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This Week in Anime - Is Ni no Kuni Worth Watching?




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omiya



Joined: 21 Sep 2011
Posts: 1822
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:16 pm Reply with quote
Thanks for making the less than shelf-worthy anime entertaining without us having to watch it Very Happy .
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 3:52 pm Reply with quote
Ni no kuni (the game) never had much to offer, it's only saving point were:

1) One of the very few console JRPG (expect not really since it was originally a 3DS game).
2) Vaguely pokemon inspire familiar system.
3) connection to studio Ghibli.

Of those, 1 is irrelevant to the movie, they apparently chose to ignore 2 and 3 was always weak at best. So no big surprise it turned into a dumpsterfire. The game writing was also really weak, bu they at least had the decency to realize that and so only had the absolute bare minimum of a story and character arc.
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Jex2193



Joined: 28 Jan 2014
Posts: 283
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 4:40 pm Reply with quote
I coincidentally watched this last night and oh boy. it's not even so bad it's good, it's just bad.
everything here hit on every thought I had while watching the movie.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 6:26 pm Reply with quote
I can't believe TWIG would avoid the obvious cheap shot of pointing out that this movie had the same writer as Gundam AGE.

Hino does really good (er, entertaining anyways) sports drama, but man does he always seem to blow it when there's more at stake than, say, the future of a middle school soccer club.
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1419
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 6:59 pm Reply with quote
I was surprised by how hard this movie flopped in Japan, disc sales included. I thought about checking it out because Yoshiyuki Momose was Takahata's right hand-man on most of his Ghibli films, but the fact that it was written by Akihiro Hino discouraged me.
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FireChick
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Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Posts: 2385
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 7:01 pm Reply with quote
Yeah...not gonna lie, this movie is just bad. It really seemed promising when I first heard about it, and I was actively looking forward to it. But yeah, the movie is just bad. Haru's an idiot (And seriously, the guy sees his girlfriend stabbed, with his wheelchair bound friend on the ground trying to help her, and the first thing he says is "Why are you holding her like that?! Then he takes her away and LEAVES HIM THERE, knowing he can't walk!? Dude, what a dick!), the story isn't trying to be good, and the writing was piss-poor.

But the ending, to me, was the most infuriating and mean spirited thing about this movie! spoiler[Yu basically decides to stay in the new world for no reason other than to be with a princess he only knew for a few days at most, abandoning his happy life on earth along with his friends and relatives when he has no reason to do so, and APPARENTLY he's somehow from the magical world! All of this makes absolutely no sense, came right the hell out of nowhere, completely contradicted what the movie previously established about him, had no build-up or foreshadowing, and basically erases him from existence (When he's gone, everyone's memories of him are erased on Earth). I mean, come on! I've never seen an ending so absolutely infuriating in all my life! The mean-spirited thing about it is that Yu is disabled on Earth, but he chooses to stay in the magical world, where he can walk and his disability is magically cured, which to me is basically a slap in the face to those who actually use wheelchairs for whatever reason. Can't walk? Just go to some magical world! Your disability will be instantly cured and you'll never have to worry about it whatsoever! Ugh, gag me]. The ending was pretty much a big middle finger that killed an already flimsy premise to hell and back. It's truly a shame, as I really wanted to like this. I really did! Seriously, I can probably write a better take on this story than the actual writers who worked on this movie! I'm extremely tempted to write an alternate ending, even! Evil or Very Mad
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Neko-sensei



Joined: 19 Jan 2007
Posts: 283
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:53 pm Reply with quote
I can't believe that no one's said anything about Joe Hisaishi's score, which is the one and only sort-of-authentic Ghibli connection. I read some reviews in Japan saying it was the one bright spot in this whole dumb mess, to which I'd respond, "yes, but it was obviously composed for a completely different movie." It's rare that the discongruity between music and production actually makes me laugh, but the portentious melodramatic swelling of the score during the actual thunderstorm that marks Haru's already jaw-droppingly hysterical decision that a bit of princess murder is the solution to his problems had me in absolute stitches.

