Mai Mai Miracle

Mai Mai Miracle (マイマイ新子と千年の魔法, Maimai Shinko to Sen-nen no Mahō, lit. Mai Mai Shinko and the Millennium-Old Magic) is a Japanese animated film based on Nobuko Takagi's novelization of her autobiography, Maimai Shinko. It was produced by the animation studio Madhouse, distributed by Shochiku, and directed by Sunao Katabuchi.

Mai Mai Miracle
Directed bySunao Katabuchi
Produced by
  • Nozomu Takahashi
  • Takuya Ito
  • Takashi Watanabe
  • Yuichiro Saito
Written bySunao Katabuchi
Story byMaimai Shinko
by Nobuko Takagi
Starring
Music byShusei Murai
Minako "mooki" Obata
Theme:
Kotringo[1][2]
CinematographyYukihiro Masumoto
Edited byKashiko Kimura
Production
companies
Distributed byShochiku
Release date
  • November 21, 2009 (2009-11-21)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Box officeUS$75,529 (South Korea)[3]

The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland on August 15, 2009.[4] It was released in Japan on November 21,[5] and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas.[6]

The movie's plot is partially based on research on Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book.

The city of Hōfu in 2006. 50 years earlier this was a small, rural town, with a main street and not much more. In the Mai Mai Miracle year of 1955, rice paddies and wheat fields dominated the countryside. But there was a recently built-up area, the "new residence" of the film, where Kiiko Shimazu lives with her father.

Plot background

It's the spring of 1955 in Mitajiri (in the countryside around then small-town Hōfu) in Yamaguchi Prefecture, southwestern Japan. A nine-year-old girl named Shinko Aoki grew up hearing her grandfather's tales of life a thousand years ago, and is able to vividly see the past. Back then, a princess named Nagiko Kiyohara lived in the same village, at a time when the area was known as the province of Suō and its capital Kokuga.[7] Shinko claims that her ability to see the past is a gift from the single cowlick on her forehead, which she calls her “mai mai”. Shinko invites Kiiko Shimazu, a new student who has recently transferred to her school, with her to her vivid imaginings of the past. Despite the girls' quite different characters – Shinko is an outgoing, exuberant tomboy, while the shy and city-raised Kiiko still mourns her deceased mother – they get along surprisingly well and end up learning from each other's differences.

Along with the local village boys, Shinko and Kiiko form a group known as the Destiny Squad, whose leader is 14 year-old Tatsuyoshi. The group explores the village, including building a dam for a fish in the creek, which seemingly represents their bond and hopes for the future. At the same time, Shinko and Kiiko can “see” that Princess Nagiko is lonely and yearns for friendship.

Shinko dreams one night that the Princess Nagiko is barred from friendship with the village girls. The next morning, the fish they built the dam for is found dead in the creek. The Destiny Squad vows that tomorrow will be a better day, one in which they all laugh.

Shortly afterward, Tatsuyoshi's father, a police officer, hangs himself after gambling away a neighbor's money with a woman. Shinko and Tatsuyoshi go off late at night to find the woman and punish her, ending up in the village's dark side riddled with crime. Tatsuyoshi attempts to hit the woman, but gives up at the sight of the grief ravaged woman and breaks down when remembering his father. At the same time, Kiiko goes back in time and becomes Princess Nagiko, and is able to help a local girl and befriend her. Tatsuyoshi and Shinko return home, with Tatsuyoshi announcing that he is moving away the following day. He vows to be a good father one day, with Shinko advising him to have as much fun as he can before becoming an adult.

Shinko and Kiiko spend a bit more time imagining the past and learning about the village with Shinko's grandfather. At the end of the winter, Shinko's grandfather passes away, and Shinko moves away to the city with her family to be closer to her father's university. In the distance, Princess Nagiko and her friend sit on a stone, enjoying the friendship that Shinko and Kiiko helped them create.

Characters
A 3rd grade girl with a strong will, imaginative and often unafraid of standing out through odd behaviour.
Reserved 3rd grade girl and new classmate to Shinko. She moved to the area with her father (from Tokyo) and in the film starts out mourning the loss of her mother.
Kotaro is Shinko's grandfather. He is also a major inspiration for Shinko with his stories about life in the past.
  • Nagako Aoki (voiced by: Manami Honjou)
Shinko's mother, generally clueless when it comes to dealing with Shinko's often unpredictable behaviour.
Shinko's little sister, she suffers at times from her older sister's careless handling of things. She has just as strong of a personality though, and likes cats.
Shinko's father, who works at the University of Yamaguchi.

