Over the Moon was released nearly exactly two years ago, and while I saw some noise about it online at the time, I didn’t really touch it until one day I was bored out of my mind, and watched the first thing that tiktok decided to show me.
The story follows FeiFei as she navigates the death of her mother and her father attempting to move on. The first thing I have to say is, even though this trope isn’t that bad, I am really tired of seeing it with the same side of the family. I can’t think of a single movie in which the one to die is the father, in which the one to move on is the mother. I’m kind of tired of the step-mother trope, even though I can see why its so necessary and why it will be relatable to some kids or even adults. Maybe its not even this trope that I’m tired of, but the dead mother trope. That aside, either way its understandable why FeiFei is so against her father finding new love, considering the tales that her mother would tell her about the Goddess Chang’e and the meaning of eternal love, however, lets just stop and think about how the first time the father introduces his new love interest, its straight away under the premise of future (re) marriage (delivered by the woman’s son, chin, who literally says that one day they’ll be siblings). I’m sorry but that seems like the worst way to go about this? It’s absolutely understandable that FeiFei would be against this considering she doesn’t even know who this is and suddenly everything is changing.
To combat this, FeiFei builds a spaceship and makes her way to the moon, and honestly quite impressive, but the fact that the dad was just paying for all of this without questioning is so funny to me. Chin finds a way to sneak himself on with FeiFei and together they end up on the moon. What I do have to say is the design choices for Lunaria and all the creatures are very beautiful and pleasing, what happens next though? Not so much.
I heard a few people complain about the world building and the lack of explanations, however that really isn’t the problem here.
So starting with my main problem, the characterisation of Chang’e. Maybe it was just me, but I was very confused by the constant change between her sadness and grief side and her bullying everyone she comes across side. Though I feel like both would have worked together if there was a way to link her two behaviours in front of the other characters. For example if eventually she dropped her “mean girl” act (and no not at the very end like she does, I’m sure you understand what I mean).
What I also don’t understand is, if the gift was so important to her, why didn’t she join the search for it. I find it odd that despite being desperate for it go for essentially thousands of years, she chose to send her army of tear-creatures on the search for it. Also her character development all happens within the last few minutes of the show and it would have made more sense if she joined FeiFei and Chin on their search for the gift. That way at least everyone would have actually learnt from each other. Because what ends up happening is, Chang’e gets depressed, but when FeiFei joins her in that depression she states that she doesn’t belong here, which doesn’t make sense because both have lost very important people to them, so surely Chang’e, out of all the people, would be the first to understand. And after a back and forth pep-talk between the both of them, they come to the conclusion that they need to move on and let love in. Except chang’e of course who for one line states that its too late for her (or smth along the lines) but of course were not going to linger on this too much because everyone suddenly decides to move on and everyone is happy.
At the end of the day, the messaging that they were trying to go for is understandable, but I’m not sure wether the execution of it was clear all the way through. The character designs and the cultural representation, in my opinion, were well done. But for me personally, some parts of the plot were a bit messy and therefor didn’t really live up to the expectations that everyone else hyped it up to be.
PhantomFiles 