#katts

Kubo and the Two Strings tells the story of Kubo, a young boy with a magical talent to bring paper to life with his music, which he uses to tell the stories his mother told him to the people of the local village. His mother is the runaway daughter of the Moon King, who left after falling in love with the mortal warrior, Hanzo–and both she and Kubo bear scars from her escape. His mother is slowly fading away from a head injury, while Kubo has one eye, as the Moon King took his other one when Kubo was a baby.

When the Moon King finds Kubo again, the boy has to go on a quest straight out of his stories. With his magic, the aid of a monkey doll brought to life by his mother, and a samurai cursed to look like a giant beetle, Kubo must find the armor and weapons with which he can defeat the Moon King once and for all.

So for starters: this movie looks darn amazing. I fully understand why most studios don’t go for stop motion animation; it takes a very long time to do, after all, and it’d be so easy to get it wrong. But LAIKA makes it look so, so good. Alright, yes, I know that there is also some CGI, for certain things that can’t be done with stop motion. But overall, a lot of it is really beautiful to look at. 

And there’s a giant skeleton!

Now I don’t know how well this was received in Japan; TV Tropes says it was received very well, but outside of that I don’t have any hints. The cast is stacked with big names, and I’m a bit frustrated that none of the lead roles are played by Asians, considering the setting. They’re a great cast, and do a great job, for the record, but I think it would have been good to include more Asians in the core cast. The same year this came out, we had Moana, which made a point that every role, other than some singing voices and the chicken, is filled by someone of Pacific Islander descent.

Also the ads emphasized that George Takei is in the cast, and he has maybe two lines in the movie? That seemed like a rip-off.

Another question: the mythology? I believe that the kami of the Moon in Shinto mythology is not a friendly guy, but I don’t think he quite fits with how he’s characterized in this movie, either. Supposedly the script names the Moon King ‘Raiden’, which, uh, he’s clearly not–he’s not associated with thunder in this movie, so that doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t make the movie bad, if it doesn’t follow folklore or mythology, it just felt a bit strange.

There is a bit of a twist part of the way through the story, towards the end of the movie, and I don’t think it’s really a twist to anyone that’s been paying attention. Which isn’t bad; a story isn’t ruined if you know where it’s going. At the same time, if you really like to have unpredictable stories, uh, this one’s not going to do it for you.

But you know what will? The action. Dear Lord, there is a surprising amount of action in this kids’ movie. There are duels to the death. The Moon King’s daughters proudly proclaim that they’ve fought cosmic battles before. Yes, there are plenty of family films that have action, but this one felt serious–it wasn’t afraid to tell you that characters are going to die, in gruesome ways, even if it wasn’t going to show you exactly how all the blood spilled. I appreciate that, because that is the kind of story kids actually like.

Which means that I find this movie really, really cool. It’s a film that doesn’t talk down to its audience, even though it’s intended for kids, and isn’t afraid to have real, violent stakes for its characters. Heck, the main character had his eye removed from his head by his grandfather. When he was a baby. What the EFFF.

I'm sorry, this is not going to be linear because first we NEED to start with the skeleton:

LOOK AT HIM!!! THAT IS A REAL HUMAN PERSON STANDING NEXT TO HALF OF HIS BODY, AND IT'S STILL TALLER.

They actually did make legs, but because he's so tall they animated them separately.

They also made a little one:

But still that's pretty big for a puppet when most of them are eight to ten inches tall!! I actually got to see the big one in-person a while ago and he was glorious. They put his to halves together and he took up SO MUCH SPACE.

Here are some other facts about Mr. Giant Skeleton:

Oh yes! Because that is not logic-defying hair on his head, it's a bunch of swords!!! This is plot relevant.

Now we're going to talk about the Eyeball Plant Monsters!!

ALSO huge!!! It's eleven feet tall!!! Look at that guy standing next to it!!

One of the really neat things about this monster is that his eye (Also huge) is controlled by a bowling ball!! It's kind of like how a computer mouse is controlled? (Sorry, best analogy I could come up with) Meaning that when you roll the bowling ball in the trackball controller, the eye rolls too!!

Next is one of my favourites, THE MOON BEAST!!!

He would have had to be over seventeen and a half feet long if he were built to scale! But look at this picture of one of him!! He's tiny compared to the other creatures we were just talking about!

The best fun fact about him (In my opinion) is that in order to capture this glow/light reflection you see from the drawing in the actual puppet, they lined parts of it with birthday balloon Mylar!! That's the shiny foil-like stuff seen in some helium balloons you can buy at the store.

Other facts about the Moon Beast:

There are many, many more things I could talk about (This movie is fascinating), but alas I have other things to do. As such, we'll leave it here for now, and I'll come back to the topic another time. I hope you learned something cool :D