Kubo and the Two Strings
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49 free Kubo and the Two Strings trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kubo and the Two Strings is the 2016 stop-motion fantasy that marked the directing debut of Laika CEO Travis Knight, a one-time rapper whose father co-founded Nike. Set in feudal Japan, it follows a one-eyed boy with a magical shamisen, a stern monkey who is more than she seems and a samurai cursed into a stag beetle, all hunted by the Moon King and his masked daughters. These 49 questions cover the film from every angle: the voice cast of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes and Rooney Mara; the plot beats from the Bon Festival to the Garden of Eyes and the village bell; the production story of ukiyo-e prints, Kiyoshi Saito, Stratasys 3D printers and the 16-foot skeleton puppet that Laika bought an eBay robot to move; Dario Marianelli's score and Regina Spektor's Beatles cover; and an awards season that brought a BAFTA and two Oscar nominations, both lost to Disney. Easy questions stick to the cast and the story; the expert tier asks about Mondo vinyl, the Yoshida Brothers and Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for an animation night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which whispered line opens Kubo and the Two Strings?
If you must blink, do it now
If you must blink, do it now. Kubo whispers the warning over a black screen before the first image, then shouts it again in the village square as he begins his street performance.
Q 02Travis Knight followed Kubo, his directing debut, with which live-action Transformers film?
Bumblebee
Bumblebee. For his first live-action film, Kubo's director set the story in 1987 and stripped the robots back to the look of the original 1980s toys and cartoon.
Q 03Which animation technique is Kubo and the Two Strings mainly made with?
Stop-motion
Stop-motion. Animators posed real puppets one frame at a time and swapped in 3D-printed faces for each expression, while computers filled in the backgrounds behind them.
Q 04What magical instrument does Kubo play?
Shamisen
Shamisen. The three-stringed Japanese lute is played with a large pick called a bachi, and Kubo snaps two of its strings in the blast that defeats one of his pursuers.
Q 05Who took Kubo's left eye when he was a baby?
The Moon King
The Moon King. He is Kubo's own grandfather, and he wants the other eye too, so the boy will be blind to humanity and take a place beside him, immortal, in the heavens.
Q 06Which Game of Thrones actor voices Kubo?
Art Parkinson
Art Parkinson. The Irish teenager, Rickon Stark in Game of Thrones, voices a one-eyed boy who supports his ailing mother by telling stories in the village market.
Q 07Who voices Monkey, Kubo's stern protector on his quest?
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron. Her Monkey is a surly, deadpan guardian who warns Kubo that if he does not eat he will be weak, then slow, then dead, and sets off with him to find his father's armor.
Q 08Who voices Beetle, the forgetful samurai who joins Kubo's quest?
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey. His Beetle is a samurai cursed into an insect's shell with no memory of his own name, sure only that he once served the great warrior Hanzo.
Q 09Which Harry Potter actor voices Kubo's grandfather?
Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes. He first appears as a kindly blind old man, then bursts into a towering monster for the final battle, a turn one critic called his most Voldemortian.
Q 10Who voices both of the twin Sisters who hunt Kubo?
Rooney Mara
Rooney Mara. She voices both twins, sent by their father to take Kubo's remaining eye; Monkey beats one in a storm on the water and Kubo's music fells the other.
Q 11What does Kubo's music bring to life when he tells stories in the village?
Origami figures
Origami figures. As Kubo plays, sheets of paper leap from his bag and fold themselves into a tiny warrior and the beasts he fights, among them a fire-breathing chicken.
Q 12Who does Kubo's guardian Monkey turn out to be?
Kubo's mother
Kubo's mother. She spent the last of her magic saving him and came back as his guardian, a truth he sees in a vision while a creature of the deep holds him entranced.
Q 13Who is Kubo's companion Beetle revealed to be?
Kubo's father
Kubo's father. Beetle is the samurai Hanzo, cursed into an insect's body and robbed of his memory by Kubo's grandfather for running away with his daughter.
