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Another World (2025)

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Another World (2025) (Animation)

Another World (Chinese: 世外)note  is a 2025 Hong Kong animated fantasy film produced by Point Five Creations and Silver Media Group, directed by Tommy Kai-chung Ng and written by Polly Po-man Yeung. Based on the Japanese novel Sennenki: Thousand-Year Journey of an Oni (also known as Millennium Ghost) by Saijo Naka, it was originally released as a 14-minute short in 2019, before being remade as a full-length feature film in 2025.

The realm of the afterlife, the titular "Another World", is an ethereal realm where spiritual guides help recently deceased souls find Reincarnation. When a soul reincarnates, they leave behind all their memories in Another World, passing on as a red rope whose knots represent all of their unresolved resentment and regret, with the denizens of Another World also working to untie these knots. The same resentment and hatred, left to fester in a human body, will form a wicked seed that eventually transforms mortals into monstrous and violent "Wraths",note  who are barred from the cycle of reincarnation and bring forth disturbances in Another World.

One day, one of the spirit guides, Gudo, meets a young girl named Yuri looking for her younger brother. Yuri is blissfully unaware of her own death and takes her visit to Another World in stride, while Gudo agrees to help her search to make her more cooperative with the process of reincarnation. Little do either know that this will set off a chain of tribulations which will not only lead Gudo to discovering more about the nature of humanity, but threaten to thrust both the mortal realm and Another World into peril.

The film premiered in the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 16, 2025. It debuted in Hong Kong and Macau on October 29, 2025. There are plans to release the film outside of Hong Kong and Macau in the future.


This animated film provides examples of:

