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Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Release date: May 16, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Mirai’ was the third feature film Mamoru Hosoda made for his own studio, Studio Chizu. Hosoda favors rather episodic films about growing up, and ‘Mirai’ is no exception, although the film takes place in a much smaller time frame than ‘Wolf Children’ or ‘The Boy and the Beast’.
Main protagonist of the film is ca. four-year-old boy Kun, who lives in a design house in Yokohama (the town is depicted regularly during the film in swooping bird-eye’s view shots), but more importantly, who gets a baby sister, the Mirai from the title. Mirai also means future, and in fact, the Japanese title is ‘Mirai no Mirai’, or ‘Mirai from the future’. Indeed, Kun meets an older version of his younger sister from the future, as well as some other characters, while he struggles to adapt to the new situation he finds himself in.
Because with the coming of little Mirai a lot changes for the young boy: his parents have less attention for him, focusing more on the new baby, they’re more often tired and crabby, and they struggle with combining working and caring, now there are two children around. Needless to say, Kun has a hard time getting adjusted, and even gets jealous of his innocent baby sister.
The film focuses on some key scenes, in which Kun experiences a setback, at least in his own mind, and then something magical happens in the little courtyard of his house. First the little boy first meets a humanized form of the family dog, and then his younger sister in older form (there’s more, but I won’t spoil it here).
Unfortunately, Hosoda doesn’t stick to the boy-sister relationship, and at some point, the magic scenes also help Kun overcome his fears. Moreover, a four-year-old is a difficult and questionable protagonist of a film that wants to show the hero’s progress. After all, he is just a little boy. It’s little surprising that Hosoda spends considerable time on Kun’s parents, and their development during this crucial part of their lives. And, indeed, to be frank, Hosoda’s honest depiction of the hardships of young parenthood and of raising one’s own children is much more interesting than Kun’s ‘development’ of character.
Main attraction of the film are the five magical scenes, with the first two showing some broad comedy, as the man-dog and Mirai from the future roam around the house. The third and fourth start to feel obligatory, even though the fourth has a nice nostalgic feel to it. But with the fifth, Hosoda goes completely overboard, and one wonders why these nightmarish scenes, taking the film to a altogether other atmosphere, were even necessary. In fact, this finale, in which Hosoda wants to tell us something about family ties, is too overtly self-explanatory and spoils a film that wasn’t perfect to start with.
In fact, ‘Mirai’ drags a little, being mostly confined to the small space of Kun’s house and with Kun’s development of character as an important, but very weak story device. The film’s episodic nature doesn’t really help, spreading the story thin, a problem that also invades ‘Wolf Children’ and ‘The Boy and the Beast’. I wish Hosoda was able to keep his use of time as tight as his use of space in this movie. ‘Mirai’ is not a failure, the film is too original for that, but it’s arguably Hosoda’s weakest feature film so far, never reaching the emotional heights of either ‘Wolf Children’, ‘The Boy and the Beast’ or even his debut film, ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ from 2006.
Watch the trailer for ‘Mirai’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Mirai’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Release Date: June 25, 2012
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Director Mamoru Hosoda rose to prominence with the feature films ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ (2006) and ‘Summer Wars’ (2009), both made at the Madhouse studio.
To make his next film, ‘Wolf Children’ he created his own studio, Chizu, allowing him to make ‘author films’. And indeed, Hosoda has proven to be a strong voice in Japanese animated cinema, especially with ‘The Boy and the Beast’ (2015). Many place ‘Wolf Children’ in the same league, but I’d disagree, as I will explain below.
‘Wolf Children’ tells about Hana, a student who falls in love with an enigmatic boy, who turns out to be half man half wolf. She bears him two children, who have inherited her boyfriend’s dualistic nature, but then he dies, and she must raise the two on her own. But how will she manage as her children are both human and wolf?
The film encompasses a long time period, up to ca. twenty years, and from time to time a voice over (by Hana’s daughter Yuki) takes over. The film thus is very episodic, but also remarkably low key, poetic and tranquil. Several scenes are mood pieces, only carried by music, letting the images do the work. Moreover, most of the emotions are seen from a distance, and the most dramatic moment of the movie, Yuki’s rescue of her little brother Ame, isn’t even shown.
Unfortunately, the episodic nature also means that the film lacks focus. The story doesn’t stay with Hana but diverts to the experiences of Yuki and Ame and back, story lines are introduced and dropped as well as characters. For example, when Hana moves to the countryside, several scenes are devoted to her relationship with the villagers, most importantly one grumpy old Nirasaki. But later this theme is dropped, and the characters are not seen again.
