Anime Movie Review — Mari Okada’s Maboroshi
Mari Okada is one of the Japanese anime industry’s most prolific screenwriters. A quick scan of her lengthy bibliography is enough to demonstrate she’s scribed for huge numbers of individual anime episodes, composed many series, and written multiple movies. She’s well known for such hits as A Lull in the Sea, Anohana, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans and Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, as well as shows with more mixed reception like The Lost Village and Kiznaiver. 2018’s excellent Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms from studio P.A. Works was her first foray into anime movie directing (also from her own script), and although she’s written a few more movie scripts in the interim, this 2023 film from MAPPA is her second as director/writer.
Originally premiering theatrically in September 2023 in Japan as Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou (Alice and Therese’s Illusory Factory), it comes to international streaming with the simplified title Maboroshi exclusively via Netflix, who dropped it onto their service earlier this week with minimal fanfare. I do prefer to watch new movies on the big screen if possible, but Netflix continues to disrupt the international movie scene with their strategies. I have mixed feelings about this — I’m glad the movie is widely available, however I do feel a little robbed of the theatrical experience.
Maboroshi is only studio MAPPA’s fourth theatrical movie, with the third being Jujutsu Kaisen 0. Recent news of MAPPA’s foul mistreatment of its staff during the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen does also trigger mixed feelings in regards to watching more of their work, especially in light of the fact that JJK0 was reportedly rushed through production in the space of a mere four months. Usually a movie of such magnitude should take a minimum of two years to complete. I can only hope Okada-san was able to protect her staff from overwork and burnout, but who knows how realistic such hopes may be? Shitty employment practices notwithstanding, I’ll try to appraise MAPPA’s Maboroshi on its inherent merits without uninformed speculation.
14-year-old Masamune Kikuiri is playing cards with his friends when suddenly the nearby steelworks explode. Masamune is instinctively aware that this incident “changed” something, and that everyone in the vicinity was somehow transported somewhere that looked identical to their home town, but wasn’t. Upon leaving the house, he and his friends witness the sky shatter and crack, and dragon-like plumes of smoke arise from the steelworks to repair the sky. These events are believed by some in the town to be the punishment of the mountain’s gods for over-mining natural resources.
From the day of this incident onwards, everyone stops ageing, and because of a blocked train tunnel and strong ocean currents, it’s impossible for them to escape from their small town to the outside world. Children will remain children forever, pregnant women will never give birth. Everyone becomes “stuck” as their current physical selves. In the vain belief that life will somehow eventually return to normal, the people keep daily “self-monitoring” reports to stop their minds from changing, so that if time starts moving again, they won’t be rejected by the world for being different to their original forms.
Unsurprisingly, eternal 14-year-old Masamune feels stifled by the town’s strict rules. One night, after describing how trapped he feels, his formerly free-spirited father mysteriously disappears forever. Masamune’s mercurial female classmate (and secret crush) Mutsumi Sagami drags him to the mysteriously no-longer-destroyed steelworks and charges him with essentially co-parenting a strange feral child who lives among the enormous machines. Soon, Masamune and Mutsumi come to learn the existentially horrifying truth of their situation, and how even if they cannot save themselves from eventual destruction, there is another whose life they can preserve…
Most of Okada’s stories focus on awkward teenagers, their painful emotions, and complicated relationships. Maboroshi is no different, except this time the teenagers have been trapped in half-child, half-adult bodies perhaps for decades, unchanging and unable to mature into adulthood. They trudge to school to learn the same lessons day after day, fearful of angering the “adults” who continue to rule over them. That’s a pretty wild concept, though I’m not sure the film really explores it in fitting-enough detail, and Okada leaves much of the background up to the viewer to deduce.
Okada has always written teenagers well, in all their cringy, embarrassing glory. There’s plenty of ribald fart and boob jokes, though in retrospect they seem a little sad in the context of the characters’ arrested development. In one scene, Masamune muses that his teenage boy friend group continues to do ridiculous, dangerous escapades (like choking each other into unconsciousness, and jumping from unwise heights) mainly because they subconsciously realise they can no longer perceive pain. They drift through a half-empty facsimile of life, never feeling the true potency of emotions and sensations they previously could. Their world is a realistic yet dreamlike purgatory, and it’s only when feral girl “Itsumi” arrives that the world starts to shake itself up catastrophically.
If the movie could be said to have a “villain”, it would be the narcissistic religious leader Mamoru Sagami who influences others mainly to feed his own ego. His over-the-top emoting and gesticulations seem somewhat out of place in this otherwise quite serious and emotional movie. He never poses a real threat though — if anything, he’s shown to be embarrassingly inept. I mostly found him irritating.
Maboroshi’s pacing is often somewhat on the slow side — at points I’d even call it languid. Particularly early on, and in the middle, we witness long scenes of naturalistic dialogue, or sometimes Masamune’s monologue that don’t move the plot along. I suppose they’re there to build atmosphere, but I’m pretty sure my brother who I watched this with briefly drifted off to sleep in the middle. I know my attention wandered. Thankfully, once the plot properly kicks into gear with literal fireworks, it becomes much more compelling, and almost indescribably beautiful in places. Multiple scenes where Masamune’s reality shatters to the point that the “real” world shines through in ever-enlarging fragments, are so cleverly-constructed as to be breathtaking in their complexity and colourful brilliance. Never have sinister blue cracks in the fabric of reality looked so aesthetically pleasing.
The climactic train/car chase is messy, but tense and fun, even if I didn’t fully understand the motivations of all of the secondary characters who sort of just turn up to join in the chaos. Central couple Masamune and Mutsumi’s relationship is alternately frustrating, realistic, and tragic, complicated by the unsettling truth of their existence. Their struggles to save the innocent Itsumi from a fate perhaps worse than death are heartwarming and easy to cheer for. Itsumi herself is confused, but considering her odd upbringing it’s not difficult to understand why. Her misplaced crush is more than a little uncomfortable though (we have an almost Back to the Future-style love triangle thing going on here. It was uncomfortable then, it’s uncomfortable now…)
Okada explored vaguely similar metaphysical material with her much-maligned The Lost Village, and the premise behind a town cut off from causality that cannot be escaped from reminds me of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki. (Hopefully the anime adaptation will finally get a release this year?) Those expecting some kind of definitive explanation for the events of the film will be disappointed. All you’re going to get is “the gods probably did it”, and that explanation is offered within the first few moments. It’s probably best not to think too deeply about the mechanics of the plot, and enjoy the strange, beautiful events and (mostly) fun characters. I don’t think the movie is anywhere near as affecting as Okada’s previous Maquia, and I can’t see myself ever revisiting it. It’s a decent enough, if obtuse and weirdly-paced movie. Hopefully her next film will have a more profound effect on me.
Maboroshi
Written and directed by: Mari Okada
Character design: Yuriko Ishii
Cinematography: Yuusuke Tannawa
Music: Masaru Yokoyama
Production studio: MAPPA
JP theatrical release: 15th September 2023
JP distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
International streaming release: 15th January 2024
International distributor: Netflix
Language: Japanese audio with English subtitles
Runtime: 111 minutes
Age rating: 12+
