Kubo And The Two Strings Analysis

“Kubo and the Two Strings” is an American stop-motion action-adventure animation by Laika. Set in feudal Japan, young Kubo earns a living for him and his mother with fantastical storytelling in the markets using his gifted magical abilities, where origami figures summoned by the music of his lute come to live to illustrate his narrations. After incidents that interrupted Kubo’s ordinary life, he goes on a quest to find his great samurai father’s amour in order to defeat the Moon King and save his family, while under the hunt of the pair of evil sisters of Kubo’s mother. I was initially interested in the film because of the extraordinary stop motion visuals presented in its trailer, and having seen Laika’s previous productions such as “Coraline”, I expected certain degrees of darker themes and emotional experiences. Although the primary audience would naturally be children, we also see that adults are also a secondary target group. This may be showcased by how ten minutes into the film, elder audiences may already realise Kubo’s mother suffers from some sort of dementia or schizophrenia. Having realise Kubo, a 10 year old or so boy, needs to take care of his mother on his own elicits a melancholy, grim undertone for the setting of the film, that younger audiences may not have noticed. The film was

The two strings symbolised togetherness, as it was physically originated from the hair of Kubo’s mother. This connection and element of sacrificing oneself is what strengthened Kubo’s magical powers during his quest, and by employing the motif of strings, the abstract theme of loss and love was attached to a tangible object, considering the primary audiences of the film being smaller children that wouldn’t understand concepts as easily. It also represented reincarnation that perhaps echoes with Buddhism in the Japanese background, where similar events of sacrifices happened to both Kubo’s mother and