Ni no Kuni

Best friends Yuu, Haru, and Kotona enjoy a tranquil high school life together. One day, however, a suspicious man pursues and stabs Kotona—a catastrophe that Yuu and Haru fail to prevent. While hastily carrying the girl to the hospital, the two boys are nearly hit by a truck but miraculously remain unharmed. Instead, they find themselves in a fairy-tale-like kingdom with an exotic diversity of people and wonderful creatures.

To their surprise, the boys discover that Yuu, who has been confined to a wheelchair since childhood, can now walk! Yet they have no time to ponder the puzzling situation, as their friend is gone. Setting off to find Kotona, Yuu and Haru stop at a local pub to inquire about her. But upon inspecting a picture of Asha, the kingdom's princess, the two have a shocking revelation.

Narrating an extraordinary adventure in a magical world, Ni no Kuni demonstrates the special connection between two separate yet parallel worlds and its manifestation of the bonds between individuals.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Released in Japan on August 23, 2019 and on Netflix worldwide on January 16, 2020, Ni no Kuni is an anime adaptation of the acclaimed video game series of the same name. Studio Ghibli contributed character designs and other components to the games, but it is notably not associated with the movie, despite its similar visual tones and textures.

Ni no Kuni was the first feature-length work directed by Studio Ghibli's animator Yoshiyuki Momose, who has served as the director of animation in addition to having drawn character designs and storyboards for the games. Moreover, the film features a score from Studio Ghibli's collaborator and composer Joe Hisaishi, who has also acted as the lead composer for the games' music.

While the film's narrative differs from the plot in the games, the movie's story includes elements from the games such as the setting, racial diversity among the characters, names, and visual references to particular individuals and items.

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Yuu

Main

Yamazaki, Kento
Japanese

Haru

Main

Arata, Mackenyu
Japanese

Asha

Supporting

Roam, Bertha

Supporting

Midorikawa, Miki

Supporting

Mishima, Saki

Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya
Japanese

Kotona

Supporting

Danba

Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki
Japanese

Gnauss, Yoki

Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Bezerra, Wendel

Producer

Katou, Hiroyuki

Producer

Momose, Yoshiyuki

Director

Nakata, Makoto

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

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Ending Theme

"MOIL" by Keina Suda

Reviews

Jan 16, 2020

anime-prime

Recommended

1: You are being chased by a guy with a dagger through the streets. You call your friend but he doesn't pick up. What do you do?
A: Call the cops to come and help?
B: Call an adult to come and help?
C: Call your other friend who is in a wheelchair to come and help?
If your answer is C, then you will probably love this movie. If it isn't then you will probably enjoy watching this show to laugh at other dumb things the characters did.

2: You find your stabbed girlfriend on the streets in the arms of your best friend (not in that way, get ...

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Jan 18, 2020

Firechick12012

Mixed Feelings

What we have here is Level-5's attempt at making a movie, and on the surface, it looks promising. Ni no Kuni is a game series that got started in the early 2010s, and it was famous for one thing: It was the first video game that Studio Ghibli worked on. No, really. Level-5 actually brought Ghibli on to animate various cutscenes and had Joe Hisaishi make the music for it. Needless to say, everyone who played it really liked it. I've been wanting to play the game myself for years, but it was on the PS3, which I could never afford. It did get re-released ... on the Switch, so I wasted no time buying it, but I never got to sit down and play it yet. Getting back on track, Ni no Kuni eventually went on to get a sequel game and, as of last year, a movie with an original story. When I heard about the movie, I was really excited! But then I actually got to watch it.

Good lord, I've been disappointed before, but this was just...painful. I really want to like this movie. I really do! It does have a lot going for it at first...and it crashed and burned. Hard. So what's the story? Well, it focuses on three kids: Yu, Haru, and Kotona, who are great friends and spend a lot of time together. One day, Kotona is stabbed by a mysterious pursuer. Haru and Yu try to save her, but when they're nearly killed in a car accident...they wake up in another world called Evermore. But Kotona is missing, and the princess of this world they're in happens to look almost exactly like her. In their quest to save the princess and find Kotona, they learn more about Evermore and what it has in common with Earth, but the friends' loyalty to each other get tested and strained when their actions in Evermore have consequences in the real world. Yu may have to make hard choices, especially when Haru begins acting strangely when Kotona's situation gets more complicated.

