Penguin Highway

Penguin Highway is an anime film about a boy who is mature for his age but still has some things to learn as a growing boy. He is a genius kid who finds great interest in researching new and bizarre phenomena. The film is structured quite well and uses a lot of metaphors through the animation and storytelling to represent the coming-of-age of his character. This film does have a bloated run-time of about two hours and it compromised some of my enjoyment. The dialogue is poorly written and attempts at humour in the film don't quite cut it. I do appreciate the representation of ... the mystery behind the penguins and the phenomena as a metaphor to discovery, exploration, and learning. This film is good to analyse as it presents metaphors in an effective way to tell a story.

The animation is decent for the most part. There are moments of extremely fast motion and travel that are depicted in this film which ends up being poorly animated. The animation in these select few scenes felt lazy and sloppily animated. The animation still deserves some praise.

The soundtrack is quite good. I liked the transition from the introduction to the opening theme. The songs used throughout this film fit the scenes' moods and added a sense of joy. I love the ending theme as the credits roll after a satisfying ending.

The characters were written and developed well in this anime film. The sense of the boy's determination and excitement of further developing his research is portrayed well. Some of the characters' actions felt a little forced but there was one scene where there was a conversation with the boy and his sister which tied up to the ending and connected all the dots. This film doesn't fully explain itself until the very end but it is satisfying to see the films ending scene nonetheless.

To be honest, there were moments that I didn't enjoy watching but I did enjoy the ending quite a bit. The lead up to the ending wasn't enjoyable and this film takes its time to fully explain itself. The humour in this film along with a lot of the dialogue didn't feel like it quite fit in the film which impacted my overall enjoyment of this film.

I'm not sure if I would recommend this anime to anyone but I do have to say that it's an anime film that has a lot of metaphors and imagery that can be analysed and interpreted differently to discover a completely different and beautiful meaning behind its message of growing up, the reality behind maturity, and overall life events that occur when maturing and growing up. You might like this anime film if you like interesting coming-of-age tales.

This is a slightly tricky one, I think. It's a little tricky to get a grip on because of both the things that work really well about it and the things that don't, the two combining together to make something that makes the 'mixed feelings' tag I've attached to this very appropriate.

As far as those good things are concerned, it's definitely a fun idea overall. Penguins are cool, and the overall mystery side of the story, at least at the start, is a decent hook that is easy to find fun. As the story goes on, it adds a couple other important plot points, ... trickles in a few other characters in a decently subtle way, so all of that is solid. And certainly, the plot is coherent enough. In purely mechanical terms, everything is there for a purpose, everything works nicely, there's a decent amount of set up and pay off, all perfectly good here. It also looks pretty great. A slightly Ghibli-esque character style, matched with generally very strong overall animation, and a few very interesting visual sequences, some very strong voice performances, and we're onto something that should be pretty good.

But, while there was definitely enough that I can say was good, I also couldn't help but feel like my interest was dropping off as it went along. While the actual premise was a decent hook, a decent plot hook needs a decent protagonist to carry it, and 'Penguin Highway' doesn't make a great choice there, with a protagonist that isn't especially interesting and isn't especially likeable. But mostly, I think it was just a bit too long. There is a pretty phenomenal 1hr30, 1hr40 movie in here, but the 2 hour runtime just feels a little drawn out, creating what I found to be some pretty severe pacing issues. And that all came together into something that was definitely enjoyable, definitely looked incredible, but ultimately somewhat struggled to hold my attention by the end.

“Penguin Highway” is what happens when You want to write a mystery but You lack the skills to pull it off organically.

We follow Aoyama - a fourth grader with knowledge compared to that of an adult… or at least he thinks so. He likes to indulge himself in pseudo scientific experiments that probably fuel his ego. One of his journals is entirely dedicated to “Geometric study of boobs”, now that’s a branch of science I can get behind. He has an ego, he treats others with reservation and sees himself as more than a child. To be honest… he’s annoying. Watching him is like watching ... a dollar store ripoff of Sheldon Cooper from “The big bang theory” (and writing a worse character than him is a real achievement as his really badly written). His boring and a lot of his “deductions” are just an ass pull powered by deus ex machina. Shame because there is a solid foundation to make him organically come to the conclusions. But that would require some work.

Aoyama has a pretty big crush on a buxom, pretty, mysterious young woman that works at the local dentist who he call’s Onee-San (Lady in English subs). She has a mysterious and fascinating power which gives Aoyama an excuse to get closer to her. She’s the most cliché character of the show. She only has one side and that is a laid back, kind side. Lady treats our little MC like a child seemingly not knowing, or more likely not giving a damn, about his infatuation towards her. If I have to point out the most wasted character of the story it would be her and that’s a problem because of her importance to the story.

It might seem like the movie doesn’t have any good points but that is not true. The supporting cast is pretty cool. Aoyamas friend Hamamoto is probably the most 3D character of the show. Yes… it’s a bit cliché that she has a crush on Aoyama but due to the fact that she shows a few sides of her personality I can forgive it this time.

The plot itself also has potential. Up to a point it’s pretty logical and organically grows the mystery. That said all that goes out the window somewhere around the 3/4 mark. After that the show relies too much on deus ex machina for my taste. I think the script writers wrote themselves into a corner. They wanted to explore a lot of themes and make us care about the main duo but had a time limit to the move. The movie could use another 30 minutes (at least) to nicely and organically round up the plot. The way it is… it’s just rushed and it shows.

Despite all that, it's not a bad movie, it has a nice calm vibe in the beginning and the visuals are very well done. Aoyama is annoying but after about 30 minutes You won’t really notice it that much… I hope so at least, for Your sake.