Cast: Yanting Lü, Mo Han, Hao Chen
Director: Yu Yang
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 143 min

The 2019 release, the kid-friendly Chinese animated fantasy “Ne Zha,” about a bratty pre-teen demon and a regal dragon prince, was the country’s most financially successful animated movie. This new sequel to that worldwide hit is also about feuding dragons, gods, humans, and ocean-dwelling monsters. The film boasts of some of the same qualities that made  “Ne Zha” popular. “Ne Zha 2” reworks much of what worked in the original film. The action and drama gets amplified without sacrificing much of the winning qualities of the original blockbuster.

Sourced from the two-volume mythological adventure ‘The Investiture of the Gods’ the film focuses largely on human emotions. The film features a surfeit of main and supporting characters, connected by knotty backstories and convoluted social hierarchies. It’s not hard to get drawn in by the exploits of the demon child Ne Zha (Yanting Lü) and his noble dragon prince buddy Ao Bing (Mo Han). It’s not necessary to have watched “Ne Zha” before watching “Ne Zha 2,” because you can follow the story here without getting caught up in the tangled past. Ne Zha is still an immature kid who doesn’t know his own strength.