Ao Oni The Animation (Movie)

Ao Oni is a film that thinks it’s far more intelligent than it actually is. Based on a free little RPGmaker game (which the film makes sure you are aware of), it spins its own tale completely unrelated to the game (which the film also decides you need to be aware of). Made with some of the ugliest CGI ever released to the market, it ends up being an hour of sheer boredom. Just kidding, it’s only forty-five minutes of sheer boredom.

HOO BOY

The last fifteen minutes made me laugh so hard I got a headache. This may be the funniest twist ... I’ve ever seen in anything ever. It’s completely bonkers. You’d think a simple “yeah they were a science experiment gone wrong” would suffice for such a low budget production but nope. Nope nope nope. I really hope this wasn’t sabotage, I really hope somebody believed this was a thought-provoking and well-written ending.

On one hand, this movie is a piece of crap. On the other hand, it’s absolutely amazing. I can’t in good faith give it a good score, but I can absolutely recommend it. For the love of God, do not spoil yourself on this one. It’s just too fuckin’ good.

I hesitated to watch the Ao Oni Movie after watching the comedy shorts. I enjoyed the shorts and was afraid this movie would kill any respect for Ao Oni that I had, but after watching, I can say that I don't know how to feel.

Story: The most interesting part of this movie is it's story. Plenty of twists to keep you paying attention- that is, if you can pay attention after the first thirty minutes of the movie which is primarily mind-numbing exposition. The second half of the movie, however, made everything feel worth it. All of the plot that's presented to the viewer in ... the first act gets wrapped up without much question in the final act. 8/10

Art/Animation: This is by the worst aspect of the Ao Oni movie. Half the time it looks like I'm watching a bunch of PSX cutscenes while the other half of the time it feels like I'm watching a Garry's Mod animation made in 2013. It's obvious by the way the human characters move that this movie was made to be animated in 2D, a lot of the problems with the animation style are caused by the CG graphics. The way the characters move would look perfectly fine in 2D, but because they're 3D models, their disjointed movements cause almost everything they do to look awkward. The characters look fine from far away shots, but getting too close to them kills almost any amount of immersion I was feeling. The silver lining of the animation style is the Ao Oni itself. I have a feeling that if the rest of the movie were 2D and it was ONLY the Ao Oni's that were CG animated, they would be a lot more frightening. As is, the best scenes in the movie visually are the scenes in which the Ao Oni is mauling someone. Everything else is just visual garbage. 3/10

Sound: I appreciate the fact that they still use the violin sting to signify danger, and I liked the song that played over the credits, but there's not much outstanding sound work to mention. There's one part of the movie in which the main characters are listening to old tapes, but the voice on the tapes is not distorted at all which seemed to me like an oversight. Nothing overly offensive though. 5/10

Characters: The characters are extremely hit-or-miss. It was really disappointing that the moment the movie began to capture my interest, the two only characters with strong personalities were completely absent. What makes matters worse is that the characters that stuck around are majorly boring and lifeless. I'll give a mention to Mifuyu Hatano, who sticks around for the majority of the movie and is actually pretty interesting. The rest of the characters are pretty bland, so this score will mostly go to the few characters that I actually enjoyed. 6/10

Enjoyment: When I finished the movie and got to the credits, I was left with a good time overall. The ending really made the movie something special. It's concept is actually quite unique as far as monster movies go. However, the abhorrent animation and boring first act make it a challenge to sit through at times, but if you're patient, then the Ao Oni movie may be an alright watch. 6/10

This is just straight-up bad. It's genuinely embarrassing as someone who really enjoyed the game this was based off of when I was younger.

Let's ignore how bad the animation is for a minute and just focus on the story: It's borderline incoherent. None of the characters really have any logical reason for any of what they do. Not only do they have nothing to do with the original characters from the game at all (because the plot mentions at the very start that the game characters are fictional to the world of this movie as well), but they're all completely forgettable. They have the personality ... of cardboard, collectively, and it's not like you're ever concerned about what's going to happen to them. They exist, that's the best compliment I can give them. Because these characters "just exist", it makes the rest of the plot barely matter, because even though yes, they're driving the story forward by existing, the story doesn't MATTER. There's a huge plot twist I won't go into near the end, and clearly you're supposed to be like "Whoa! That's crazy!" except it doesn't matter because nothing about this show has any tension or anything to feel anything about.

But yes. The visuals. They are shockingly bad. Like, if you thought the Ao Oni shorts were bad, at least those were stylized and looked okay. This? This is like if someone went into MMD and forced out the worst product possible. It doesn't help that everything is pretty much the same color palette, so it constantly looks bland and uninteresting. There's certainly ways to use a limited color scheme to look interesting...this isn't it.

I like to try to challenge myself to see at least one good thing in shows I watch or games I play, and I just can't. There's nothing here. If you don't know the series, this is incoherent. If you do know the series, it's still incoherent. I can't recommend this for anything other than maybe to watch it and laugh at how bad it is.