Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

DCfan This movie is good for someone who is learn about Japanese culture before the world advanced. But the rock music didn't really help set the scene to be honest.Just be vairy that before you watch this film there is a lot of religious and god references to Heaven and Hell throughout the movie.Just to be clear this is not a movie for children nor it is intended to be (check out Paparika) especially because there is a few swear words used and in one scene we see two people get into bed together....not going to go into detail.However, the animation, art style and voice acting is good from the dub side of things.If you want to know how life in Japan was like especially if you were a painter I would recommend this movie.

SnoopyStyle It's 1814 Edo, Japan. Tetsuzo is a famous painter. He lives with his daughter O-Ei. She also paints but he often critiques her work harshly. Zenjiro is a hanger-on, a former samurai who turned to painting. O-Ei hates Zenjiro's inferior work and ridicules him as Zen Zero. She often visits her blind half-sister O-Nao who lives with her mother and Tetsuzo rarely visits due to his aversion of the sick.This evokes a time and place. It paints two great characters. The plot is episodic in nature and I would like more in terms of plot development. I love the woman haunted by O-Ei's painting. There are great bits of a story. I don't know if O-Ei's character development is enough. I am intrigued by her visit to the brothel but it comes to nothing. In the end, she marries but it's left to a postscript text. The script needs a plot development rewrite. It paints a beautiful picture but the picture doesn't really move. Does she become a great artist? Does she find true love? Does sex release her artistry? Is she gay? Does death give her art new depths? There are so many questions but this movie is reluctant to answer them.

sergelamarche Day to day life of a historical figure in Japan. The family was creating great paintings so the animators took special care to create scenes of rare beauty. Not much adventures but lots of thoughts and details make the film very alive. The film leaves our subjects a bit early and the epilogue is brushed over quickly it seems. But we witnessed a passage of time.

cguldal The art, as well as the way the making of art is portrayed in the film is great; however, there is no real story arc or character development to speak of. Perhaps not much is known about the daughter of Hokusai, but even so, historical fiction is fiction for a reason. Though the film is narrated by the daughter, it is not about her at all, which is misleading (title, trailer all suggest the film will be about her). Her character does not develop much, though there is ample room for it to develop. Just when she may go beyond her immature, mean self, beyond her father's shadow, the film ends with a few narrated summary lines conveying what happens in the next 30 years without actually showing it. The film seems to focus on the period in which the blind daughter of the famous painter (the narrator's sister) is young, falls sick, and dies. It is not clear how and why Hokusai is separated from his wife, why his eldest daughter draws and paints with him (though she resents him plenty)... None of the romantic interests develop during the film, yet the summary in the end tells us she married once! It is hard to imagine her marrying, so this would be a great story, but it is not the subject of the film. At one point, we learn that she has a passion for fire, but have no idea how, if at all, this affects her paintings, her art...All in all, the art is great, especially the parts where painting and drawing itself is discussed. But the story is severely lacking and aimless.