I’ve finally seen Kubo and the Two Strings, and I loved it.

Yes, the story’s themes are well-trodden classics. Yes, I could see the twists before they arrived. No, I didn’t care—Kubo and the Two Strings knew what it was setting out to do, and it delivered that with skillful and focused storytelling. Plus, it’s gorgeous, and its presentation is stylish as hell.

This is not a perfect movie. I feel a little weird about it. But it is an excellent reference for how to write a good all-ages adventure story with heart. That feels especially true when I compare it to the writing of K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Before you get too mad, yes, I also enjoyed K-Pop Demon Hunters.

I also feel less conflicted about K-Pop Demon Hunters than I do about Kubo and the Two Strings. Like Blue Eye Samurai, K-Pop Demon Hunters is obviously full of people from the place where its story is set; its cast is predominantly Korean (or Korean-and-something else), and one of the writers and directors has direct connections to Korea. Kubo and the Two Strings doesn’t meet those same standards.

It’s important that we be able to tell stories about things that are outside of our own experience. We can embrace cultural appreciation—not everything is cultural appropriation. Also, when we are telling stories about specific places and times, we ought to collaborate with people with direct connections to those places and times if possible.

Do I think Kubo did fantasy-medieval Japan dirty? Not really. It’s literally fantasy. But also, I wouldn’t know if they had! What I do know is that I felt odd looking at the cast list and seeing a bunch of white people playing the main (& non-white) characters, while the token background characters were played by Japanese, Japanese-American, or other Asian people. That felt like a missed opportunity and an own goal.

That said, Kubo handily beats K-Pop in the writing department. Kubo starts with an incredible hook, immediately creating tension and a story-within-a-story. Throughout the movie each piece of dialogue or exposition layers on new information, building and contributing to what has come before. It’s like watching a collage form before your eyes. Each fresh element echoes what we already know while adding new depth. Figuratively speaking, Kubo grows and elaborates on its story and characters through rhyme rather than repetition.

K-Pop, by comparison, literally repeats itself. We are told the central conflict, and then we hear it again and again in exactly the same way from multiple other characters. Sometimes we’re given a new scene with the same characters and are then fed precisely the same exposition of the central conflict. Maybe this was intended to reinforce or intensify the conflict, but it felt like being hammered upside the head with a “this is the plot” bat (like this Dropout bit).

Sadly, the same treatment is given to our non-main characters (Mira and Zoey). They’re granted one or two notes of characterization, and those notes are simply repeated every time we might have gotten to know them a little more. That hurt to watch. These characters deserve better.

To be fair, K-Pop might have been hampered here by its reliance on Netflix. Netflix has developed a reputation for “slipshod filmmaking,” as its productions use repetitive, blunt, and painful exposition at the cost of everything else. I don’t know how much influence Netflix had over the final version of K-Pop or how malign that influence was, but given how flattened other productions have been, it feels plausible.

Maybe the people involved didn’t trust their young target audience to follow anything deeper or more complicated. I feel like Pixar proved that assumption wrong decades ago, but here we are. At least Kubo feels like it trusts its audience enough to let them engage with the story on their own.

Anyway. Yes, Kubo has its failings… but I admire the movie’s craftsmanship. I can see myself returning to it for inspiration, and for a reminder of just how well written an all-ages adventure can be.