Page 1 of The Tale of Princess Kaguya (Anime)

By Ghibli studios which produce some of the best Anime films from Japan.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya out now in the shops and online on DVD (In English) at around £13.

Being waiting on this one for a long long time and its based on a real old Japanese folk story from 900AD about a baby sent from the moon to a bamboo cutter and his wife on Earth where she grows up. It is supposed to be one of the first Japanese written stories about UFO arrival and abduction. So it seemed very interesting.

First of all the animated film follows the story quite accurately, but you wonder why it took eight years to make, when the animation is very poorly draw.

If you consider earlier works like Laputa and Porko Rosso or the newer Spirited away and Howls Castle which has deep colours and are fantastically drawn, this new work is just like a Japanese ink drawing, lacking in depth.

The characters and backgrounds are hand drawn in a rather crude method.
Maybe it was meant to be like that, presented like water colour art, but leaves the viewer wondering what did he pay for, as it is not up to Ghibli standard as far as I can see.

The only scene to me that looked good was movement of the 'cloud of non earthly beings' that was at the end of the movie.

Unfortunately, I will not be keeping this film, seen it once, and not worth seeing again. My rating is a rather poor  5/10, which I did not expect.