Introduction
Hey, hey, fellow adventurers! Blaziker is back for the next animation adventure of the year, and today, we got a massive ride as we have five very interesting animated movies to cover, so let’s get to it!
The first movie, Your Letter, saw a Korean schoolgirl finding a letter from an unknown schoolmate in her desk, leading to a discovery of a lifetime as she discovered more letters from the same unknown person. South Korea is emerging as a country that, like China, shed its outsourcing past and are continuously producing amazing animated movies that show that they are not just the outsourcing kings of animation, especially with Lost in Starlight earlier on this year. Will Your Letter be yet another fantastic animated movie from them?
The second movie, Boys Go to Jupiter, is a coming-of-age story about a teenager trying to hustle his way in suburban Florida, as he comes to terms to what he wants to do. Boys Go to Jupiter is a one-of-a-kind type of animated movie that is never heard of in America: a pure indie animated movie that is mostly crowdfunded and was clearly made out of a true indie cast. How would this pellicular movie fare?
The third movie, Nobody, is a Journey to the West parody about four animals on a pilgrimage towards enlightenment. Based on a short from the Chinese animated series Yao-Chinese Tales, Nobody garnered attention and praise from the Chinese animation community, so much so that it is now the highest grossing 2D-animated movie of all time, which is already record-breaking on top of shocking. Is Nobody truly not just a “nobody”?
The fourth movie, In Your Dreams, is the latest Netflix animated movie about two siblings journeying to their own world of dreams to meet the Sandman who might have the power to grant them the wish for a perfect family for them. So far, Netflix has been hit and miss in terms of their animated movies for this year, and while they had their highs with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance’s Most Fowl, Mononoke the Movie: The Ashes of Rage and Lost in Starlight, they also have a good number of lows for this year. How will this movie fare?
The fifth and final movie, Falcon Express (aka Pets on a Train), is the newest animated movie from TAT Productions as its 25th anniversary movie about a group of animals trapped on a runaway train with it taken control by an evil badger. I had talked about TAT Productions a few times with me covering some of its movies and from its reception at the Annecy International Film Festival, it seems to be an absolute crowd favourite. Will this topple Terra Willy as my most favourite TAT Productions animated movie?
Are you ready, because we are about to begin our last animation adventure of 2025, so here we go!
Your Letter
Key Information
- Director: Kim Yong-Hwan
- Animation Studio: Studio Lico, Studio N
- Country of Origin: South Korea
- Rating: PG
- Release date: 30 October 2025 (in Singapore)
Trailer
The Review
Considering Your Letter has a presence at the Bucheon International Animation Festival, another prestigious animation festival that showcases a lot of the top-tier animated movies, especially those from the Annecy International Film Festival, I was quite excited to see how Your Letter pans out, especially since I already covered one fantastic South Korean animated movie from this year with Lost in Starlight. Well, I have some good news: it did not disappoint.
In a similar vein to Lost in Starlight, Your Letter is an emotional rollercoaster that has a simple premise at first, only for the story to develop into a multi-layered story that is filled with so much development and care, and it pays off during the second half when every plot line in this movie revels together for a very strong ending. In fact, despite its 100-minute plus runtime, Your Letter was so engaging with a well-written and well-paced story, it did not felt too long for me. I also love the characters and how each of the main characters connect to the story. The budding relationship between Lee So-Ri (Lee Soo-Hyun) and Park Dong-Soon (Kim Min-Ju) just felt very genuine and their connection with the creator of those letters, Jung Ho-Yeon (Min Seung-Woo) blossomed throughout the whole movie.
I also really like how simple but beautiful the animation style is. Your Letter is mostly a 2D hand-drawn animated movie with some 3D CG elements incorporated inside, and with how simple the animation is, the quality is just as exquisite. The background and character designs, while simple, are well-produced and have great rendering and texturing, showing that the animators took their time and dedication to produce such fine animation. Even if this is a style that is already perfected in Lost in Starlight, the animation in Your Letter is just as great and shows how much South Korean animation has improved from a long time ago.
The soundtrack and the minor elements are simple but well done too. As for my level of enjoyment, I was honestly having a lot of fun with this chill experience of a movie. It is nice to cover something so simple, yet so well-executed, and it goes to show that sometimes, simple but effective stories and animation go a very long way.
