Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ni no Kuni’ on Netflix, in Which a Video Game Becomes an Anime Based on Every Worn-Out Fantasy Trope Ever

Netflix’s latest anime offering is Ni no Kuni, a video-game adaptation carrying a tenuous association with Studio Ghibli. The renowned animation house contributed character design and other components to the game, but notably is not associated with the movie, despite its similar visual tones and textures. So does the film — which debuted in Japan in 2019 prior to its international Netflix release — survive on its own merits, or exist in the towering shadows of Ghibli and its source material?

NI NO KUNI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It all starts with the thrusting of a pole: An old man stands on a hospital roof, poking his cane into the air. “I’m in the middle of invoking some magic,” he explains to a nurse. Is he senile? No way! For soon enough, a trio of high-schoolers will be swept into a parallel world rife with puffy tunics, anthropomorphism, scary monsters and big, glistening-wet heaps of sorcery. Haru (voice of Mackenyu Arata) is a brash basketball star; Yu (Kento Yamazaki) is his relatively timid, wheelchair-bound best pal; and Kotona (Mei Nagano) is Haru’s girlfriend, although Yu quietly longs for her.

For reasons yet to be explained (and explained (and explained some more (and then even some more))), Kotona is stabbed in the gut by a red-eyed, black-hooded ninja guy who emanates purple mist. Rushing to save her, Haru and Yu find themselves randomly whisked to Evermore, a place I like to call Middle Blearth. There, Yu can walk, all the better to be a kickass sword-warrior alongside his buddy. Kotona is the princess of the land, ailing from the wound sustained on Regular Blearth. Somehow, Yu summons the courage and wherewithal and whatnot to save the princess from the special effect that’s slowly killing her, putting the two boys in good standing with the king and his strange kingdom.

What with one thing and another, Haru and Yu jump back-and-forth between both worlds, learning how one affects the other. Most importantly, if you die in one you die in both, although the method they use to jump realities involves throwing themselves into absolutely fatal situations — leaping off a cliff, for example — which is where I started drowning in the story’s convoluted logistics. Inevitably, there’s a big battle between good and evil that must be gotten over with, but will all the principal characters survive? I daren’t say.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Like I mentioned before, it has a similar look and feel as hand-drawn Ghibli classics such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. And conceptually, there’s a wholly derivative Wizard of Oz-via-Tolkien thing happening here.

Performance Worth Watching: Frequently tailing our heroes is a small pink puffball creature with big eyes that seems to be an evolutionary cousin of the soot sprites from My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Frankly, I’d rather see the story of the Battle of Evermore from its perspective, which would be far more fascinating and original than what we get.

Memorable Dialogue: A prime example of the script’s hilariously fatal love affair with exposition follows (spoken by a character who shall remain unidentified to avoid spoilers): “I have returned from death! By using advanced alchemy, I forged a new body from the blood and flesh of magical beasts!”

Sex and Skin: None. Although there’s a male-gazey scene where Yu wide-eyes the princess’ shadow as she changes into her bathing suit.

Our Take: Disclosure: I’ve never played the Ni no Kuni games — which originally were about a boy traversing another world on a quest to save his mother — so I watched the film with no baggage, and therefore no context to criticize it for fouling up the concept. I therefore proclaim it to be lousy purely on its own terms as a film. It’s stuffed with boilerplate D&D fantasy crapola, generic voicework, nondescript animation and a preoccupation with stilted and stultifying exposition that’ll have you battling the Demons of Drowsiness with the Flaming Electrified Sword of Another Cup of Coffee and a Spell of Toothpicks Propping Open Your Eyelids.

The plot is a very loose assemblage of Things That Happen, usually suddenly, with little logic or sense. If an ancient magic weapon is needed to influence the course of a battle, the plot will provide one. If a significant mechanism is needed because it’s been too long since the last action sequence, the plot will provide a giant spider. If Haru and Yu need to randomly ascertain without even the tiniest scrap of proof that risking their lives prompts them to warp between worlds, the plot will provide them with an opportunity to throw themselves into a towering flame, and their half-assed lamebrained idea will work. I was bored out of my mind, although my ears perked when the princess reveals that magic does, indeed, have its own distinct smell. That’s a new one!

Our Call: SKIP IT. Ni no Kuni is not magical, and therefore smells like something we’ve all smelled before.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Ni no Kuni on Netflix