With help of "Little Hanzo", an origami figure based on Kubo's father, they set out to find the armor. Monkey tells him Sariatu is gone and the village destroyed. Kubo wakes up in a distant land to find Monkey, his wooden snow monkey charm, has come alive. Karasu and Washi quickly find him and attack, but Sariatu suddenly appears and uses her magic to send Kubo far away, telling him to find his father's armor. Kubo attends but is angry that Hanzo does not appear from his lantern, and forgets to return home before sunset.
One day, Kubo learns of the village's Bon festival allowing them to speak to deceased loved ones. Sariatu warns him not to stay out after dark as her Sisters, Karasu and Washi, and his grandfather, the Moon King (who took his eye when he was a baby) will find him and take his remaining eye. Kubo is never able to finish his story, as he does not know what happened to Hanzo and Sariatu cannot recall the end due to her deteriorating mental state. He earns their living by magically manipulating origami with music from his shamisen for the village folk, telling the tale of his missing father Hanzo, a samurai warrior. In feudal Japan, a 12-year-old boy with only one eye named Kubo tends to his ill mother Sariatu in a mountain cave near a village.
The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects, becoming the second stop-motion animated film ever to be nominated in the latter category following 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the first film to be nominated for both. Kubo premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival and was released by Focus Features in the United States on August 19 to critical acclaim, but was considered a box office failure, grossing $77 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must embark on a quest to defeat his mother's evil Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather, Raiden the Moon King, who is responsible for stealing his left eye. The film revolves around Kubo, a young boy who wields a magical shamisen (a Japanese stringed instrument) and whose left eye was stolen during infancy. It stars Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brenda Vaccaro, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey. Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American stop-motion animated action fantasy film directed by Travis Knight (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by animation studio Laika.