Tag Archives: new york international children’s film festival

Magical Somewhat Secret Powers: Mune

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This film is part of the 2015 New York International Children’s Film Festival

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been able to attend the NYICFF. While in the past I mainly prioritized Japanese animated films, I’ve recently been making more an active effort to diversify my interests in animation. Hearing others talk about the frequently stunning visual presentation of French animated films, I decided to take a look at Mune.

An important note to readers from anime and manga fandom: it’s pronounced “Myuun,” and is not about what you think it is.

Directed by Alexandre Heboyan and Benoît Philippon, Mune centers around a world where the sun and moon were brought to the planet long ago, and the guardians who must guard the movements of these celestial bodies. The protagonist of the film is a night creature named Mune, who despite viewing himself as a nobody, ends up in an unlikely position of power and responsibility.

I found Mune to be a film whose main strength was the portrayal of an intriguing world that revolves around the clever elaboration of its own creation myth. The way the planet divides between day and night, the designation of creatures that thrive not only in day or night, but also dawn and dusk, and especially the designs of the inhabitants all worked to give a sense of a living world. What most impressed me were the towering giants that pulled the sun and moon across the sky, one a four-legged rock golem, the other a camel of sorts, though I also need to mention the antagonist Necross, a dark and menacing figure with a waterfall of lava continuously pouring out of his chest. Another notable aspect of its visuals is that Mune uses primarily 3DCG animation but occasionally switches to traditional 2D animation when presenting either stories of the past or other worlds.

However, when it comes to narrative and characterization, Mune falls short where it matters most, in Mune himself. While other important characters have some sense of growth throughout the movie, such as the well-meaning but arrogant sun guardian Sohone who learns the importance of selflessness, Mune changes, sort of, but it feels incomplete. This is not to say that a protagonist necessarily needs “character development,” but the film specifically sets him up to have a character arc where he discovers that the true power was in him all along. The issue is that Mune’s realization of confidence is not only rather abrupt, but doesn’t really require him to learn anything. If this were a Dreamworks film, I could picture them overlaying I’ve Got the Power. Similarly, one of Necross’s demonic minions is shown to struggle with the idea of being “evil,” and I had assumed this would set him up to contribute to the plot more, but he mostly ends up as comic relief.

A lot of similarities, though perhaps mostly surface ones, can be drawn between Mune and Disney’s Hercules. I feel that, if the film had borrowed more of the character progression that the latter shows, then it could have been more complete in its storytelling. While a work of animation can certainly succeed without the need for denouement and all that by focusing on its aesthetic qualities, Mune comes across as being stuck somewhere in the middle.

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Mostly Visual Wonders: Oblivion Island

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The New York International Children’s Film Festival is known for bringing some of the best and most interesting animation the world has to offer to the Big Apple, and Japanese animation is no exception. In previous years, the festival has brought great works, such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Days with Coo, but usually limited it to only one title, so it was particularly amazing that this year’s Festival had not one, not two, but three anime films.

This last film is Production I.G.’s Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror. It follows the titular 16-year old girl as she searches for her lost hand mirror, an important present she received from her mother years ago, and ends up entering a magical world inhabited by “kitsune,” fox spirits who take everything humans misplace and ignore. Humans are not allowed in the kitsune’s world, but a few unlikely companions make the journey possible.

Unlike the other two NYICFF animated films from Japan, which used some CG but still went for a primarily traditional 2D look, Oblivion Island has the unique distinction of being created almost entirely in 3DCG. While it would be easy to make the film look drab and lifeless, Production I.G. is famous for knowing how to make things look good, and Oblivion Island is no exception. The characters are nice-looking and full of life, the backgrounds are gorgeous, and the use of color as the movie switches from environment to environment are particularly notable. One unusual thing about the movie is that a lot of the backgrounds looked more hand-drawn and two-dimensional than the characters themselves, which made it almost look like the characters were “real people” interacting with a backdrop. While jarring to an extent, it gave the film a unique and welcome look. The only other sticking point might be that the faces of the human characters are somewhere between being anime-style and being humanly realistic, particularly with their mouths, and so tread the deepest regions of the uncanny valley. Overall, the look of the film, particularly the Kitsune’s world where everything is built from discarded human belongings, reminded me a little of Kon Satoshi’s Paprika, though it isn’t quite as visually splendid.

But while the visual aesthetics of the film are top-notch, the rest of the film from a storytelling perspective is nowhere near as good. Most of the characters’ motivations are simple and some hardly get characterized at all. The story is also paper-thin, developments happen too suddenly, and the film occasionally takes a very ham-fisted approach to plot exposition. An example of this heavy-handed storytelling occurs towards the beginning of the movie. The start of the film takes place years before the main story and shows Haruka with her mirror. Minutes later into the film, the now 16-year old Haruka is hanging with her friend from school and asks the friend if she had ever lost anything important to her. It then flashes back to the very scene the audience just saw of Haruka and her mirror, and if that’s not enough to tell you that she’s thinking about the mirror, Haruka then outright mentions the mirror to her friend. It was just unnecessarily excessive and would’ve benefited from better editing.

