Nimona (2023)

Nimona (2023)

 

7/10

 

Starring the voices of

Chloe Grace Moretz

Riz Ahmed

 

Directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane

 

I must be honest, the first few minutes of this animation had me thinking how I have wasted my time putting this on. I later summon the courage to fulfil my belief, “if the first twenty minutes does not give me a reason to continue, I will shut it off.” I was waiting for things to go wrong as you will expect in things like this, they gave a little too much away in the opening sequence for me to be expecting something to go wrong. And it did, but then the introduction of the Nimona character was nothing like I had expected.

This is an animation, for children, so do not think too much of the fact that a group of people surround their entire town with a wall to keep the monsters out. They have an institute, grooming and training monster fighters for centuries, but known has seen a monster. Only the ones alive when their leader Gloreth (who lived like a thousand years ago) saw a monster. Everyone after that time has never seen or heard of any monster beyond their walls. Yet they keep training knights to be prepared for when the monsters come and the whole civilization (which lives in a fantasy futuristic sci-fi world) leaves behind a wall away from everything.

The animation is based on a graphic novel of the same name by ND Stevenson, and it starts by introducing us to Ballister a commoner who has risen in the ranks and will be the first commoner not from the bloodline of Gloreth to become a knight. The day for him to get his knighthood, the queen was murdered, and he is the prime and only suspect. He is being haunted and lost his arm in the flight. He now lives alone, trying to find out who framed him. While roaming the streets and hiding from everyone, Nimona spots him and follows him to his hideout. She asks to be his sidekick in his villainous rampage against everyone. Turns out, Nimona (a little girl of about ten years old) seems to hate everyone and wants to just punch their faces in. So, she wants to work with Ballister thinking he was a villain. They somehow formed a partnership, and he explains to her that he is not guilty and tries to get away from her. In his quest to clear his name and his naivety, he gets arrested, and it was then he learns that Nimona was a shapeshifter. As she breaks him out of jail using her ability and causing a lot of chaos.

Now they are being hunted, and Nimona seems to be happy to be known as a bad guy.

The antihero Nimona and the Ballister combination is fun to see and enjoyable for children, and adults alike. The animation is not so grand, I did not enjoy it much, but as the story develops you seem to just get used to it and watch on. You can catch this animation on Netflix.