A Spirited Movie of Spirits

Review: The Legend of Hei (2019)

By Kelsey Cox

The Legend of Hei is a fantastic prequel to the series The Legend of Luo Xiaohei. The movie falls into a diverse world full of humans and spirits, who are on the path to finding a way to co-exist with humans. The film follows a young cat spirit, Hei, who wants to find a home after losing his to deforestation. Along the way, Hei meets other spirits and other humans along his journey. The Legend of Hei is a wholesome story of this young spirit trying to find a home while asking an important question, "What makes someone good or evil?" Our group saw this film this week, and many of us agreed on how adorable the animation is. The animation of this film is very simplistic while still holding enough detail to let a lot of the character's personality and movement shine through. The animation reminds me of Studio Ghibli films and another web series called All Saints Street, which has an adorable animation style. Speaking of Studio Ghibli, a few of our members noted the music in the film reminded them of the music from these classic films. The music was chosen well for this film as it added to the more enchanting and action-packed scenes, allowing the world's beauty to show through the screen. One of the things our group mentioned in our discussion was the bonds between some of the characters. For example, we noted how admirable Bamboo/Luozhu was for his desperation to help Hei in the movie. Many of the characters were enjoyable to watch and gave us quite a few laughs. Overall, this film was a wholesome story that piqued our interest

in understanding Hei's and the other lovable characters' worlds and stories.