Da Yu Hai Tang (Movie)

Finally watched this movie after I lost the name a year ago and found it again last week. I got to know about it because it's a collaboration between a Chinese studio and the Korean studio that made Korra.

The art and animation are next level revolutionary. The character designs, flora and fauna, music, voices and everything visual are like endless orgasm for your eyes. You can see the Korra and Ghibli influences in it. I loved it. BUT it was a real real pity - the entire film happened too fast, it was one tragedy to another in minutes, too many characters that seemed ... important but were never or sparingly expanded on or explained. The girl made her decisions too fast without a period for developing her feelings to a realistic intensity. A lot of things happened that were hard to understand and messy. They missed out the opportunity to present and explain the beautiful world and concept they created for the movie. It felt like they tried to cram in too many emotional scenes to the point they some of them didn't feel emotional anymore. Not to mention the two main characters probably died and revived 3 times throughout the movie.

Could have been a 10/10 film if not for the very bad presentation/execution. It was really the amazing art that saved it. I still recommend it cuz I think it's worth the watch for the art.

This movie ultimately fails in what it is attempting to do. It draws on the idea of faustian bargain but the rules of the trade become convoluted and nonsensical to get to an ending that doesn't make sense with in the context of the overarching theme.

Further the love interest of one of the main characters has no reason for being a love interest, they have been shown to have barely any interactions and their relationship does not grow or receive any attention until the very end. It makes the whole premise very unbelievable and unfortunate, because the original idea this character would have ... played in the movie made it interesting but I couldn't see them fulfilling this role given the narrative.

Still as a Chinese anime the art was fluid and the ambiance was comfy. There were some scenes where the writer looped the same sequence several times back to back which made it drag on and made me lose interest in the scene. Still the animation being so clean brought me back in for a while.

Overall I'll give it a 6 because it was well animated, though the story was flawed.

(Minor spoilers in this review)


Da Yu Hai Tang is an okay movie. Unfortunately, that's all that can be said about this movie and it is not one to leave a lasting impression.


The movie starts in a fantasty-like setting where we meet our main character, our main character's best friend, and the main character's family and other random people in this fantasy society. In order to fully become an adult, at the age of 16 they must undergo an arbitrary task of going to the human world as a... red fish.. and then come back after a week and then they get to be called ... real adults.


When the main character enters the human world, after being told by her family to avoid humans at all costs, she gets saved by a human and low and behold he ends up dying to save her, leaving his sister behind as it is implied he is her caregiver, and now the main character feels guilty.


So she finds a way by some lucky miracle to bring him back to life and the rest of the film is the journey she undertakes to try and bring him back, as she must protect him (his soul embodies a fish) as he grows until he is able to return to the human world through flight.


In general, I picked this movie because it had an interesting premise but it turned out to be a low-grade quality studio ghibli like film. The voice acting in this film is bad as characters talk quickly and don't really have much emotion to their roles. One role that stood out particularly to me was the main character's father who was seeing her off, knowing he might never see her again, and in the most monotone voice basically says "ok leave". What?


The art-style in this film ranges from decent to terrible as there are inconsistencies with the visuals due to bad implementation of CGI. There are certain scenes where something will just look "off" to you and it can really take away from the experience of watching the film.


The story itself started off with a good premise but its execution is lacking. The story uses an old trick to progress the story. "Magic". This fantasy world has no rules, or rather, the rules aren't really explained and its hard to get emotionally involved in the story when you realize that there are no real consequences to the majority of the character actions because magic can fix everything. Without spoiling too much, there are characters near the end of the film who should die but instead magic saves them in order to push for a traditional happy ending, which is disappointing.

There are also plot points that are just... confusing. For instance, the attitude of everyone in the village is that they should never go into contact with humans and the human world is bad- yet everyone throughout the film seems to believe that the human world is much better. Yet, we rarely see anyone try and escape into the human world. One of the first scenes in the movie, a major character explains how in their journey to the human world they enjoyed it- to the extent where they implied it was better than their own world. Why does it seem like no one actually leaves this "other world".


There is another point in the movie that says that you need an object from the human world in order to enter the human world and leave behind their world- but in the instances we see of people entering the human world only once is there a human world object involved. It seems like the fantasy world in this movie has made-up rules that can change when convenient because "magic" and "happiness" and "We must push forth for a happy ending at all costs, no matter how bad the writing".


Did I necessarily dislike this movie? No. That's why I give this movie a 6/10. However it is mediocre in the sense that this feels like a movie aimed at children with a premise already done before. Romantic elements in this movie seem forced due to lack of character development, which seems great for a kid's movie but should still be criticized, and characters seem very one dimensional showing little growth and performing illogical actions.


In general, you won't be missing out on much if you skip this movie.

I watched the movie Da Yu Hai Tang, also known as Big Fish & Begonia. It is a Chinese animated movie and I watched it with Chinese audio. Here are my thoughts:

If I could describe this movie in one word it would be "strange." This movie is very strange. It involves a lot of supernatural and mythical themes. It makes me think of the absurd fables that are part of ancient mythologies, such as Greek or Indian mythology. This movie feels like a strange illogical fable straight out of some ancient mythological belief system. In fact, the movie apparently does draw on some themes from ... Chinese mythology. It could be that my complete lack of knowledge in that area impeded my understanding of the story.

Visually, it looked pretty good. Animation quality was high. There were lots of strange creatures too which were entertaining to watch. This movie doesn't really look like anime both in terms of art style as well as the animated movement itself. The animation style feels more like western animation, despite its Chinese origin. This felt like a demented Pixar film to me. It's worth noting that I am quite sick right now and I watched this with a fever which probably amplified the delirious feeling of the movie.

The story itself was quite incoherent and often rushed. Many things were unclear in terms of plot as well as character motivations. I spent most of the movie confused about what was happening. Both the writing and execution of the plot are the weakest aspects of this movie. The exposition during the first half of the movie was also quite rushed and left me confused before the plot even really kicked in. My confusion continued to compound as things progressed.

Audio in this was really good. Audio production quality was high. The soundtrack was very good. There were some really nice Chinese vocals that played during the ending credits as well.

My overall rating: 6/10