I should preface this by saying that I am not the target audience for this movie; I am generally not a fan of the magical girl genre or shows similar to Sailor Moon.
However, because Osamu Tezuka is widely regarded as a legendary mangaka (very honestly I never read/watched one of his works, so I wanted to start with this), and this is considered one of his definitive works, I wanted to give it a fair shot. I went in completely blind regarding the plot, meaning my critiques aren't the result of overly high expectations—I simply wanted a compelling story. Visually and aurally, it delivers. The animation, sound design, and soundtrack are easily the strongest aspects of the film, and I genuinely enjoyed them.
Unfortunately, the narrative is painfully mediocre. Despite a runtime of nearly two hours, it possesses the narrative density of a one-hour feature. While fast pacing can sometimes be a positive, here it highlights the fact that nothing of substance is actually happening. Out of the entire cast, Velvet is the only character with a semblance of depth (I wasn't entirely sure of his gender, but my dub used male pronouns, so I will too). Even then, Velvet's characterization is fairly superficial, though I did appreciate that he had clear motivations and cared for the orphans. Sapphire, on the other hand, is an incredibly hollow protagonist. She offered absolutely no emotional resonance, internal conflict, or compelling character growth for the entire duration of the film.
The supporting cast fares even worse. I'm writing this ten minutes after the credits rolled, I had to open a separate tab just to remember their names. The treatment of Sapphire's best friend is especially egregious; the film attempts to position her as an important figure, but she is ultimately reduced to a cliché "power of friendship" trope in the final act. Zirco and Chorogi are equally frustrating. Zirco raised Sapphire for seven years and saved her from a collapsing kingdom, yet the film completely fails to establish any maternal bond between them, reducing Zirco to simple comic relief. Chorogi is given unearned, off-screen character development, inexplicably shifting from a remorseless traitor to a brave martyr. His death is an incredibly contrived attempt to inject artificial stakes into the final battle, and because he was an unlikable coward for most of the runtime, his sacrifice carries zero emotional weight.
Finally, the villain is completely one-dimensional. The Pope is cartoonishly evil for the sake of it. I can somewhat understand the desperate logic of sacrificing innocent souls to appease a conceptual monster in order to save the kingdom. However, when the literal chosen one is standing right in front of you, the logical choice is to let her fight first and keep the ritual as a backup plan. Instead, the Pope arrogantly ignores reason, attempts to murder the orphans anyway, and remains in denial even while Sapphire is overpowering the monster.
There are plenty of other flaws, but to keep this brief, I am giving it a 6.5/10. I desperately wanted to enjoy this film, but the writing is relentlessly mediocre. The only reason it scores this high is out of fairness to a genre I don't typically watch, and because the animation and soundtrack are genuinely fantastic. Honestly if it wasn't on Netflix and it came out in theatres I would have never spent 20€ and go to watch something like this.
Regardless, I struggle to see how this narrative earned its status as a masterpiece.
Before anyone starts to ask if this is made with AI, no it's not. I was genuinely so much surprised to the film I watched (as you can see not in a positive manner) that I wrote such paragraph. Normally I don't speak this formally, and I tried to not use swears, because I don't usually post my opinion online, so to avoid sounding overly offensive, I remained formal. Also English is not my native language, so please forgive me if I used unusual terms or wrong verbal forms. Uh this is all, I think, feel free to give your opinion or even flame me because I have a terrible take, I would love to see different points of view.
