Change Your Image
mattandruby
Reviews
Y Mabinogi (2003)
Welsh Anime
A handful of 'oral tradition' stories have been woven together with a contemporary twist, presented in a stylish manner to make a very watchable film.
Sure, the plot-line vaults over some huge chasms (plot holes don't seem to convey the right sense of scale) and a US audience may find some of the characters' situations unworthy of a satisfying empathy, but if the writers had softened it further it would have dissolved.
The 'Welsh Anime' tag is as close as I can get to summing the film up. It's a quiet epic, touching the rather more brutal side of human nature, whilst retaining the sort of magic that makes animation work so well. The bookends of 'Real Life' add a great deal, and will open up the film to a wider audience.
On the other hand, I can hear someone in California describing it as "Asterix meets Lord of the Rings to create Excalibur Variations".