Rectangular_businessman Review of The Great Yokai War

The Great Yokai War (2005)

The first movie from Takashi Miike that I've watched

[8/10 · 4 April 2012]

"The Great Yokai War" was my first approach with the filmography of the Japanese director Takashi Miike, who is known for doing shocking and violent movies such as "Ichi the Killer or "Visitor Q". However, the interesting thing about "The Great Yokai War" is that it is aimed to a completely different audience: This is a movie made for children, and as such, it didn't have scene of extreme violence or some kind of shocking content (Though I guess that it will be a little bit too "extreme" or "weird" in comparison with the kid's movies that are produced by Hollywood) This is a very interesting film, and even without violence or shocking content, it still manages to have the peculiar style from all the other movies directed by Takashi Miike: I would describe this film like some sort of combination of "The Chronicles of Narnia", "Time Bandits", the films from the Studio Ghibli, "Tideland" and "The Neverending Story" taking both the good and the bad things from all those works, resulting in something strange and unique, that is also incredibly funny to watch. The rich imagination that fills the story of this movie (Joined with lots of truly unpredictable plot twists, or at least unpredictable by the usual standards from more conventional kid's movies) compensates some of the flaws in the pacing and the uneven quality of the production values (The combination of puppets with CGI and stop motion sometimes it's effectives, in other occasions, not so much) I highly recommend this movie to the viewers that like unusual kid's movies such as "Time Bandits" from Terry Gilliam.