Overall, I am happy with what I saw in Your Letter. It is not the most flashy animated movie I have seen this year, but for such a simple animated movie, it is the overall execution that blew me away. I wanted to get away from the same old tired family-friendly foreign CG animated movies that felt endlessly manufactured, and thankfully, Your Letter is crafted with such care and attention to detail. Seriously, South Korea, when you move on from manufacturing poor quality outsourced animation stuff, and focus on doing more of these, the result is obvious: stick to more high-quality stuff, and you will have an animation industry that can compete with the global animation giants. More of this, please!
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
Boys Go to Jupiter
Key Information
- Director: Julian Glander
- Animation Studio: Glanderco
- Country of Origin: United States
- Release Date: 8 August 2025 (in the United States)
Trailer
The Review
Boys Go to Jupiter is another relatively hard movie to find given its limited VOD release, but I was fortunate to find a copy of this experimental piece, mostly self-produced and self-funded by passionate animators who care about producing their own animated movie their own way. After seeing this movie, while some elements need work, I appreciate how unique this felt for me.
In terms of the main issues I have with this movie, I personally feel the writing is quite overwhelming and pretentious. This is a movie that has an “anything goes” ethos, which equate to a quirky and trippy animated movie that is full of unique characters and plot lines, but unfortunately, I just felt the writing is not well-developed enough to make me engaged fully in it. It also did not help that the pacing just felt too slow, making certain moments not interesting enough for me to care. While I appreciate its experimental approach in telling such a unique story, not everything lands for me.
However, everything else about Boys Go to Jupiter were spot on. Because of its experimental vibes, the unique and fun animation style sold me, especially given this is mostly computer-generated. We had been flooded with too many CG animated movies that felt too similar and poorly animated, so it is great to see a CG animation style that is anything but. The trippy colouring and elements sell the movie’s uniqueness very well, some of the characters have unique designs that sells its vision, and most of the animation is of great quality despite a few animation errors. For a mostly self-produced and self-funded animated movie, it is impressive that such a very indie animated movie has better animation than those from some of the “bigger” animation studios around the world.
The soundtrack is very trippy and its unexpected musical numbers, while not as memorable as those from other better animated movies from this year, are still well-produced and complements its unique vibes. As for my level of enjoyment, even though I was not fully on board with Boys Go to Jupiter, I appreciate what it was trying to do. It is ironic this was produced in the United States, because Boys Go to Jupiter is the least Americanised American CG animated movie I came across, which is fantastic considering I had complained about the Americanisation of non-mainstream animated movies in the past.
Overall, while not elements land, Boys Go to Jupiter is nevertheless a unique and experimental animated movie that I feel you would appreciate for its bold and fun vision. This is an animated movie that makes you feel something different, which unfortunately cannot be said for certain animated movies from this year.
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
Nobody
Key Information
- Director: Yu Shui
- Animation Studio: Shanghai Animation Film Studio
- Country of Origin: China
- Release Date: 27 November 2025 (in Singapore)
Trailer
The Review
It has often been said that while Chinese animation dominates the computer-generated animated movie scene for some time, especially with the box office success of Ne Zha 2 just this year, it can also be said that they are also not heavily reliant on CG animation, as they can also do other animation techniques as well. We saw them in hand-drawn animation with The Legend of Hei 2 earlier this year, and given this was a movie adaptation of an episode in a popular Chinese animated series, I was curious to see how it plays out.
Holy. Crap. Nobody floored me, in the best way possible.
Let’s begin with the story. It’s rare for a Chinese animated movie to lean into the satire route, but that was exactly what happened with Nobody. Nobody is a fun satire about the popular Journey to the West, but it is more than a satire. No, Nobody is an odyssey about four low-level monsters faking till they made it to enlightenment, but it is also a story that has different meanings and interpretations that many moviegoers can resonate with.
