Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild

This movie is an adaptation of the Monster Hunter video game series. As a fan of the series I was interested in watching it to see how closely it follows the games.

Overall it is a faithful adaptation, all the iconic monsters are there and it looks and feels like it's part of the Monster Hunter universe. Where the movie falls short however is in it's story and animation.

The movie follows a young aspiring Hunter named Aiden who is trying to prove himself as a monster hunter when a more experienced hunter named Julius arrives at his village to warn them of an elder dragon on it's way to destroy them. The villagers don't believe Julius as he's an outsider so he takes Aiden with him to see the elder dragon for himself. From then on the two share a sort of student and mentor relationship.

Personally I feel this story would work better as a series rather than a standalone movie. We don't really spend enough time with the characters to get to know them very well and having an elder dragon (essentially the most powerful monsters that exist) be Aiden's first big monster is a strange choice. I feel it would have been better to see Aiden grow and improve as a hunter over several episodes, eventually leading up to an elder dragon.

Now for the animation. Though it's impressive to look at and matches the art style of the games, the character's movements feel very stiff and their voices often don't sync up very well with what's on screen. Ironically it feels more like a cutscene from one of the games rather than animated movie quality, perhaps this was the intention but it doesn't work very well.

Overall it's worth checking out if you're a fan of the games, just don't expect it to be anything amazing. At the very least it's a lot more faithful than the 2020 live action movie.