The premise of a simple story would've been fine; boy with no one and nowhere to go meets would-be mentor out of circumstance and both experience a coming-of-age as they grow and learn from each other. That's fine. That's what you get to start. Then the inner turmoil of being Tarzan hits, and sure, that's fine too. But it's at that point that things start to unravel as the plot armour thickens and weird allowances keep happening just to let the story progress.
There are small nit-picky things like arbitrarily deciding not to finish a 10-count until the protagonist gets up so they can win. Then there are big things like the main antagonist reaching full development as the villain with almost no attention paid unto them up to that point. And things get really weird after that, where somehow despite magic and explosions going on, everyone in the world starts acting in unbelievably illogical fashions. The main heroine for some reason is just like "Yeah ok, not only have I only just learned that magic exists without any prior context, but I also fully understand the nature of this magic, what's going on, get why this person has become that way, and am ready to stand up to them with bizarrely specific dialogue." The movie also really mixes its blatant metaphors, and as a result the poetic message gets twisted quite a bit. Avoiding the climactic ending and gone with a coming-of-age dramatic ending would have made a LOT more sense given what they had built so far story-wise. They rush so fast through certain plot developments it felt like there were missing scenes.
Finally, with magic and mystical universes the underlying logic and structure does not need to be explained absolutely. But there is a huge deus ex machina thrown in at the end just because... and the justification for the societal structure and world-building in general is extremely minimalist. Almost no thought seems to have been put in to the mystical beast world outside of "beast-people live there, they have a martial arts-based hierarchy, and only two people get to even entertain becoming the next grandmaster while the rest of the world accepts this." Also there's a big open square where shops set up.
While the animation studio did a fine job polishing off a finished product, the storytelling was sub-par. Overall, a fine saturday night flick, but at an 8.45 (at the time of writing) I expected a masterful story. A 7 rating is labelled "Good" for a reason folks. Just because you like something doesn't mean you have to give it a 10.
