The short answer is it's fine. Sincerely, this was a fine, charming, quaint little film. It has an odd little urban fantasy. It's a coming-of-age story about learning to be more independent, a small exploration of found families and working together, and a quirky twist on shinto-tinged fantasy lore.
Sounds nice right? However, there are a lot of problems here. The problems are more numerous than they probably should be, especially with a really competent team, and a fairly solid director who has performed well in the past. The talent is clearly there, so what happened?
I think it's best to compare this to something like a
...
gymnast performance. Sometimes a gymnast just has a bad day. Sometimes they have a great routine but either their mood, skill, or level of confidence just doesn't let them perform at the level they need to. It's just an oopsie. But enough small mistakes begin to add up real fast. It makes the whole performance just sloppy. You want to not blame them, because you see how skilled they are. But a subpar performance is still subpar.
So what happened here?
Let's start with the good. The presentation of this anime is GREAT. It's so pretty throughout. The character designs are fun, especially the clothing. Every time a character was was given a new piece of clothing, I got excited. The general design is a also nice. You can tell they spent a lot of time getting their designs just right, especially the color palettes. The backgrounds and landscape shots are also quite lavish. There are quite a few CGI shots throughout the film, but they're fairly inoffensive. Also, can we talk about the monster designs? Holy crap those are cool. The whale mouth those things have is legitimately one of the neatest, creepiest looking things ever. I love it!
That's nice, but there's bad right? Unfortunately, there's quite a lot of bad. The biggest problem with this film is that it's story and pacing are all over the place.
This film feels like it was written out of order and without cohesion. This comes in two parts: the order of the plot and the structure of the narrative.
First the plot. This is the general story of teens go on an adventure, resolve a conflict, and hopefully come out the other side happy. The problem is that it's extremely bookended. The first quarter is really intriguing and fun; the last quarter is very intriguing and fun. Then... there's all of the rest. The middle half of the film is just kind of there. It's made as this travel journey, but the travel is not very purposeful. All the action happens in meeting this girl, learning about her lore, and then concluding the big story at the end. But the center of the story is this odd slice-of-life. Don't get me wrong, the slice-of-life is nice and cozy. But it feels out of place in a more story-driven, action-oriented film.
Then there's the narrative. Here the problems deepen. What is this story about? Well, it's about an oni girl who comes to the real world. Why? Well, for reasons. Also, did you know that people leak energy when they are hiding their emotions? Don't worry, that won't be important later, only for the times where it's relevant. Our main character has a bit of a complicated house-life with a strict dad. But don't worry, the dad will go away when he's not important. Oh, by the way, the oni girl wants to find her mom, who is gone, but she didn't come here, so she'll have to go somewhere else to find her. Oh, and the fun part, we get to travel to oni world. Why is it in snow land? Dunno, but there are monsters, and they're sorta spawned from the oni girls mom, but sort of not. Also, the demons have their own society, but it's not important. What is important, is that the main characters reconnect with their family, but that happens after the films over, so don't worry.
Do you see the problem? Not only is there a LOT of plot to cover, but there are about ten-thousand different concepts and ideas they want to explore. This film isn't even 2 hours, and it's trying to handle all of that and more. Because of this, the screenplay is never allowed to linger on a coherent point. It's like a pinball, constantly bouncing between story beats. This leaves it difficult to keep up, and the story quickly loses coherency. Even when you can understand the general path the anime wishes to explore, it still leaves you confused, just because of the sheer volume of concepts and ideas.
This film also seems to be suffering from identity crisis. What does this film want to be? Is it a coming-of-age film? Is it a found family film? Is it a roadtrip film? Is it a tourism advertisement for Yamagata Prefecture? It's it a romance? Is it a family drama? Is it a fantasy? I wish I could tell you, because it's literally all of those at the same time. This film is so bloated on ideas that it's dizzying. What's worse, because the film is so spread thin in plot, narrative, and direction, it feels so milquetoast and bland. It never commits to anything, so anything meaningful the film has to say, it has no ground to stand on while saying it.
