There are three mitigating factors to my reaction to this film, and I want them on the table. The first is that I did not know it was a sequel going in, and it barely explains anything about the first film so I'm just going to look at it as a stand-alone. The second is that I'm not familiar with the source material, aside from being vaguely aware that there's a famous east Asian fairy tale about the White Snake in which Green Snake is an oft-forgotten minor character, the same way that's about the score of what I know about Rose Red from the original Snow White. And the third is that I'm not Chinese. I know a bit about Chinese stuff, I've read a translation of the Journey to the West in its unabridged entirety, but just as I often complain Japan just doesn't "get" Christianity a lot of the time, I found the Buddhism vs. Taoism stuff there interesting in a purely intellectual way, so a lot of the same themes going in the other direction here were things I picked up on but don't feel competent to comment on.
With that out of the way... it's alright. I guess.
Green Snake is a movie with an identity crisis. It almost feels like they wanted to do a sequel to their original, fairy-tale-esque movie, but they also wanted to play around more with an cyber-punk-y urban fantasy fantasy setting from their previous film Nezha (far superior, by the way), so they decided to do it come hell or high water, and the result is nonsensical. The Green Snake is thrown into "Asuraville" (don't worry, we'll get to the localization later), where she meets a broad array of colorful and interesting characters, almost all of whom the film inevitably discards before they get to their full potential. She has to interact with politics between bickering gangs of other dimensional refugees and native (?) demons, all of whom get just enough development that you resent their being abruptly killed off so they can't get more. She loses her magical powers for no good reason beyond the creators really liking Mad Max car battles. And she spends a decent chunk of the film just pinballing around relying on the charity of strangers.
It's not all bad. Most of the characters have great designs and are at least a little deeper than their initial impressions suggest, although the main villains are both disappointing exceptions on the latter front. The premise that Asuraville is a Self-Inflicted Hell for those unable to give up on their obsessions is a neat idea, especially given how it plays into why the inhabitants refuse to put aside their differences and work together against the harsh environment and frequent natural disasters, but it's never used to its full potential because every member of the main cast either never reveals their obsessions or chooses to double-down on them instead, a choice the film treats as heroic rather than negative. And the action scenes are pretty creative and fun, although they all either run too long or employ a high-speed, near-frame-dropping style I'm not a fan of. And while the voice actors are acting their hearts out trying to imbue emotion and character into the script, it's a disappointingly amateur localization, with frequent grammar issues, weird line reads, and technically legitimate but downright bizarre choices ("Asuraville" instead of the "Shura City" the main article on this site uses being the obvious example), the last of which at least suggests tampering to me, although I can't prove anything.
Finally, the ending involves a disappointing double-subversion twist that puts earlier stuff in a much creepier light, and as a result ends on a deeply-disappointing series of What Happened to the Mouse? questions.
I guess if you like fantasy action, it's not a complete waste of time, but everything good about it is mixed, and it feels like trying to cram multiple separate movies together, regardless of the consequences.
Animation With a number of important caveats in mind ... Eh.
There are three mitigating factors to my reaction to this film, and I want them on the table. The first is that I did not know it was a sequel going in, and it barely explains anything about the first film so I'm just going to look at it as a stand-alone. The second is that I'm not familiar with the source material, aside from being vaguely aware that there's a famous east Asian fairy tale about the White Snake in which Green Snake is an oft-forgotten minor character, the same way that's about the score of what I know about Rose Red from the original Snow White. And the third is that I'm not Chinese. I know a bit about Chinese stuff, I've read a translation of the Journey to the West in its unabridged entirety, but just as I often complain Japan just doesn't "get" Christianity a lot of the time, I found the Buddhism vs. Taoism stuff there interesting in a purely intellectual way, so a lot of the same themes going in the other direction here were things I picked up on but don't feel competent to comment on.
With that out of the way... it's alright. I guess.
Green Snake is a movie with an identity crisis. It almost feels like they wanted to do a sequel to their original, fairy-tale-esque movie, but they also wanted to play around more with an cyber-punk-y urban fantasy fantasy setting from their previous film Nezha (far superior, by the way), so they decided to do it come hell or high water, and the result is nonsensical. The Green Snake is thrown into "Asuraville" (don't worry, we'll get to the localization later), where she meets a broad array of colorful and interesting characters, almost all of whom the film inevitably discards before they get to their full potential. She has to interact with politics between bickering gangs of other dimensional refugees and native (?) demons, all of whom get just enough development that you resent their being abruptly killed off so they can't get more. She loses her magical powers for no good reason beyond the creators really liking Mad Max car battles. And she spends a decent chunk of the film just pinballing around relying on the charity of strangers.
It's not all bad. Most of the characters have great designs and are at least a little deeper than their initial impressions suggest, although the main villains are both disappointing exceptions on the latter front. The premise that Asuraville is a Self-Inflicted Hell for those unable to give up on their obsessions is a neat idea, especially given how it plays into why the inhabitants refuse to put aside their differences and work together against the harsh environment and frequent natural disasters, but it's never used to its full potential because every member of the main cast either never reveals their obsessions or chooses to double-down on them instead, a choice the film treats as heroic rather than negative. And the action scenes are pretty creative and fun, although they all either run too long or employ a high-speed, near-frame-dropping style I'm not a fan of. And while the voice actors are acting their hearts out trying to imbue emotion and character into the script, it's a disappointingly amateur localization, with frequent grammar issues, weird line reads, and technically legitimate but downright bizarre choices ("Asuraville" instead of the "Shura City" the main article on this site uses being the obvious example), the last of which at least suggests tampering to me, although I can't prove anything.
Finally, the ending involves a disappointing double-subversion twist that puts earlier stuff in a much creepier light, and as a result ends on a deeply-disappointing series of What Happened to the Mouse? questions.
I guess if you like fantasy action, it's not a complete waste of time, but everything good about it is mixed, and it feels like trying to cram multiple separate movies together, regardless of the consequences.