Journey: Taiko Arabia Hantou de no Kiseki to Tatakai no Monogatari

As of the writing of the review, only two projects are attributed to Manga Productions (including this project) so keep that in mind for the rest of the review. Toei Animations does not need any introduction. I watched the original Arabic version.

The Journey is an ambitious but flawed experience. It is ambitious because it gambles its reception over the audience's acceptance or interest in Arabic culture. There is very little to take from the film if you're already well acquainted with Arabic culture and the Quranic legends. As a person who lived through and heard all those stories multiple times in his life, I'd say ... I felt conflicted while watching the movie; there is the joy in having a legendary story animated in Japanese style, and the boredom of knowing exactly how the story will pan out.

Starting with the premise of the film, it's an ode to Surah Al-Fil taken directly from the Quran as source material. The film also utilizes several other short stories to give the film the illusion of depth, but we'll take more about that soon enough. The story itself is adequate, it stays true to the source material and provides sufficient information at all stages without taking too much off the experience. What disrupts the enjoyment, however, are the short stories that are included to give the viewer this false sense of depth; the stories themselves do not add anything to the story, in fact, the film would probably be better received removing them altogether. They really cheaped out on them, and the stories (3 of them, if I recall correctly) are essentially glorified slideshows with decent art. They are mainly used as ideas that characters use to extract wisdom, motivation, and stoical qualities for application. The detail in them is great and appreciated, but the length it took them to divulge that information results in extreme boredom, where the viewer wishes the segment to end as quickly as possible.

The art, to me, resembles the western adaptations of anime (Netflix adaptations and originals) more than the traditional Japanese productions. It focuses more on aesthetics rather than quality of the animation. Much of the fight scenes were anti-climactic because they were extremely brief and have no momentum to deliver.

Voice acting for the Arabic dubs was unexpectedly good. The script of the dialogues was fun to hear and dissect because the characters converse using Classical Arabic (unspoken Arabic that is present and known only in texts, it was replaced by the more modernized version: Standard Arabic), and expresses itself more like stanzas in an elegant poem rather than just plain statements. This is usually the product of well-written Arabic prose.

There is not much to say about the characters themselves, they are bare-bones and much of the cast simply exists because, well, the directors shoved them in there. Quantity over quality. The designs were average, while some characters looked pretty good; nothing much to be said about them. However, it is important to note that several historically accurate characters weren't given the time they deserved, such as the main antagonist, Abraha, for example.

I viewed this movie with a friend of mine in the pandemic—we were the only persons in the theatre hall. I believe this greatly enhanced the experience. The enjoyment that can be taken from this anime would be the strict historical and cultural qualities, other than that, it is your average run-of-the-mill moderate budget anime movie.

To conclude, this anime is an okay watch. If you're interested in the legends it depicts, go for it. If you're wishing to watch the stories you read in text your whole life come to life in animation (and presentation, but I digress), then go for it. If you're looking for a unique experience that will leave you satisfied in virtue of the sheer quality of the product, then this is not for you.

The Journey.. this Anime i been waiting for a long time and finally I had Chance to watch it.

The way they telling the story in this anime I didn't like that. I know story it's from Quran but I felt little boring and they telling us the stories like it's a kids animation not adults that what I felt so I give (7/10) for the story.

Thank you Toei Animation for drawing a masterpiece Art Even the art is nothing like New Anime films and series but I really love it.

This Anime got a great Characters and Voice Actors. Every Main Character looks brave and Manly ... also their voice suit their Characters.

The Most Thing let me enjoyed this Anime film is Fighting Scenes. I really loved fighting Scenes with swords and that made me excited while watching this Anime I give it (9/10) for Enjoyment of this Film.

It's good anime as a beginning I really loved to see Anime where not in Japan and I so happy that Manga Production Team up with Toei Animation to create this Film.

I Rate this film (7/10) I hope to see a better Manga Production Anime Series and Films.

The Journey is an animation set around the story of the Elephant from the Quran, knowing that I entered to watch the movie with conflicted thoughts as going the religious route for a first anime by Manga Productions was a bold move.

Story-

It's a story from the Quran so there wasn't much of a surprise of what I expected. Unfortunately with that in mind the animation was bound to very severe constraints on what they could do.

