LogFAQs > #975120107

25. Ne Zha

Plasma: 8
Suprak: 12
Johnbobb: 14
Evillord: 19
Mythiot: 25
Red: 25
Karo: 26
Ermine: 29
Inviso: 30

Total: 188

Plasma: When Ne Zha opened with a lengthy info-dump, I feared the worst, but this one kept getting better and better. If this were an RPG, Id play it. Loved seeing a child demon-hero as the main character, and his arc kept me guessing. The animation effects were fun and engaging to watch. Bonus points for the battle scene where bubbles turn characters body parts to stone.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Johnbobb: This is probably the movie I was the most torn on. It's almost like two movies combined into one. One movie, about 2/3 of the runtime, is an incredible folklore driven epic with thrilling fantasy combat and interesting lore and humor and hart. Kind of like Kung Fu Panda. The other movie is a sloppy direct-to-video animation with ugly, cheap characters and fart and snot jokes. It legitimately gave me whiplash, because there's often not a transition from one to the other. But man, the good stuff here is good enough that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would watch it again, even if the less good stuff means I probably won't recommend it to people.

Evillord: This is the first film in some sort of planned Chinese Mythology Cinematic Universe, complete with a post-credits stinger advertising the next movie. It's loosely based on the story of a protection deity who appears in two chapters of the Investiture of the Gods and is also described in Journey to the West, but here the figure of Ne Zha is reinterpreted as Naruto. A child container for a demonic power who is prejudicially hated by his village and grows up as a prankster when really he just wants to be loved, gives all the villains pep talks and turns them into better people and defies his fate in extremely Shnen anime style. From my Wikipedia synopisis-based understanding of the original myth, he originally kills the dragon Ao Bing (who is just some dragon who gets sent after him) and then carves himself up and sends his flesh to his mother and bones to his father to prevent retribution from the dragons. In this version Ao Bing is his prettyboy friend and they have the dynamic of pals fated to be enemies until they defy that fate and make up, essentially the Sasuke in this analogy. They even do the rigmarole from early Naruto where Sasuke loses to the bad guy, but the bad guy needs to reveal his greatest trick in the process, allowing Naruto to come in and beat him. At least it gives both characters some conflicting motivations, there's a sequence where Ao Bing is torn between helping Ne Zha and going along with the schemes his dad and teacher have raised him for. It gives him a little nuance. I've seen enough anime to be tired of Shnen story tropes and the animation itself is incredibly so-so, but I at least found it funny how distinct the Naruto vibe ended up being.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Red: A few of these films have some pretty bad messaging, Ne Zha is up there with the worst. Remember, life isn't about enjoying it, being good for some sense of fulfillment, or even doing good because its good for you personally. No no no, its all about doing good because that is how people are going to see you when you are dead. Even if you are going to die, you don't get to enjoy life at all because that would shame your living relatives. The motives here are dubious at best. The random villagers are all horrible. Ne Zha's parents are horrible. But the most outlandish thing that stands out to me here. In the process of the climactic fight of the film, everyone gets dragged into the paintint world. Kind of a cool concept, you think we're going to get some cool setpiece or whatever and it might be kind of interesting. Nope we're just there for a fart joke. It might be the single worst scene on this list.

Karo: So there's this weird crystal head floating in the sky and the forces of heaven split it into two orbs one of which is so evil the it must be smote by God's lightning, but only in three years time because that would be more dangerous and irresponsible. They decide to implant the good orb into a pregnant woman for some reason but use the evil orb by mistake and the good orb ends up raised by dragons. Thus, Chinese Bart Simpson is born to a family of kung fu demon hunters and our story begins. Are you with me so far? No?
Confusing narrative aside, this is something that has no fucking clue what kind of film it wants to be, and the tone shifts wildly from dark inner turmoil to characters being propelled by flatulence. I have a hard time understanding what the movie is trying to make me feel at any given point other than utter bewilderment. It is honestly like someone marathoned a bunch of really dubious western CGI films and said 'this is what I want my artistic vision to be'.
Regardless, the film is a mess of substandard animation, complete lack of understanding of basic story structure, and full to the brim with unlikable and unpleasant characters with incomprehensible motives.
Ne Zha is the highest grossing animated movie in Chinese box office history, and though it horrifies me to say it, I fear the Chinese masses might actually have even worse taste than the American ones.

Ermine: I don't know if the dub for this film is just so god-awful, but I'm going to chalk it up to the movie just being trash as well. The movie has moments of looking cool, mostly during some of the fight sequences, and then during any other period of the film, it looks ugly as sin.
The character, Ne Zha, is one of the most unlikable and unrelatable characters of ALL TIME. And that's saying something. I do not understand in any fashion why this movie has good reviews and several times I stopped the movie to make sure I had the right version. I honestly thought I had downloaded the wrong film and was watching a terrible parody or something.
I hated Ne Zha SO fucking much. His stupid shit-eating grin every single time, I wanted to punch him in the face over and over. Nothing was funny. Nothing was even remotely interesting. Oh god, and the stupid fat ass mentor, don't even get me started. Was he somehow even more unlikable than Ne Zha? I dunno, that's a tough line to beat.
Then you have the other "child?"... For a character that was born from a dragon, it really would have been cool if we could have seen his dragon form for more than like 20 seconds.
I could honestly go on and on about how trash this film is but it's not worth my time. I still cannot believe how highly rated this film is?! Even now... did I watch the right film? Did I download the wrong thing? I must have. Right? This can't be real... This movie can't be THIS bad? Can it? Something is wrong...