I can’t, with reasonable sincerity, claim I understood 100% of this movie. That’s partly due to my ignorance of Chinese folklore and legends but also because the subtitles on the US release were kinda bad. But I got enough to follow along, even if why a certain journey had to be made or who backstabs who and why were a little murky.

So Ne Zha 2 picks up from part 1 with its two leads kinda dead… or at least in in spirit form. They are quickly – if messily – reconstituted and then <waves hands wildly> they wind up in one body. While the town is now on the edge of war, Ne Zha and his spirit buddy must make a pilgrimage… somewhere… to do something that will ultimately help.

I’ll be upfront about it… similar to The Wandering Earth 2, the English subtitles were pretty poor. They faded WAY too quickly so that I would miss critical plot points. I could ultimately piece things together and enjoy the movie, but it was still frustrating. Also, the subtitles were not so grammatically correct which is only a problem in that I watched the first film dubbed and it was fine. The dub was better than the sub. I know… that’s heresy! But true.

Regardless, I really enjoyed most of this film. It has some plot points that felt like time wasters… like three challenges Ne Zha must face… that didn’t really feed the plot. Plus some of that dumb-ass humor I grumbled about in the first film (thankfully, much less of it).

Most everything else I liked. The plot – the many plots – are actually quite good. The twists and turns in the story are engaging and even surprising. The film has an EPIC scope to some of the sequences plus it’s often as badass as it thinks it is. Some of those hero shots, yo. Epic.

Above all, it has a humanity to it that the comparably smaller in scale first film had as well. Among all the chaos and maneuvering of armies and dragons, it pauses to remind us that this is a story about a little boy who didn’t sign up to be evil. And it’s about his mom and dad and best pal. The emotional tug is there even during the more bombastic sequences.

Plus, hey, the character models and art style aren’t my favorite but they clearly had a bigger budget. The art and animation is, technically, a whole lot better than the first flick. At least it looked so to me but that COULD be the difference between small and big screen.

Ne Zha 2 is really good, bordering on great. I haven’t said that about many of the recent Chinese animated imports recently. Both part 1 and 2 are worth watching, and you should see both to make heads or tails out of what’s going on in this one.

Score: 88