It's really just unfortunate, because so much about this had such high potential. This COULD have been great if they focused in on one aspect of the story. If this was just about the oni girl, awesome. If this was just about the protagonist, cool. If this was just about the slice-of-life, cool. If this was just about defeating the evil monsters, cool. Instead, it's all of those concepts and MANY MANY MORE. But then it's just nitpicking on what could have been, rather than what was made. And what was made was not very good. It is entertaining. It's cute. But if you're looking for something meaningful and deep, you're in the wrong place.
Alternative Titles
Japanese: 好きでも嫌いなあまのじゃく
More titlesInformation
Type:
Movie
Episodes:
1
Status:
Finished Airing
Aired:
May 24, 2024
Licensors:
None found, add some
Studios:
Studio Colorido
Source:
Original
Duration:
1 hr. 42 min.
Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
Statistics
Ranked:
#51662
2
based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.
Popularity:
#4177
Members:
33,719
Favorites:
101
Available AtResources | Reviews
Filtered Results: 7 / 26
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Your Feelings Categories May 27, 2024
The short answer is it's fine. Sincerely, this was a fine, charming, quaint little film. It has an odd little urban fantasy. It's a coming-of-age story about learning to be more independent, a small exploration of found families and working together, and a quirky twist on shinto-tinged fantasy lore.
Sounds nice right? However, there are a lot of problems here. The problems are more numerous than they probably should be, especially with a really competent team, and a fairly solid director who has performed well in the past. The talent is clearly there, so what happened? I think it's best to compare this to something like a ... Jun 25, 2024
It's Rare for me to write a review, unless i was completely disappointed in something;
Overall the movie wasn't impressive. The animation was great, can't complain about that. But what else to say? The story is completely a mess. The goal is met, but there isn't really any build up that makes sense. After 30 mins I started watching how long till the movie ends. It was boring. No spoilers, but you have the ML who is pretty much a push-over and can't express his real feelings. Then you have the FL that wants to find her mom. That isn't much of an issue. But then ... Jun 23, 2024
“My Oni Girl” is what happens when You want to do too much in too little time.
Have You read Franz Kafka? He had an interesting way of building his stories and world. Weird things just happened to his protagonists and were never explained. The most known one is “Metamorphosis”. Oh, You got turned into a giant bug but still retain Your mind and sense of self? Yeah… tough shit, deal with it. “My Oni Girl” builds its plot similarly. A lot and I do mean A LOT of things never get explained. In Kafka’s case it somewhat works because the event itself is a gateway ... Jul 24, 2024
Painted Cake.
This anime is aesthetically pleasing and tugs at heartstrings early on. About 20 minutes in, however, it becomes obvious that there's nothing really going on. And I don't mean there's no action; I'm happy to watch a non-action anime. What I'm not cool with is when a movie pretends to have more going on underneath it than it actually does. This is one such anime. For example: the girl is blushing pretty much all the time. This was cute at first, but got tiresome after the 20th iteration. At the end, all I was left with was a sense of wasted time. Imo, ... Jun 13, 2024
If I could give this a 0 I would. I’ve never felt the desire to write a review until now but this was truly the most bizarre and stupid movie i’ve wasted my time watching. It felt like it was trying to be like a new Spirited Away, but whoever wrote it had no idea how to tell a story or how to interact with other people. The art style was nice but that’s about it. All characters were stupid, nothing was even borderline realistic and I think if you have a brain you’d find it predictable and would dislike it. I’m literally just trying
...
Aug 19, 2024
There's a world that is being condensed into such a tiny portion, they prioritize the characters over it and that makes the balance of this story tip-off. There's a big heart inside, but the medium is just too small, the story goes into cardiac arrest so often.
And the main girl, i don't like to be mean, but she never breaks out of that token, FLCL, manic-pixie-girl kind of character that she is. The story could benefit so much more if she be less mature, less collected, and be more akin to her naive age group. She just so hard to relate. Apr 12, 2025
I went into *My Oni Girl* with high expectations because I had never watched an anime with an Oni theme before, and I was curious about how they would handle the romance (plus, the art looked good).
The story starts with a boy who struggles with expressing himself and has problems with humans. When I thought about it, I wondered how they would approach the "Oni girl" theme, but even before the main character's story began, it was already over. Suddenly, he leaves his home and goes on a journey with a girl he just met (not even a day ago), and this journey ... |


