Da Yu Hai Tang is an okay movie. Unfortunately, that's all that can be said about this movie and it is not one to leave a lasting impression.
The movie starts in a fantasty-like setting where we meet our main character, our main character's best friend, and the main character's family and other random people in this fantasy society. In order to fully become an adult, at the age of 16 they must undergo an arbitrary task of going to the human world as a... red fish.. and then come back after a week and then they get to be called real adults.
When the main character enters the human world, after being told by her family to avoid humans at all costs, she gets saved by a human and low and behold he ends up dying to save her, leaving his sister behind as it is implied he is her caregiver, and now the main character feels guilty.
So she finds a way by some lucky miracle to bring him back to life and the rest of the film is the journey she undertakes to try and bring him back, as she must protect him (his soul embodies a fish) as he grows until he is able to return to the human world through flight.
In general, I picked this movie because it had an interesting premise but it turned out to be a low-grade quality studio ghibli like film. The voice acting in this film is bad as characters talk quickly and don't really have much emotion to their roles. One role that stood out particularly to me was the main character's father who was seeing her off, knowing he might never see her again, and in the most monotone voice basically says "ok leave". What?
The art-style in this film ranges from decent to terrible as there are inconsistencies with the visuals due to bad implementation of CGI. There are certain scenes where something will just look "off" to you and it can really take away from the experience of watching the film.
The story itself started off with a good premise but its execution is lacking. The story uses an old trick to progress the story. "Magic". This fantasy world has no rules, or rather, the rules aren't really explained and its hard to get emotionally involved in the story when you realize that there are no real consequences to the majority of the character actions because magic can fix everything. Without spoiling too much, there are characters near the end of the film who should die but instead magic saves them in order to push for a traditional happy ending, which is disappointing.
There are also plot points that are just... confusing. For instance, the attitude of everyone in the village is that they should never go into contact with humans and the human world is bad- yet everyone throughout the film seems to believe that the human world is much better. Yet, we rarely see anyone try and escape into the human world. One of the first scenes in the movie, a major character explains how in their journey to the human world they enjoyed it- to the extent where they implied it was better than their own world. Why does it seem like no one actually leaves this "other world".
There is another point in the movie that says that you need an object from the human world in order to enter the human world and leave behind their world- but in the instances we see of people entering the human world only once is there a human world object involved. It seems like the fantasy world in this movie has made-up rules that can change when convenient because "magic" and "happiness" and "We must push forth for a happy ending at all costs, no matter how bad the writing".
Did I necessarily dislike this movie? No. That's why I give this movie a 6/10. However it is mediocre in the sense that this feels like a movie aimed at children with a premise already done before. Romantic elements in this movie seem forced due to lack of character development, which seems great for a kid's movie but should still be criticized, and characters seem very one dimensional showing little growth and performing illogical actions.
In general, you won't be missing out on much if you skip this movie.
