ChaO Review Studio 4 C s Wild Emotional Anime Romance

What's up everybody, Tarell here and I'm here to talk about a new movie getting released in the US on April the 10th called Chao from GKids, one of my favorite studios that are, you know, constantly releasing good content, you know, on doing the Lord's work for Blu-ray and DVD and making sure that we get these limited release that are usually exclusive to Japan. Other parts of the world in the US and thank you GKids once again for letting me watch this early before the release. This was such a fun ride, such a fun ride. Chao runs at about an hour and 30 minutes and is directed by Yasuhiro Aoki and it is in Japanese. So if you are looking for that, this is going to be a limited release is going to be in Japanese. Originally, this came out in August of 2025. And like I said, we're getting it now and for a limited release on April the 10th. So we had a couple of other countries that have gotten this film before we did, but hey, no complaints. It's pretty, pretty decent film here. Let me, let me break it down for you as I usually do in this review. Let me give you back the description of the movie. So basically this is in a world where humans and merpeople exist together. Princess Chao gets engaged to human engineer Stefan and this is what will become of their romance. I could honestly say, I wasn't sure what this movie was going to be. I was, I was thinking like Little Mermaid for the most part but not quite exactly. That's what it is. So I wasn't really sure exactly what we, what we're going to get until I watch the movie. The overall, I'll start off with the, the story. No spoilers, of course. So yeah, the story is, like I said, the story is of Stef, of Stefan and Chao getting married, you know, after, after he, you know, finds her, saves her life and they wind up getting engaged. And in this world, like there are just people that are, they're just merpeople, like just on the face, like, you know, people that have the appearance of fish that are in like normal society at this point. Stefan is trying to come up with a new type of engine that does not hurt merpeople in the, in the ocean based upon, you know, what happened, you know, with his personal story. And I'll let you, I'll let you watch that part, but he's motivated to do this based upon, you know, personal reasons for what's happened to him. And Chao comes along in his life and he's not worried about that at all. I will say like, as far as like how the chemistry is written between the characters, it takes a while to get there for sure. I felt like, I just, it took a little while. I feel like it took before, like, maybe like the last acting movie for me before I was like, okay, now I really start to see these two characters potentially being together. Because like I said before, it was just kind of like, the story was, felt like it was just kind of over the place, all over the place for a second at the beginning, at the movie. And then it really comes together at the end. I feel like in terms of the story, that'll probably be my only issue is I just wish there was a little bit more consistency and a little bit more time spent with the characters, especially the main two characters of Chao and Stefan. Like we, we, we get like a little bit of that backstory, but I feel like most of the time, the story is spent on the politics of, of their marriage and how Stefan feels about Chao. Like he clearly does not like her or love her at all. And it feels more of an obligation to do this than anything else. So it's a little bit more, it's a little bit more complicated with like this political marriage, because now he's pretty much marrying her to stop a whole thing against the, the people on the, on the land. But other than that, like I said, this was, this was fun. Like I said, once, once it kicks in the gear and gets to where it's going, I think it's definitely a more enjoyable story, but I can't say that the characters left, left a lasting impression on me. But with the main two characters, there are other characters that I feel like a little bit more quirky, a little bit more fun in the movie. Like I said, I don't want, I don't want to spoil that particularly the scientists that works with But I feel like there's more story there than there is with these two characters. But like I said, other than that, the story is what it is. Like it's, it's, it didn't, it didn't disappoint me yet. It didn't, it didn't wow me either. The animation, which I thought was very, you know, unique. We've seen it before, but like, I thought it was very unique to how they used it to this movie. Especially the transition scenes where like some of the, the Mer people have transformed from their like fish form to like their human form, especially child. And they say in the movie, you know, when, you know, child kind of progresses more into a human-like form to a certain extent, but only when she feels more comfortable. But I feel like, you know, as we go on, we don't necessarily get, we don't get that right away in the movie. So it kind of takes a while to, for her to get it because she has to feel more comfortable with Steven as he feels more comfortable with her. And then we, he started to kind of peel back the layers of that form a little piece by piece throughout the movie. But like I said, the animation was cool. I thought it was, it fit this movie very well. And it's weird kind of aesthetic of kind of future merman, you know you know, human co-existence and how, and what that looked like in some of the technology. But I thought, like I said, I thought they did a pretty good job of animating this movie, especially for a feature film of hour and 30 minutes. The music itself of the film, I feel like fits very, very well. It feels very whimsical, but like this kind of under the sea, no pun intended adventure. So we get a lot of that, a lot of like hijinks in the movie, but I also feel like the movie slows it down too with the music. And it's not always like octane like music, because there's a lot of like, you know, semi-romantic moments throughout the movie too, that, you know, we kind of hone in on. But I thought they did a really good job of like picking the music for this movie. I feel like it fits it very, very well with its animation style. And I guess that kept me engaged the entire time. But I said, in terms of the characters, like there's nobody here for me that's like totally memorable outside of like Chow herself, who's, you know, of course the title hero of the film, but the other characters just kind of like, all right, they were there. Nobody felt like they were there long enough, like I said before, to really establish anything. So it was kind of hard to remember who was who. But other than that, like I said, no complaints about the movie itself, other than, I mean, I felt like they were just supposed to did in the hour and a half. I'm glad we got this. I'm always down for more anime in the movies or we get it here in the US, you know, that anime is taking over pretty much everything. And I'm glad to see more theatrical release. I do think this is a good time. I do think like, you know, if you're going out and there's, you know, would I wait to watch this? It depends on what's out of the theater. Like I said, it's not, it's not a bad movie. It's just depending on when this, like I said, this comes out April 10th for a limited release in the US. So yeah, I mean, I would definitely check it out. I mean, like I said, as we, as we get limited amounts of anime in the movie theater, check it out. I mean, I do, I do think it's worth, worth your time, but like I said, I don't think you're going to, this is going to be a movie. You're going to come out of the theater and just continue to talk about it. Like I said, I just think that the characters are just forgettable for me for the most part. But don't, don't let me take my, you know, take my word for a hundred percent. You know, if you do decide to go see it and you look and you know, you want to go support the anime, which I do suggest I do say, you know, check it out. Let me know what you guys thought in the comments. I'm very curious if I feel the same way. Is this a movie where you're like, Hey, this was okay. You know, you keep it moving or, you know, I'm under selling it. You know what I mean? But I guess I did think it was cool. I did think it was a good time. Um, let me know what you guys thought in the comments below child. Like I said, come into there. It is April the 10th in the, in the U S um, but you know, G kids, thank you again. Um, like I said, fun movie. Um, and if you get, like I said, if you got a chance to support it, buy it, stream it, uh, go to the theater, uh, April 10th, we're getting child. So let me know. Like I said, again, let me know what you guys thought in the comments about the movie. Very curious to discuss this with you. And, uh, I will see you guys next time for another review. See it.