"The Deer King"’s delicate world-building plus its curious mix of the medical and the spiritual creates a strikingly different fantasy film.

The clear lines of the elegant 2D animation are not matched by the mythic muddle of the storytelling, an exposition-heavy slog of warring factions, convoluted webs of enchantment and a deadly, wolf-borne pandemic for good measure.

One can only hope that, in future, the directors will have a better script that may befit their talents as animators.

This is an interesting tale that is an adaptation of a manga series that was published after a different pandemic, but this film came out during the COVID-19 pandemic with a lot of thoughtful observations.