Anyhow, the animation is seriously like 10. It's got scenes that make me wish I were there--and not the lame super shiny Miyazaki way that everyone spazzes about. I'm talking things that seem to reach back into the Japanese past and bring scrolls to life sorta animation. It was excellent and I hope to one day own a DVD of this movie so as to see it in its true definition glory.
The sound/music was also superb. It was well made and definitely captured the mood of what was going on a lot of the time. Regardless there were also times when the music just took you away and you kinda felt like you were in rural Japan...well for me anyway. The dialogue and voice actors were good and it was interesting to hear Chinese occasionally.
Now come the story and character development...it was lousy. I'm not going to sugar coat anything like I think other people did/do. The characters are lame and just too mysterious to care about. The little boy is just in the way and seems like a little bitch and loves his dog too much. Even the main character Nanashi is poorly developed to the point where all I cared about was him fighting the next person. So, all in all, every character is pretty much flat, static, and waaaay under/poorly developed. It follows that the story is pretty bad too. Very cliche and seriously stupid (SPOILER: Boy gets kidnapped, Nanashi must rescue, the end.) I mean come on, its so damn lame that I could have written the entire plot on a napkin (which is what they must have done).
Overall + enjoyment was a 5 because though I really loved the art work and music, the story crept along and never really gave me anything to care about minus the gruesome fight scenes/sequences. I would recommend just watching Samurai 7 or even Basalisk than waste your time/money on this feature...unless of course you admire the animation or some other aspect of the work. So yeah...a winner is you!
