Title: Kingdom III Unmei no honou / キングダム III 運命の炎
Rating: 7 / 10
Recommended for:
For those who have watched the first two movies and/or are fans of the cast especially Oosawa Takao, Yoshizawa Ryo and An
* Potential spoilers ahead!
* Disclaimer: I have not read the original manga.
* Currently available on Netflix (subject to geographical location)
Liked:
- Finally! For those who want to see more of Ouki / Oosawa Takao, it had been such a long wait because he finally appeared more and spoke a lot more in this movie. While he hasn't really shown his physical skills on the battlefield yet, the Ouki in Part 3 was portrayed as someone who is a shrewd strategist and good at deploying his men and leading them in the mental sense. In addition, he finally looked like a human with emotions brewing within despite his nonchalant calmness on the surface. As such, if you like Oosawa Takao, you will probably be pretty satisfied with this installment. From the size of his image on the poster, I think that was a telling sign of the significance of his role in this part as well.
- While Yoshizawa Ryo kind of faded into the background in Part 2, this installment finally explained the reason for his motivation to unify China and thrust him back into the limelight. From the pattern so far, it looks like there will be a central female character featured in each installment - Part 1: Nagasawa Masami's Youtanwa and Part 2: Seino Nana's Kyoukai. That was probably why in the first half of Part 3, An's role Shika and her influence on Eisei were featured very prominently, albeit short. I don't know the age setting of Shika and Eisei at this point in time but I thought Yoshizawa and An had very good chemistry in those few scenes and showed the strong bond between their characters with a tinge of romantic vibe (just my feeling though). Just too bad that it was a tragic ending for them.
- In the second half of Part 3, Seino Nana's return as Kyoukai and her strengthening relationship and comradeship with Shin (Yamazaki Kento) was definitely the highlight. Both of them also showed an improvement in their fighting skills and movements here.
Disliked:
- While I liked the portions of Part 3 which tried to fill in the blanks and develop the characters more by showing their background stories or their inner thoughts, the Bayo battle was kind of unbelievable and somewhat tiring to watch towards the end. This was because Shin's squad Hishintai was largely made up of peasants and for the small team of 100 to be able to take on a massive troop of supposedly trained soldiers, it felt really impossible. I get it that Shin definitely had to overcome this seemingly insurmountable barrier in order to head for greater achievements but still, the realist in me didn't quite like how the situation panned out.
- I wonder if at least half of the Japanese entertainment industry showed up for this movie but I'm truly amazed by the number of actors and lineup introduced so far. The problem is, with so many characters and just a 2hr+ movie to work with, it is inevitable that most of them hardly get a chance to shine or show what they are capable of. For example, Sato Koichi and Tamaki Hiroshi appeared since Part 2 but to be honest, they just looked like superficial villains at the moment since there was hardly any explanation and insight into their actions so far. Likewise, the fleeting shots of new characters played by Yamada Yuuki, Kikkawa Koji, Yamamoto Koji or Oguri Shun felt like a teaser which I'm not sure whether it may lead to anything significant in Part 4 and beyond.
- It annoys me to a certain extent to have to switch between the subtitle languages at times because the furigana is sometimes missing from the names in Kanji flashed on the screen and in the Japanese subtitles when a character appears for the first time. If I want to know how that name is pronounced, I have to return to the English version so it causes a bit of time loss for me and impedes my momentum in watching the film. Given the number of characters in this series and their mind-boggling positions/titles, knowing how their names are pronounced at least helps me distinguish between them. I could have stuck to the English subs throughout but I was also bothered by some translation issues here and there so I would have rather watched the movie with the Japanese subs.
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