Anyone who's ever played an RPG should find the story of Brave Story familiar. A 10 year-old boy named Wataru follows mysterious friend Mitsuru through a strange portal, only to arrive in a fantastic medieval land called Vision, complete with dragons, anthropomorphic creatures, melee weapons, and armor. Once there, Wataru assembles a party of compatriots and treks across in the land in search of the "Goddess of Destiny", in order to fulfill some important quest involving fate, destiny, and the lives of untold innocents. Or something like that. Wataru's quest actually has acute real-world significance to him: his parents are estranged and his mother deathly ill, and Wataru wants the Goddess of Destiny to make his home life healthy and happy, and not dysfunctional and depressing. However, Mitsuru is after the same Goddess of Destiny, and desires something along the lines of total annihilation. That can't be good.

Predictably, Wataru must save Vision and take on the role of hero. However, doing so requires him to give up his own personal wishes - a tough thing for a 10 year-old boy, and the very reason that Brave Story transcends its video game premise to become more than just an animated RPG. It's got surprising angst and emotion, and manages to affect in a way its direct competition - the Studio Ghibli film Tales From Earthsea - didn't. The leap from the disappointing Earthsea to the surprising Brave Story isn't that great, and Brave Story still fails at engaging audiences in its fantasy world, which feels too manufactured to be that compelling. But, it has excitement and tension that Earthsea didn't, and manages to connect audiences to its young, wounded protagonist far more than Earthsea did. Wataru's quest involves growing up and making sacrifices, and possesses the very themes that good stories are built on. Oh, the state-of-the-art CG+cel animation from Studio Gonzo (Last Exile, Samurai 7) is pretty good, too.