Available to Stream on Amazon Prime, Google Play and Youtube and coming to Home Video on April 25th, 2023 courtesy of Shout! Factory.
It would be a shame if all the work put behind building the world presented in New Gods: Yang Jian gets limited to one movie. What’s presented as extras in the home video release gets into the finer points of why many realms exist. In the press interview with Ji Zhao, the director, he simplified the plot to be about this individual who can see the truth, but doesn’t fully understand what it all means.
The other details revealed help with how this works relates to New Gods: Nezha Reborn. Although he doesn’t say much about whether more films in this world will come, I hope it’ll one day happen.
With these featurettes, what we get to hear about is the thought process that went on during pre-production. From storyboards to pre-production to voice over, the gambit is well covered since the level of work is on par with how Pixar produces their work. There’s talk about why the Wei and Jin Chinese dynasties influenced this film’s artistic design, and also why the world is as it is.
Also included is a fairly good news segment that looks at what goes on at the offices of Light Chaser Animation Studios. What I found amazing is that they hired professional dancers rather than martial artists, so animators can study the recorded video. They’d translate the grace and find the ideal angles to bring that to CGI animated life.
Also, the reasons the Immortal Realm is so technologically advanced are explained. As a result, there’s plenty of discussion packaged into these extras. After viewing these, I viewed the film again and appreciated New Gods: Yang Jian even more. For a full movie review and thoughts on this film, please visit my post from a few months back. One difference I noticed between this home release and theatrical is that the teaser for 3000 Miles of Chang’an is not included.
Light Chaser Animation’s
Trailer of New Gods: Yang Jian
