General [SPOILER ALERT], better go into Maboroshi cold.
Star crossed teen lover anime films are kind of Makoto Shinkai’s thing. So props to the prolific Mari Okada, bravely taking on a story already covered by a brilliant storyteller/animator. Thankfully, there’s more than one way to be star crossed teenagers in love, and Okada’s Maboroshi is an engrossing, exciting new take that makes me hopeful for the dozens of new stories she’ll continue to deliver anime fans for years to come. As long as Mari doesn’t get stuck.
Unlike her little Mifuse residents. 14 year old Masamune (Junya Enoki) already feels like he’s going through the motions of his life in his steel factory companyish town. His only joys in life are hanging out with his friends, and drawing sketches. He doesn’t like the elusive Mutsumi (Reina Ueda), the class tease and instigator whom he can’t get out of his head. Masamune’s sameness gets a wrench thrown in boiler number 5, as Mutsumi takes him to this abandoned part of the factory, where she reveals she’s been caring for a feral girl (Misaki Kuno) and needs Masamune’s help to do so.
By minute 3 Maboroshi should have sucked you in with it’s visual audacity. There’s a harrowing intense opening sequence that immediately made me put down my phone and lock in to my Netflix chill. Yes the sequence dazzles and gives the movie its unique style immediately, but also it leaves you asking a bunch of questions about the world you’ve just entered. Mari Okada executes this pattern with her big drawn/CGI sequences to perfection, as you can’t look away, and are fixated on solving whatever is going on in the town of Mifuse. Each new sequence raises new questions, shifting the narrative in new directions, evoking all sorts of feelings, both wonderful and despondent depending on where Okada wants the story to go. So by the time we hit the big final animated setpiece, we’re snapped into place, but also have gone on such a crazy visual and emotional journey, that it would be impossible for most people to connect the dots from Maboroshi’s beginning to end.
But Maboroshi is more than just vacuous eye candy. There’s some really interesting stuff Mari Okada wants to explore through here characters as well. I’d almost consider this appointment viewing for company town kids, trapped in their little industrial place knowing nothing else. Having lived in one of those towns myself, they have a way of quickly placing you into your little societal bucket, forcing each day to be exactly like the next, with no hope of anything new. Maboroshi is a giant crusade against that, showing that even if adults will fight hard to keep any change from happening (usually out of fear), it’s never too late for you to grow even a little bit, as long as you take a risk on yourself, or someone else…though the fight is gonna be hard. There’s also this ephemeral, ghostly tale going on at the same time. That story is more clunky, but has big highs with some strange lows. At it’s best, we’re in Everything Everywhere All At Once territory, showcasing the consequences of succumbing to your fate instead of taking it, and how love and hate is a blurrier line than you think it is. And at its lows? The final scene is a weird choice, as the movie tacks on a coda that stretches what the movie is really about.
But the good VASTLY outweighs the bad of Maboroshi. Mari Okada must have a hyperactive imagination, with how abundantly she produces great anime stories big and small. I hope she can find a way to partner with Makoto Shinkai, and their disparate personalities could combine to create the greatest star crossed tale since Jack and Rose.