well firstly, good job to the production team and casts in creating this movie. I will just point out a few critics from fellow animation lover Also I am not going to compare the animation to Japanese anime and Ghibli, because its just unfair right now to put them in the same place right now.1. Casts not done right; this is a huge fatal flaw from this movie. Not casting at least professional actors can cost a film a lot. The Yumna character for example is Maudy Ayunda, she is by no account is a professional actress and I'll have to say I just met my expectation right about her....she sucked. A lot of other characters except for Musa and Danu (who is unexpectedly good) just overdid everything so much.2. Story lines are very short and a lot of moments are uninteresting and unnecessary. They cut through every story so much with so little details. I can say that 70% of the movie just bored the hell out of me, and it's only 99 minutes?!!3. Last one is character development; everything is so sudden for me. Danu turns good and ready to sacrifice himself for a boy he barely knew even though he previously tried to kill him?! The best character in which I voted for mostly is surprisingly that balding English officer, the voice-acting wasn't that good, but at least I can understand where he comes from and his purpose for doing what he does....although the plot for him is surprisingly badOverall, I wouldn't say this movie is bad, but it's worth the watch...especially if you're Indonesian :). Please refrain from rating this movie so high even though its not all that.

I will state the very obvious. The graphic is awesome. Right now, it has THE BEST 2D graphic among Indonesia's animation movie. The style is similar to Studio Ghibli's. In general, it's very beautiful. The graphic is 8.5 out of 10! But the graphic is not flawless. It lacked finer details. For example in most part of the movie, when someone got shot, the cloth was torn from the gunshot but it showed no blood. But later, the gunshots produce blood. *laughs* talk about consistency...The lack of consistency also presented in the sound mixing and in the dubbing. I notice that it used 'present' pattern of speech instead of the pattern of speech matched the 1945. Also, it barely used the correct dialect of the area where the story took place. And there was a Dutch family who speak English! And the British soldiers who didn't speak British English. But, the major downfall of this movie was the storyline. Instead of creating a conflict which was more realistic, cohesive and related to the Battle of Surabaya; they took the unnecessary effort of creating an imaginary 'secret organization' which no way has any place nor involvement in Indonesian history at 1945. I know it's a fictional movie but their take in 'fiction' is waaay out of the line. Because, seriously, ninja fight in Indonesia independent war at 1945??? And there was practically zero character development. I am so proud of that they manage such an eye-porn graphic, but they really truly need to improve a lot in storyline department. The graphic quality is practically the only thing worth praising in this movie.

I watched this movie for 3 reason. first: the trailer was good. Second: as Indonesian, I really excited when finally somebody make animation movie about Indonesia's History. Third: My friend bought me a ticket, so why not. it's free movie. nothing to lose right? but i was wrong.. I just lost 2 hours of my life for bad movie. I don't know where to start to explained how they ruined this great chance for make great Indonesia's animation movie. it's like they put their 60% budget for animation, 30% for the cast, 9% for Sound, and just 1% for directing. storyline is awful. plot hole? don't even talk about plot hole, i only watched a hole without the plot. I wish they took different route, especially for storyline, to explained for audience that is "theres's no glory in war" with more subtle way. or they can just change the title as "Before battle of Surabaya, and After" or "Organisasi Kipas Hitam" or "Musa and Yuna" or "10 minutes of battle of Surabaya with another 1 hour and 45 minutes of 25 other random story". *and people.. please honest with your review.. 10/10 honestly? how much for classic animation like Spirited Away? 200/10?

As the "I" in "IMDb" doesn't stand for "Indonesia" i guess I have to be fair and try to focus on its quality, mostly its animation quality. also a bit spoiler on 7th and 9th point.1. This animation feature is a serious offender for Newton's laws of motion. Seriously. A few source i read mentioned that animators actually has to learn proper physics (mainly Newton's laws of motion related) or hire a physics consultant to make sure things move as it is. I'd say that whenever you see something moving in 2D animation, something just doesn't feel right; be it human, or objects. There are parts when it uses cell shaded 3d animation instead, and that might be the only decent ones, from the perspective of Newton's law of motion. Speaking about perspectives....2. This animation feature is another serious offender on perspectives. Whenever you see someone standing with their foot shown on screen and with a background, you'll see that "what? is he/she even standing". This might be a reason why most of standing characters with backgrounds is shown in a bit close up, so that the feet isn't shown. but on some scenes when someone is running/walking/standing, it just doesn't feel right. The best part to see this is to find that scene where someone is walking up/down a stair, you'll see like the animated character and background doesn't look well aligned.3. Another thing it seriously offends is human anatomy. This, combined with physics and perspectives is amazingly... offensive:As mentioned before, it makes movements, most of them, unnatural. you can see correctly "that is not how you sit to a chair" "that is not how you move your shoulder" "that is not how you jump" "that is not how you fall". Some extreme issues is that a movement is only animated with less than 10 frame/second, and it is a slow movement with weird anatomy. combined with perspective, you'll see that characters looks completely different from different PoV, at some part, heads looks totally distorted with head changing size a few times in 1 same shot, misplaced eyes/ears on different PoV, and characters doesn't look like holding what he/she is holding in the scene (the most visible item for this error are steering wheel and rifles).4. I'd say that most voice acting are either fine or good enough.... but SFX and BGM is also another part with huge errors. 4-8 running step sound for 1 step movement on screen, for a few shots in more than 2 scenes. It also tried to hard to switch mood with BGM, but a sudden intro with huge volume to force a mood (which is supported with OK voice acting but animated like 3 points above) felt more like being forced. It'd need a smoother transition on BGM. Also some part suddenly had lyrics, I see 1 or 2 of them is "product placement" for a certain singer, but lots of them are just like being forced to chew and gulp something.5. Continuity error. Lets just mention it with: When you sit on a muddy paddy field, there must be mud marks on your butt. Yet it is missing from the next scene.6. Lots of model and model+animation error. Lots of soldiers are copy pasted. There is a scene where a character rips a banana leaf and if you ever seen a banana tree, you'll know that it doesn't work that way. 7. History errors, ranging from some more historical event details to wrong object design (mainly electric pole). This is very nitpick topics, but there is one at the very start.... The Yamato Hotel Incident is a bit inaccurate. Then If I remember correctly this Incident is written as "3 months before Battle of Surabaya" though it should be less than 2 months until that Battle of Surabaya.8. Jokes are.... cheap, but I guess it is well adjusted to its audience's taste.9. It was supposed to be a history feature about November 10th Battle of Surabaya. Yet instead it add element of secret Japan-made Indonesian Ninja sub-plot which is nowhere in history records. And there is no actual scene from November 10th Battle of Surabaya. The Battle of Surabaya is not in the movie titled "Battle of Surabaya"And these are just examples of longer list i don't even remember anymore hours after coming out from the theaterSoooo, yeah good luck on the 2nd project, lets hope it would be better so that future work will have better benchmark.