Sorry if my summary of the story isn't that great. There's a lot that I can't mention without spoiling the entire movie in the process, so I'll try to hold back as much as I can. But man, do I really want to rant about this movie! However, I don't want to be too negative, so I'll go over the positive aspects of this movie first: The animation is quite good. The world's overall look is really breathtaking, the character designs are varied and interesting, the fight choreography is top notch, and some of the fight scenes were actually pretty clever in some ways. I also really liked Yu as a character. Not only is he NOT an overpowered bland isekai protag (And he has no harem. Thank God!), he actually has a backstory, has good chemistry with his friends, and is smart and competent. He could have benefitted from more depth and had more flaws, but I'm happy with what we got. Plus, having a main character in a wheelchair who is portrayed decently well, doesn't bemoan his disability, and isn't solely defined by his disability, is pretty cool. His friend/adopted sister Saki was pretty awesome too. She got some great moments in the movie, both in the real world and in the other world. I kinda wish we had seen more of her.

Unfortunately, those are the only good things I can say about the movie, because the rest of it really doesn't fare well. While I admit I haven't played the games much, they delve into the world the kids go into in a lot more detail than the movie could even scrape, so what little we see of it is just kind of there. The setting isn't developed well enough to make its audience feel invested in it, even with the animation making it look as beautiful as possible. And that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of this movie's many, many problems. With how well loved the games are, and how the movie is telling its own story, you'd think the creators would be able to do them justice and create an intriguing story out of it. Unfortunately, the movie is little more than a generic fantasy isekai movie, with the main kids trying to save their girl friend and the princess who is a damsel in distress. The villains are so cartoonishly evil that you'd think they'd have come straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, and the real big bad is so obvious that you can tell who it is straight away. The whole movie follows the same story beats and cliches that have plagued other stories for centuries, and doesn't really do anything new or exciting with them.

And that's not even getting into the characters. Other than Yu and Saki, every single one of them is extremely bland and one-note. Kotona's the energetic girl whose life is in danger, Astrid is the damsel in distress princess who tries to be more active, the main villain is the chessmaster manipulating everything who hams it up when exposed, but all of them pale in comparison to Haru. Seriously, watching him made me feel like the writers really didn't know what to do with him most of the time. He starts out as the cheerful friend archetype, then gets needlessly angry at Yu for little to no reason (Case in point: Early in the movie, when he sees Yu with an injured Kotona, he doesn't ask if he's alright or offer to take them both to the hospital, you know, like a good friend would. He yells at him for holding her in an intimate way, takes Kotona away so he can run her to the hospital, and JUST LEAVES HIM THERE! Knowing that Yu's in a wheelchair and can't move! Dude, what a dick!), his motivations are laughable and poorly developed, and he's constantly being a reckless idiot who can't stop to think (Which Yu actually calls him out on in the movie!). Any development he gets is really unnatural and rushed, like the writers couldn't agree on what to do with him. Honestly, as a character, Haru is the biggest dark spot on the movie, and the other characters, while slightly more tolerable, are still too bland to really connect with on an emotional level, since the movie's only under two hours long. There's a lot of characters to keep track of, and I think the movie would have fared better if it had cut a few of them out to give the writers more wiggle room to strut their stuff.

