shakespeare, this revenge anime tale offers an interesting perspective about revenge, kingdom, faith, and what if things were worth it theory. Interlaced with some gorgeous animation designs, colors, and structure, and sound designs, camerawork, and atmosphere throughout. Hosada's direction on the presentation, atmospheres, emotions, and animation has always been pretty well-grounded and thought out. Particularly with how he handles the emotional weight that does work within this movie. You feel the tension, energy and the emotions that are brought out within the characters.
The writing does offer some different and interesting takes on the themes and concepts. While it is true that some of the concepts felt a bit unbalanced, it still had some ambitious moments. Including some really good voice performances from the cast members. I'd say the weakest elements were the characters as the characters, while at times does have some good chemistry, they didn't felt memorable nor as engaging as I would have wanted. Making them a little difficult to fully connect or believe them.
The musical score is good, and the pacing is pretty good without a moment of boredom. There is some wonky usage of CGI animation that does feel distracting. But as a whole, I still think it was an interesting and ambitious fun anime. I don't think it is as bad as others are saying and sure, Hosada has made much better movies like Wolf Children, Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. But I say this one is better than The Boy and the Beast (which I think it's his worst movie).
