Movie Thoughts: Stormy Night (2005)

• Released: 18 September 2012
• Directed by: Gisaburô Sugii
• Running time: 1 h 50 min
• Rating 4.5/5

Synopsis

A friendly goat and a cowardly wolf end up accidentally becoming friends, much to the dismay of their respective clans. 

My Thoughts

I watched the 2008-2009 English dub of this movie.

I must confess that I haven't watched this movie as much as I'd like. I love this movie, so why is honestly beyond me. This marks my third time watching it. Ah well, like I said, I love it.

First of all, the movie is beautiful. It has wonderful stylized 2D-animation with a really soft look to it. The style is cute yet unique, and it has some really nice shading, airbrushing and details on the characters. The backgrounds are also beautiful paintings almost reminiscent of a storybook. It's legit beautiful. The only thing that hasn't aged as well visually is the occasional CGI incorporated into the 2D animation, mostly due to when this came out. It kind of just looks out of place, but with how well the rest looks, it's very forgivable.

The voice acting was great. I'm not usually one for dubs, but decided to watch the dub over the original this time because it was the first I came across. The English dub was honestly great. First thing that needs to be mentioned is that the vast majority of the cast is voiced by one person, Tustin Gilmer Macafee. He does a really good performance as all these characters and I really wouldn't be able to tell most of them were voiced by him if it weren't for his slight accent. The other voice actors do a great job, too, but Macafee deserves extra praise for how huge his vocal range is and voicing most major/main characters. 

The story is also just so heartfelt. These two unlikely accidental friends end up wanting to do anything to protect one another. Their friendship is full of hardships and understood by truly no one but themselves, yet they're willing to risk all of it for each other. Mei is even at one point willing to give up his life so Gabu can eat and survive the journey across the mountain, which leads to the absolutely heart-wrenching "Why did I have to be born a wolf" moment. Yeah, prepare to shed some tears during this. 

There's also the popular gay reading of this movie, and, yeah, I don't disagree. Mei and Gabu's bond is portrayed technically as close friends, but the dialogue and how they act could very well point at them being a couple by the end, which I obviously support. I can see either reading of the movie, but I particularly like the gay reading though I guess it's not totally canon. 

The characters are also great, at least the main ones. We have Mei, who is pretty standard and nice, yet also has this stubbornness when it comes to his bond with Gabu, and of course Gabu himself. He is pretty much considered a failure of a wolf by his pack, and I just rooted a lot for him. And Mei, of course. The other characters were mostly just archetypes because the real focus of the movie is where it should be: the relationship between Mei and Gabu. So I'm obviously not holding the lack of development for other characters against the movie. The wolf pack also made for good villains (again, pretty much if not all of them voiced by Macafee). 

This is just a really heartfelt movie that is absolutely beautiful. It has some minor blood in it (similar to Ringing Bell, though notably less violent), but if you can stomach that I'd definitely recommend you give this one a watch.