  • Achilles' Heel: All Wraths have one in the horns growing from their head, actually the roots of their Seed of Evil that first pierce out of their head when they transform. Cutting them off will instantly kill them, but they're nearly invulnerable otherwise owing to their incredible durability and an immense Healing Factor. Some stronger Wraths, like the one born from Ying, will make an active effort to protect said horns or even retract them into their bodies, which if successful will render them nearly invincible unless one has a way to force through their defenses and target the horns again.
  • Anachronic Order: Although piecing together background details does still allow a rough timeline to be estimated, the first half of the film constantly switches between the perspectives of multiple characters who live at different points in time, with only vague hints as to how much time separates each perspective and how the events are related. This leads into The Reveal at the climax, namely that Yuri, Goran, and Keung are the same soul that has repeatedly died and reincarnated, and that Gudo has been watching over each successive reincarnation to protect Yuri's soul from becoming a Wrath, which would doom them both as per the thousand-year pact he made with the Goddess.
  • Body Horror: A human that turns into a Wrath will have their body grotesquely splatter and mutate into a misshapen behemoth of flesh, bone, and other gruesome parts washed in psychadelic colors, often with the original human body embedded somewhere in the mutant one.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: Many Wraths take on the form of gigantic alien insects with vaguely human features.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Gudo successfully helps Ying reconcile with her past resentment and saves from her transformation into a Wrath, therefore finishing the thousand-year pact of protecting each of Yuri's reincarnations, which allows Yuri's soul to reincarnate properly again. However, the injuries he sustains in the fight and the strain of protecting Yuri's soul for a thousand years causes him to burn out and begin crumbling to dust himself. While Mira is able to save him, it comes at the cost of him having to reincarnate as a human, meaning he'll have to forget all about Yuri and the journey he had over the last millennium. However, he successfully manages to reincarnate as a human baby, while Yuri/Ying and Dark Sky are shown to be watching over him from Another World and waiting to reunite with him.
  • Break the Cutie: Yuri gets hit by this hard, from the revelation that she's been Dead All Along to finding out the brother she's looking for is not only dead, but was inadvertently eaten by her when her family cooked his dead body to survive a famine, which instantly causes her to have a breakdown and begin turning into a Wrath on the spot. Her final reincarnation as Ying is hit by this again when Gudo helps her recover her memories of her past lives, which causes her to break down as she remembers all her past sins and how much suffering she's both been through and caused, only stopped by Gudo telling her that she can't blame herself for all of that, and that she actually managed to save her brother's own reincarnation in her current life, fulfilling the original promise she made as Yuri.
  • The Brute: Dark Sky is a loyal servant of the Goddess and Gudo's protector. While he's good at his job of killing Wraths with extreme prejudice, he admits that he's not cut out for much else besides violence. This leaves him at a loss when Mira is imprisoned by the wave of resentment knots created from Keung's failed rebellion, as he can't just cut his way through them, although he does manage to quickly deduce that reconciling Gudo's own regrets is the key to saving her.
  • Cessation of Existence: The fate of a soul that cannot reincarnate is to crumble away until nothing remains, rendering them Deader than Dead. This is the fate that nearly befalls Yuri when she nearly transforms into a Wrath while inside Another World, but Gudo manages to bargain with Mira and prevent this, with the condition that he too will crumble to dust if he fails to save her. While Yuri is saved by the end of the story, Gudo almost falls to this fate thanks to his injuries, but manages to avoid his fate by choosing to reincarnate as a human, even at the cost of losing his memories.
  • Cheerful Child: Yuri is cheery, upbeat, and constantly confusing Gudo with her hopeful nature, which Gudo notes is a stark contrast to all the other souls he usually helps guide to reincarnation, who usually range from depressed to desperate. Not even realizing that she's actually dead and seeing the gruesome state she died in is enough to dampen her spirits for long. The truth about her brother, on the other hand...
  • Combat Tentacles: Ying's Wrath form uses dozens of ribbonlike tentacles to fight.
  • Deal with the Devil: To save the people of Wheat Village from the tyrannical Nyer, Keung makes a pilgrimage to ask Gudo to turn him into a Wrath, hoping it will give him the power to kill his enemies and free his home, despite Gudo's warnings against it. He relents when Gudo shows him that Wraths kill indiscriminately and would hurt his loved ones as easily as his enemies (to be specific, the Wrath that was the origin of the "Ghost Arm" devouring his own daughter and allies), then after seeing what a real Wrath is like when one suddenly attacks.
  • Death by Childbirth: Goran's mother died giving birth to her, leading others to see her as a bad omen and seemingly causing her father to neglect her. In truth, the King admits right before his death that his wife was already so ill that Goran's birth in itself was a miracle, and that he regrets being too stricken by grief to not do more to raise Goran and protect her reputation.
  • Doom Magnet: Princess Goran is feared as a "cursed princess" by her own subjects for "causing" her mother the queen to die in childbirth, which she internalized and developed self-esteem issues over, leading to her blaming herself for her father's death in battle and the state of Flower City as a whole.
  • Despair Event Horizon: When a person's hatred and despair reaches its zenith, the Seed of Evil growing within them will fully bloom and transform them into a Wrath. After this, it's the point of no return and the Wrath must be killed, at least in most cases.
  • Dub Name Change: Many characters who are known only by a title or nickname in the Cantonese script are given proper names in localizations. For instance, Gudo and Yuri were originally simply called 小鬼 (Siu Guai, lit. "Little Ghost") and 小妹 (Siu Mui, lit. "Little Sister"), respectively.
  • Flaming Hair: Dark Sky's hair isn't just fire, his entire head is a column of smoke that ignites when he's fighting and whitens when he's tired.
  • God Save Us from the Queen!: After affiming her belief that her father was betrayed by his own people, Goran ascends to the position of queen and becomes a cruel tyrant who personally executes and tortures dozens of dissidents and enemies.
  • Harmful to Minors: After Ying's sister gets into a fight with some other child workers bullying her, she ends up being knocked off a walkway into active machinery, where Ying and the other kids can only watch as she's ripped to bloody shreds before their eyes. This traumatizes Ying so much that, combined with her self-loathing belief that she's responsible, causes her to turn into a Wrath.
