Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an animated film from 2018. That movie is "Mirai".
Now, for those of you who don't know anything about this movie, this film was written and directed by a man named Mamoru Hosoda. And I've seen 3 other movies from him that he also wrote and directed. One of them was "Summer Wars", which was pretty good, and I liked it enough to buy it on DVD. Then there was also "The Boy and the Beast", which was OK, I guess, but it's certainly nowhere near his best film. Which then leads to the other movie from him that I saw, which was "Wolf Children", and I absolutely adored that movie. So overall, Hosoda knows how to make good movies. And even his weakest film is still watchable.
Which now leads into tonight's movie, and I really don't know much about it. I know it has something to do involving a kid who meets his sister as a teenager, and they go through their family history to meet this kid's relatives from different time eras. So, I'm going to assume that this has something to do with time travel, which...sounds interesting. I'm not sure if this movie's going to handle this concept well, but I have do have hopes that it's going to be good. Mainly because, as I've stated, this is from Mamoru Hosoda, and he's had a good track record, so far.
Now, I've heard various things about this movie. I've heard some people say that it's pretty good, others say it's OK, and I've even heard a couple of people say that the movie is crap. So, it's a bit of a polarizing film. Which makes it easier for me, because I'm going into this movie completely blind. I have not seen any trailers or clips from this movie, so I'm in for a very interesting experience. I don't know if it's going to be a good experience, but the only way I'm gonna find that out, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Mirai".
2 minutes later
Well, guys, I can tell you this much so far. This opening song here is...actually really catchy. I'm really digging this song, guys.
13 minutes later
Wow, if this isn't the most irritating crying I had to deal with so far. Guys, I kind of figured that...wow...OK, that was probably the scariest fucking face I've ever seen a mother make. Anyway, my point being that I kinda figured I would have to deal with whining kids in this movie. But damn, this is almost incredibly annoying.
20 minutes later
OK, I have a bit of a dumb question here. So what happens if the Mirai from the future is seen by her Dad when she is just a baby? I'm a little bit confused by this, because they haven't really made it clear as to whether or not there would be consequences if Mirai is seen by someone from her past. Mind you, the movie's been really good so far, but I am a little confused by those tidbits of information. I'm hoping that the movie is going to explain that at some point.
19 minutes later
Sorry, guys, if I haven't been saying whole lot, but I'm really getting sucked into this story. It's been surprisingly good. I really wasn't expecting that from this movie.
11 minutes later
Guys, I'd like to say right now that this movie has some breathtaking animation. This is some really amazing stuff here. Also, the music is really solid, even if you can't hear it right now for obvious reasons. This is some really awesome stuff.
13 minutes later
OK, that's probably one of the creepiest fucking things I've seen this entire movie. And if I was Kun's age, I would probably do more than just ask questions, I would honestly be really freaked out if this person I'm talking to looked like THAT. And no, I'm not gonna tell you what this person looks like, you're just gonna have to watch the movie for yourself.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Mirai". Let me shut the movie off...OK. Wow, that actually turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would. So, what do I start with first?
Let's start with writing, because I think that's the best place to start with. I've noticed a pattern throughout all of the films that I've seen from Hosoda, which is that they all have something to do with family. For those who haven't seen any of his films, I'm gonna give you a brief summary of each one that I've seen. I'm gonna start with "The Boy and the Beast", because that's the one I don't have a lot of memory with. But from what I remembered, it was about a boy that lives with this bear spirit and he somehow ended up being an apprentice to that beast spirit. Again, it's been quite a few years since I last saw that movie, because it wasn't all that memorable to me. I may have to give it another watch at some point as soon as I can find a copy of it. "Summer Wars" was about this teenager that ends up being this chick's boyfriend because she wanted to come back home to her family to prove that she had a boyfriend that will end up caring for her. And they also end up getting involved in an online world called OZ, where they had to battle against some online avatar that's eating up other people's online avatars. It's a little bit of a complicated story there, but that is also another aspect where family is involved. "Wolf Children" was about a woman who ends up falling in love with this guy, who turns out to be the last of his kind of an ancient race of werewolves. And they ended up having children together, who are born part human/part wolf. And after the father dies from an accident, she ends up having to care for both children on her own. It was basically a slice of life story as she gets through life's challenges, while trying to raise two children of her own. So, all of those movies have something to do with family in some way, shape, or form. And normally, I would not be into these kinds of films because I'm not a huge fan of children, and I feared that this movie would suck, because it was mostly going to focus on this one main child character and his little sister. Well, little sister from the future to be more accurate, but I'll get into that in a moment. So, that's what I feared going into this movie. But somehow, Hosoda was able to take this child character, along with his sister, and make it work incredibly well with our story. And that's not something most movies are able to accomplish with me. But, like I said, Hosoda is able to take these stories involving family, and make it work really well.
