At the least, it's a very pretty movie. While the characters don't have the same sort of life and distinctive visual appeal as their Ghibli progenitors, they do come close, and the landscapes and backgrounds are absolutely stunning. The monsters and magical beings that are encountered along the way are, like the characters, not quite there but close, and they show a decent amount of creativity as well as their obvious influences. The film sounds alright too, though I always find sound somewhat hard to rate.
Unfortunately, the film stumbles in two of the most important departments: Story and Character. For characters, we have three leads throughout the majority of the film: Asuna, who is something of a naive, nice everygirl with fairly confused and inconsistent motivations; Shin, our harsher mystical fighting-type boy also with confused and inconsistent motivations; and Mr. Morisaki, who mercifully doesn't have the same problem with confused and inconsistent motivations and instead suffers from the fact that despite the fact that his story is possibly the best told with the most emotional gravitas, it doesn't get the emotional focus it needs because he's more of an antagonist type (even if I wouldn't call him a villain).
And I think this brings me to the critical problem with the movie, that underscores most of the rest of what it does wrong: the film is trying to be and do too many things at once, when one thing would have been more than enough. The closest thing the film has to a good, well-rounded plot is Mr. Morisaki's quest, but since the film is more focused on Asuna it doesn't have the room it needs to be really compelling.
And while Asuna is the focal character and you sort of get that she's probably a nice person it's a little difficult to follow her because nothing ever adds up. At the start of the film, she's listening to a magic crystal based radio and hearing a mystical song, which could have been a plot hook all on its own if they bothered to develop her past "nice girl" with some curiosity and adventurous spirit. After that, it looks like she's forming a strong bond with another character, but that gets halfheartedly not-quite-discarded for the meat of the film too. Once she's in Agartha she has two potential motivations to go on the magical quest served to her on a silver platter, but she never addresses either of them. The film tells us she felt a calling, tells us that she's lonely, and never really addresses why this causes her to make the choices that she does, which ultimately leaves her just along for the ride.
Shin, meanwhile, at least has one consistent desire, but her pursues it in a very scattered way and his reasoning and actions don't ever seem to add up. One scene he has a serious issue with honor, doing his duty, and paying his debts, the next he's more of a softie who doesn't want to see an innocent brought to harm. I suppose that could work, saying he's grown or formed some sort of bond, but it's not treated that way; we aren't really let in on how he's changing or even that he is really changing so when he says and does things at odds with his stated purpose, it's just jarring, especially when he indicates a resentment he never seemed to hold.
And even beyond the arcs of the characters, if you can call them that, the movie has a lot of elements that start nowhere, go nowhere, and never seem to add up. There are scenes, even entire threads of plots, that seem like clues to a mystery that doesn't exist. For instance, Asuna's magic crystal from her dad would seem to indicate that one or both of her and her father have some connection to Agartha, and we even get some tantalizing hints as to what that connection could be, only for it to never be mentioned, addressed, or the pieces put together in any way, much less one that would be logically and emotionally satisfying. We get a lot of mini-scenes and talks, however brief, about these supposedly deep philosophical ideas... which could be deep if the entire movie picked one and tried to focus on it. Instead it's sort of about the cycle of life and death but it also throws in an anti-war bit that could have been played up to a strong main status instead, and halfheartedly tries to suggest maybe an environmental message sort of that never gets followed up with, and so on.
It sort of makes me sad, because there are bits of great movies in here. And I don't just mean the great movies that clearly inspired this mediocre offering, but great movies that could have been. In one alternate universe there's a great movie about Asuna's crystal radio and how it draws her into this intrigue about a spirit world connected to our own, that spins a tale of global conspiracies and dying gods and humanity growing up. In another alternate universe there's a film about Asuna's journey to the world of Agartha, a world to which she is more deeply connected than she realizes, that has a lot of great and beautiful things to say about identity, and finding your place. In another alternate universe there's a movie about conflict and greed, that follows up on the snippets of Agartha's history we get in our version, that tells a great epic story that touches on the flaws of human nature. And of course there's the alternate universe with the great film that's closest to what we've got, that actually follows through with the emotional gravity of telling this tale about life and death, grieving and letting go. And there are more besides those that taking some elements of this thing a different direction could really make shine.
But in our universe, rather than getting a single, brilliant, great film, we got Frankenstein's monster: Cobbled together out of great parts, or at least parts with great potential, but in the end a shambling, patchwork sort of thing that doesn't do any of its components justice, coming out as truly less than the sum of its parts.
This is a film that wants to be epic and deep, but doesn't know quite how to do it, and so instead ends up flat and epic only in the potential it squanders.
Yet despite this, as I said at the beginning, there's enough to like here that I can't really bring myself to call it a bad film. I was entertained watching it, and don't really resent the two hours I spent that way. It's Diet Miyazaki: nowhere near as fulfilling as the real thing, but still likable and full of beautiful, creative vistas, so if you're really in the mood for a somewhat melancholy magical adventure and have it at hand, I'd say go ahead. Just don't go in hoping for too much.
Story: 4
Art: 9
Sound: 7
Character: 4
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 6
