Anime On the Big Screen: “Mirai”

Venue: Dendy Cinemas, Level 2, North Quarter, Canberra Centre, 148 Bunda Street, Canberra City, ACT
Date: Saturday 25 August 2018
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Format: Digital Projection, Japanese dialogue with some English dialogue with English subtitles
Length: 98 minutes
Production Date: 2018
Currently on Home Video in English (as of writing): No

Yet another anime film has come to cinemas. This time it’s Mamoru Hosoda’s fifth major film (discounting the “Digimon” and “One Piece” films he directed). This most certainly a much welcome change from the numerous anime compilation films and the run of stunningly mediocre anime features Madman has foisted on cinema goers this year. I was really looking forward to this film. It was a typical Canberra winter’s day; overcast, a shower which barely wet the ground; however it was quite mild, a bit warmer than the usual weather we’ve been having. As a result, the Canberra Centre was packed, even more so than usual. Dendy is still playing limited season anime films twice a day, first at around 4pm, the second screening around 6pm. Can’t say I’m overly happy with that arrangement, but whatever. I went to the earlier session. Only 10 people showed up for this session which did surprise me seeing as it’s a Mamoru Hosoda film. Madman even put a bit of effort into promoting this film; a single poster in the foyer. Usually they do bugger all except ads on Facebook and Twitter. Anyway, let’s talk about the film;

Four year old Kun lives in with parents in an upper middle class suburb in Isogo ward, Yokohama. Kun has a deep fascination with trains and constantly playing with toy trains, which his grandmother is attempting to get him to put away. However today Kun is only interested in one thing; the return of his mother. She has just given birth to a baby girl and is due home with Kun’s father any minute. Finally the family station wagon pulls up outside the house and Kun rushes down to the entrance. He is overjoyed to see his mother again but is also excited to meet his new sister. So obsessed with trains, Kun decides on two names for the baby; Nozomi and Tsubame, the names of shinkansen. Kun’s father is an architect and has built a very unusual house. Split into two separate parts on a slope of a hill, the centre part has a courtyard with an oak tree siting right in the middle. Kun’s parents have decided that father will stay home to look after the new baby and do freelance work while mother will return to work after three months leave.

However father isn’t all that competent with housework, much to mother’s frustration. Things become a bit tense in the household with rising tensions between the two parents and Kun becoming increasingly jealous of his sister as both parents dote on and take care of their new baby daughter. Storming out into the courtyard crying after being scolded by his mother, Kun discovers he seemingly has been transported into another world, a kind of European-like ruin overgrown with plants. There he meets a middle aged man who calls himself the prince of the house. The self-proclaimed prince tells Kun that he was once doted on by mother and father and ruled the house until Kun came along and that Kun is jealous of the new baby. Kun suspects he knows who the prince is when he discovers the family dog’s favourite toy nearby. He throws it repeatedly and every time the man fetches it for him. The prince is in fact Yukko, the family’s miniature dachshund. Kun finds Yukko’s tail and grabs it off him, much to Yukko’s horror. Kun then jams it above his tailbone and is amazed to discover that he can partly transform into Yukko. He excitedly runs around the living room, while his parents see him as Yukko and can’t understand why their pet dog is acting that way.

Later Kun relays Yukko’s request that he wants better dog food, which father buys for him. Eventually Kun’s parents decide on the baby’s name; Mirai, meaning future. Kun thinks it’s a bit of a silly name. His grandparents come over to see the new baby, however Kun is still jealous of the attention Mirai is getting. Mother eventually returns to work and father is finding it difficult to cope on his own, with a crying baby and a jealous four year old. Hinamatsuri (Girls' Day) has come and gone and mother, traveling on a long business trip, has specifically asked father to take down and store away the set of ornamental dolls used to commemorate the day. This is because of a superstition that for every day the dolls are on display, the girl’s marriage will be delayed by a year. Frustrated that father won’t play with him as he is dead tired due to caring for Mirai, Kun sticks whale shaped biscuits on Mirai’s face while she is sleeping. Still annoyed, Kun goes out to the courtyard where again he is transported to another world, this time a large domed greenhouse filled with plants and butterflies. He finds a trail of whale shaped biscuits on the ground and follows them to an angry looking young female high schooler who is waiting for him.

She claims to be the teenage version of Mirai and asks him not to bully her as a baby. But more pressing issues are at hand for Mirai. Father has not put away the dolls as requested. Mirai does not want her future marriage to be delayed and eventually forces Kun to ask father to put away the dolls. However father is so immersed in his work he practically ignores Kun. Kun comes up with an idea that he should pack up the dolls, however they require a special ritualised way to be disassembled and stored away, and Kun is obviously not up to the task. Instead a plan is hatched for Kun to distract father while teenage Mirai and Yukko (in middle aged man form) pack away the doll set. Of course it doesn’t go to plan, with father becoming rather suspicious and Mirai and Yukko almost being caught out several times. Mother later arrives home and complements father on putting away the dolls. Confused, father states he never did. Kun later owns to packing them away with Mirai and Yukko’s help, but his parents don’t quite believe him.

