Anime Meta-Review
Chinese Ghost Story
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
I've seen the Hong Kong (I assume?) live action movie which was fun, so an animated version sounded like a good deal. I think this is actually in chinese, with subtitles in english and Japanese. The central plot involves a developing romantic attachment between a romantic young man and a female ghost. This is complicated by a group of ghost destroyers who want to exorcise her ( not as blatant in the movie?) and an ancient evil spirit that wants to eat him. Both members of the couple risk themselves for the other, and come to see the depths of their love for each other. This story is told with the aid of a lot of computer animation, but sadly this leads to the weakness. Computer animation is so capable of weird things and impressive effects that far too much time is spent in gee-whiz animation, generally of conflict between the ghost destroyers or the ghost world, which ends up reducing the effect of the romantic angle. The epic power of the physical effects also makes the continued existence of the single ordinary mortal hard to believe. The anime (I think) also adds a dog sidekick, which is quite unneccesary. Impressive and fun to watch, but had they forced the computer animators to restrain themselves the end product may well have been better.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:16 WST 2009