So, what is the premise of this story? Well, believe it or not, this story is, from what I picked up, a re-imagining of the classic tale of "A Christmas Carol". Now I say that it's a re-imagining, because a lot of adaptations, be it from movies or television specials, would follow that same story where Scrooge, or some half-assed version of that character, ends up hating Christmas and they end up meeting 3 ghosts to try and change his ways before something bad happens to him and the people around him. This movie, however, while it does take that concept, it's doing it in a much different way, and it does it well enough to be be it's own original story. Plus also, Christmas doesn't play a factor here. So anyway, we have our main character, Kun, who gets introduced to his baby sister, Mirai. And she ends up getting more attention, because she is the newest member of the family of four. Which grows into jealousy for Kun, because he thinks that his Mom and Dad don't love him anymore because she's getting all the attention. So much so that, on two separate occasions, he almost ends up hitting his baby sister with a toy bullet train. Which is a little bit extreme for a young child, but I'm not gonna get into that. So because of his growing jealousy for his baby sister, he ends up not liking her. Which then leads him into this garden that they have in their house with this one lone tree in the middle. And through this magic tree, if you want to call it that, he ends up meeting a couple of his family members. One of them ends up being Mirai as a teenager. He also meets his pet dog as a human, but he's not in the movie for too long. He also meets a couple more of his family members later on in the movie. Who they are, I'm not going to spoil. This is a movie that you have to see for yourself, because if I talk about that in any detail, then it would result in massive spoilers. Granted, the story is very similar to the classic tale of "A Christmas Carol", so you might have an idea of how the story's going to end, but who he meets and where he goes from there is something I'm going to leave for you guys to view for yourself. Our characters are very likable, and very well fleshed out. This is one of those very rare cases where there isn't a single unlikable character that you won't end up despising. There might be a background character here and there that you won't end up caring about, but they aren't really a big part of the story, so you won't have to worry about that. Every character in this movie is likable, and that's something I don't see happen often in a lot of movies. Usually, I would run into a few, or a lot of unlikable characters. Or in the case of my last Reaction & Review of "Mardi Gras Massacre", there were no likable characters to be found whatsoever. This movie does the exact opposite. Every character is likable, and you really do end up caring for a lot of them, whether they're supporting characters or our main characters.
If there are really any negatives, I guess I could pull out a few minors ones. One of them involves our main child character, Kun. Kun, when he first starts off, is really annoying and obnoxious. But then again, that's how damn near every child acts when they are that age. So it's something that you have to take for what it's worth. But he's certainly not the worst child character I've ever had to lay eyes on, and he DOES get better as the movie goes along, so at least there is that. The other issue I do have is something that I brought up earlier. So earlier, I mentioned that if Mirai was seen by her Dad from the past, then what would happen? I should probably explain this in a little more detail. So, there are these two dolls that are set up for Mirai as a baby. And if they are not put away by the day's end, then that means Mirai wouldn't be able to meet the husband that she's going to marry for every year of every day that the doll's are not put away. I have no idea if that's a real tradition or not in Japan, but I'm not going to get into that here. So at first, the teenager Mirai tries to get Kun to put away the dolls that their Dad forgot to do, because he's distracted by his work on his laptop. But then she notices that Kun's hands are dirty, and decides that she, along with Yukko, which is the pet dog that is a human, ends up trying to put away the dolls themselves without having the father see them. Now, since this is a re-imagining of "A Christmas Carol", you would think that maybe since these are characters that Kun can only see, why would they have to worry about getting spotted? Especially Mirai. Now you could write this off as it being a game to Mirai because, since Kun is just a child, he wouldn't notice the differences between reality and fiction. However, I don't really buy that. So I don't see why teenage Mirai is worried about her father noticing her, or Yukko for that matter. The only other thing that I guess I could bring up is the family tree in the home. Now again, without delving too much into spoilers, we do kind of get an explanation about what this tree is towards the end of the film. And I could see the film being a little bit creative with this idea, but it's still kind of a weak explanation. However, it's not too big of a deal to make it a negative, so I'm not really going to count it as one. Overall, guys, the writing in this movie is really sharp and very well thought out. Even though it's just a re-imagining of a classic story, it's still very well written and I really loved what was shown here. In fact, whenever I do watch it again, I might notice some things that I didn't see from my first viewing of this thing. So yeah, the writing in this movie is great.