Art-

The art was amazing in my opinion, nothing too wacky that deserves a 10 but it was decent. The major downfall in this anime was the pathetic powerpoint slides for ... memory sequences... the whole point of an anime is to well... animate, so watching powerpoint slides to explain something unrelated to the main plot was unnecessary. If the entire movie excluded those PP slides I think the movie would've been much better.

Sound-

Interesting sound choices, very Arabic. Nothing much to say.

Character-

This movie completely failed in anything character related, I disliked every character as they fail to make you care about anyone and 99% of the characters just shouldn't have existed as they literally added nothing. The anti-hero or whatever you call the "bad guy that turns good" was so out of place, I get that it's an anime but he didn't fit the scene at all with the white hair and blue clothes and his backstory was super lame [SPOILER] He saved the protagonist and made him escape from imprisonment, then he gets made that he actually escaped... what? The only cool character was the war general wearing a red scarf and guess what, he's the only character which they said nothing about, and that's what made him the most fun.

Enjoyment-

Like I said the story was limited because it's a story from the Quran. This shouldn't have been their first choice for an anime because you lose all the freedom with the possibilities. Watching the movie didn't get me excited.

Summary-

I wouldn't recommend watching this specific movie but I would keep an eye on their future works. I hope they would expand past religious stories because I do believe they can do much better if they let their creativity flow wild. ALSO NO MORE PP SLIDES please...

I will give my honest review, as a Bahraini Sunni Muslim, I am 36 years old. Living in Japan.

Story:
The Journey story is based from the Quran, and once it has been animated, I truly enjoyed seeing the life story that was animated and explained to us in such a simply way. Though, I always questioned, Who is abraha? How did he lose his nose? how did he gain power? How did the war start? and why did the war start? Same with AWS and ZURARA, both their back ground story in details. we should see how life was before Islam, how they ... worshipped their Gods, Alcohol, Sex. How society was corrupted before religion. I hope a TV Series or Manga can be released. we need to see things in a deeper scale.

I wish Manga Productions a positive success, and for the other people who complain and throw attacks towards this anime, if you can make your own anime then do it, if you are going to complain and attack it, because you don't want to give Arabs a chance to create something, you are selfish and rude.

The anime provides strong masculine characters, which the anime industry in japan is lacking and most of all, focusing on effeminate men.
Anime in Japan has been losing its own touch, fully focusing on FAN SERVICE, SCHOOL LIFE and FANTASY WORLD, which is repetitive and boring.
Its good to see something new.

for foreigners they did their best even if some of yall didnt like the story representation . it was aight.

i mean they are not muslims so of course they aint gonna be as excited as us when making a quran based anime or catoon . they aint gonna be as emotional or religiously related to us while making these kind of animes so i hope yall cut them some slack LOL

i hope the bad reviews dont discourage them to do more and the fact that zoro voice actor from one piece did the voice acting for this. ... it made it even more enjoyable

To benefit, read the entire article because it contains very important information in some paragraphs


Well, for the first manga production, this is a good start
The film talks about a story from one of the Abrahamic religions (Islam), and the story is quoted from their heavenly book (the Qur’an), so it was a good idea, as we do not usually receive works related to a religion other than Buddhism or Christianity (religions spread in Japan), and it was a good initiative
1 The story:
The film talks about the Year of the Elephant with its Arabic name, which means 1,500 years ago
According to my later research on the ... characters, they omitted very important characters, and if they added those characters, they would not need to extend the story, such as adding events within events such as the story of Moses (the prophet of the Jewish religion), who Muslims also believe in his existence, and the story is explicitly short to be a full movie and the old Arab animation Unfortunately, the story was better explained, and I wish they would add the story of the father of the Prophet Muhammad instead of the other stories because Muhammad's father died in the midst of the events
2 Drawing and animation
The drawing and animation were very good in the movie but they screwed it up in the fights and also.... Elephants drawn in CG while you've been working on the movie for two years? Surely the staff was joking, wasn't it?
And the powerpoint slides were really bad
The vocal performance:
The vocal performance was strong in both versions of the film and the performance was realistic and good
4 Characters
I will tell you something: Did you know that if they had brought the story about the villain (Abraha Al-Habashi), the movie would have been better than it was with the character Aws.
Because the depth of the character of Abraha al-Habashi gives depth to the rest of the characters and gives them a better role than it is, especially his dirty tricks in obtaining power and exploiting the people he knows and Aws in those events was just a secondary character in the origin, and this gave us a bad depth of the characters in the film
But I'll accept it since it's the first toei animation studio work for Arab culture
5 - Enjoyment
I prefer to avoid talking about it because the story as a novel gave me more fun
In the end, I give the film a 6 out of 10 rating for this work

