Nobody (2025)

[浪浪山小妖怪]

Synopsis:
A yaoguai seeking his fortune decides to assemble companions to impersonate Sun Wukong's party and beat them in their journey to the West to attain Buddhahood before them.

Impressions:
I'm grateful to the reviewer who brought this film to my attention. The basic premise is simple: a parallel story to Journey to the West, where low-level monsters clumsily impersonate the heroes of the main story. If you're more familiar with Japanese folklore, yaoguai and youkai are basically the same thing. I don't know if the clan system is part of the folklore or the author's invention, but there's some fun to be had with cronyism in the yaoguai world. My Chinese is terribly limited, but a lot of the verbal humor comes across well by the performances alone and there is a lot of character to the animation to provide visual humor as well. It's a nice story of petty villains unintentionally becoming heroes. I haven't seen anything else by Shanghai Animation Film Studio, but they avail themselves well here and I'd be willing to check out other works of theirs in the future. If you're in the mood for a recent animated film with a little more substance than a lot of other offerings out there, this is well worth a watch if not a place in your collection.