What about the acting? Well, I opted to watch the English dub, and, for the most part, the acting in this dub is very solid. I was expecting the worst from whoever voiced Kun. However, that didn't end up happening, because whoever they got to voice this child was fantastic at it. They sounded like how a child would sound like at Kun's age. And while it did get annoying at times, it was intentional. So I'm not going to blame whoever voiced Kun, because they did a really good job at it. There is one voice actress, however, I need to bring up, and it's whoever voiced the Mom. And this one is a bit of a strange one to talk about, because, at times, it sounds like she's just phoning it in, and she's not really putting in any kind of effort into making herself sound believable. But then there are moments where she's actually putting some effort into whatever emotion that she's trying to give out. And when she DOES do that, it sounds really good. Which begs the question on why she sounded like she didn't really care about putting in any effort into some of her lines, because she sounded kinda bored giving out her dialogue. Now I don't know if it was an issue involving her voice direction, or if she just had on off day when recording her lines. I have no idea. However, like I said, when she is putting effort into her lines, she still does a very good at it. And the same could be said for the entire cast of this dub. Everybody turned in very good showings, and they mostly made this dub worth watching. Again, minus the questionable performance of the actress who voiced the mother. But again, it's not too much of an issue, unless you're someone who's not into English dubs. Overall, the acting is very good, and I very much enjoyed this dub.
Now let's talk about the animation. The art style for this movie is fucking beautiful. But then again, this could also be attributed to the fact that this was made by Studio Chizu, which was the same animation studio that also made the other 3 movies I mentioned early on, such as "The Boy and the Beast", "Summer Wars", and "Wolf Children". And that same art style and animation carries on in this movie. It is such a beautiful film to look at. The characters are well drawn, the color palette's are great, and the backgrounds look amazing as well. There is also some utilization of CG in this film. Now, one thing you have to take into consideration is that you really have to be careful on how you mix in 2D animation with CG. Because a lot of animated movies, the ones I've seen anyway, usually would find some way to fuck this up. A real good example of this would be a majority of DC's direct-to-video animated films. While the 2D animation in those movies look great, most of them would utilize CG for stuff such as cars, and most of them look like shit. Anime films are guilty of this, too. "Fireworks" is one very good example. While most of the CG was good in that movie, there were also shots of characters riding bicycles in CG, and they looked horrendous. So I was worried that this movie would fall into this same trap. And thank god, this movie actually proved me wrong. This movie has some of the best mixture of blending in 2D animation with CG, and it's mostly just for vehicles. But they actually managed pull it off, and they pulled it off well. One great example I can think of is towards the latter half of the movie. Again, without going into spoilers, there is one train in this movie that is rendered in CG. And, holy shit, this train looks fucking amazing in CG. This is one of the best looking CG trains I have seen...ever. Guys, I never thought I would gush over something such as a train in CG. But this one train looks so fucking cool, that it really is something that you need to see for yourself. But overall guys, the animation in both 2D and the CG elements is great. And to any animation studio that wants to mix in CG with 2D animation, follow this movie's example. Because they know how to do it right.
Sound-mix here is great. The music in both the score and songs are also really good, too. Overall, guys, am I able to recommend "Mirai"? Oh, hell yes, dude. This thing really surprised me on how good it really was. And if it weren't for "Wolf Children", I would probably place this as my favorite film from Mamoru Hosoda. But still, this thing is fucking great. And if you are fan of Hosoda's movies, and you haven't had a chance to see this one yet, by all means, please do. It is definitely worth your time. The only thing that MIGHT hold this movie back for you is if you aren't a fan of children. But then again, I'm not a fan of children either, and I still ended up really enjoying this movie a lot. And it's certainly made me a fan of Hosoda, as a filmmaker. And if he's able to continue pumping out great films such as this and "Wolf Children", then he's probably going to end up becoming one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers of all time, next to Satoshi Kon. Which I understand is kind of a big feat, however, Hosoda is certainly making a strong case. And this movie is certainly going to have a prominent spot on my DVD shelf. And on that note, I think I'm gonna go and watch another film Hosoda wrote and directed. I think I'm gonna go and watch "Wolf Children", because it has been almost a year since I last saw it, and I think it deserves another viewing.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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