You distorted a lot of things, for example Abraha's purpose was to destroy the Kaaba yet the Kaaba never showed in the whole movie, the hero was fighting cause he wanted to protect the Kaabah, Abd El Motalib wasn't a coward like the movie showed he didn't "abandon" the Kaaba, women clothing wasn't like that, this story happened when the Arabs were pagans before Islam appeared (Kaaba was a holy site since prophet Abraham was sent, the hero & most of the other characters became afterwards) ...
It would have been better if you chose fictional characters... if you wanted to distort the whole story from ... the beginning.
I had hight hopes for this movie but it sadly was a huge disappointment.
If you wanna take a story from the Quran then don't distort it, this was too much.
The art was good tho, distorting the story was what ruined the movie.

What an enjoyment of 1,5 hours! Speaking as a Muslim, I am a bit disappointed to read bad reviews from other Muslims about this anime. Come on, Journey was made not totally by Muslims! We should be grateful they made Journey quite representative and realistic about Elephant War in 571 AD!

Maybe I should give my review for each scope of the anime.

Story: 8/10.

Thanks to TOEI animations for filming such a beautiful Arabian movie WITHOUT changing any significant plot of the real event. I was quite surprised to see the ending. As a movie that was planned to be played on Cannes, I didn't think TOEI ... would end Journey with "that bird scene" *no spoilers here*.

Hmm...speaking as a movie enjoyer (not as Muslim), I would prefer if Journey more focused on the plots and actions, not the moral value. So people who are non-Muslim can watch this movie freely without being told about God multiple times (Journey's story happened before Islam was revealed tho).

And yeah, to be honest, the stories about past believers were good, but they were added during important events where they were actually unnecessary, with too long duration.

Art: 8/10.

The art is quite compelling, although needs some improvements especially in war and fight scenes. Probably more blood would be interesting?

Sound: 7/10.

This is the first project, so I guess it's acceptable if Journey is incomplete in some parts, including theme songs. I enjoy the Arabian theme songs, but the movie would be more tempting if it used more soundtracks.

Character: 8/10.

The character of Aws the son of Jubair is MC typical. He is good but I think not complete enough in the character development. Meanwhile, other characters felt like just additional to the story. I wish I could see more development if someday TOEI makes the TV version of Journey.

Enjoyment: 8/10.

Yeah! I fully enjoyed the movie! Though it felt awkward in some scenes, I respect the movie staffs and producers for NOT CHANGING any plots from the real events.

Overall: 8/10.

Journey is a good start for Arabian-themed anime. There will always controversies if you make religion-related movies/TV series, but I think as long as the moral value is universal, they will always be fun and entertaining to watch.

I watched the movie. The animation is good. As a Muslim, I know the story and watched cartoons about it when I was young and guess what the cartoon was much better in terms of writing, characters, and clarifying the goals of each side. Unfortunately, the writing is poor in the movie. For example, the three stories that were only audio, I see as unnecessary and were killing fun. I mean, I was following a battle and then suddenly it was cut off. And the characters did not delve into them too much, especially from the side of evil.. but since it is a beginning ... for Saudi Arabia, it is a good start, and I wish them success in the future.

After long prologing to watch this I am genuinely surpised even if I heard this story many times and I have seen some interpretations, and I really like how Movie came out and how for it’s story source was Qur’an and had an actual story that has happend during the time of Prophet Nuh a.s and Prophet Musa a.s. or to put it simply life before true Islam like we have today came to truth by last Prophet a.s.

Story: Just as true I could of predicted it cause I heard it many times. I’d say if someone asks for something Islam related and ... wants it to be Movie then if you give this to Non-Muslim you are spreading true info.

Voice Acting : Both Arabic and Japanese Dub were done very good and Japanese side had one of my 2 favourite Seiyuus of Nizar and Zurara (Hiroshi and Yuuichi). Arabic Dub was definently done with some good actors in mind. Great job.

Artstyle: Exceptionally good I’m no less impressed from Toei Animation cause they release really good Animations and also artists were superb.

My verdict is that I enjoyed watching it and how it actually presents closely. I’d recommend this to any Muslim and Non Muslim watcher of Anime.