NiNoKuni

This movie follows in the footsteps of the video games, has an equal potential to tell a great, sometimes complicated story. It straight up throws away so many scenes that could've been made to both improve the bond between the characters and to strengthen the plot. Instead, they seem to take a shortcut on explaining or showing things by inserting a really lazy written dialogue - usually a size of a sentence at max, to simply let the character notify the others why she arrived late.

It feels like there would've been enough story to make a two and a half hour movie, but everything that wasn't strictly related to the main plot was just cut off entirely. I did not get to bond with any of the characters in this movie, and the ending would've actually been an amazing twist if they'd shown a bit more passion and time to introduce even the two main characters to the audience.

Story aside, audio was great and visuals were okay. Only reason why I just have to rate the visuals down from what could've been great, is the fact that even that feels so rushed. Animation part is gorgeous and has very notable touch of Studio Ghibli - yet doesn't really hit the same level of detail - especially in motion.

What gives the visuals a huge negative hit are the CGI that is used in the majority of bigger fighting scenes. It is also used as an effect at some points, but I did not find it that disturbing - although I would've preferred those effects to be animated instead. During fighting scenes, you can see how the movement and visual part of the characters stands out as being notably different to those that are animated on the foreground. It's kind of giving this movie a tiny hint of probably unintended humor, as looking at the two CGI characters fighting on the background with the world's laziest and most repetitive movement patterns around really made me laugh. I wouldn't have minded the lazy moves if it would've been animated like the rest of the movie. It would've fit in - as for the CGI rendered characters stand out way too much and kind of force you to pay attention. Needless to say, the CGI parts feel very, very lazy and rushed.

Budget probably wasn't where the studio hoped it to be, but because of that I really hate to see another movie based on a video game fail. I'm a guy who watches even mediocre movies repeatedly over the years - this I would not watch again, not even to show it to someone else.