As you join them on this hilarious, entertaining and also deeply emotional journey, you will realise that this journey is full of hilarious jokes and gags that play a huge part in the movie (in fact, this is the funniest animated movie of the year so far), but beneath the fun is a deeply emotional journey between four monsters who have never known each other, from the prideful and arrogant Pig Yao (Chen Ziping), to the moral compass Toad Yao (Lu Yang), the talkative Weasel Yao (Dong Wenliang), and the wimp Ape Yao (Liu Cong). You learn a damn lot from these four “friends” as they pretend to be Sun Wukong and his team on their hilarious journey pretending to be something they are not, resulting in such a fulfilling and impactful final act that is just the perfect way to end this movie.
The animation is just as fun and vibrant as the writing itself. Despite covering CG animated movies most of the time, I actually prefer non-CG animated works more than CG, simply because not only are they more fun to look at, but there are many ways to produce a different feeling animation style that is better than CG, even if non-CG styles, especially hand-drawn animation, takes longer to get it done. In the case of Nobody, I had no complaints about the animation whatsoever, because everything in the animation is perfectly executed. The character and background designs are distinct, fun and have this distinct traditional hand-drawn style that you can only find in most hand-drawn Chinese animated movies such as The Legend of Hei 2. Speaking of, it is easy to produce different animation styles in hand-drawn animation compared to CG animation and here, you can tell they are different looking, but are still of top quality. Personally, the styling in Nobody is more unique and has a lot of fun animation sequences, particularly the battle with a Rat Yao (Wang Shangbin) that might be one of the funniest animation sequences of any animated movie this year.
The soundtrack also slaps hard and has some of my favourite music tracks of any animated movie this year, which is quite a feat given the soundtracks for Ne Zha 2 and K Pop Demon Hunters exist. In particular, the theme song, “Heavy as Dust” by Lars Huang, did not need to go that hard, but I am so happy it did, because I love that song so much! The sound editing is just as fun and accentuates the sound effects at the right moments, and the marketing (from the Chinese side) has been nothing but solid. As for my level of enjoyment, I was having a complete blast with everything in this movie. I laughed, I cried, I hollered at the fight sequence with the Rat Yao, and I was crying even more towards the end. It is not every day that a theatre that is half-full is having a lot of fun at the same time, but that is exactly what I got with Nobody. It is also a great sign when I would say I would not change a single thing about Nobody; it is as perfect as it was.
I don’t know what else to say about this fun adventure, except… Wow. Nobody is really a special type of animated movie, and one that further solidifies China as the new powerhouse of animation. Remember, China used to suck a lot at animated movies, but when they started producing animated movies that stayed true to themselves instead of surrendering further to the Americanisation of the global animation scene, you got a golden age of modern Chinese animation. If there are people who still think China is still stuck in the past of its dark ages from its Americanised past, with Nobody and so many top-tier Chinese animated movies, I think this would shut them up, because China is no longer a “nobody” it wants was in the global theatrical animation industry.
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
In Your Dreams
Key Information
- Directors: Erik Benson and Alexander Woo
- Animation Studios: Kuku Studios (with Netflix Animation)
- Country of Origin: United States
- Rating: PG
- Release date: 14 November 2025 (on Netflix)
Trailer
The Review
Netflix’s animated movie output for this year has been admittedly top-heavy for me, with K-Pop Demon Hunters, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance’s Most Fowl and Lost in Starlight both in a league of their own, and that is not to give disrespect to the other Netflix animated movies of this year. Netflix’s output has been solid, but not as top-heavy compared to other years. In Your Dreams was also solid, but obviously, I did not understand why Netflix was pushing this for the awards race when all it did was to take attention away from K-Pop Demon Hunters.
In terms of the writing, you can compare it to Spellbound, another Netflix animated movie from last year, in terms of the strengths and issues I have. In fact, you can copy and paste whatever I thought about Spellbound into In Your Dreams since both movies explore divorce from a kid’s perspective as an underlying theme, and they have the same issue in that the world-building and character development felt under-baked. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is solid with good pacing and memorable characters, but in 2025, just being technically sound is not enough anymore. Animation studios need to be creative and thoughtful in how they want to develop their stories, and while it was not frustrating to get through compared to The Twits, the previous Netflix animated movie before this one, it did not stand out compared to some of the better animated movies I covered this year.
