The Great Yokai War: Guardians (2021)

Being brave does not mean not being afraid...

It means doing what's right despite your fears. Great message for a movie that obviously has kids as their target audience. And for kids I would for sure recommend it.

It was painfully cheesy, especially the ending. The messages were literally slapped into my face, no ambiguity, no need to dwell on them more. The power of love, care, friendship, bravery, apology, reconciliation - everything kids should be learning about, you have it here.

Watanabe Kei is honestly a great character - usure and scared, but willing to learn and improve if it means helping others and saving his younger brother. He is not a perfect hero, he is a normal kid that other children can relate to. What helps is also an amazing performance from Terada Kokoro - this child knows how to scream and has actually great comedic and dramatic skills.

Production was nice, typical for fantasy movies for younger audiences, focused on the practical makeup and costumes with CGI just as an addition slapped on top.

Overall, while I obviously was not in mind of the creators when they made it, I still had a great time and even cried by the end. As cheesy as it was, it’s a nice and simple story that can teach kids some life lessons.

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Fun if uninspired sequel

Takashi Miike's loose and belated sequel to The Great Yokai War, Guardians is much more of the same, so if you liked the previous adventure, you'd like this. It's made for kids so accessibility is a key factor to its appeal, meaning there's not much meat to its story beyond your standard hero's journey, but just because it's more kid-friendly doesn't mean it lacks a lot of wacky, and sometimes downright disturbing, imagery courtesy of the Yokai themselves which are brilliantly realised (both east and west alike). Miike even managed to bring back our great guardian god Daimajin for an extended cameo which put a big smile on my face knowing he was originally lined up to direct a film reboot in the late 2000s. Fox-Faced Woman also was ?.

While there's certainly a lot of love and creativity put into this movie, I can't deny like the previous film, it certainly has its faults. The child-friendly tone does its story no favours, especially in the final act where you'd normally find Miike going hell for leather, it falters. The overreliance on CG like the last, has dated the film extremely quickly although Japan has never really had the best of results with this technology. Regardless, for what it's worth, The Great Yokai War –Guardians– is a fun romp but extremely subdued Miike which is saying a lot.

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