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kaenaOn a distant planet AXIS, a gigantic coiling plant, stretches high above the clouds... At its center is a village whose people are in mortal danger because Axis is withering... it's sap is drying up. The people beg their gods for help... but to no avail.
Kaena is the adventurous free spirit of the village. At the age of 17, she refuses to partake any longer in the harvest and bow to the God's wishes. She feels at one with nature and prefers exploring Axis to toiling in the fields. With her extraordinary agility, she leaps from branch to branch and each time, pushes the exploration of her native planet a little bit further.
Compelled by a mysterious force, Kaena, will defy the High Priest and her people's ancestral beliefs to take the perilous journey through the Axis and discover what dark secrets lie beyond the clouds... A dying world, an evil force and a terrible secret...
Details
Featuring the voice talents of Kirsten Dunst (Kaena), Richard Harris (Opaz) and Angelica Huston (The Queen).
Commentary
Kaena is a French-produced CG animation. The animators have produced a bizarre alien jungle environment with vines and branches that seem to go everywhere. The world is divided into three distinct levels with the Queen at one extreme, Opaz at the other extreme and the village in between. Although the world's inhabitants are drawn in great detail, the world itself is surprisingly sparse.
Despite the deficiencies in the animators' world building efforts, the story was engaging and fast-paced. I don't really have a favorite scene in the feature, though. There wasn't really anything in the feature that stood out as truly awe-inspiring, except perhaps the opening scene showing a spacecraft breaking up and falling to the ground in pieces. Overall, Kaena had some shortcomings, but, was still reasonably good.