What I do not have any major complaints about, however, was the animation. While I am tired of the same old generic CG animation style of so, so many animated movies, especially since we are getting animated movies that are moving away from that style and are instead pushing animation styles that fit their identity more. Still, the animation is fun and vibrant, with many interesting and well-executed character and background designs that at least prevented the movie from going stale real fast. This movie also embraces different animation styles here and there to keep things interesting, including certain hand-drawn animation sequences that felt over-the-top in a good way.
The other elements are decent and well-executed, though nothing of note. As for my level of enjoyment, I had a decent time enjoying this movie. I had seen more animated movies that are way better and more interesting compared to In Your Dreams, but at least this movie did its job, and I feel there are some people that will vibe with this movie more than more, but that is ok.
Overall, In Your Dreams is at least well-executed and is decent enough, but in 2025, just being technically good and technically well-executed is not going to cut it. I like it, but this is not something to rush to Netflix for, especially considering the next movie after this one…
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
Falcon Express
Key Information
- Directors: Benoit Daffis and Jean-Christian Tassy
- Animation Studio: TAT Productions
- Country of Origin: France
- Rating: PG
- Release date: 15 November 2025 (in Singapore as part of the French Film Festival Singapore 2025)
Trailer
The Review
As someone familiar with both the US distributor and animation studio involved in this movie, I had an idea of what to expect from Falcon Express (and yes, from now on, I am calling this Falcon Express instead of Pets on a Train) and after my screening… Yeah, it was exactly what I expected, though I am shocked that for the first time ever, all the Viva Kids animated movies that I had covered this year got a passing grade which has never happened. More on that later, but we need to get through the movie so…
I do have a few issues that I need to discuss regarding this movie first. Normally, it is ill-advised that I covered the original dub without any English subtitles before seeing the movie in actuality, but that was what I did for Falcon Express. I am glad I did that because as do English dubs of most family-friendly foreign CG animated movies, the English dub is not great. While the French dub is more fun and has certain jokes that hit hard, here those jokes were not translated well and the English dub is slightly more painful to get through. Additionally, the movie underutilise certain elements and characters, especially considering the expansive cast of characters, and the animation is not as strong compared to Terra Willy, which was by the same animation studio.
However, I do have a good amount of fun with this Die Hard parody mixed with Under Siege 2 and Snakes on a Plane. This is a fun and hilarious adventure that has a personality of its own. The references are not in-your-face and are sprinkled liberally throughout the movie’s runtime, and has a handful of jokes and gags that were very well-executed. The characters that got more screen time are fun and have great personalities, especially the character dynamics between Falcon and Rex, aka the buddy cop pairing, and the animation is still competent and well-executed in spite of it not being as top quality as Terra Willy (which still remains as my most favourite animated movie from the animation studio behind this). The anaconda rap song unironically slaps, and despite the English dub, this was quite enjoyable, and it seems the French dominated clientele at my screening were having a lot more fun than I did, which is a great thing given how TAT Productions is in its native home of France.
Overall, I am still as shell-shocked as you may be, but for the first time ever, Viva Kids had distributed a year of animated movies that all get a passing grade, which is usually not that possible considering there are usually a few animated movies from them that do not pass my Hot Sauce Rating grade, but this time, with this, Buffalo Kids (Viva Kids is distributing it next February), Night of the Zoopocalypse, Benjamin Bat and Grand Prix of Europe, they all pass my requirements with some relative ease too. Sure, I have issues with Falcon Express, but it was entertaining enough for me to not be bothered by it.
When even the Viva Kids animated movies turned out to be decent at worst, that is normally a good sign. This year’s animated movies have been stellar on average, which is a great sign…
Blaziker’s Hot Sauce Rating
Conclusion
November is off to a pretty great start, which is important given November is also a very busy month of animated movies. There were a couple of great quality animated movies here in the form of Your Letter and Nobody that should be on your radar, and even the other animated movies are quite good.
Thank you for joining me on this adventure. It is time I finally do a standalone adventure of perhaps one of the very best animated movies of 2025, and one that is making headwinds across the animation industry. You will have to wait until next time because we are heading to Japan for this coming-of-age odyssey. Until then, see you on the next adventure!
