Reviews::Main

Director: Sunao Katabuchi Year: 2009 Language: 日本語 (Japanese) (English Sub) Country: 日本 (Japan)

On the face of it, Mai Mai Miracle should be a strong contender to join Studio Ghibl in the ranks of Japanese animation know to many outside Anime circles, but the problem is, it's not that good.

The story follows a young girl named Shinko growing up in a small town in Japan shortly after World War II. She listens to stories her grandfather tells her about how the ancient capital of the region used to sit on the land they now farm and makes friends with a new girl in her school who no-one else is interested in.

She has an imagination that lets her travel 1000 years into the past to see what life was like in those times. And this is where the main problem with the film creeps in, the flashbacks to the past are too prevalent to just be a passing thought, but aren't fleshed out enough and don't have enough relevance to the rest of the story to have any point. There are a couple of other sub-plots and they are each ok when taken alone, but don't gel together well.

The animation is reasonable and it looks like there should be a Ghibli-esque story in there somewhere, but I found the film dragged on, despite only running to just over 90 minutes.

Overall, not a terrible film, but should have been so much better.

Dave W - 21st June, 2010 - 19:08