It's actually about a child's psyche and trauma caused by a broken family. The main protagonist is also fed up with everyone being obsessed with robotic gadgets. The psychological sie of the movie was more akin to Inside Out rather than to Big 6.
With this out of the way...
Visuals: The animation and visuals are stellar, with a mix of Wall-E like plastiky feel with far more photorealistic shots. The most interesting bit to me was the use of combinations of 2D and 3D effects, in case of beam weapon effects for example. But it's only one example of an effect I saw in Next Gen for the first time. There are much more original implementation unique to this movie, which is surprising considering how many 3D animations has been produced so far. And by the way, this is not a Pixar movie! In fact, it's a movie by Tangent Animation. You can watch a lecture by their co-funder on the entire process of creating the movie in Blender 3D by looking up "Blender and Next Gen: a Netflix Original" or #bcon18
Audio: Most notable: 1. The lead protagonist voice acting (Charlyne Yi) 2. The soundtrack containing lots of punk-ish tracks with some hit ballads by the shooting star Grace VanderWaal
Story: I admit the robot friend is a weak link in all this. It's pretty generic and lacks any background story. It's just there wanting to make friends. But the rest is solid. The most satisfying part of the story to me was how dark the writers went with some parts of the movie. And the humor! Oh man, if you haven't seen the tooth brush scene, you've seen nothing! :)
With this out of the way...
Visuals: The animation and visuals are stellar, with a mix of Wall-E like plastiky feel with far more photorealistic shots. The most interesting bit to me was the use of combinations of 2D and 3D effects, in case of beam weapon effects for example. But it's only one example of an effect I saw in Next Gen for the first time. There are much more original implementation unique to this movie, which is surprising considering how many 3D animations has been produced so far. And by the way, this is not a Pixar movie! In fact, it's a movie by Tangent Animation. You can watch a lecture by their co-funder on the entire process of creating the movie in Blender 3D by looking up "Blender and Next Gen: a Netflix Original" or #bcon18
Audio: Most notable: 1. The lead protagonist voice acting (Charlyne Yi) 2. The soundtrack containing lots of punk-ish tracks with some hit ballads by the shooting star Grace VanderWaal
Story: I admit the robot friend is a weak link in all this. It's pretty generic and lacks any background story. It's just there wanting to make friends. But the rest is solid. The most satisfying part of the story to me was how dark the writers went with some parts of the movie. And the humor! Oh man, if you haven't seen the tooth brush scene, you've seen nothing! :)