Now, I was first introduced to Ne Zha through the newer films, 2019/2025, and since then, I've been wanting to learn more about the mythology around him, so why not start now before the dubbed version of Ne Zha 2 comes out?
The first Ne Zha animated movie ever made, and it hits all the check marks it needs to hit.
It gets the important story beats and the character growth.
There's a lot in the story that I do like. Half of that is because it's from the newer films, but the other half is because it feels different enough.
This film was made in 1979 - it's pretty old. And you can 100% tell in the actual movie. The animation is extremely outdated, but it's cool to see what Chinese animated movies used to look like in the late 1970s compared to America.
But because the film is so old, there is a huge pacing problem in the movie. A lot of the time, I love the actual plot because it's the main plot in Ne Zha's story.
But half of that is taken away because you have such a slow movie. It is only an hour, and in that hour, every 10 minutes there's a fantastic moment that Ne Zha goes through. But hidden between all those moments is a drag to sit through.
Now, I do have to keep in mind that this movie is almost 50 years old. But it's a 50-year-old movie that served as a good introduction to the character for people who didn't know the myth.
But it is now extremely outdated, and now that we have such a better version of the story, there is almost no reason to go back and check this one out. I would say what makes it worth checking out is some of the story elements that this version has which stand out a bit. Other than that, it's not worth checking out.
