Sometimes it’s the simplest stories that can be told the best, and nowhere is it truer than with Kubo and the Two Strings.

The latest film from Laika, Kubo begins with the story of a woman fighting a raging sea. She’s trying desperately to make landfall. Why? As we find out when she washes ashore - she’s trying to protect her son, a very special boy, who lost his eye to his Grandfather…better known as the Moon King.

The film shifts to 11 years later - the boy, Kubo (Art Parkinson), works to care for his now catatonic mother, and earn money as a storyteller, waxing yarns about a heroic samurai named Hanzo. Hanzo is in search of magical armor, and faces many perils on his journey, and wouldn’t you know it…those stories are more real than Kubo ever knew.

This sets Kubo on an adventure - searching for this ancient armor, with sidekicks in the form of a grumpy monkey, named Monkey (Charlize Theron), and a cursed samurai named Beetle (Matthew McConaughey). The quest that follows is a classic heroes journey, cut from the same cloth of The Legend of Zelda and countless Japanese role-playing games (not to mention many fairy tales). But what makes Kubo standout is the confidence with which Laika tells its tale.

While on paper a family film, Kubo goes to very dark places - ideas of spirituality, death, the afterlife, love, loss, and most importantly, life after loss are explored with remarkable maturity, even if it’s as the backdrop of an adventure film.

With their two best films, Coraline and ParaNorman, Laika proved themselves adept storytellers, using the basis of a family-friendly animated film to explore deeper, more mature topics (for example, ParaNorman has some of the most striking interpretations of sadness and depression I’ve ever seen) - Kubo and the Two Strings continues this proud lineage, and I can only imagine the strong effect it will have on generations of children to come.

I realize now that I had yet to speak about the brilliance of the animation of the film, but it’s mostly because - at this point - Laika is showing off with how well they’ve perfected the art of stop-motion animation. The visuals here are breathtaking, and I recommend staying through the credits, as there is a brilliant sequence showing the real-life scale of one of the movie’s most breath-taking set pieces.

Wonderful for all ages, full of heart, depth, and brilliant artistry, Kubo and the Two Strings is a late-summer joy for all ages.

Kubo and the Two Strings is in theaters now, and is available for pre-order via iTunes and Amazon.