An average movie

By now, I have seen almost all the movies directed by Hayao Miyazaki and, of course, at some point, I had to watch his directing début. Well, even though it was fairly enjoyable, it was still his weakest effort so far. Indeed, basically, it wasn’t a personal project but, like everyone else, he had to start somewhere and it could have been worse, I guess. Obviously, the animation felt rather dated, although some action scenes (above all the car chase at the beginning) were sometimes quite mind-blowing and I found out afterwards that they had just 4 months (!) of production. How could they manage to make this 100 minutes animated feature in such a short time is beyond me, especially when you think that the average production time for an animated flick is usually around 4 years. Apparently, because of this tight production schedule, Miyazaki had to play around with the script and he was never really satisfied with the end-result. To be honest, the whole plot was pretty chaotic but maybe it has to do with the fact that I haven’t seen the previous installment or the TV show it was based on. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, it remains a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Hayao Miyazaki’s work.

6/10