Director Tommy Kai Chung Ng lands his debut feature as a notable moment for Hong Kong’s animation scene. Adapted from Saijo Naka’s novel Sennenki: Thousand-year Journey of an Oni, the film builds a striking animated space that treats the afterlife like a checkpoint: a pastel-washed holding ground where the dead linger before reincarnation.
That setting introduces Gudo, a child-like spirit guide who works as a soul keeper. His job is practical and emotionally loaded. He helps humans let go of their memories and their “seeds of evil,” the resentments that can seep forward and contaminate whatever life comes next.
The visual language often carries the kind of gentle wonder people associate with Studio Ghibli, and that makes the film’s hard turns hit even sharper. Violence arrives with graphic clarity. The tone stays firmly adult, playing like a macabre fairytale that can pivot from trippy, candy-colored imagery to scenes meant to unsettle. Even on a pure craft level, the project reads as a statement of intent from a regional industry that has spent years living under the long shadow of nearby animation powerhouses.
Centuries of Regret and the Human Knot
The film’s story “system” runs on a non-linear structure, hopping across centuries and shifting through multiple eras in the mortal realm. That design choice shapes how you process Gudo’s role: you watch a thousand years of observation and accumulation rather than moving along a tidy timeline. The approach turns history into a sequence of emotional test cases, each one showing how cruelty, grief, and self-interest can repeat with new costumes.
Yuri becomes the clearest throughline. She is a young girl searching for her brother, unaware that she has died. Her innocence persists in a place built to strip people down to their remaining attachments, and that persistence becomes the spark that starts changing Gudo. He begins to register people as something other than passing entries in an endless queue.
Princess Goran sits at the other end of that emotional spectrum, carrying grief with such force that it mutates into something destructive. She embodies what those “seeds of evil” can grow into when resentment keeps feeding itself. Dark Sky, positioned as Gudo’s guardian, breaks the pressure with light humor at key moments, giving the film breathing room without dissolving the stakes.
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A recurring image gives the film its clearest metaphor for emotional damage: “knots of regret,” shown as red silk threads. Goddess Mira presides over the work of undoing those knots, yet millennia of repetition have worn her down. Her fatigue reads as a spiritual burnout born from watching human cruelty survive every attempted cleansing. The film’s philosophical question rises out of that exhaustion: can kindness endure inside a cycle shaped by greed and destruction, or does the loop grind it down every time it reappears?
The Contrast of Pastel and Punishment
Step C’s art direction is the engine of the film’s atmosphere. The afterlife scenes lean into a sketch-like texture and a kaleidoscopic palette, giving the “Another World” a handmade, drifting quality that feels unstable in the right way. One of the film’s sharpest visual decisions shows up in the human faces, specifically the eyes.
By replacing the whites of the eyes with surrounding skin tones, the animation forces you to hunt for emotion in smaller shifts of expression. It makes every glance feel slightly harder to read, which fits a story about spirits and gods trying to interpret what humans carry inside them.
Gudo’s design pushes that idea even further. He remains masked and faceless, a figure without readable features, which reinforces his position as an outsider studying the “rules” of human feeling. His presence becomes a kind of interface: you track changes through posture, movement, and choices rather than through a face that can explain everything at a glance.
The film pairs that delicate color work with images meant to appall. It includes brutal moments like a feudal lord burning peasants and scenes of graphic lashing. The reaction is stronger because the violence breaks through a world that often looks lush and inviting. The film keeps stitching the dreamlike afterlife to grounded historical spaces in the mortal plane, and that linkage matters. Each transition shows how the same human impulses echo across time, even as the surface details change. The visual cohesion holds even when the setting swings between ethereal beauty and harsh cruelty.
Finding Compassion in a Dour Landscape
Gudo’s evolution functions as the emotional spine. He starts as cold and ambivalent, watching people from a distance with the detachment of someone who has seen too much repetition. Over time, that distance collapses. He develops compassion and a sense of conviction that goes beyond simply completing his duties.
His bond with Yuri becomes the pathway for that shift, letting him experience basic human sensations such as longing and hunger. Those feelings aren’t treated as decorative; they operate like narrative mechanics that move his character from observer to participant.
The film’s view of humanity stays bleak for much of its runtime, tracing what looks like a long slide into individualism and greed. The gods and their subordinates often read as indifferent to the suffering of the living, which deepens the cynicism hanging over the story’s historical episodes. Still, the film keeps introducing a rotating cast to widen the emotional field, even if the factory worker and the princess can come off as thinly drawn because the pacing moves so fast.
That speed can turn the film into a whirlwind of ideas, with themes and images arriving in quick succession. Yet the story’s throughline keeps circling perseverance and community, returning to the belief that people find ways to adapt and support one another even while surrounded by darkness.
Another World (世外) premiered at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2025 before its wider theatrical release in Hong Kong on October 29, 2025. It expanded to international markets in early 2026, arriving in UK and Irish cinemas on January 30, 2026. As of today, February 18, 2026, the film is primarily available to watch in theaters across the UK and North America via GKIDS, with home entertainment and streaming options expected to follow later this year.
Full Credits
Title: Another World
Distributor: Edko Films, GKIDS, AnimeKey
Release date: October 29, 2025
Rating: 15
Running time: 111 minutes
Director: Tommy Kai Chung Ng
Writers: Polly Yeung Po Man, Saijo Naka
Producers and Executive Producers: Polly Yeung Po Man, Gin Kai Chan, Erica Chon
Cast: Suet-Ying Chung, Hiu-Tung Choi, Louis Cheung, Kay Tse, Will Or, Goofy Yeung Nga Man, On-Ying Chan, Hon-Man Ko
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Step Cheung (Art Director)
Editors: Wong Fei-pang
Composer: Adlian Chau, CMgroovy, Vicky Fung Wing Ki
The Review
Another World
Another World is a visually stunning, emotionally complex debut that breathes new life into Hong Kong animation. While its non-linear structure and rapid-fire ideas can occasionally feel disjointed, the film succeeds as a bold, philosophical exploration of the human condition. It masterfully balances Ghibli-esque wonder with a dark, visceral edge, anchored by Gudo’s compelling evolution from a cold observer to a compassionate guide. It is a haunting yet hopeful journey that lingers long after the credits roll.
PROS
- Striking, original art direction that blends sketch-like aesthetics with a trippy, pastel palette.
- Deeply philosophical narrative exploring reincarnation, regret, and the nature of evil.
- Effective emotional arc for the protagonist, Gudo, as he learns the weight of human feelings.
- A bold, adult-oriented tone that isn't afraid to use graphic violence to enhance its themes.
CONS
- The non-linear storytelling and high volume of ideas can occasionally feel chaotic or overstuffed.
- Many secondary characters lack development, often feeling one-dimensional before their subplots end.
- The pacing may feel too frantic for those seeking a more traditional, focused narrative.
