Fire Ball a 2005 Best Taiwanese Family Movies

Fire Ball is a 2005 movie. Good quality animation, some average CGI effects. We will follow the interest of two clans, following the intrigues in parallel. Lots of transformation effect.

MESSAGES

world of buddhist religion

We are shown a Buddha who is good and present in people’s lives, he sanctions bad deeds, repairs errors Importance of the bond with the mother. Wanting to save his mother.

Protection

When one has abilities, it is good to put them at the service of a pious man. We see the power of Buddha which is apparent. Importance of meditation, mastering your body. Importance of living. Do not kill living creatures, even for self-defense. Save a small caterpillar from a spider’s web.

Redemption

The monkey will have to work on himself and make people forgive his bad actions. The monk’s accomplices must redeem their past faults by serving a monk, but this is not really well explained in the anime.

Importance of family

We see Rouge, a child very devoted to his mother, who tries to help him. We are shown the regrets of a father who did not pay enough attention to his family.

Criticism of violence

Buddha punishes those who attack. Importance of promises. Monkey gets punished when he is not good enough (the monk sends him suffering in his mind so that he learns to be better). If you have a bad temper and are a fighter, you have to work on yourself.

Criticism of cowardice

We are shown a brave (but sometimes a little too reckless or overconfident) monkey hero. Pig, pig man is often afraid of things. And above all a frog in the pay of the spider, cowardly and twisted, ready to turn around to get out of it.

Give a chance of salvation

You shouldn’t condemn the other because he’s used to doing stupid things, he can also do good deeds, you have to believe in him.

Be wary of others

You can see injustice, a person who pretends to be sympathetic when he is in fact a traitor.

Gambling

With plans that allow you to win for sure and that backfires on the player, who can lose everything. We can also see that there is cheating. A husband is selfish when he spends household money on gambling. Greed.

Negative female image

They are barmaid spiders. It may be a sick mother, neglected by her husband and unable to protect precious things.

Racial profiling

Here all the characters have the appearance of their interior, the spider is mean, the cowardly pig, the treacherous frog.

Totalitarianism

Criticism of an armed totalitarian regime that wants to dominate the world by force.

DIFFICULT SCENES

Hazards

Bridge collapsing taking everyone with it. Dark forest, different noises that create tension. To be sent through the air by a magic fan, to be struck by lightning, to be attacked by a dragon. Risk getting fireballs. Death threat, with the mother who drank a poison. Risk being hit by burning pots. Dead. Disappearance of the speaking cloud, pierced by a dragon’s fire (we can believe it dead). The villain ends up crushed and sent to the bottom of a precipice filled with lava. Different death threats (we want to kill the monk to have eternal life, the hostage mother risks dying poisoned). many fights. Different fights, typed martial art, with spear or other sharp objects. Use a dragon that breathes fire. Pursuit. Fight against hordes of humanized spiders.

Bad guys

Aggressiveness of a father, shown to be dominant, having nothing to do with his family, caught up in the need to satisfy his cravings for games. A devious character works by not being detected by the others, a kind of vile doctor, who does not heal, but in fact makes people sick.

Faintness

The mother asks her son to keep the family tensions a secret, otherwise they risk being laughed at. Sick mom in a wheelchair. The child wants to attack the monk, kill him to take his bones, he believes they can save his mother. Dragon operated by a spider woman, who has become dependent on a potion she gives him. The monkey is banished by the monk who wrongly accuses him of having been aggressive.

Abuse

The monkey goes inside the sick mother and kicks her body so that she gives up her magic fan. The nice husband is actually a monkey in disguise, usually this husband is not interested in the family. The monkey easily mistreats the pig.

Vague

It is difficult to grasp who are the good guys and the bad guys at the start of the film, because everyone is confronting each other.

VOCABULARY

Risk of finding only a Chinese version with subtitles.