I wandered into one of the viewing rooms at FanimeCon just this weekend (memorial weekend 2016) during the very beginning of this movie. I thought to myself, "hey, this is pretty cute", not to mention I had a couple hours until the next panel I planned on going to.
Now, what I have to say about this, is that it's a lot like Finding Nemo--- only that it gets really fucking brutal in a subtle, built-up way. The crazy thing is that this was obviously meant for kids.
MILD-MEDIUM SPOILERS AHEAD: (Though personally, I don't think these will ruin the movie experience, but rather, make you realize what exactly I mean.)
So, yeah, like I said, its a lot like finding nemo. It's even got that Pixar feel to it. However, shit starts to get real because apparently the Koreans do not like to white-wash their shit, like how (for example) sometimes fish attack each other and feed on their corpses. So while it's kind of cute, I started building some level of empathy for these little fishies, especially Padak, the main character. "Padak" is apparently the Korean onomatopoeia for the sound a fish makes when it flips around on land, hence the name "Flippy" in the description of this movie. Padak is a fish in captivity, living in an aquarium tank in front of a fish restaurant/market. She wants to escape back to the ocean and tries to convince her new fishy friends to either help her or to do the same. Only one fish, a mean and rugged flatfish, knows about the sea. Drama ensues inside the tank, some fish fighting, and some dying in the process, only to be fed upon by the other fish. Sometimes, they have to "play dead" in order not to get picked by the customers of the market, and do other things in order to survive in the tank. What really got me was when one actually did get taken out, and he was taken to the table to get slaughtered and eaten. It looked on in horror as the cook beheaded and gutted his half-dead comrades, throwing their guts and bones in the garbage disposal and searing their bodies on a stove.
So, I would say this was rather interesting. Just like a fucked up "Finding Nemo". For that reason I give the plot somewhere around a 7 or 8 even.
The art was nice, because like I said it looked like a pixar film. So I give it a 7.
The sound/music didn't really captivate me. I never really noticed it. I give it a 5.
Characters weren't totally fleshed out, though I did feel some empathy for some of them. I give that area a 6.
