Kubo and the Two Strings! Thursday preview (still not sure how those work.) Epignosis: good stuff. Climax, perhaps, flawed? Though "flawed" maybe not right word; incongruities possibly stemming from non-Western storytelling mode. Would need to get into spoiler territory to explain.
Am reminded of Barsk review, reading all of it on the first day it came out, being too tired and also not having enough time to do full review in initial post when it came time to review- wrote review dealing with non-spoilers, end of post draft one; edit in later, a section at the end where spoilers are covered. Feel now that that would be a good idea for Kubo as well.
For now: good credits. "While My Guitar..." Regina Spektor. Handdrawn of quality to rival stop-motion. Good media, both. Tough year for Best Animation Oscar. Et cetera.
AND HERE: (ALSO HERE BE SPOILERS OF COURSE.
...JUST SEE THE DANG MOVIE.)
We find out what is meant by the two strings, strings of the shamisen made from symbolic representations of Kubo's parents. (And it turns out that the two outer strings of the shamisen's precursor sanshin are called the "male" and "female" strings! Neat! Thanks, Wikipedia; that adds a whole other dimension to my enjoyment of this symbolism!)
It's the final confrontation, though the promises the movie made, while indeed dealing with the film's degree of willingness to depict violence, point somewhat stolidly against this being any kind of epic final "battle." Kubo, we know, is going to have to find some other way around this. String stuff, crazy unforeshadowed moon bug.
So this is how the conflict is resolved: Kubo plays the guitar and gives the moon bug amnesia, upon which the moon bug transforms back into his grandfather, but mortal now. And, being unable to remember anything, they just lie to his face and tell him he's a swell, selfless guy. That's the story of how the moon king learned to see. I guess. ...Come to think of it, yeah, he CAN see, also, now... Weird.
Kubo's mom has Alzheimer's, so it's implied that loss of memory may be tied somehow to this form of magic? But in a film where it's explained no less than three times why it is that Kubo shouldn't go out under the night sky before he does so anyway, you'd figure they'd do something better than imply.
So the whole climax is just this weird, yep they managed to do something unexpected, but in such a way that, maybe, at least to my mind, it was too unexpected? I'd have to watch it again, and admit here that our hero should surely have perished, 'cause I blinked, like, three times, and probably forgot for at least an instant some stuff. "No matter how strange" sure covers it...
Maybe it does have to deal with certain non-Western tropes that we're just not used to. The Boy and the Beast, that came out this year, and though I haven't seen it (yet??) from what I've heard it assembles the elements together in a way that seems at first incongruous to Western eyes. Something about the way the third act is handled, or something?; like, man, not even Stephen Sondheim gets bolder than making all crazy act two. So, I don't know; it's definitely something we're going to have to keep an eye on, and learn from?
...You just, you just read this spoiler section without going to see Kubo first, didn't you. Typical, typical...
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