On Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Contains spoilers for: Maquia.
For as much as I enjoyed the many great anime films that have come out (Your Name, A Silent Voice, In the Corner of this World), I really wanted a fantasy anime film removed from a real world setting: breathtaking visuals that don’t remind me of school or Tokyo or that road down the street–visuals limited only by what an artist can think up and realize on paper. Maquia (Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana wo Kazarou) did not disappoint, and in fact manages surprisingly well at portraying the effects of time on people, their relationships, and their perception of the world.
Maquia opens with rhythmic thuds of the Iorph people weaving on large looms. The Iorph have white-blonde hair and distinct facial features, portraying themselves as a species far removed from humankind. We are then introduced to an otherworldly, ethereal realm of tall, medieval-esque white buildings and delicate flora.
The many fantastical elements in the film–from the dragon-like Renato to immortal weavers–come to life as dynamic and complex. Each illustration provides another insight into its subject: we see a destructive, berserk, Red-Eye-infected Renato, but at the same time, a breathtaking creature flying into the night, tangled with delicate woven Hibiol. Frankly, a good number of moments and pieces of dialogue might have been a bit too heavy and forced had it not been for the art and animation that made the visuals and storytelling feel natural.
For a society that weaves the history and stories of the world into fabric called Hibiol, the young Iorph are sheltered and emotionally inexperienced. Despite living many centuries, they are accustomed to a constant, predictable society where their primary duty is to weave. When the Iorph are attacked by the Mezarte who seek their blood that grants long life, three Iorph children to whom we are introduced, Clim, Leilia and Maquia, diverge on separate paths representing the consequences and aftermath of love, and more importantly, time.
Clim remains unchanged throughout the film, and that becomes his ruin. Relative to the Iorph whose lives remain occupied by weaving, humans change significantly as time passes–in both personality and appearance. When the Mezarte army breaks into the Iorph microcosm and forces them out, Clim fails to adapt even though his lover Leilia and his friend Maquia both find themselves changing as the years pass.
And in his nearsightedness–his expectation that those he cares about will be the same as he left them–wars with reality. Clim’s death comes with his realization that he has lost everything; even the memories of the Leilia he loved are marred by her revelation that she now cares most for the child she bore. As Clim attempts a murder suicide with Leilia, he is instead killed by a Mezarte army commander Izol–and with that, we see a cruel world that has betrayed Clim’s expectations, or more accurately, Clim’s rejection of a world where humans change over time.
Leilia, an initially carefree girl, is forced to marry the Mezarte prince in order to introduce the Iorph blood into the royal family. The prince rapes her and then discards her, forbidding her from seeing the daughter she bore. Accustomed to companionship, vivacity and love while living among her kind, Leilia becomes a victim of circumstance, from a mellow girl to an unhinged mother who attempts suicide multiple times. Her sole motivation to live becomes seeing her daughter–a poignant motherly desire, but also a dangerous single-minded, self-fulfilling obsession, especially for a daughter whom Leilia will outlive. When she tries to run off a building after seeing her daughter for the first time, purportedly to “fly” and be free, it comes off more as her final act of desperation: she has accomplished seeing her daughter, and there is no reason left to live. Despite being an Iorph who can live for centuries, she loses the ability to see beyond the immediate, unfamiliar with the concept that just maybe, the world is not so bad. Where Clim treads the path to avoid–trapped by his memories that blind him from seeing the beauty of change that time passage brings, Leilia garners pity as the girl whose first experience with change is marred by tragedy and injustice.
Unlike Clim and Leilia, Maquia experiences love for the first time because she was able to leave her parentless, lonely life with the Iorph. While a motherly relationship between a girl who doesn’t physically age and a normal human boy can venture into morally questionable waters, the film manages to avoid watering down the tender relationship between Maquia and Ariel. It is strongly hinted that Ariel grows to love Maquia as more than a mother, but neither characters act on these emotions. Rather, in a bittersweet and cruelly grounding realization, Ariel and Maquia accept that their lives cannot continue together forever, solidified by the time skip to adult Ariel’s marriage to a childhood friend and the birth of his child. The lack of attention to romantic development between the two allows the film to avoid what would likely be melodramatic and distracting from the depth of their relationship that in many ways withstands time. Instead, we get to see a mother grappling with her responsibility as a caregiver and protector, and a son who is plagued by insecurity and self awareness. That is, a love that guides them to do what they believe is right, especially because they know they can never be together forever.
In most films, time skips tend to be a failsafe way of generating All The Feels. Think: Ellie and Carl’s opening scene in Pixar’s Up, episode 10 of Violet Evergarden (A Loved One Will Always Watch Over You), maybe even Shinsekai Yori. Maquia’s time skips felt organic, with credible, assumed events between time skips. With each time skip, the characters change significantly: Ariel grows to care for his family over his romantic notions with Maquia, Maquia learns to acknowledge her immaturity in order to care for a child and cope with her long lifespan relative to those she has grown to love. And yet, the small things–like the recurrent “tadaima” and “okaeri”s–bring us back to the Maquia and Ariel as we remembered them.
Both the first scene when Maquia pries Ariel’s dead birth mother’s fingers away from baby Ariel and the last scene when Maquia holds an old, dying Ariel’s hands underscore the beauty of life that Maquia has come to realize. The first: Maquia encounters the fragility of life through breaking Ariel’s birth mother’s fingers and releasing Ariel from her grasp. The last: Maquia is in a position where she now understands the strength of Ariel’s birth mother. The Iorph’s slow aging is merely a tool to draw out Maquia’s internal conflicts. Ultimately we are seeing a girl learn to gain and lose people she loves.
Despite the somewhat complicated politics, setting and relationships (and plot ambiguities) in Maquia, the themes were straightforward and emotions raw. Where the characters discover beauty that the outside world has to offer, the film manages to display that equally to its audience–a beauty that perhaps transcends time.