As I said before, this is Hosoda’s fifth film as writer and director. When I was in Tokyo late last month I noted “Mirai” was still in the midst of a very big promotional push for the summer holidays. It was practically in every cinema, with adverts on the screens in pretty much all Japan Rail trains on every line, a retrospective of Hosoda’s work at the gallery at Tokyo Dome and you could not escape the somewhat annoying theme song from the film, Tatsuro Yamashita’s “Mirai no Theme”. Hosoda’s previous film, “The Boy and the Beast”, was also broadcast on TV while I was there, with “Mirai” TV adverts during every break. Yet despite this relentless promotional push, the film has not lived up to commercial expectations, despite good reviews and debuting at second spot at the box office. According to industry analysis, it seems that Japanese audiences are more interested in Ghibli or franchise works.

As with the majority of Hosoda’s other works, this film deals with family connections. But whereas his other films explore the drama and tension in those family connections, here it is almost solely focused on one member of a family. Kun is front and centre of this film, so much so that other than his sister and the family dog, no other character seems to have a name. Hosoda portrays Kun as a quite realistic child. From the opening scenes, everything is seen from Kun’s viewpoint. Hosoda perfectly captures the excitement of a child anxiously waiting for his mother to return home, the way he clumsily navigates stairs with his short stubby legs and of course the tantrums. To a degree however, Kun’s behaviour becomes a bit too much and at times and I began to despise him.

But it's the unusual architecture of the house the family lives in which drives the plot of the film. There’s two separate worlds in that house; Kun’s playroom which is in the lower part of the home and the main living room where Kun’s father and mother work, do household chores and look after the baby. Right in the middle is the courtyard which contains an oak tree. Though it is not explicitly explained in the film, I believe Kun’s adventures in these other worlds take place in his own imagination, fuelled by stories his mother, father and other relatives tell him. As the film progressed and Kun visited past and future versions of his sister, mother and grandfather, and as he developed bit by bit as a person because of these journeys, it felt very reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, albeit a much gentler version. At the beginning of the film these excursions, while amusing, felt a bit aimless. In particular Kun’s attitude to Mirai. The teenage Mirai explicitly tells Kun not to tease or upset her as a baby yet Kun seems to ignore her pleas. It frustrated me that Kun was still a tantrum throwing turd, even though I knew he was still a child. However as the film progresses, in other aspects of his life the experiences he has with past and future versions of members of his extended family really do change him for the better.

It culminates in an amazing fantasy sequence where Kun is trapped in a nightmarish version of Tokyo station. This is a wonderfully realised sequence. But at times I wondered if Hosoda had structured the story in the wrong way. Would it have been better if Kun had entered the fantasy world for the majority of the film rather than for him to enter occasionally then return to the real world? For example, something like “Spirited Away”? Having thought about it, the answer is no. However I think Hosoda spends far too much time setting up how this fantasy world works, first using Yukko, and in the second fantasy sequence which introduces the teenage Mirai. Neither of the sequences really adds a great deal to Kun’s development as a person which is the major plot line of the story. The other thing which struck me is how out of line Kun’s parents are with the rest of Japanese society. They’re upper middle class with an amazing house with two children, not exactly your typical Japanese citizen. They also seem to have very few real problems other than minor domestic duties issues, which are blown out of proportion in the story. Most Japanese women would love to go back to work after having a baby like Kun's mother. The vast majority don’t get the opportunity to do so.

So summing up, I really don’t think this is Mamoru Hosoda’s best work. I think the basic idea is sound; exploring a fantasy world of a four year old as he becomes second fiddle to the new arrival. However I think it could have been written a lot better, wasted less time on the set up and maybe showed that Kun had grown a bit with his earlier interactions with teenage Mirai. Though Hosoda really knows how young children think and manages to believably show the thoughts and physical actions of a young child on screen, with the sole focus on Kun, his tantrums can become really grating. At times you can question if you really want to watch this annoying brat for nearly 100 minutes. But when it does work, Hosoda creates magic. At times it feels really nostalgic and takes you back to childhood. I think the audience was confused at times as to how the film worked. They were quite silent by the end. However if you just accept that Kun’s interactions with past and future versions of his family members are all in his imagination, it makes sense and is quite enjoyable. 7.5 out of 10.