It looks and feels like a DC animated feature, but Legend of Korra animator Studio Mir puts its own spin on the action. Geralt of Rivia has walked the many perilous paths of the Continent, and broken through in nearly every medium. Netflix’s new animated movie The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep fully brings him into the realm of animation, where the monster hunter, free of realistic physics, blasts fire from his hands and pummels sea monsters like he’s the Avatar from The Last Airbender.

  For Sirens of the Deep, writers Mike Ostrowski and Rae Benjamin (vets of the Netflix live-action series) draw from Sapkowski’s short story “A Little Sacrifice,” a riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” (That story can be found in Sapkowski’s collection Sword of Destiny.) The writing duo remain relatively faithful to Sapkowski’s story: While on the hunt for a monster, Geralt stumbles into rising political tension between the land-dwellers of Bremervoord and the merfolk of, uh, the ocean.

  Even more than in their first Witcher prequel movie, Nightmare of the Wolf, director Kang Hei Chul and Studio Mir (The Legend of Korra, Young Justice, Harley Quinn) seize the animation medium as a chance to make The Witcher their own. The colors of the Continent pop beyond the blue hues of the live-action series, but feel more painterly than the AAA sheen of CDPR’s games. The sets, from seaside villages to underwater kingdoms, feel unrestrained by practical considerations — IRL builds or in-game physics. And Ostrowski and Benjamin are constantly veering from the grand to the intimate, threading Geralt’s relationship woes through battles with armored reptiles and a full-blown mer-war.

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  But all in all, Sirens of the Deep is more Witcher — good Witcher! — and a story we’d likely never see on screen without this direct-to-video-brained experiment. Let this be an argument to keep making and building on Geralt’s animated adventures, and not just the project where they peak. 

Read the full article here: https://www.polygon.com/the-witcher/521890/witcher-sirens-of-the-deep-anime-netflix-review-studio-mir