That said, Oblivion Island still has a number of good, powerful scenes  and moments of poignant character interaction and introspection which draw you into their world. It’s just that the film suffers from “things happen” syndrome and lacks the connective tissue needed to make it feel like one continuous story. It’s an all enjoyable film, but definitely had the potential to be more.

In the end, a lot of the film’s flaws can be pardoned if you just take into account that it is first and foremost a kid’s movie, but at the same time I feel somewhat reluctant to do so as the NYICFF’s other films were also for kids and still had plenty for older audiences and never felt like they were simply advancing the plot along without taking heed of everything that had happened prior. Overall, it’s decent, but it won’t go down in history as one of my favorites.

It’s Easy If You Try: Mai Mai Miracle

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If there is anyone to hold responsible for this review of Mai Mai Miracle, it is Japanese blogger tamagomago.

A blogger of anime and manga with a very keen sense of observation, lots of intelligence to spare, and a fount of good ideas, my first real experience with tamagomago was when I translated his essay on the concept of “Otaku Girl Moe.” Since that time, both of us had come into possession of Twitter accounts, and so it was only natural for me to begin following him.

Around late November, early December of last year, I began to notice that, in the vast majority of them (I would say over 90% or so), tamagomago would consistently mention the same thing: Mai Mai Shinko. He would preface his tweets with マイマイ新子妄想, or “Mai Mai Shinko Delusion,” and it was clear that whatever this was, it was quite a big deal to have captured his imagination so. My curiosity was piqued, and after finding out that it was actually a movie he was talking about, I hoped for the day that I too could see it. So when the New York International Children’s Film Festival brought the film over, I felt very fortunate.

Known in Japan as Mai Mai Shinko and the Millennium Magic, it was titled in the US as Mai Mai Miracle (and for the purposes of this review I will be going with the English title). Not knowing what to expect, I went into the theater and came out pleasantly surprised.

Mai Mai Miracle takes place a few years after World War II in Japan and follows a young girl named Aoki Shinko, whose primary characteristics are an untameable tuft of hair and boundless creativity. Shinko’s daily life is changed when she befriends a lonesome new girl in town, Shimazu Kiiko, and shows the quiet and demure Kiiko how to live life to its fullest armed with only two feet and a head full of imagination, while also connecting to her town’s storied history which stretches back a thousand years.

When I say that Mai Mai Miracle is a pleasant surprise, the operative word here is “pleasant.” It has an everyday atmosphere that can only be described as such, and the film, down to its core, exudes a sense of serenity that cannot be escaped even during the movie’s unhappier moments. The story has a clearly intentional meandering quality. There is no real overarching narrative which reveals itself over time, and Shinko’s goals, as much as she focuses on them, shift quite frequently along with her imagination and feelings. One might even say that the movie lacks an “orthodox” cinematic structure, and yet the movie never feels like it’s leading the viewer to a dead end, even when it’s not actually clear what direction it’s taking. Mai Mai Miracle is like a series of vignettes connected by the thread that is Shinko’s daily life and how it is affected by her newfound friendship with Kiiko.

Mai Mai Miracle has many strengths, but chief among them is the characters. This is especially the case for Shinko and Kiiko, but every person in the story, no matter how much or how little screen time they get, feels incredibly human. Some characters get barely touched on, but you can tell that they are going through their own personal adventures and struggles just as Kiiko has in moving to a new town.

The animation in Mai Mai Miracle is very vibrant and fun, though for the most part it doesn’t go for any wild experiments in moving images and keeps everything very traditional. One exception however,  takes place in the early parts of the film, when Shinko is imagining the world of a thousand years ago. Here, crude, crayon-like drawings of houses, animals, and other objects begin to pop up all over the landscape and transform into their “real” counterparts, symbolizing the strength of Shinko’s childhood imagination. But by the latter half of the movie, the technique disappears entirely and we never see that transition again. Most likely the creators thought that doing it in the beginning was enough to imply that it was happening all the time, but I still kind of wish that we saw more usage of creative and abstract techniques, even if it wasn’t this one in particular.

I think Mai Mai Miracle will draw inevitable comparisons to the works of Studio Ghibli, particularly My Neighbor Totoro with its similar themes of moving to a new home and the strength and wonder of imagination, but Mai Mai Miracle can certainly stand up to the scrutiny. It’s a pleasant experience that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys the simple wonders of life and youth.

