Drifting Home

First of all a little comment regarding the recommendations for this movie

Ok back to my 2 cents about this movie. It is pretty good. I don't think it has any major flaws and it handle its animation and writing pretty well.

Drifting home follows the adventures of a bunch of kids finding themselves stranded in an alternate world through mysterious circumstances. In order to return back to their original world they have to work together to survive and find a way to escape.

I watched this in the mandarin dub on Netflix and find the quality of the voice acting pretty good. Comparing with the English and Japanese voices in the movie, I think the Japanese dub is superb as expected but the English voice actors sound like damn adults and not kids as depicted which really took me out of it. The mandarin voice actors definitely sounded like their age which is a huge plus despite not on the quality of the Japanese.

Studio Colorido's animation is a visual treat to behold as usual. Their art style is distinctly cute, clean and full of aesthetically perfect colors. I like their character design a lot, each of them are really easily recognizable. The dynamic feeling of the animation is really consistent and it really feels like I am watching an animation. This is something that I feel Studio Coloridio really stands out from other studios. Just like the previous work that I watched from them: A whisker away, scenes always feel dynamic even on mundane scenes such as having simple conversations, sitting around or walking. This is something that I really appreciate as it really keeps my focus because things are actually moving instead of the usual single image pan or cropping the legs so they don't need to animate the walking. Studio Colorido is a really hardworking studio that does not cut corners in depicting movement on screen!

In terms of the writing it does suffer slightly on the pacing. I don't think it needed to be almost 2 hours long. There are some unnecessarily dragged out events in the earlier part of the film that felt repetitive and long. This is a minor issue tho because the other half of the movie is well paced in my opinion. The way they handle tense moments in the rising action is done really well, I am actually worried about what is going to happen to these poor kids when I was watching.

The story is nothing too complex and I believe it is in the design to be that way. It is easy to follow and they really develop the 2 main characters really well. The side characters did not feel unnecessary as they do a good job as supporting characters in the story. A really simple and straightforward message and narrative about what family means and the sentimental attachment one can get from a loving home.

Overall a really cute and heartwarming experience. I love the warm fuzzy feelings it left me.