Bakemono no Ko

Two souls, living very different lives, wander alone and isolated in their respective worlds. For nine-year-old Ren, the last person who treated him with any form of kindness has been killed, and he is shunned by what is left of his family. With no parents, no real family, and no place to go, Ren escapes into the confusing streets and alleyways of Shibuya. Through the twists and turns of the alleys, Ren stumbles into the intimidating Kumatetsu, who leads him to the beast realm of Shibuten.

For Kumatetsu, the boy represents a chance for him to become a candidate to replace the lord of the realm once he retires. While nearly unmatched in combat, Kumatetsu's chilly persona leaves him with no disciples to teach and no way to prove he is worthy of becoming the lord's successor.

While the two share different goals, they agree to help each other in order to reach them. Kumatetsu searches for recognition; Ren, now known as Kyuuta, searches for the home he never had. As the years pass by, it starts to become apparent that the two are helping each other in more ways than they had originally thought. Perhaps there has always been less of a difference between them, a boy and a beast, than either of the two ever realized.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kumatetsu Main

Yakusho, Kouji Japanese

Ren Main

Miyazaki, Aoi Japanese

Kaede Main

Hirose, Suzu Japanese

Chiko Supporting

Morohoshi, Sumire Japanese

Hyakushuubou Supporting

Franky, Lily Japanese

Ichirouhiko Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Tatara Supporting

Oizumi, Yo Japanese

Iouzan Supporting

Yamaji, Kazuhiro Japanese

Soushi Supporting

Tsugawa, Masahiko Japanese

Kyuuta's Father Supporting

Nagatsuka, Keishi Japanese

Bezerra, Wendel Producer

Cook, Justin Producer

Saitou, Yuuichirou Producer

Kawamura, Genki Producer

Reviews

Feb 2, 2025

Caeruleus_CCXVI

Recommended

7.75/10 ~ Great movie but far from perfect

If you read through the comments there is a pretty common factor among most who have watched this one that the 2nd half of the film is not as good as the first, and I would agree with this. The start of the movie is incredible, engaging, interesting and you just want to stay in this world. The problem I found is this should have probably been a short series of 3-6 smaller 1-2 hour movies, the first 50-70 minutes or start really has some fantastic pacing, there is a time skip and all of a sudden the ... pacing goes out the window and the content covered is the equivalent of 2-5 more parts that could have been made all lasting about an hour or so. Instead we got all of these moments, sub plots crammed into this small hour moment. Its a real shame because the movie over all is really a banger and I would recommend this one wholeheartedly. I personally have the need to compare this to the directors other works and this one falls pretty short compared to Wolf Children, in my humble opinion. as someone else in here said "Spirited Away meets Jungle Book. But not as cool as it sounds." I would agree with this except I hated the jungle book and yeah its very sported away adjacent.

Now lets talk about the movie as a whole,
Pros:
- The visuals are probably the best part of this movie
--Incredible camera work with those banger wide shots
--amazing scenery art style, the world really feels lived in
- I enjoyed the MCs and the overall main cast
- This movie made me cry, in like a happy good cry several times through the movie
- English dub is very good
- pretty good story for a young person to understand depression and how to deal with it; its have support and believe in yourself if you didnt get that lol
- very little weeb/anime culture in this move, which is extremely refreshing as I HATE that stuff

Cons:
- Music is kinda whatever
- as per mentioned above, the pacing goes from top notch to kinda garbage in the half way point
- because of the pacing the love interest part is kinda botched
- ending past the climax is pretty meh
- the antagonist could have had more build up, lost to bad pacing :/

Overall I really think the good parts of the movie out ways the bad, and the 2nd half isnt inherently bad, it just wasn't enough content and this never should have been a single 2 hour movie. Unlucky. This movie falls into the same category as most Ghibli movies both in the fact of how it blends mondain life with the mystical but by the fact that this movie is very approachable to non-anime watchers and that is always a great thing. Great for the family, or a cozy night with the SO.

Happy watching!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jan 21, 2025

Ernacram

Mixed Feelings

Hosoda Mamoru is one of these anime movie directors of these last 10-15 years that, together with Shinkai Makoto, has been hailed as the “new Miyazaki”. On this website also you can find a lot of people comparing his movies to the ones made by Studio Ghibli. But while you can find some similarities between Hosoda’s films and Miyazaki’s masterpieces, I believe that they are only similar on a surface level. That is the case with Bakemono no ko (or “The Boy and the Beast” in the language of yankees). Indeed, the movie deals with themes like facing hardships, growing up, and overcoming family difficulties, ... themes which we have seen in some of Miyazaki’s movies, and the basic premise is slightly reminiscent of Spirited Away. However the quality of this movie is, in my opinion, nowhere near a Miyazaki movie. Let me explain.

