Mirai

A few short days after watching Ambiguous Places and feeling that I don't get Japanese humor, I got a chance to mend things between me and the Japanese sense of humor. This is a very Japanese family story, that manages to be universal at the same time.

Charming witty and fun, all the way through. Superb animation of nature, nature's phenomanons (think of the falling snow) and city surroundings. The people as always with Japanese anima, are secondery. but it doesn't hurt the overall result. One of the best real life fantasies I've seen from Japan or anywhere else in a very long while. Kids will love it and will identify with the four years old hero and his lovely family. Adults will love its wit and wisdom.

I saw this movie last night and having never seen any anime films before I was a little skeptical, but in the end was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The opening of this film was beautiful and a treat for the eyes. The birds eye view of the city we receive was so realistic that on first thought, I was sure that it was real and not animated. Other highlights for me were a sequence with trains running along the train line that I thought was done well and I liked the use of colours that helped define different times of the day.

The characters in this film are very well crafted. I cannot begin to say which is my favourite as each was so good. Kun definitely stands out as being I think the main character, although this film is named after his sister, the story did revolve more around Kun and how he felt about his new baby sister and his feelings towards his parents after her birth. I believe the director has well captured the typical behaviour and emotions of children and adults throughout this film.

I laughed a lot during the movie. The comedy in "Mirai" was well written and played out often quite naturally but also with bit of the melodramatic.

I would recommend this movie for anyone who is an anime fan, who likes to laugh and who enjoys a heartwarming, thought-provoking movie

My compliments to all who worked on the making of "Mirai". It is a job well done. I give it 4 and a half stars (or 9/10).

A wise crafted animation about family, parenthood, childhood in its precise and lovely ideas , maybe, to realistic . A charming - seductive fairy tale. So, just seductive and useful and profound poetic.

After the mediocre mistep of The Boy and the Beast, the brilliant Mamoru Hosoda returns reasonably to form with Mirai.

While Hosoda's previous movies all fell solidly in the fantasy genre, this one is somewhat different. The fantastical elements are all in a young boy's mind, and the movie charts the way he processes the real world through wildly imaginative interludes.

Episodic and slight, Hosoda hasn't quite reached the heights of Wolf Children or Summer Wars, but he has made an absolutely lovely, beautifully animated, funny and touching movie.

Mirai is the story of Kun, the eldest child of a pair of young professionals. He, at the start of the movie, ends up becoming a big brother. The new addition to the household of course creates some new tensions, and the way Kun ends up dealing with the divided attention of his parents is by travelling through time to meet his family members in different points in time. Like you do.

Mamoru Hosoda, the director, is a real up-and-coming name in the anime industry, with some true gems under his name. Wolf Children and Summer Wars to name a few. His second to last film, The Boy and the Beast, did not impress me all that much, but fortunately Mirai is a slight uptick from that. And I've always liked his animation style, and I still do. The almost too simplistic character designs set against elaborate backgrounds are a joy to watch and there's a really great sense of movement in everything he does.

I like the idea of Mirai, on paper. A young boy, settled with new responsibilities, turns to make-belief and fantasy in order to grow as a human being and as a big brother. Unfortunately the focus of the film is on his temper tantrums and his difficulties in accepting that he is not the sole focus of his parents' love. The problem with that being that almost the entirety of the film is him acting like a total brat. And it's hard to get behind a character like that. This film sorely needs a bit more sugar to make the medicine go down, if you know what I mean.

I would also have liked for the movie to confirm that he is in fact imagining all these things. Now it's a weird "is it or is it not" that pleases no one.

Then again, some of the individual segments are really great. I especially liked the bit about his great-grandfather with its post-war aesthetics and its focus on looking ahead and not giving up no matter what the circumstances.

Is it the best movie Mamoru Hosoda has ever done? No, not by a long shot, but it's still a very well animated movie with some truly inspired pieces. The main character is a bit hard to swallow, but then again he's a four-year-old boy. None of them are angels to begin with.