Review of Next Gen

Next Gen is about a girl Mai who is dealing with a lot of anger issues after her dad left (Which is hinted that he died at some point in the film). Her mother has a huge affinity for robots while Mai cannot stand them because of how they are used against her and taking away any human interaction that she craves. When Mai comes across Project 77 (no he does not get a name in the movie) she is just as unwilling to trust this robot like any other, but when he follows her home she realizes the unique aspect of his design when he blows a small robot up. They begin to create memories together but due to damage that 77 sustained earlier he can only keep so many memories and must choose which ones to delete so he will not end up going into a system reboot. Through out his time with Mai he learns mortality and the concepts of love and attachment and how much Mai really needs him and other people in her life. All of this comes crashing down when the Robots development CEO Pin comes looking for 77 and you find out that he intends to destroy all human life. A huge battle ensues and 77 must give up his memories for Mai to restore his weapons system to fight the massive robot Aries. This story is sad in so many ways. It shows Mai and her distraught emotions over her father leaving (and possibly dying) and her mom trying to cope through her love of robots and ignoring the problems with her daughter. It shows humanity is something you must chose and that our memories are priceless with the people we love. Everything about this movie was a win for me. The animation style was crisp and as strong as a Pixar or Disney movie I would even say that it exceeded DreamWorks animation in a lot of aspects. There is a vague similarity to big hero 6, but for me I feel this movie touched on a lot of better subjects and that the character depth was better on the main two characters than all the supporting ones. Where as Big Hero 6 felt like it had a forgivable villain this movie was facing it's own demons by creating a robot that thought everything should be perfect when humanity itself cannot obtain any level of perfection. I wish that they would have made more progress in the end with 77's memories being restored. I also would have liked to have a little more backstory on Mai's father and if he died or the funeral they went to was something else entirely? My complaints aren't very many, I'm excited to see what Animation Netflix comes out with next because this was an amazing start in my book.