Mantra Warrior: The Legend Of The Eight Moons

With its stories of battles against demons, scary sacrifices, kidnap, rescue, and endless cunning plans, the Ramayana is a good deal more exciting to the youthful imagination than the average religious text. Nevertheless, there are those who resist its lessons. but get this: what if, instead of Ancient India, you set it in space; and what if, instead of traditional armour, you had its legendary warrior wear giant battle mechs?

This is the premise of Veerapatra Jinanavin and Manassavin Malevong’s Mantra Warrior: The Legend Of The Eight Moons, which screened as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival. It throws in lasers, explosions and super cute little spirit creatures which bear a distinct resemblance to pokémon for good measure. Also, the female characters all have skimpy outfits and massively oversized breasts, but hey, they’re not afforded personalities, so they have to get your attention somehow. All of this is probably great if you’re a bored kid just hitting puberty – or at least, it would have been back when the filmmakers were kids themselves. The problem they face is that animation has experienced a boom in recent years, with the tools of its creation becoming more and more accessible, and kids’ tastes have accordingly grown more sophisticated. This isn’t really very well placed to compete.

At the core of its problems is a failure to develop its characters. Sure, many viewers will be familiar with the figures on whom some of them are based, but that’s not quite the same thing. We need to know and feel for them here, and be sufficiently gripped by the action that it still scares us even when we know what the outcome will be. Sensibly, the film focuses most of its attention on supporting characters rather than those at the centre of the traditional story, which gives it a little more artistic licence and enables it to develop narrative elements of its own, but the cutesy performances and shallow teenage rivalries leave it seriously lacking in anything that would allow even younger viewers to bond with them.

If you just want to see giant mechs fighting each other, the film delivers well enough. It’s not outstanding but it has a couple of strong set pieces early on. Later, a powergaming approach to keeping the good guys on top begins to get tedious. Although only a fraction of the overall story is told – assorted ‘extras’ during and after the credits assure us that further instalments will follow – the film feels overlong, weighed down by combat sequences that would have been more exciting if edited down. It’s passable entertainment, perhaps best watched in half hour slices in the comfort of your home, but it feels like a missed opportunity.