Mirai, the girl who crossed the time and obsessions of Mamoru Hosoda

Mamoru Hosoda has made a name for himself as a director of fantasy anime, although his films are as strange as ever, they remain focused on the emotional journey and offer a catharsis that the real world rarely offers.

His last job Mirai, and one of his first, the 2006 film The girl who crossed the time, science fiction to high-end concept in stories of arrival in the age. Mirai Suit Kun, four years old, who, after the birth of his little sister, receives visits from family members of the past and the future. Through these impossible interactions, he begins to re-evaluate his relationship with his new sister, as well as with the rest of his family. While The girl who crossed the time explore the impact of your actions on the people around you. In these films, their characters discover larger worlds and each image of this process is extremely detailed and textured, each scene brimming with imagination.

The girl who crossed the time was a breakthrough for the director; although not his first feature film, having worked on Digimon: the movie and the sixth installment of the previous One Piece movies, it was the true beginning of the styles and themes he had been wearing ever since. A loose continuation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel of the same name, the film follows Makoto Konno, the niece of the book's main character, as she discovers her ability to literally cross the time.

The film feels spiritually linked to the work of another animator: Satoshi Kon. As Kon does with the protagonist Chiyoko in his film Millennium actressHosoda connects Makoto's transitions between the past and the present with fluid movement, connecting his jump from the present to his (often inelegant) landing in the past with a single break. As his aunt explains, "time itself does not come back: it was you who came back "and the animation of the film embodies this idea of ​​time travel is a physical act. Millennium actress, Reality and memory merge to become impossible to distinguish one from the other. The most important thing is the emotions that connect the dimensions.

Kadokawa Herald Pictures

Although the concept is rather high, the stakes remain mostly limited, as Makoto mainly uses time travel for fairly trivial questions, so it 's about making a quiz at the same time. school or give yourself the opportunity to play 10 hours of karaoke. another decadence that a teenager can think of. To be more a story of young adults, The girl who crossed the time is perhaps more unfortunate in tone than Mirai, to contemplate what things might be if you had the power to enjoy the simplest days of your life. Makoto spends her time amplifying good and avoiding harm, giving herself the freedom to overcome the constant discontent and self-doubt inherent in being a teenager.

Until the last stretch of the film, Makoto stands out from the others to feel more outstanding. She gives priority to her own feelings, which is to a certain extent, but it quickly becomes careless and damaging; At one point, his aunt insistently asks, "Do not you wonder if someone is suffering for your good fortune?" The film suggests that looking for an easier life at any cost can be an isolated and selfish way of life, and Makoto learns that sharing the heart with others can be painful. When the truth about his power is revealed, the film begins to look outward, to look at the lives of others. The moment she realizes that her powers involve more than her own worries is punctuated by a montage of people we do not know, only taking care of their business.

Kadokawa Herald Pictures

Mirai is concerned with an earlier stage of development, focusing on a toddler named Kun. The child is a whirlwind, a noisy and spoiled brat who does not really think about the consequences of his actions. As the film begins, her place as a center of attention changes rapidly as her parents return home with a new addition to the family, her younger sister Mirai. The film is roughly divided into vignettes, each type of episode following Kun's different temper tantrums, as his anger, frustration and insecurity over the replacement replace him.

Each of these episodes usually starts with Kun's exit from home and in the garden. When he comes out, the boundaries of his house collapse, the visual camera revolves around him as we move from the real world to the magical / imaginary world. , the world of Kun's family tree. The garden of his house becomes the yard of a castle, a jungle and a gateway to the past, while Kun interacts with a family member at a time in his life that he could not otherwise, like his mother when she was hers. age, or his great-grandfather in his youth. Throughout his life, he will be visited by the future version of Mirai, appearing as a teenager.

Kun takes lessons from each of his time trips with his loved ones to deal with his new circumstances and mature through them. He learns to better share his home, to treat his mother, to be part of the family and to understand the meaning of each member. The film aims to broaden Kun's frame of mind, pushing him to see beyond what happens to him, but also to let him into his heritage and reflect on what his family has gone through. As the film progresses, its vision of the world changes, pbading only inside the house of this boy, to that of past events, to viewing past events off of time, showing how small events and choices that people make add to their present form.

Toho

These changing views are matched to the visuals of the film. Hosoda observes spaces from different angles than most (but not all) anime. Many shots mimic a wide angle camera in small spaces and place the virtual camera at an angle to create more depth than the typical painted background. At one point, a 3D animation is used to create a tracking plan, moving around the house while Kun's father cleans it up. The technique is used to signify an escape from the real world, both in Mirai, The girl who crossed the time, even in other works like Summer wars – representing dimensions of another world with large white spaces mostly virgin, the outlines of characters turning to bright red.

The image of the real world that disappears around Kun shows that Hosoda does not denigrate the often egocentric nature of children, but rather celebrates their resilience, imagination and potential. Hosoda's films are based on impossible and mostly unexplained interactions, those opportunities for personal growth and epiphany that the real world does not allow. All of this care for the creation of these spaces gives the world a fantastic feeling, after all, the only thing at stake is that children learn not to be selfish. He considers engagement with the family as an adventure and adolescence as a challenge.

In both cases, the films are meant to look beyond you and focus your experience on the one that is most important. This is a very real stage of human development, provoked by a strange and wild anime. Each character emerges changed and more mature, by means to which we are not privileged in the real world, and the way Hosoda builds these films makes this personal development. feel as fantastic as one of the fantasies that it takes to get there.

Mirai has come out now in limited theaters.