The short answer is its fine. Sincerely this was a fine charming quaint little film. It has an odd little urban fantasy. Its a comingofage story about learning to be more independent a small exploration of found families and working together and a quirky twist on shintotinged fantasy lore. Sounds nice right? However there are a lot of problems here. The problems are more numerous than they probably should be especially with a really competent team and a fairly solid director who has performed well in the past. The talent is clearly there so what happened? https://occ027942219.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/E8vDcW8CLv7yMQu8KMEC7Rrr8/AAAABSmjA41HAGXElKEtZdMYqI6BYZKUId8OJB2PqOsRcjLPh729zEbInpARfpeeXTwgjQ1rxHaRmb9N2nMWzntanFJr7fvwbMwMF.jpg?r=a6b I think its best to compare this to something like a gymnast performance. Sometimes a gymnast just has a bad day. Sometimes they have a great routine but either their mood skill or level of confidence just doesnt let them perform at the level they need to. Its just an oopsie. But enough small mistakes begin to add up real fast. It makes the whole performance just sloppy. You want to not blame them because you see how skilled they are. But a subpar performance is still subpar. So what happened here? Lets start with the good. The presentation of this anime is GREAT. Its so pretty throughout. The character designs are fun especially the clothing. Every time a character was was given a new piece of clothing I got excited. The general design is a also nice. You can tell they spent a lot of time getting their designs just right especially the color palettes. The backgrounds and landscape shots are also quite lavish. There are quite a few CGI shots throughout the film but theyre fairly inoffensive. Also can we talk about the monster designs? Holy crap those are cool. The whale mouth those things have is legitimately one of the neatest creepiest looking things ever. I love it Thats nice but theres bad right? Unfortunately theres quite a lot of bad. The biggest problem with this film is that its story and pacing are all over the place. https://.pastemagazine.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/05/23105846/myonigirlmain1.jpg This film feels like it was written out of order and without cohesion. This comes in two parts: the order of the plot and the structure of the narrative. First the plot. This is the general story of teens go on an adventure resolve a conflict and hopefully come out the other side happy. The problem is that its extremely bookended. The first quarter is really intriguing and fun the last quarter is very intriguing and fun. Then... theres all of the rest. The middle half of the film is just kind of there. Its made as this travel journey but the travel is not very purposeful. All the action happens in meeting this girl learning about her lore and then concluding the big story at the end. But the center of the story is this odd sliceoflife. Dont get me wrong the sliceoflife is nice and cozy. But it feels out of place in a more storydriven actionoriented film. Then theres the narrative. Here the problems deepen. What is this story about? Well its about an oni girl who comes to the real world. Why? Well for reasons. Also did you know that people leak energy when they are hiding their emotions? Dont worry that wont be important later only for the times where its relevant. Our main character has a bit of a complicated houselife with a strict dad. But dont worry the dad will go away when hes not important. Oh by the way the oni girl wants to find her mom who is gone but she didnt come here so shell have to go somewhere else to find her. Oh and the fun part we get to travel to oni world. Why is it in snow land? Dunno but there are monsters and theyre sorta spawned from the oni girls mom but sort of not. Also the demons have their own society but its not important. What is important is that the main characters reconnect with their family but that happens after the films over so dont worry. https://thefeastoflegends.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/oni11024x647.png Do you see the problem? Not only is there a LOT of plot to cover but there are about tenthousand different concepts and ideas they want to explore. This film isnt even 2 hours and its trying to handle all of that and more. Because of this the screenplay is never allowed to linger on a coherent point. Its like a pinball constantly bouncing between story beats. This leaves it difficult to keep up and the story quickly loses coherency. Even when you can understand the general path the anime wishes to explore it still leaves you confused just because of the sheer volume of concepts and ideas. This film also seems to be suffering from identity crisis. What does this film want to be? Is it a comingofage film? Is it a found family film? Is it a roadtrip film? Is it a tourism advertisement for Yamagata Prefecture? Its it a romance? Is it a family drama? Is it a fantasy? I wish I could tell you because its literally all of those at the same time. This film is so bloated on ideas that its dizzying. Whats worse because the film is so spread thin in plot narrative and direction it feels so milquetoast and bland. It never commits to anything so anything meaningful the film has to say it has no ground to stand on while saying it. https://thefeastoflegends.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/05/oni11930x620.png Its really just unfortunate because so much about this had such high potential. This COULD have been great if they focused in on one aspect of the story. If this was just about the oni girl awesome. If this was just about the protagonist cool. If this was just about the sliceoflife cool. If this was just about defeating the evil monsters cool. Instead its all of those concepts and MANY MANY MORE. But then its just nitpicking on what could have been rather than what was made. And what was made was not very good. It is entertaining. Its cute. But if youre looking for something meaningful and deep youre in the wrong place.