Review of Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018) by Thefrog — 14 Jul 2020

Definitely one of the worst movies I've seen. It's the story about a girl who is destined to live centuries and therefore end up losing any person she grows attached to. Still a teenager, she meets a newborn orphan and adopts him in spite of all difficulties, but she remains the same as he grows, with a war threatening to destroy their whole world. The premise is not too bad, but the execution... oh boy!

So, imagine a story that develops along decades. It could work with strongly developed characters, drama and emotions, but in this case it's like a director randomly picked up the stupidest moments, concentrating only on scenes where someone is whining for the most idiotic reasons. Seriously, every f***ing minute there is someone bawling, while the story is forgotten, the characters are barely sketched and then immediately abandoned. It's impossible to care for anyone, since you don't get to know them. Characters are introduced in two seconds and then those idiotic, maudlin scenes start again. The war? Apparently it's fought by a couple dozen people on either side and lasts two whole minutes before it's over.

Really, this is a tear-fest where everyone keeps crying all the time, but everything else is sorely lacking. Without a solid infrastructure, the drama falls flat on its face.

Gotta admit that the horrible dubbing in my language gets a good part of the blame. They picked a super whiny, querulous, grating voice actress for the protagonist, so that every time she spoke, usually between sobs, I felt like my brain was hemorrhaging.

Why 2 and not zero? In other languages, with better voice actors, it will still be abysmal but maybe a little less excruciating.