Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Mirai is Studio Chizu, and director Mamoru “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” Hosoda’s latest film, and by that I mean he directed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, not that he is a girl who leapt through time, although it’s a fast moving world and it’s hard to keep up, especially as there’s a girl in Mirai who sort of leaps in time. I’m confused, let’s start over.
Mirai is, for me at least, a bit of a hard one to recap in any meaningful way that wouldn’t require about as long to describe as it would to watch it. I think the best I can say is that it concerns the growing pains of the Oda family, centred on Kun, their firstborn son, and his troubles adjusting at the ripe old age of four when he’s joined by new younger sister, Mirai.
While he does become jealous of the attention lavished on the newborn, he’s given some reassurance from an unlikely source. After playing around the tree this father designed their house around, a strangely clothed gentleman claiming to be the Prince of the house, turning out to be the anthropomorphic spirit of their dog Yukko, helps him gain some perspective on current events.
And to a degree that’s the format of the film – various largely entirely ordinary domestic flashpoints cause Kun to take another acid trip, where he meets or simply views various ancestors, often shepherded by the spirit of Mirai from the future.
At the risk, perhaps of sounding like I’m diminishing it a bit, there’s not a tremendous amount more to it narratively speaking, and perhaps even thematically speaking, other, perhaps than “raising kids is tricky, eh?”. What it does have, in overwhelming quantity, is charm, and it’s a very easy and emotional watch.
It helps, of course that it looks so good, with lovely fluid animation that’s occasionally marred by the CG backgrounds and such not quite marrying with the more traditional looking animation. But that’s a minor thing, and is barely worth mentioning. This is the first non-Ghibli anime film to receive an Academy Award nomination, and for once they’re doing something right.
Speaking of, while this isn’t on the same level as the master at Ghibli, this, at least, gives me some hope that Miyazaki isn’t completely correct in that comment that “Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people … It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans”. Studios Chizu and Ponoc, at the very least, seem more than willing and able to carry the humanity forward if Miyazaki does actually retire at some point.
So, yes, gorgeous and charming and has all the feelz, or at the very least 90% of the feelz. As highly recommended as anything I’ve seen this year, I’d say.