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

Aug 8, 2025

Bensonas

Recommended

I had high hopes for this. The plot sounded interesting and it held a rather high score on here. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. This is likely more my fault than the films, but nevertheless here is my review.

The animation in this film is excellent and to get it out of the way now, is getting a 9/10. The characters have excellent design and are original. The world's look great too. Both the beast world and the human world have their own colour variations with the human world seeming darker and full of pessimism and the beats world lighter and optimistic. ... The limited fight scenes are incredibly fluid and all round is almost as solid as you will get on the animation front.

Music wise it was average. Maybe I am critical to a fault when it comes to music in anime. Maybe being a musicians makes be pay attention more. I don't know, all I do know, rightly or wrongly, is this film was average on this front. It's fine, its there, popping up every now and again doing what it needs to. 6/10

The story is an interesting one. It has its really great moment but sometimes goes a little flat. The last 30 mins too were disappointing for me. There is one 'oh damn' moment but that quickly becomes a 'oh nevemind' moment. The film ends mainly in the human world, with some mad shit happening that transpires, no human took a picture or video and just shrugged off like it was nothing which is a little odd. I'm giving the story a 7/10

This gives us a total score of a 7/10 which I believe is fair, you might not after reading this and watching and think I've been too harsh. If this is the case, write a review and post it. It's good fun.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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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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Aug 25, 2025

Legolaspt

Not Recommended

The movie starts with a black screen and a narrator performing a 2 minutes long exposition. This is by far the worst start to a movie I've ever seen. I cannot fathom how no one put a stop to this before it came to air. It made me want to instantly drop the movie, as I knew it'd be trash from that point onward.

And besides the beautiful art style, the next few scenes weren't much better either: the dialogue was terrible, the pacing was immensely boring, and then we headed straight into a flashback.

Overall, despite its appealing art style, the movie quickly fell apart with ... poor writing, weak pacing, and a frustrating structure that made it impossible to enjoy.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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