Q 21Monkey springs to life from which keepsake that Kubo carries?
A wooden charm
A wooden charm. Kubo calls the little carved snow monkey Mr. Monkey and keeps it in his pocket, until he wakes one day to find it full-sized, alive and giving him orders.
Q 22What does Kubo's mother warn him he must never do?
Stay out after dark
Stay out after dark. Night is when those who took his eye can find him, and the one evening Kubo lingers past sunset, his hunters appear within moments.
Q 23Kubo's makers wanted the film to look like a moving woodblock print in which Japanese style?
Ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e. The name means 'pictures of the floating world', and the director made its woodblock prints the lens for every design choice, limiting each sequence to a handful of colors.
Q 14Which festival does Kubo attend, hoping to speak with Hanzo's spirit?
Obon
Obon. Kubo folds a paper lantern at the graveside to call his father, and when no spirit answers he crushes it in anger, then smooths it out again in shame.
Q 15The first piece of armor Kubo recovers is a blade called the Sword what?
Unbreakable
Unbreakable. The sword is lodged among dozens of blades in a giant creature's skull, and Kubo has to smash through their hilts to find the right one and wrench it free.
Q 16Which piece of the armor Kubo seeks turns out to be his village's bell?
The helmet
The helmet. Little Hanzo points Kubo to a drawing of the Helmet Invulnerable, and the boy sees that it is the bell he has heard ring over his village every evening.
Q 17Where do Kubo and Beetle find the Breastplate Impenetrable?
At the bottom of a lake
At the bottom of a lake. Kubo and Beetle dive for it from their boat, and the creature guarding it holds Kubo in a trance until Beetle hauls him out, unconscious.
Q 18What kind of creature is the Garden of Eyes that Kubo meets?
A sea monster
A sea monster. Its many eyes hold victims spellbound with visions of secrets until it can eat them, and Kubo is freed only when Beetle shoots an arrow into one.
Q 19What becomes of Kubo's grandfather once his powers are stripped away?
He loses his memory
He loses his memory. Left a confused, mortal old man, he is told by the villagers that he was the kindest man in the village, and they take him in as one of their own.
Q 20In Kubo's final scene, the villagers' floating lanterns transform into what?
Glowing birds
Glowing birds. The paper lanterns refold themselves on the river and rise to join a flock said to carry the souls of the dead, while Kubo stands between the spirits of his parents.
Q 24How are the twin Sisters related to Kubo?
His aunts
His aunts. They greet him with 'Come to your aunties': the pair stayed loyal to their father when their sister, sent to kill a samurai, fell in love with him instead.
Q 25Which Japanese animator's films did Kubo's director name as an enormous influence?
Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki. Kubo's director calls Studio Ghibli a kindred spirit, and traces his love of Japan to a business trip he tagged along on with his father at the age of eight.
Q 26How tall is the giant skeleton puppet that Laika built for Kubo?
16 feet
16 feet. Laika's effects supervisor says the 400-pound skeleton could have been computer-generated, but the crew was so keen to build the biggest puppet of its kind ever that he backed them.
Q 27Where did Laika's crew buy an industrial robot to move Kubo's giant skeleton puppet?
eBay
eBay. The factory robot's controls could not talk to the studio's camera system, so the crew built its own motion base, the kind of rig that rocks theme-park rides.
Q 28Which composer, an Oscar winner for Atonement, wrote the score for Kubo and the Two Strings?
Dario Marianelli
Dario Marianelli. He studied Japanese scales for the job, saying the West knows little beyond the piano's black keys, and gave Kubo's own cues what he called a rock-and-roll spirit.
Q 29Which Beatles track does Regina Spektor perform on the soundtrack?
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Marianelli's arrangement includes a shamisen solo and ends with a piano coda.
Q 30What does Kubo use as the third and final string when he restrings his instrument?
His own hair
His own hair. Kubo first strings a bowstring and a strand of hair he has kept, then plucks the third from his head as the beast closes in, and his playing calls up the village's dead.