Production

In Lille, France in November 2007 Katabuchi showed extracts of the film without naming it.[11] The film was announced by Madhouse at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair as a new project of director Sunao Katabuchi.[12] While Katabuchi had served as a scriptwriter Hayao Miyazaki's Sherlock Hound, as an assistant director on Kiki's Delivery Service, and had directed his own film Princess Arete in 2001 at Studio 4°C, this was his first feature film since joining Madhouse. To create the film, he assembled his crew from Madhouse's staff animators and artists, as well as associates from Studio 4 °C. Shigeto Tsuji, previously an assistant animation supervisor on Metropolis, designed the characters, while Kazutaka Ozaki and Studio 4 °C artist Chie Uratani served as animation directors. Both had previously worked on Princess Arete with Katabuchi. Shinichi Uehara, a veteran background painter at Madhouse, acted as art director.[13]

Release

Shochiku promoted the film online, aiming at international as well as domestic fans. A short English-subtitled trailer was posted on the studio's website in June.[14] Additionally, Avex Network also promoted the film through their YouTube channel. A 31-second trailer was released on August 28,[15] followed by a 100-second trailer on September 16.[16]

The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland on August 15, 2009.[4] It was released in Japan on November 21,[5] and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas.[6] Following 2010, though, it ended up in the category of films receiving a box office receipt of less than 300 million ¥.[17]

The film opened on the December 11–13 weekend in South Korea, where it debuted in 13th place and grossed the equivalent of US$61,370 on 39 screens.[18]

Besides this, the films has had various international festival screenings,[19] including France's Val-de-Marne/Paris (February 2010), Brussels, Belgium (February 2010), Edinburgh, UK (June 2010), San Francisco, USA (2010), Montréal, Canada (July 2010),[20] and (during the summer of 2011) Melbourne, Australia.[21]

In March 2012, the company All the Anime which is based in Glasgow, UK, initiated the Kickstarter project to fund the DVD and/or Blu-ray release of Mai Mai Miracle in English subtitle and/or English dub in US and UK. Initial goal was $30,000, and the project was successfully funded with $107,153.[22]

On February 5, 2014, Anime Limited launched the Kickstarter campaign for the film on February 6, until March 7, 2014, the campaign has set a US$30,000 goal for an English-subtitled release of the film in the United States and United Kingdom.[23] As of February 6, 2014, 11:00 a.m. ET, the campaign has raised over $33,700.[24] On February 24, 2014, the Ask me Anything session was announced by his director, and began on February 27, 2014.[25]

Home media

The film has been released on DVD in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Germany (where it is called Das Mädchen mit dem Zauberhaar[19]) and France. In France, Mai Mai Miracle enjoyed a release on Blu-ray Disc.[26] The film was released by Right Stuf Inc. via its licensing and production studio Nozomi Entertainment on Blu-ray December 3, 2019.[27]

Reception

Themes and critical response

The story revolves around a 3rd grade schoolgirl, living with her parents and little sister in the countryside of 1950s Japan. Thus Mai Mai Miracle has things in common with Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, enhanced by the animation of Madhouse (having collaborated on many Studio Ghibli productions). Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau of the French-language online magazine Panorama-cinéma said, "Both films chronicle childhood adventures and the "magic" that resides in this naive outlook. In the former film, nature becomes fantastic; in this film it is the story that resides beneath the surface that has a life of its own as it is so aptly represented using animation."[28] San Francisco International Animation Festival programmer Sean Uyehara said (interviewed by Elisabeth Bartlett of Fest21.com) mentioned this film in the light of Miyazaki's oft used focus upon pre-adolescence, "that moment when kids are figuring out their personality, how they fit in socially, feelings of empathy, how to deal with anger and disappointment...They are starting to understand how they affect others and others affect them."[29] Uyehara also pointed out one difference between Miyazaki's work (where "usually the spiritual or dream world is as real as the actual world"[29]) and that of Katabuchi (where there is more distinction between the two and "it's more about imagination than it is about mysticism"[29]).

The Variety review appreciated on the director's complex cross-cutting technique, when presenting two worlds a thousand years apart. In the film, the princess of the Heian era, "a girl their age whose face they cannot yet visualize, remains isolated in her parallel universe as Katabuchi inventively leaps timeframes."[30] This ancient world at first only spring forward in the mind of Shinko, who believes her mai mai (the cowlick in the middle of her forehead) is the reason for her unusual ability.[31] Both the Variety review and independent film reviewer Chris Knipp elaborated upon the fact that this "children's story" has a darker side, that is cleverly mixed in to bring a realistic perspective. "Shadowing this enchanted cross-temporal childhood ether is a half-glimpsed adult world,"[30] where the dark and complex parts of adult life opens up new discoveries for the kids in the form of "tragedy but also accommodation."[31] And the children realise that "good and evil are not so comfortingly distinct."[31] With this added perspective, Katabuchi's storytelling skills enable him "to layer an aura of postwar disillusionment without disturbing the pic's well-sustained innocent tone."[30]

