This anime film tries to portray the third book of the Earthsea trilogy. That's the hardest to do, in my opinion, as it involves more mature understanding and emotions. As such, it does a decent job, but not much more.
The animation is nice, although you would not expect this level of simplicity to a 2006 production, especially from Ghibli. The soundtrack is uninteresting and when Therru starts singing in the field it's just ridiculous. The characters all say the same things like it's some well known wisdom, while both Arch-characters (the good and the bad wizards) do not do almost nothing in the whole film. Yet, the film is sound, one can certainly be entertained by it.
But what I cannot forgive is that the story is almost unintelligible to someone that did not read the book. Even having seen the 2004 TV production Earthsea, which merges together the first two books, you are still left in the dark.
Bottom line: it would have been average to good, yet I have greater expectations from Ghibli's adaptation of a book trilogy such as Earthsea.
The animation is nice, although you would not expect this level of simplicity to a 2006 production, especially from Ghibli. The soundtrack is uninteresting and when Therru starts singing in the field it's just ridiculous. The characters all say the same things like it's some well known wisdom, while both Arch-characters (the good and the bad wizards) do not do almost nothing in the whole film. Yet, the film is sound, one can certainly be entertained by it.
But what I cannot forgive is that the story is almost unintelligible to someone that did not read the book. Even having seen the 2004 TV production Earthsea, which merges together the first two books, you are still left in the dark.
Bottom line: it would have been average to good, yet I have greater expectations from Ghibli's adaptation of a book trilogy such as Earthsea.