Âya to majo

Started out with a great premise, then lost sight of it in the tangles it wove. The CGI characters had the look of those on cheap TV kids' shows, but the backgrounds in which they moved were Ghibli quality (of the past) in detail. As one of the other reviews mentioned, this was 2/3rds of a movie. That might be fortunate - character development was getting really annoying, especially that of Earwig herself.

I didn't connect with the characters or the story. It is not entertaining to watch horrid treatment of children. I didn't like it at all.

Did they really end the movie like that? lol

It felt like a first episode or half worked pilot for a series that was never meant to get picked up.

Now we'll never know what happens.

I gave 5 points because it had good ideas, but I took away 5 points because of the "ending" and the lack of a real conclusion. It goes nowhere.

I'm expecting lots of people to hate this movie. I hate when movies do that. It's very annoying. The Devil Inside and The Turning did the same thing. They present ideas and characters, but do nothing with them.

Saw this during the world premiere, an NHK broadcast (I'm in Japan and speak Japanese) and, while the CGI was initially off-putting - it looks like every other Japanese cartoon-to-CGI adaptation but with occasional Ghibli Eyes, and plastic SF5 Ken Banana Hair on everyone - it gradually started to win me over. Then, right when the story progression suggests that the third act is going to begin, as the past catches up with everyone, so that we can bring everything to a satisfying narrative conclusion... instead, we just get a smash cut to black and the credits.

The ending 100% feels like the cliffhanger to make you want to watch the second half of the movie. Unfortunately, so far as I am aware, there IS no second half. So instead, the movie just kind of tosses a bunch of narrative threads out, ignores all of them for nearly its entire runtime, and then remembers them all juuuuuust long enough to remind you that it ignored them entirely, before suddenly grinding to a halt.

Reasonably charming at times, if you're willing to accept that basically nothing that happens in the movie matters at all, and that there's no ending. Or, in other words, it's a modern Ghibli movie, I guess. Goro Miyazaki has inherited his father's knack for telling two thirds of a story.

Whyyyyyyy did Ghibli go 3D computer-animated?! This just felt uninspired. A really boring witch, especially for the main villain. There's no soul here. Rewatch Howl's Moving Castle instead.