I’ll sum up the plot rapidly. The movie is about Ren, a young boy who ran away from home after loosing both of his parents due to various reasons. While wandering in the streets of Shibuya, he encounters Kumatetsu, a beast warrior from another world. Ren follows the beast into a parallel world inhabited by beast people only, and there he starts a new life as Kumatetsu’s only apprentice, and his relationship with Kumatetsu quickly evolves to one of a son with his adoptive father. The first half of the movie is mostly focused on the comedy elements. Kumatetsu, as he is a self-taught warrior, and on top of that has an irresponsible and short tempered personality, is a disaster of a master / foster father, and is in constant conflict – or should I say, is constantly bickering - with his apprentice / adopted son. That is the source of the most of the comedy. But here we already have one major shortcoming : the comedy is basically limited to the characters always yelling at each other. As such, it gets a bit repetitive, and a lot of the humor falls flat. This first part felt quite slow and uneventful, but it was at least entertaining thanks to Kumatetsu and the comedy elements.

Then in the second half, as we see Ren growing up to become a young adult and regularly going back and forth his world and the beast world, the plot gets more dramatic. From this moment the story more or less stops focusing on Ren’s relationship with Kumatetsu. That is another major shortcoming of the movie, since Kumatetsu is quite the only decent character in the story. In general, I found it hard to connect with the characters, especially Ren. All of them felt forgettable and too simple. Look at Kaede, for example. Kumatetsu, with his irresponsible and violent personality, along with his character design, is the only character that sticks out and is enjoyable. Towards the end of the movie there’s also some sort of plot twist which is my opinion a complete failure. First, because it was 100% expected. Second, because the character who turns out to be the true antagonist of the story wasn’t developed at all and barely got any screen time or relevance to the plot before that. As a result, this “plot twist” felt both uninteresting and out of place, almost as if the director needed a makeshift solution to make the movie longer, which was already too long by this point.

Another thing that I found infuriating in the story was the moment where Kumatetsu and Ren go on an adventure to learn what strength is, or something like that. One could have expected an actual adventure, discovering unknown regions, seeing great landscapes and the like, but instead of this, the trip is rushed and wrapped up in like... 5 minutes ? While I understand that Hosoda’s aim was definitely not to make an adventure movie, this was quite a disappointment to me.

The world building is pretty much non-existent, as all of the story takes place in the same limited places : Shibuya in the human world, and Kumatetsu’s house in the parallel world. The movie doesn’t try to develop the parallel world at all, we know that it’s a world similar to ours but with medieval-ish technology, and some supernatural elements like reincarnation, and that’s about it. Indeed the movie doesn’t even attempt to make its universe interesting, as its main focus is the characters and their relationships.

So the plot and the characters aren’t great. But what about the animation ? Well, in that department also, I was disappointed : the visuals are lackluster. As I said earlier, some people compare this movie to Studio Ghibli movies. But in practically every Ghibli movies there are outstanding, breath-taking visuals. Ghibli movies make you discover dream-like, or sometimes nightmare-like new worlds. That is not the case with Bakemono no ko. The landscape, the architecture, the scenery and the backgrounds that are shown are uniform and unoriginal, though they don’t look bad and are pretty detailed. The depiction of Shibuya is overly photorealistic, and as such, gray and soulless. Juntengai, the town in the parallel world, has more color, but its architecture is very monotonous. The art style in general feels pretty generic, especially the character designs which give a feeling of déjà-vu. The designs of Ren, Kaede and other humans lack character and look very lazy. The same could be said about the beast characters, with the exception of Kumatetsu. Let me clarify: the animation doesn’t look bad. It is fluid and dynamic. There is detail in the backgrounds and such. But overall it just doesn’t have character. On top of that, CGI is often used for crowds and vehicles.

Lastly, let’s quickly talk about the sound. I don’t have much to say about it. I believe the voice acting was decent. The music was unnoticeable, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it means the music serves its purpose, fits the situations and doesn’t feel out of place. Bad because it doesn’t leave a strong impression and is quickly forgotten once the movie ends. It definitely didn’t sound like an OST you would re-listen to on YouTube later. Overall it doesn’t really add value to the movie.

Here’s my verdict: Bakemono no ko is not what I would call a bad movie, but it definitely is not worth being compared to even the worst of Miyazaki’s movies. Its uninteresting characters and story made it boring from start to finish, and its visuals, while decent for a movie, aren’t good enough to make it enjoyable. I believe fans of Hosoda Mamoru’s other films can find it entertaining, but I couldn’t.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 12, 2023

nightwolf1923

Not Recommended

To keep it simple, good for kids/family but for teens and adults it's not worth the time.

Story
Really promising in the beginning, because we get what we came for, the boy trained by the beast, but later we will get other "emotional" plots that don't have enough time to feel relevant and can become boring and predictable

Characters
Simple but likeable, they have some personal struggles to make them feel more alive but make illogical decisions sometimes

Antagonist
No motivation, no logic, no buildup
...
Visuals and music
Very beautiful, probably why the movie is even relevant

Is it bad? no, but for a 2h movie is just not worth it

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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