The story had good potential, but the voice acting, specially of Sonya is beyond terrible. It really throw off all the good that could come from this animation.

If almost every live action adaption of an anime or animation film was a disaster, does that mean that creating animes based on live action films will yield better quality? This film argues that it is not the case. I liked the 2017 Bright film which, much maligned, combined the present buddy cop formula with a fantasy concept of a world shared by humans, orcs, elves and what have you. However this felt like one of those lazy productions made for the sole purpose of maintaining an IP.

The animation was decent, but also a combination of traditional anime drawing and 3D that made it look fake. The story, for some reason dealing with samurais and the Meiji restoration, was also about a human and an orc bonding to save a Bright elf, but less interesting than any anime fantasy story set in the same period and also less engaging. I bet that if this was a traditional hand drawn anime I would have felt better about it, but even if it was, how could it even approach something like Ninja Scroll with such a simple and formulaic story? And the editing was atrocious.

Bottom line: nothing was above average in this film, and many things were subpar. I like the Bright universe, but they have to try better.

Decent animation, good action, and a simple but effective story. Like the original movie, the growing bond between the human hero (a Samurai in this case) and an orc is interesting. And their protection of a young elf girl is heartwarming :-)