Arashi no Yoru ni

Oh hey look! A great movie that's not coming from that well known handful of producers who know what they're doing!

Truly, for something that is clearly a children's film, it is quite capable of drawing a heartthrob from basically anyone watching it. While not exactly action oriented, you'd be surprised at the scenes the movie dares to throw at its young viewers.

Well-done mix of a traditional and CGI animation.

Another strong point would be its characters, since we can find a surprisingly sad backstory or two. The relationship between Mei and Gabu is amazing for the reason it has good firm grounds to turn into the ... most valuable friendship, even with their differences as species.

An adventure with strong slice of life tone, which is for obvious reasons hard as fuck to pull off properly. It may not be action packed, a comedy gold, a fanservice mine, or an epic fantasy and thank Lord it isn't trying to be, because that made it just right.

Arashi no Yuru Ni. Please do not watch this unless you realize straight away that this is a Japanese Disney movie. The art, the message, the entire feel of this "anime" is that of a Disney cartoon, but in a good way.

Story: the moral of this story is "don't judge a book by it's cover" or something to that effect. Learning how to get along, no matter who you are is deeply conveyed in this. It's nicely done. The goat and wolf meet each other at night, they can't see each other but they end up having a really nice ... talk and agree to meet the next day. When they meet the next day the one thing that was going through my head was "HE'S GOING TO EAT THE SHEEP!" but that didn't happen. Their freindship ends up deepening quite a bit and the rest of the anime follows their experiences. Prepare yourself to see all the morals that Disney movies have in them. It's done...subtly...but not as well as I've seen in other films. But it is a kid's movie so that's really to be expected.

Art: There were times that I really liked the art, and there were times I was going "meh" But overall it had a really nice feel. But again I was really, really getting the Disney vibe from it, which threw me off a lot because I was hoping for anime...not a cartoon. But Disney has always had very....colourful pictures and Arashi is like that too.

Sound: It's a kids movie....so the score wasn't epic or depressing. It was sort of generic to enhance the feeling of the movie. Sad music played when something was sad, exciting music was played when something was exciting. Whatever the filmmakers wanted you to feel was the music they chose to play.

Character: The characters are predictable, stereotypical, but nonetheless they are quite cute. Don't except to be floored by any of them, because you won't be. Again, it's a kid's movie so they don't throw in anyone who doesn't fit the mold of the kid's movie characters.

Enjoyment: Honestly I outgrew this movie 8-9 years ago. Mind you I wouldn't know what anime was, i thought that Pokemon was a cartoon. The fact that I outgrew this really did affect how much I enjoyed it, which is...unfortunate. But like, I don't go out to see stuff like Chicken Little or Veggie Tales (which....I did see) when I want to see a movie. So it's a little unfortunate that I've outgrown this.

If you have a kid and you want to introduce anime to them, then this movie is totally for you. There are some big kids out there too, and this will be fine for them. Just because I've outgrown this and think that it's a Disney movie masquerading as an anime doesn't mean that people won't enjoy it, it just means that I didn't like it as much as I could have.

A cute and lovely story conveyed by gorgeous art. One can't ask for a better thing to watch on a Sunday afternoon.

This is a children's movie, surrounded by an aura of good feelings and easy humour. But everyone needs good feelings and easy humour once in a while! The story is simple, as well as the objective: a wolf and a sheep are friends and, no matter the differences, they will fight for their friendship till the end.

This story is pampered by beautiful art. One of the better I have ever seen. In a digital-traditional mix sometimes you're not sure what is watercolour and what ... is tridimensional animation, which results in a very pleasant experience to the eyes. The beauty of the art helps to characterise the personalities of our characters. The sweet, round and fluffy lambs (which actually look quite tasty, from a certain perspective...) opposed to the ugly and flea ridden wolves (fact that makes them hilarious characters, even though they are ferocious and scary)

This way the simplicity of the characters and the story turns into something very interesting and heart-warming.

A must-see if you have children running through your house and you want them to sit quiet for almost 2 hours. I tried it and it works!