Hosoda does succeed in showing how little events in children’s lives can change their character and outlook on life forever. Indeed, Yuki and Ame go different directions in life, proving that one upbringing can have very different outcomes.
Despite the film’s interesting message, the lack of focus, the episodic nature, the slow speed, and the sheer length (the film clocks almost two hours) all hamper the film. One wishes Hosoda dared to be more concise, killing more darlings.
Moreover, stylistically the film doesn’t deviate from the general anime style. As all other anime films of the era, the movie exploits very realistic and intricate background art, and the character design feels generic and uninspired, despite being designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto of ‘Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water’ (1990) and ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ (1995) fame. In fact, with their rather ugly line work and flat colors, the characters contrast greatly with the often beautiful background art, and are simply subpar.
The animation and cinematography, on the other hand, are excellent, and there’s some clever use of computer animation, especially during the scene in which Yuki and Ame run through a snow-covered forest.
‘Wolf Children’ is certainly an interesting and by no means a bad movie, but for a director being able to do his own thing, Hosoda certainly could have been more daring artistically, and more focused storywise.
Watch the trailer for ‘Wolf Children’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Wolf Children’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Release Date: July 11, 2015
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
For quite a time only three Japanese author directors of animated films were known in the West: Osamu Tezuka, Katsuhiro Otomo and Hayao Miyazaki (well, and perhaps Miyazaki’s friend and Ghibli-associate Isao Takahata). But in the 2000s several others were added, most notably Satoshi Kon (who, unfortunately, died prematurely), Masaaki Yuasa, Makoto Shinkai, and Mamoru Hosoda. The latter impressed audiences with his films ‘The Girl Who Lept Through Time’ (2006), ‘Summer Wars’ (2009) and especially ‘Wolf Children’ (2012), for which he had erected his own studio, Studio Chizu.
‘The Boy and the Beast’, like ‘Wolf Children’, was made at Hosoda’s own Chizu studio. It’s a coming-of-age story, largely set in a parallel world of Bakemono, shapeshifting spirits that in Hosoda’s film have taken the shape of anthropomorphized animals. The whole concept of Bakemono is, of course, unknown to us Westerners (I, at least had no knowledge of this part of Japanese folklore), but luckily, Hosoda provides the film with an introduction, which sortly sets out this strange otherworld, and its major inhabitants: an aging Grandmaster (who turns out to be an old rabbit), and his rival successors, Iouzen (a hog) and Kumatetsu, a bear.
Then we cut to present Tokyo, where nine years old Ren wanders the streets. After the death of his mother he has run away from home and he has nowhere to go. By some strange events he enters the parallel Bakemono world called Juutengai, where he becomes Kumatetsu’s pupil.
Kumatetsu can be viewed as Ren’s counterpart: he’s alone and lonely, having grown up without parents. But the old bear is also immature, lazy, selfish, and extremely quick-tempered. In fact, he can learn something from his own young pupil, and although the two quarrel throughout the picture, it becomes clear the two recognize something in each other, and love each other for it.
On this premise Hosoda builds a surprisingly complex story about what it means to grow up without parents. In fact, despite the elaborate fantasy world and spectacular fight scenes this is a film about loss and of the empty feeling inside of having no father or mother or either. Indeed, halfway the film jumps several years forward and the now seventeen years old Ren (or Kyuta, as Kumatetsu calls him) has to deal with the emptiness inside him. He learns that this can be filled with love of others. Back in the real world, he meets a girl called Kaede who helps him to cope.
More than any of Hosoda’s previous films, this movie seems to owe quite a lot to the Ghibli studio influence: the coming-of-age story, the parallel world, children working and learning how to become disciplined, adult figures becoming quite fond of the human child in their world – it’s all very similar to particularly ‘Spirited Away’ (2001). But unlike Miyazaki’s masterpiece, ‘The Boy and the Beast’ does know a real villain, a boy called Ichirōhiko, even if his villainy is explained by loss. Ichirōhiko is similar to Ren, but he has never been able to fill the void inside him, and consequently, he’s filled with anger and hate.
Ichirōhiko provides the most surreal scene in the entire film: the shadow of a whale swimming through the streets of Tokyo. But throughout the background art and imagery is rich and colorful: Tokyo feels absolutely real, as does the fantasy world of Juutengai. As said, the story is rather complex, but it remains engaging throughout and never loses focus on its main message. The animation, too, is fine, if not exceptional, as is the drawing style, which is a little more generic than the average Ghibli product.
In all, ‘The Boy and the Beast’ corroborates Hosoda as a strong author-director. If only American animated cinema would allow strong individual voices like him!
Watch the trailer for ‘The Boy and the Beast’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Boy and the Beast’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
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