I struggled to understand the need for this anime Lord of the Rings film that’s clearly and visually associated with the Peter Jackson films. I mean, it seems to exist to only tell us why a certain thing in The Two Towers was given that name… without spoilers ,I wasn’t wondering myself… but… cool?

The flick tells a story two hundred years before Bilbo Baggins went on an adventure. It’s about the squabble over the throne of Rohan… a king sits on the throne of Edoras and local rulers think he’s too in bed with those rascals in Gondor. So there’s a power struggle, backstabbing, and a red-haired warrior princess in the thick of it.

I struggled deeply to care at all about this story. The Riders of Rohan were pretty cool in The Lord of the Rings books and films… but I wasn’t sitting around wondering their backstory. I mean, any story can be a good story, but there’s probably more interesting stories to tell in Middle Earth, right? Though given they plan on making a Gollum movie that nobody seems curious about and with the Amazon show even I couldn’t get past the middle of the first season, they aren’t doing so hot.

So I was very much on the fence through half of this two+ hour film. I was heading pretty low on the review scale for awhile, but eventually – eventually – I started to give a damn about anything. And then I started to care a little bit. And there was a pretty cool fight involving a wedding dress that scratched my inner badass warrior woman itch.

The art and animation is clearly anime-inspired but without the usual set of kind of generic faces so that’s a plus. There’s CGI assistance with the vistas and maybe some rotoscoping with some group shots (it kind of reminded me in an uncomfortable way of the end battle in Bakshi’s Lord of the RIngs from the 70s). Overall, it’s a good enough looking film and I respect the choice to go cel-shaded anime instead of CGI. Though it makes me wonder why the whole thing didn’t just go to Netflix like a bunch of properties gone animated have.

I’m sliding it a pretty low “good” rating. Just good enough to not slip it into the bad column. It’s good enough to watch but I think it still struggles to justify this particular story.

Score: 76