  • Humanity is Infectious: Gudo initially operates on a lighter version of Blue-and-Orange Morality, but spending enough time with Yuri and then taking that experience into the human world very quickly starts making him better understand human concepts, emotions, and compassion. By the midpoint of the story, he's become human in all but name. Comes to a head in the finale, where not only does Gudo actually gain his own "knot" in the form of his pact with Yuri, he's ultimately reincarnated as an actual human.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Dark Sky and some of the denizens of Another World firmly believe in the wickedness of human nature, as the hatred that turns people into destructive Wraths is innate to them and can't be changed. Gudo disagrees with him and believes that their kindness and strength will always overcome it.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The only way to prevent a transformation into a Wrath is to get the target to reconcile with their hatred and resentment, which will weaken the Seed of Evil and allow a spirit guide like Gudo to pull it out of their body. Gudo has to perform this to stop Goran from transforming, and ultimately does the same to Ying to reverse her transformation in the climax.
  • Intangible Time Travel: Gudo is given the ability to send people back to moments in the past, which they can watch but not interact with.
  • It's All My Fault: Fitting for a story about letting go of resentment, this is the shared conflict that Gudo must help Yuri and all of her reincarnations overcome. From Yuri blaming herself for eating her brother, Goran blaming herself for her parents' deaths, Keung blaming himself for the state of Wheat Village and the failed rebellion, and Ying blaming herself for the troubles faced by her fellow workers and the death of her sister, every one of her seen reincarnations has some form of character-defining regret that Gudo has to help reconcile to stop them from turning into Wraths. He finally manages to pull through with the final reincarnation, Ying, by in part bluntly telling her that she can't possibly kick herself over things that were largely out of her control.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Dark Sky has a second pair of arms folded behind his back. He brings them out and quad-wields his swords when he needs to get dangerous.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: Dark Sky not only kills Wraths without mercy, but believes in executing humans who are about to transform as well, seeing no point in waiting and no way to prevent it. Gudo has to stop him from killing Goran this way and, to his credit, manages to stop her transformation.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Goran has this moment when she asks Gudo to show her her father's death a second time, showing that he really did kill himself to buy time for his men to escape. The fact that she had been so impulsive to not even try and see the whole picture, and become a despotic tyrant in her rage, causes her to break hard as she realizes that she's largely responsible for the decline of Flower City.
    • Ying realizing what all of her past lives had done and all the death they caused indirectly or otherwise (including the aforementioned Goran) causes her to snap and spiral even deeper into her Wrath-induced grief, declaring herself a wicked person incapable of compassion or salvation.
  • The Needless: Spirit guides don't get hungry or tired, and it takes Gudo a good bit of time to understand what Yuri means by fatigue or hunger. He seemingly tries to poorly imitate hunger later, as his later encounters have him declaring his hunger and asking for food in exchange for his visions of the past, then just shoving the food into his mask without actually ingesting it. Except it's not actually just him trying to mimic Yuri, but the gesture they agreed on as Gudo's way of getting her reincarnations to remember him.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: After gaining the power to show people visions of the past, Gudo frequently hopes that by clarifying their unresolved sorrows, he can help them get over their resentments. However, as Dark Sky and Mira both tell him, just because someone knows about the truth doesn't mean they'll necessarily be changed for the better from that knowledge, especially if it's an Awful Truth they aren't prepared to handle. Goran seeing just a glimpse of her father's death (cut short by Dark Sky's interference) seemingly at the hands of his own soldier drives her to become a cruel tyrant towards her own people, too consumed by rage to think about taking a clearer look at the actual truth, while Keung seeing the true nature of a Wrath initially does little to dissuade him from wanting to become one. Ying's transformation is accidentally expedited by him trying to remind her of her (Yuri's) brother, which instead causes her to descend more into loathing about her sister's death in this life. Even Yuri's initial breakdown that sets off the thousand-year pact is caused by Gudo showing her the truth of her brother's death, even inadvertently rubbing salt in the wound by trying to rationalize it as necessary for her survival, not fully understanding why the girl would still have problems with eating her own brother regardless of circumstance.
  • Non-Action Guy: While he takes part in preventing Wrath emergences before they appear, Gudo has a fragile, childlike constitution and no combat ability of his own, relying on his "bodyguard" Dark Sky to do the heavy lifting if a Wrath actually rears its head.
  • No Party Like a Donner Party: It's revealed that Yuri's brother actually passed away in the famine that would eventually take Yuri's own life, and that her family was able to survive for longer by cooking his corpse into stew, which Yuri unknowingly ate. When Yuri finds out, she appropriately freaks out and has a Stress Vomit, then begins transforming into a Wrath.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: The Goddess Mira presides over Another World and is strict with its laws, but is also reasonable and kindly towards those under her, and means well for human souls. Although she attempts to eliminate Yuri with extreme prejudice once she begins manifesting signs of a Wrath transformation (as Wraths manifesting inside Another World would potentially spell the end of the realm outright), she ultimately allows Gubo to make a bargain to save her life after seeing how far he's willing to go to protect her.
  • Reincarnation Friendship: Played With. After promising Mira that he'd prevent Yuri from becoming a Wrath for one millennium, Gudo spent the next thousand years seeking out and watching over all of Yuri's reincarnations to honor her promise to meet again. However, Yuri doesn't remember him in any of them and isn't exactly friendly with him, with Goran being antagonistic towards her, Keung worshipping him as a god, and Ying not even knowing who he is. It's only after saving Ying and bringing back Yuri's memories that the two of them finally remember their promise.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: A recurring trend with Gudo's attempts to save people from becoming Wraths is that they ultimately end up independently taking actions that lead to his efforts being nullified. Dark Sky explicitly warns him that although he can try to help them, their actions are ultimately out of his control:
    • After Goran realizes how badly she's ruined her kingdom by refusing to believe her father really did kill himself, she flees from the kingdom to get help...then is stung to death by a hive of wasps after collapsing in the forest. Without their queen to lead, Flower City quickly falls and is colonized by the cruel Nyer, becoming the slave lavor driven Wheat Village.
    • Keung, successfully convinced not to become a Wrath by Gudo, decides to make the changes he wants using his own hands. He organizes a rebellion in Wheat Village and cuts off his own arm, threatening the Nyer that if they aren't given the food they're owed, all of the villagers will maim themselves (rendering them unable to work) and cause them all to starve together. The Nyer respond by simply going scorched earth and slaughtering all of them and abandoning the village after giving them some false hope, which also leads to a Wrath manifesting and filling Another World with even more resentful souls.

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