a review of 海洋之歌

groschi
groschi @groschi
Song of the Sea - Review

I'm gonna say the same thing here i've already said about all previous Cartoon Saloon productions i've seen so far: Amazing artwork, competent animation, bargain bin storytelling. The story itself also feels kinda repetitive by now and some characters and plot points even strike me as directly ripping off Miyazaki. Unless the studio's films start getting beyond the most basic of hero's journey plots, stereotypical stock characters, clichéd, exposition-laden dialogue and stiff voicework, these folks will just continue forever to churn out glorified feature-length saturday morning kids' cartoons (...and as far as those are concerned: Adventure Time happened in the meantime and has been running circles around anything CS studios have done so far...) with moments visual brilliance. As an adult viewer, i feel kinda underwhelmed. That said, this is probably the strongest one of the lot (i haven't yet seen their newest one, My Father's Dragon (2022) though...), most of it kinda works and it even keeps coming up with some neat tricks and ideas like one of most effective uses of a map sequence i've seen since... dunno, Seven Samurai (1956), maybe? Also, this time we're spared songs redundantly spelling out what's just happening on screen. No "Running With The Wolves" in here, thankfully.