It’s Okay to Propagate the Idea that “Otaku Girls” are Moe, But…: The Aggression and Difficulty Inherent in Moe

Everything That is: Summer Wars

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In a time where an interactive online community known as “OZ” has become so popular that even the governments of the world participate in it and treat it as a second reality of sorts, a young high schooler named Kenji is roped into attending his classmate Natsuki’s family reunion. When a mishap sends OZ into disarray, its consequences ripple outward into reality, affecting people of all ages and showing that, while everyone has different priorities in life, they can all come together for the common good.

I gave the above description to convey just a little of what Hosoda Mamoru’s Summer Wars is about, but it is hopelessly insufficient on its own, as Summer Wars defies categorization. But to get some idea of what kind of movie it is, perhaps we should first look at the title of the movie itself.  Summer Wars is designed in nearly every way to be a “summer movie,” and I mean that in the absolutely best way possible. When people talk about “summer blockbusters” that “the whole family can enjoy,” Summer Wars is it.

It’s all-encompassing, it’s down-to-Earth, it’s subtle and personal and yet also powerful and grand, simultaneously appealing to audiences young and old and of different values. There’s romance, there’s epic battles, and yet through all this the whole film never feels manufactured. Within the context of the movie, even simple actions take on incredible meaning as you relate to Kenji and Natsuki’s family. The characters are treated with the utmost care, and its story is solid and natural, even if it stems from a digital world.

Often times when a movie or a cartoon portrays any sort of “advanced technology,” it is very clear that the people responsible for these portrayals have no real or direct experience with that technology, but such is not the case with Summer Wars. Whether it’s an old countryside in Japan or the elaborate world of OZ, the animation is gorgeous and sensible and goes a long way in helping to make the movie as strong as it is. Clever art direction in both realms makes both OZ and the real world seem like separate entities, and yet I was never jarred out of the movie when it transitioned between the two. Its integration of various incongruous elements into a cohesive whole is so organic that everything just feels right, just like the entirety of Summer Wars.

In all truth, I almost don’t want to review Summer Wars, as there is so much to the movie that if I were to talk any longer I would give away too much or would risk spoiling the experience of watching it yourself. In fact, if you’ve read this far, there’s a chance I may have ruined the experience for you forever. And I know that Summer Wars isn’t just the kind of movie you can go and see easily, as I saw it as part of the New York International Children’s Film Festival, but if you can get to a theatrical showing or something at a con, I highly recommend you do so.

Speaking of the NYICFF, I had the fortune of being at a showing where Hosoda Mamoru himself was in attendance. After the movie was over, Hosoda went up to the stage for Q&A. I managed to ask him a question about the strong theme of closing generation gaps and his message to people of all ages, to which he responded that it was basically “to get along with one another.” But the real stars of this session weren’t me or Hosoda, but the kids. The children’s questions blew the adults’ questions out of the water, mine included. Many were surprisingly insightful and intelligent, and to me it showed me just how well-made Summer Wars is at communicating to both adults and children.

When I went to watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time at NYICFF three years ago, I could hear the kids in the theater asking their parents, “What’s going on?” as the themes and topics were perhaps a little too mature for them. But such things did not happen with Summer Wars. Here, you have a movie which allows both adults and children to enjoy it without patronizing or insulting the intelligence of either. To me, that is the clearest sign that no matter your age or origin, Summer Wars is a movie which can keep you riveted through even the simplest of moments.

Summer Wars Tomorrow in NYC

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Regretfully it’s too late to buy tickets now so for those who were unaware of this event in the first place I extend my apologies, but I will be attending the New York International Children Film Festival‘s opening night showing of Hosoda Mamoru’s Summer Wars. I’ve been highly anticipating this movie, especially because the year I attended my first NYICFF was when I saw his previous film, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

I am going in blind. I have no knowledge of Summer Wars whatsoever, not even its basic premise, which should tell you a thing or two about how high my expectations are for this movie. Am I setting myself up for disappointment? I highly doubt it, but we’ll see.

Hosoda Mamoru himself will also be there, and it will truly be an honor. The last time I went to a showing where the director was there was for the Otokojuku movie. While I don’t expect Hosoda to be putting on a display of swordsmanship, I really hope the audience is able to deliver some solid questions. I know I’ll be there with my hand raised.

5cm Per Second and Summer Days with Coo showing at the NY International Children’s Film Festival

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On March 1st and March 8th respectively.  In Japanese. With subtitles. So I don’t want to hear any complaints about them being dubbed.

Check http://www.gkids.com for more information and to order tickets. If you’re going, I recommend you order now because when it came to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time the tickets sold out FAST.

I, of course, will be there.

And bouncing off my previous post about animation in general, they’re showing stuff from Korea, Spain, and other countries.

It is an international film festival, after all.