Speaking of writing, I'm not even done with that portion yet. Late in the movie, a lot of stuff happens, but most of it is characters spouting about random plot points that were never mentioned before, are barely explored when they're introduced, and they just appear without rhyme or reason. Like, at one point, Astrid mentions that the only way to defeat a villain is some magic sword, but her father tells her it's been gone for years, and later, we see the sword again because some old guy gave it to Yu, who can activate it even though he has no reason to be able to do so at that point, and all is suddenly happy happy joy joy. Can you see how badly planned and written this sounds? Basically, the only reason the sword is even used again is because the plot demands it. Furthermore, there are a ton of other plot threads that get little to no deep exploration, such as an old man who Yu met when he was a kid. We never know his name, we never know who he is or why he's there, but when the story writes itself in a corner, he appears and gives the heroes the tools they need to save the day, and then leaves again. He's basically a Deus Ex Machina in human form, and that's not good writing. Seriously.

I don't have much to say about the soundtrack, as its Joe Hisaishi, and from what I've heard, he re-uses tracks from some of the games. Again, I haven't played them, so I can't judge them on how well they fit into the movie, but I kinda feel like Hisaishi overused his orchestra to the point where the BGMs were so loud during certain scenes that they just got obnoxious. And at other points, the music swells and gets dramatic, then suddenly just stop. Oh, and the CGI made no effort to actually integrate with the animation. My God, close-ups of various monsters walking through rugged terrain don't even try to blend in with the 2D animation, making them stick out like a sore thumb, even worse than how Granblue Fantasy did it. It's jarring and takes you out of the movie. Think looking through a closet of all black clothes and a random pink dress suddenly flies in front of your face and blinds you. That's how bad it is. It's especially obvious when important characters, who are traditionally animated, are the focus of a scene, while obviously CGI soldiers flail around in the background, their limb movements all herky jerky and the texture so computerized that you can tell they're not even trying to make them mix with the scenery.

So yeah, the movie's not great. It's poorly written, the characters are bland, the story is cliche in all the worst ways, the CG is terrible and makes no effort to try to be less jarring than it is, and any drama it tries to pull off comes off forced and artificial. But in all honesty, if Ni no Kuni had been just a generic isekai movie, I wouldn't have minded. It would have been just a generic but still serviceable movie...but then the ending happened. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is absolutely one of the most awful, badly written endings I've ever seen in any form of media, not only by just how out of nowhere the final twist is, but how little sense it makes, and how it completely spits on everything the movie previously established all for the sake of forced drama that didn't need to happen. Seriously, I haven't been this infuriated at anything since the Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card anime's just as God-awful ending, and this one stoops to a whole new level of bad writing. I mean, you really have to TRY to be that bad.

I really don't want to hate this movie. I really don't. If the writers had made more of an effort with it and smoothed out all of its issues, it could have been a fine movie capable of standing on its own merits. Alas, what we wound up getting was a complete mess with a God awful ending that ruined an already flimsy premise to Hell and back. So don't waste your time with this one.

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Jan 17, 2020

caleb3817

Not Recommended

Am I the only one who strongly disliked this movie. The 2d animation was good but the CGI was downright awful. Models looked worse than videogames from two generations ago. It's hard to get into specific details without giving away spoilers but the world history and logic created in the games are completely shattered in this movie. The timeline is all mixed up. The story is often predictable. I think as a stand-alone movie it would be ok for someone who hasn't played the games but as someone whos put 30+ hours into Ni No Kuni 1 and 2 each this movie feels like an ...

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Poll: Ni no Kuni Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Leosmileyface - Jan 16, 2020	62 replies	by Loufi34 »» Mar 2, 9:24 PM
A post i agree with about the movie Aiaigasa - Mar 6, 2020	3 replies	by Mattinator95 »» Jan 7, 2021 10:03 AM
Netflix Premiere removed-user - Jan 3, 2020	3 replies	by Desi56 »» Jan 23, 2020 3:44 PM
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Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds Global Version Release on the Horizon

Ni no Kuni is coming to mobile. Pre-registration is now open on the iOS and Android app stores.

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Ni no Kuni

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Characters & Voice Actors

Yuu

Haru

Asha

Roam, Bertha

Midorikawa, Miki

Mishima, Saki

Kotona

Danba

Gnauss, Yoki

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Ni no Kuni

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

Recent Featured Articles

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-