Meant to pop in and say I saw a digital version of this last week, in the original Japanese, and liked it a LOT. I can’t quite make that a "loved it", but I very nearly did. For anyone that liked Spielberg/Jackson's Adventures Of Tintin, this is right up that same alley, from the style of the animation to the tone and story.
In truth, the animation itself is more wow and sparkly due to the terrific rendering, light and textures, that show off various cloth and hair simulations wonderfully, though the character work is no slouch, being as good as Blue Sky or Illumination picture if not *quite* up there with top tier Disney or Pixar. But it’s totally above DTV fare and gives most of the big studios a run for their money.
If I had a gripe, it’s a small one in that the very jazzy theme, very much in the Giacchino-Incredibles style, is repeated over a couple of action sequences, where tailored music would have been better in telling the story, though that the theme is so fun can’t really be held against it.
But I’ve now ordered the Blu-ray and will watch the English dub when that arrives, which may well enhance my enjoyment even more, as I can just enjoy things without having to "read the movie", and have a perhaps more, er, "nuanced" performance instead of the rather harsh sounding Japanese track, where often with these things, they can sound pretty forceful even reciting delicate lines, so I’ve a feeling the dub will be more fun, and I like that they use returning voices for those characters.
So, all in all, it’s a recommendation from me, especially if you liked the Tintin movie. Though it’s not motion captured, as far as I know, there’s more than a few similarities, and it largely plays out the same kind of way. Indeed, one or two characters might very well fit in each other’s movies in terms of some of the designs and 3D renderings.
Oh, yeah...and I went for the steelbook in the end, after seeing one a bit more "up close" and finding it more representative of the movie overall than the just Lupin's face version, plus having a steel is perhaps more in keeping with the diary featured in the film itself.
Big fun, and a welcome difference from the likes of the turgid Tenet that we also watched in the last few days, and was awful...latot tihs, in fact!