It's like watching Christopher Plummer trying to bring some class to Starcrash: so perfectly absurd you wake up the next morning and go, "wait, did I dream that?"
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Posts: 2345
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 10:18 pm Reply with quote
Neko-sensei wrote:
I can't believe that no one's said anything about Joe Hisaishi's score, which is the one and only sort-of-authentic Ghibli connection. I read some reviews in Japan saying it was the one bright spot in this whole dumb mess, to which I'd respond, "yes, but it was obviously composed for a completely different movie." It's rare that the discongruity between music and production actually makes me laugh, but the portentious melodramatic swelling of the score during the actual thunderstorm that marks Haru's already jaw-droppingly hysterical decision that a bit of princess murder is the solution to his problems had me in absolute stitches.

It's like watching Christopher Plummer trying to bring some class to Starcrash: so perfectly absurd you wake up the next morning and go, "wait, did I dream that?"

You never watched guilty crown have you?
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 11:59 pm Reply with quote
Tanteikingdomkey wrote:
Neko-sensei wrote:
I can't believe that no one's said anything about Joe Hisaishi's score, which is the one and only sort-of-authentic Ghibli connection. I read some reviews in Japan saying it was the one bright spot in this whole dumb mess, to which I'd respond, "yes, but it was obviously composed for a completely different movie." It's rare that the discongruity between music and production actually makes me laugh, but the portentious melodramatic swelling of the score during the actual thunderstorm that marks Haru's already jaw-droppingly hysterical decision that a bit of princess murder is the solution to his problems had me in absolute stitches.

It's like watching Christopher Plummer trying to bring some class to Starcrash: so perfectly absurd you wake up the next morning and go, "wait, did I dream that?"

You never watched guilty crown have you?


No one should have to watch that. Maybe listen to the first OP but that's pretty much teh only thing worth remembering about guilty crown.
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jellybeanbandit



Joined: 18 Jun 2019
Posts: 107
PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 3:46 am Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Ni no kuni (the game) never had much to offer, it's only saving point were:

1) One of the very few console JRPG (expect not really since it was originally a 3DS game).
2) Vaguely pokemon inspire familiar system.
3) connection to studio Ghibli.

Of those, 1 is irrelevant to the movie, they apparently chose to ignore 2 and 3 was always weak at best. So no big surprise it turned into a dumpsterfire. The game writing was also really weak, bu they at least had the decency to realize that and so only had the absolute bare minimum of a story and character arc.


There were plenty of RPGs on consoles at the time for people to play. The only reason Ni no Kuni got hyped up so much is because of it being 'Ghibli'. So many gaming websites were treating it like it was going to dethrone Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest because the only anime they like or think is worth watching is Miyazaki/Ghibli stuff. They hate regular anime RPGs and would always bash them. This was the same time period Lightning Returns and Dragon's Crown came out, two games that got lots of hate because of sexualized anime girls.

Sadly they got rid of the monster battling system in the sequel. That was the one main interesting thing the game had going for it. But instead you do get to play as the President of the United States being isekai'd into a fantasy world but he still had his modern weapons like guns. The sequel was pretty weird now that I think about it. lol
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 6:18 am Reply with quote
Just watch the movie cut scenes for Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch video game
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 1:59 pm Reply with quote
jellybeanbandit wrote:


There were plenty of RPGs on consoles at the time for people to play. The only reason Ni no Kuni got hyped up so much is because of it being 'Ghibli'. So many gaming websites were treating it like it was going to dethrone Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest because the only anime they like or think is worth watching is Miyazaki/Ghibli stuff. They hate regular anime RPGs and would always bash them. This was the same time period Lightning Returns and Dragon's Crown came out, two games that got lots of hate because of sexualized anime girls.

Sadly they got rid of the monster battling system in the sequel. That was the one main interesting thing the game had going for it. But instead you do get to play as the President of the United States being isekai'd into a fantasy world but he still had his modern weapons like guns. The sequel was pretty weird now that I think about it. lol


Well around the time ni no kuni came out there were only a few console JRPG. The only one you that had similar amount of marketing and exposure was FF13-2, which if you didn't like the first one you weren't picking up (something very common since it didn't even get half the sales of 13) and tales of xillia (which was incredibly rushed). Otherwise there was an atelier game, last rebellion (terrible game, I doubt it even broke 20K sales) and resonance of fates (pretty weird game). I wouldn't call 6 JRPG in a two year period plenty.
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