The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf

I would like to make a small review of this new "anime" film that belongs in the Hissrichverse. When the show was initially announced I was not been prepared for something good or decent even. So expectations were pretty low. To my surprise, this film was even worse than I thought.

The thing that I hated the most is Vesemir's characterization. I know that Netflix must go on for a broader appeal of the audience, but for me, him being made into a generic "cheerful good guy" who quips and jokes during the battle with serious monsters felt off for me. At this point, many people might have already forgotten that the witcher job is no joke but hard and muddy work. But this fact is totally negated for the sake of "rule of cool", I guess.

His childhood was also the thing that seemed to be straight out of some generic fantasy stories of a poor kid being interested in becoming a warrior. As anyone could expect, there is a super-predictable childhood love interest story as well. Since the witchers are growing older than ordinary folk it was also very predictable that this childhood love interest will somehow show up in the story. So the twist was lame.

Another thing that I disliked is that the witchers are presented as evil overlords who are going to make monsters THEMSELVES in order to survive. That sounds incredibly stupid and anybody might have expected the presence of Alzur who is responsible for the creation of the witchers and several other monsters, but he isn't there nor even mentioned. Netflix can't even be true to the books in such distant stories where only some little details must be in place. They failed even at that. It becomes obvious that the series and this film have a very detached relation to Sapkowski's books and lore. Instead, some unknown mage of color is filling his (Alzur's) place for the quotas. I'm not sure though, whether Alzur was alive during the Kaer Morhen siege. So it's not really a big problem.

A big problem is, however, a lack of attention to detail and generally caring about the things happening in the canon. What was the point of leaving many children in the swamps without any weapons or chances for escape? Deglan says that it's "their" harsh method of competition. No surprise that very few witchers will be left on the world of Continent. I know that the training was mentioned to be brutal in the books, but brutal doesn't mean taking all chances of survival leaving children's fate for blind luck (which was Vesemir's case). Those children didn't even get any training or trial of grasses but instead are thrown into the swamp like some monster feed. So the majority of them are easily slaughtered except for a few ones and Vesemir because he has plot armor. I can understand that they try to show the witchers in a "villainous" spotlight, but why didn't they think a bit about logic in their decisions? Another thing to notice is that the reason for the angry mob to go to the fortress is highly contrived. If Tetra is that powerful to bring some monsters onto the fortress, what's the point of bringing so many peasants there? For a tick in the box that it was like that in the books? Expectedly, this angry mob does nothing more useful than to be cannon fodder.

As I mentioned the abilities of the mages, I had an impression that Vesemir doesn't really concede to Tetra in magical powers. Gone are the times when Igni was mostly used for mundane usage (like warming a pot) and to distract the enemy, but now, Igni has the powers of an atomic bomb, I guess. To be more simple, the signs of the witcher are too damn overpowered. These powers might actually exceed those that were even presented in the Blood and Wine expansion to Witcher 3. It's pretty sad that the origin story has some over-the-top sign usage and for the live-action TV show to use it once or twice to pathetically shove two or three people aside. Not only that, but this anime seems to take too much inspiration from Claymore (or maybe it's just me, I'm not sure). Leshen presented here has powers and an appearance highly reminiscent of Yomas. It's too much of a stretch that there are dozens of leshens in one forest, whereas, in the books, it was implied that only one Leshen owns the forest similarly to Witcher 3. They have taken some elements from the games as well. It's the usage of oils for the sword, wraiths, and the scene in the bath. I just personally did not like it and prefer the show and games to stand separately. But thankfully, Wraiths, Leshen, and Gryphon don't look the same as in the games.

For me, it seemed like the potential of Tetra as a character was not fully explored. Her motivations are also rather too ambiguous I think. While in the books, several mages were mentioned to be in the battle, the carrying force here was Tetra. Even if there were some other mages, their input was shown very little. Surprisingly, they used an Aguara-like character for this movie, they call her "kitsu". That's leaving the fact that she alone could have conquered the witchers easily without any mages or mobs, but her powers are only used when the plot demands it. On top of that, it was highly predictable that those illusions will somehow be used in the final battle and since all of the new characters are lackluster and unimportant, they are all predictably slaughtered. Not that anyone will remember them anyway.

Additionally, here and there they shoved some fan-service things like including Filavandrel in this story even though he doesn't really belong in it. Personally, I think that he shared too many similarities with Invoker from Netflix's Dota TV series. Is this a self-plagiarism? There were no signs that Filavandrel could be involved in all this nor if he ever interacted with Vesemir in the first place in the books canon of course. Let alone the fact that this is the same character who precedes the lackluster performance in the first season of Witcher. Also, it felt annoying that he's constantly called "Fil". Additional fan service is the inclusion of Geralt (the bald boy, why is he bald though? is there any mention in the books that Geralt was balded after the trial of grasses?), Eskel, and Lambert as children. It didn't seem like they were present there actually even as children (correct me if there is a mention that those three were present during the siege of Kaer Morhen, I'm not sure). I thought that Vesemir should have been already a bit mature to be a father figure to them. Remember that in Last Wish, Geralt reminisces of his times with Eskel when they were both playing with a bumblebee as kids and then Vesemir made a thrash with them for it? But here, Vesemir is more like a douchy older brother. Also, by logic, shouldn't Lambert be, you know, a bit younger there or not to be here at all, because as a younger witcher he might be brought to Kaer Morhen later than Geralt and Eskel (who were like twin brothers to each other). In this anime, there is no age distinction between those refuge kids.

In terms of book lore and canon, I guess that the very first scene of this anime that shows a urinating boy illustrates Netflix's attitude to the book canon.

In conclusion, I would like to say that everybody is allowed to like what they like. but through this anime, I see how the image of the witcher saga transforms into something of the same level as any generic fantasy. Overpowered protagonists and ridiculous (generic) plots all lead to the bastardization and Americanization of this brand. The most important thing that this anime lacks is the feel of groundedness, if we can call it like that. Groundedness was overarchingly present throughout all the books. For this anime, lack of this is enforced not only by excessive & ridiculous action but by lame dialogues that are essentially just empty in their core. Thank you for reading this far. I would be glad to know what you think about this so-called anime. If I made any mistakes, feel free to write