Shinko's opening up to the realities of life comes both as a shock and a disappointment, but it also causes her to "realize that her magic may not be real."[31] Through the depth of this story-telling, neither "Mai Mai Miracle nor the screenplay talks down to anybody, even though the playfulness and the ability to laugh are never lost." Chris Knipp thought the most appealing and fascinating about the film was "the way it oscillates between the real and the imaginary, the upbeat and the sad, while maintaining the deceptively simple surface of childhood." On the large scale, Katabuchi's film depicts Japan of the '50s, "caught between an imperial past of rigid class distinction and its Western-influenced, caste-loose future," and it presents "two sides of an ambivalent East/West fusion, conveyed with surprising clarity."[30] And on the personal level, we find that nothing is cast in stone forever, as real-life events affect the main characters right up to the end. Those events seem "both surprising and inevitable".[31] In the end, we as viewers learn that life goes on, just as in the real world, which in the case of this film happens to be the booming economy of Japan, ten years after a world war and a thousand years after the Heian era.

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for the 4th Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film.[32]

Mai Mai Miracle won the 2010 Audience Award for the Best Animated Feature for adults at Anima, the Brussels Animation Film Festival (February 2010 in Belgium). It also won the BETV Award for Best Animated Feature at the same festival.[33]

It also won the Best Animated Feature Film award in the Jury Prize categories at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal, Canada (July 2010).[34]

The film won the Excellence Prize for Feature Length Animation at the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival (the 14th festival edition).[35]

See also

References
  1. http://www.generasia.com/w/index.php?title=kotringo&oldid=90858
  2. Video on YouTube
  3. "South Korea Box Office: December 18–20, 2009". Box Office Mojo. January 2010. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
  4. "62nd Film Festival Locarno - Films & Screening Schedule - Mai Mai Miracle". Film Festival Locarno. 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2009-08-12.
  5. "Mai Mai Miracle Official Website" (in Japanese). 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-12.
  6. "Publication information from YesAsia.com". 2010. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  7. "Houfu Nippou News" (in Japanese). 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-19.
  8. "Mai Mai Miracle English Dub Cast Revealed". Anime Bluray UK. Jan 31, 2016. Retrieved Nov 2, 2016.
  9. In the film she's addressed to as "Hime" (i.e. Princess).
  10. "Katabuchi's comment" (in Japanese). 2009. Archived from the original on 2010-07-26. Retrieved 2009-08-26.
  11. "Rencontre-événement avec Sunao Katabuchi" (in French). Archived from the original on February 16, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2010.
  12. "Madhouse Announces Latest Film from Black Lagoon's Katabuchi". Anime News Network. 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2009-08-12.
  13. "List of Works - マイマイ新子と千年の魔法". Madhouse (in Japanese). 2009. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
  14. "Mai-Mai Miracle Film's English-Subbed Trailer Posted". Anime News Network. June 2, 2009. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
  15. "Negima, Duel Masters, Penguin no Mondai, Mai Mai Promos". Anime News Network. September 2, 2009. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
  16. "Mai Mai Miracle Film's 90-Second Trailer Streamed". Anime News Network. September 16, 2009. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
  17. The Guide to Japanese Film Industry and Co-Production – 2010 Archived 2011-01-12 at the Wayback Machine
  18. "South Korea Box Office: December 11–13, 2009". Box Office Mojo. January 2010. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
  19. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517216/releaseinfo
  20. Info on Montréal's Fantasia Festival, including awards, from Anime News Network
  21. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2011-05-14.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  22. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alltheanime/mai-mai-miracle
  23. "Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter Campaign Is Now Live". Anime News Network. February 5, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
  24. "Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter Meets Goal in Less Than a Day". Anime News Network. February 6, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
  25. "Mai Mai Miracle Director to Hold Reddit Ask Me Anything Session". Anime News Network. February 24, 2014. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
  26. https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B003Y4O4BK
  27. "Mai Mai Miracle Blu-Ray". Right Stuf Inc. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
  28. "English-language translation of review from 12 July 2010, posted at Twitchfilm.com on 28 July 2010". 2010. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  29. "Elisabet Bartlett's blog at Fest21.com, posted 14 November 2010". 2010. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  30. Scheib, Ronnie (2010-03-17). "Variety review published 10 March 2010". Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  31. "Mai Mai Miracle (Sunao Katabuchi 2009)--SFIAF, review published 10 March 2010". 2010. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  32. "The Awards Nominated Asia Pacific Screen Awards Best Animated Feature Film". Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Archived from the original on 2010-10-21. Retrieved 2010-12-17.
  33. "News item published at Anime News Network". Retrieved 2011-05-08.
  34. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-07-29/montreal-fantasia-festival-announces-animated-awards
  35. "Official award publication, in English". Archived from the original on 2010-12-13. Retrieved 2011-05-08.
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