Movie review: 'Mahavatar Narsimha' (2025)

Mahavatar Narsimha (clip) is the first in an intended series of 3D animated films from India, with the goal of telling the stories of the ten avatars of Vishnu. Released in 2025, it's directed by Ashwin Kumar, written by Jayapurna Das, and produced by Kleem Productions.

First and foremost, this is a religious film that takes its spiritual roots from Hindu mythology pretty seriously. It clocks in at over two hours long, and honestly I didn't have the patience to watch it from start to finish. I don't think I can objectively review such a film. I don't know the mythology, the religion, the symbolism or the culture that it's based upon.

It's struck a strong chord in India, becoming its highest-grossing domestic animated film in less than two weeks! So that's a positive sign. Whether you should try watching it - I can't say. This review will be a short summary that points out the anthropomorphic beings that appear.

The story begins with a sage whose 13th wife wants her turn in bed with him, but the timing is bad. After he shames her for this, she gives birth to two demon brothers, Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, who are complete assholes. The first brother, Hiranyaksha, kidnaps the personification of Mother Earth, and Vishnu appears as the avatar of Varaha to rescue her.

Varaha is a boar! He shows up about 19 minutes into the film, and quickly transforms by muscling up into an anthro form. This film really goes for feeling epic. The fights are quite dramatic, like punching your opponent so hard they're hurled into space. No one holds back; at one point the demon's eyeballs fall out of his skull. The whole sequence is about 7 minutes long.

(I was amused by the English subtitles at this point: "Ordinarily, a boar is considered to be an abominable creature. However, even in this form, your body is resplendent, divine, and transcendental. Anyone who meditates upon this wonderful form of yours, or listens to this wonderful tale of yours with full faith, will certainly invite auspiciousness into their lives.")

The remaining demon brother knows that Vishnu is going to come for him at some point, so he goes on a religious journey in order to ask a favor from the god Brahma, who grants it. Basically he requests that he can't be killed in several ways, neither during the day nor during the night, not while inside nor outside a building, and so on. It's a long list, to cover his bases.

For the rest of the film, the demon builds his kingdom and becomes a megalomaniac with delusions of godhood. His biggest irritation is his own son, Pralad, a devotee of Vishnu whose kindness, faith and spiritual purity is off the charts. Several attempts are made to kill him, but the boy is simply too nice and devout to die.

In the end, everyone's sick of Hiranyakashipu, so Vishnu appears as another avatar to take him down, that of Narasimha, an anthropomorphic lion. (Human feet, no tail.) He shows up around the 1:49 mark in the film, and that sequence lasts for about 18 minutes. Again it's a huge fight, so visually it's difficult to find a clear view when he's not moving.

Years ago, looking around the Internet, I'd stumbled across references to Narasimha, and every time I tried looking up images of him, most of what I found depicted his arms covered in blood, and an eviscerated corpse on his lap. What I didn't understand at the time was the story - this is the only time Narasimha shows up in the mythology, and that's simply what he does.

See, when the demon guy got Brahma to protect him from dying, neither by A nor by B, he neglected to include the in-between states when things aren't quite either A or B. So he's vulnerable at dawn and at dusk (neither day nor night), on the threshold of a building (neither inside nor outside), and also when Narasimha is holding him up (neither on the ground nor in the air), using his claws (not a man-made weapon), and ultimately he can be killed by Narasimha himself (who is neither quite man nor animal).

It's all more complicated than that of course, but you get the general idea. Are there other anthro beings in the film? Yes! At one point (from 1:33 to 1:37) they try to drown Pralad by having him coiled up by a sea serpent and falling off a huge waterfall into the depths of the ocean, but as usual his devotion saves him, with the help of Varun, god of the sea, a kind of merman with four arms. And by Garuda, king of the birds, an anthro eagle, who appears a second time just momentarily around 1:41.

The anthro content in this film is mostly fleeting, but if you're interested, in the U.S. it's available on Netflix.