The opening twenty minutes are pure spectacle, a battle between oni and humans rendered in fluid, painterly detail that makes every other action anime look cheap by comparison. Then the actual story starts, and you're saddled with a kid who screams at everything and contributes almost nothing to the conflict around him. What keeps you watching is the film's refusal to pretend he matters, the real war between demons and humans unfolds with or without his input, and the beauty of that animation never stops carrying the weight of what's actually at stake.

Fifteen-year-old middle school student Jun Tendou flees a strange creature into a temple, where the head priest Genun tells him more about the oni that chased him. Genun then carries them both more than 1,200 years into the past, to the Heian period, where the capital that will one day become Kyoto suffers repeated oni attacks. The city's nobles hail Jun as their rescuer, since his special bloodline lets him command the dragon Orochi and wield its immense power against the demons. Jun is reluctant to fight, though, and he learns that the oni are not what they seem. Adapted from a two-volume novel by Takafumi Takada, the film blends action with the supernatural.