The source material is a Manga, one very episodic in nature, and the film keeps that up, making it a fairly hard to follow series of disjointed vignettes. Oh, and inner monologues work in print, but are clunky in film.
There was a chance for the magical realism to work; the characters seem to believe in the spirits, in dragons, etc but each of these sequences showing fantastical things is clearly a story or dream sequence, which leaves it narratively detached.
And I am professionally annoyed that everyone "paints" and is magically popular and well known and... gets money somehow? Oh, they do say "publisher" occasionally, but make not the slightest reference to printmaking. There is a lot of time spent looking at brushwork, and not one knife or gouge visible, not a plate, block, tub of ink, roller, or visit to a print studio.
If it was all background that would be one thing but their lives as artists are important, so missing or breaking that doesn't help me, someone who knows the art well.
There was a chance for the magical realism to work; the characters seem to believe in the spirits, in dragons, etc but each of these sequences showing fantastical things is clearly a story or dream sequence, which leaves it narratively detached.
And I am professionally annoyed that everyone "paints" and is magically popular and well known and... gets money somehow? Oh, they do say "publisher" occasionally, but make not the slightest reference to printmaking. There is a lot of time spent looking at brushwork, and not one knife or gouge visible, not a plate, block, tub of ink, roller, or visit to a print studio.
If it was all background that would be one thing but their lives as artists are important, so missing or breaking that doesn't help me, someone who knows the art well.