Review of The Boy and the Beast (2015) by Viet Phuong N — 26 Mar 2016

What a lovely and pleasant film that is! Visually speaking, this film easily sits among the best anime I have ever watched with a photographic beauty that is comparable to any live-action film out there.

And typically for a Mamoru Hosoda's film, this film is simply delightful to watch and appreciate with its heart-warming story, humanist characters (despite most of them being "beasts"), and predictable yet cheerful treatment of tensions and climax.

This film very much reminds me of Hosoda's own "Summer Wars" - exotic characters' appearance, multiple twist-and-turn, mixture of real world and "virtual" world, and focus on characters' struggle with their own selves.

It feels, though, that "The Boy and the Beast" is a little bit campy towards the end. However, the fact that this film is much more cheerful to watch (than "Wolf Children") is already a good news to me, as I really love Hosoda's colourful and positive style, it brightens up my day.

With the retirement of both Miyazaki and Takahata and the sudden death of Kon, Hosoda now has to bear the burden to lead Japanese animation moving ahead. It will be a long and winding road, and a true masterpiece is what Hosoda is still developing, but I really hope that his fantastic visual and profound humanism will finally end up with something big, something that makes the whole world appreciate, again, the uniqueness of Japanese animation.