The Animal Crossing anime movie has one major twist

For the most part, Crossing the Animals: A Movie is straightforward. The 2006 animated film (which has never been released outside of Japan, although a fanatic can find unnamed and titled versions online) is largely based on a well-known game series. As in games, the middle-class town is full of familiar characters such as owls Feathers, hedgehog Able sisters, and the old Tortimer river. Everyone still loves music dog K.K. Compact. And when the characters prune the trees, the fruits fall off. The same is true of the game Animal Crossing fans might see it while watching it, preferring to actually play some of the franchise entries, though Pocket Camp either New Horizons. But you have to stay focused until the end of the movie, which is more than believable.

At the beginning of the Crossing the Animals: A Movie, a little girl named Ai moved to Animal Village, and tanuki businessman Tom Nook quickly takes it under his wing as a transporter. As a natural part of the job, she got to know all of her animal neighbors, including Yu, a young boy from a different village. Characters plant trees, breed flowers, catch bugs, go fishing, draw patterns for the Able sisters, and respond to many things as they do in the game, produce flowers when they are happy, and experience the cold breeze there & # 39; we are not happy.

Seriously, Crossing the Animals: A Movie sounds like a restricted form of gaming. It's the kind of launch project that seems to be designed to make viewers think, "Wow, that's right, I remember that character," or, "Oops, I can do that in a game." Those kinds of Easter eggs turned out to be the best places, as the whole movie developed just as fast as the game, with the short story line holding it together. Though the village is literally transformed, the characters are almost entirely 2D drawings of their 3D game models (with the exception of Ai, whose features do not capture the film's feel). Watching a movie sounds like watching someone else play a Animal Crossing

Some details of the film are a little surprising. Playing Animal Crossing it leaves viewers with so much more to do that they forget to think about the details of the character. But given the speed of the movie, the same questions persist. For example, Ai is 11 years old. Were the citizens of the game always meant to be children? And how old are the animals? The alligator Alfonso behaves like a baby, and Ai makes friends with the cat Rosie and the elephant Margie, which may put them at the same age range. But the wolf Whitney and the Eagle Apollo look like healthy adults, as they give advice to younger characters and deal with them with more respect than friendship. (At one point, Rosie tells Ai that there are rumors that Whitney and Apollo were a couple, which brings up the question of animal love.) Cat Kaitlin and her daughter Katie also appear in the movie, raising the question of where all the other kids are.

Picture: Toho

But all those questions come with standard gameplay, too, so it's not as if the film is taking the franchise straight. If anything, it's later – New Horizons does not require players to comply with any gender identity, but the movie draws a clear line between girls and boys and what is considered appropriate for both. Yu is allowed to put on clothes and run around catching bugs or finding fossils; In contrast, Ai is expected to be a drop, wearing the same clothes and shaking his head at what Yu got up to.

Movie compatibility and gameplay only when a UFO falls into a valley. At first, the incident was seen as a normal part of the franchise. As in Animal World and City Folk, Gulliver allegedly crashes his disk-shaped atmosphere, and asks for help in recovering its lost parts. Ai and her friends have found what appears to be a gear, but instead of being a lost part, it turns out she is an alien from various realms – the gear, the blob, the giant version of the Ai head – kind of like the miraculous mirror-creature in Extermination. When the alien's brothers arrive to pick it up at home, it briefly covers Ai in the form of space, surrounding her with unwanted stars and nebulas before taking a break.

Picture: Toho

The alien is stunned, and frankly uncomfortable. Its default shape is a glossy blue, and it has some strange powers that almost blend like the sense of evil in the solid world of Animal Crossing. That sense of complexity is even more surprising given that the alien is incompetent in gaming, and has not been used in the series since the release of the 2006 movie.

That suggests that perhaps the introduction of a clear alien was much more of a step outside of games, which is way more about improving your daily life than anything less alien. Instead of rehearsing something in the game or introducing a new feature, the alien is designed to increase cinematic issues more than the game's calmness, making the movie more enjoyable than the playtime of people familiar with the game, making it more accessible to those who aren't.

Translating a game where there is no real story without paying off your home loan requires the introduction of something new to the sleeping world of Animal Village, which is why they are real aliens. The alien encounter also feels like the kind of event that might arise if Animal Crossing games ever ended. Instead, they cover the seasons, the years, the life span. The movie, which only covers the same amount of time in comparison, requires this kind of eccentricity to make a mark. Unfortunately, it is not enough to make it draw on its own. While the movie is a good discussion Animal Crossing The finishers, and less of a confusion than the change in video game movies Prince of Persia and Assassin's faith, your time can be better spent making your Bells to pay for Tom Nook.