Big Fish & Begonia

Compared with Japanese animation, Chinese animation slways stay in an embarrassed period. Though it never lacks of creative artists and materials of stories in China, it's too difficult for Chinese animazion works meet the standard of Chinese audiences. Plagiarism also exists widely.

It attracted the attention of us when it was reported that a Chinese animation called Big Fish & Begonia concerning the Chinese legend will be on in July. According to the introduction, two young directors came up with their ideas about a movie demonstrating Chinese traditional culture 12 years ago and the short film made in 2004 showed their full preparation for this movie. There is no doubt that all factors above ignited Chinese audiences' desire to watch this movie as soon as it appears.

(http://www.bz55.com/yingshibizhi/33367.html)

Though honestly, I am not a crazy fan of animation before, I look forward to some Chinese elements such as traditional legend and architecture in this movie. As a result, when the day comes, I went to the cinema but unfortunately... I can't give a full score for it concerning all aspects including the scenario, the aesthetics and the charaters.

1. The aesthetics

    Nobody can deny the artists' endeavour in depicting an ancient and mysterious  Chinese world. The traditional Chinese habitable space，the starry night above the sea and many other symmetrical sceneries made me feel comfortable. Mixed with Chinese ancient element, such as mahjong，Chinese flowering crabapple， Phoenix，paper umbrellas, cranes, stone lions, the movie do have a Chinese style.

2. The charaters

    The names of the charaters all represent the jobs they have in the heaven or their values. For example, Chun means the girl who masters the growth and death of Chinese flowering crabapple, in addition to Qiu means the boy who masters the wind in human's world. However, only the name reflects their value in the movie. The artists don't shape their characters vividly but only leave us audiences an impression that the heroine is capricious and irresponsible. As a god, her pure but unnecessary love for a human boy almost destoried all her family and the place she lived. And the supporting actor lost his mind to the heroine crazily and even broke with his family. That's unrealistic and immoral, just as a kind of love between kids.

3. The scenario

    This movie can't express a clear clue for audiences and makes us confused.

4. The music

    The lyric is moving.

In conclusion, I think it's the introductions and the recommendations for this movie before this movie was on that provided the audiences with too much expectation so when the movie can't meet the standard of the audiences they felt disspointed.

But I still hope there will be more excellent Chinese animation movies in the future.