Mai Mai Miracle
Encyclopedia
is a Japan
ese 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.
The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival
in Switzerland
on August 15, 2009. It was released in Japan on November 21, and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas.
The movie's plot is partially based on research on Sei Shōnagon
's The Pillow Book
.
, southwestern Japan. A nine-year-old girl named Shinko Aoki imagines she has a way of connecting to the world around her, a thousand years before. Then, an upper-class girl called Nagiko Kiyohara lived in this same land, at a time when the area was known as the province of Suō
and its capital Kokuga. Shinko invites Kiiko Shimazu, a new student who has recently transferred to her school, to her magical time-travel, i.e. her vivid imaginings of the past. Despite the girls' quite different characters – Shinko is an outgoing, exuberant tomboy, while the shy and initially very reserved Kiiko still mourns her deceased mother – they get along surprisingly well and end up learning from each other's differences.
The family of Aoki farms the land. Like many of their neighbours in southern Japan around the mid-20th century, they cultivate durum wheat in spring, followed by a rice harvest in late summer/autumn. Shinko's and Kiiko's differences include Shinko living in a house without stairs, and like most of her classmates shez's going to school barefoot. At Kiiko's house there's a well-kept little garden, and her father is a doctor at the new factory in the area. Kiiko has seen television a couple of times, and at the house there's a gas-powered refrigerator, alien things to country-kid Shinko. What Shinko does have is an unruly cowlick
(which she calls "mai mai") in her forehead, which she believes makes her able to imagine things from the past. For that Kiiko is a bit jealous of Shinko.
as a new project of director Sunao Katabuchi. 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.
channel. A 31-second trailer
was released on August 28, followed by a 100-second trailer on September 16.
The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival
in Switzerland
on August 15, 2009. It was released in Japan on November 21, and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas. Following 2010, though, it ended up in the category of films receiving a box office receipt of less than 300 million ¥
.
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.
Besides this, the films has had various international festival screenings, 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), and (during the summer of 2011) Melbourne, Australia.
So far, the only official release on home media containing English subtitles is the Region 3 DVD release in Hong Kong.
's My Neighbor Totoro
, enhanced by the animation by 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 naïve 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."
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." Uyehara also pointed out one difference between Miyazaki's work (where "usually the spiritual or dream world is as real as the actual world") and that of Katabuchi (where there is more distinction between the two and "it's more about imagination than it is about mysticism").
Elisabeth Bartlett mentioned one reason Uyehara loved this movie was, the themes being explored in the film mirrored the things his own 7-year-old kid was experiencing. The realism in portraying the dynamics of childhood imagination was also noticed by Ronnie Scheib, who further on in his review for Variety
pointed out that Katabuchi, "exploits deftly time facial expressions, judiciously chosen minutiae and complex cross-cutting to grant emotional depth and tonal resonance to a deceptively simple story of girlhood friendship."
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." 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 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," where the dark and complex parts of adult life opens up new discoveries for the kids in the form of "tragedy but also accommodation." And the children realise that "good and evil are not so comfortingly distinct." 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."
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." 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." 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" 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.
.
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.
It also won the Best Animated Feature Film award in the Jury Prize categories at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal, Canada (July 2010).
The film won the Excellence Prize for Feature Length Animation at the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival (the 14th festival edition).
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese animated
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
film based on Nobuko Takagi's novelization of her autobiography, Maimai Shinko. It was produced by the animation studio Madhouse
Madhouse (company)
is a Japanese animation studio, founded in 1972 by ex–Mushi Pro animators including Masao Maruyama, Osamu Dezaki, Rintaro, and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It has created and helped to produce many well known shows, starting with TV anime series Ace o Nerae! in 1973, and including western favourites Ninja...
, distributed by Shochiku
Shochiku
is a Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. It also produces and distributes anime films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada...
, and directed by Sunao Katabuchi.
The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival
Locarno International Film Festival
The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. After Cannes and Venice and together with Karlovy Vary, Locarno is the Film Festival with the longest history...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on August 15, 2009. It was released in Japan on November 21, and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas.
The movie's plot is partially based on research on Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shonagon
Sei Shōnagon , was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Pillow Book .-Name:...
's The Pillow Book
The Pillow Book
is a book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi during the 990s and early 11th century in Heian Japan. The book was completed in the year 1002....
.
Plot background
It's the spring of 1955, and the place is the area of Mitajiri (in the countryside around then small-town Hōfu) in Yamaguchi PrefectureYamaguchi Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan in the Chūgoku region on Honshū island. The capital is the city of Yamaguchi, in the center of the prefecture. The largest city, however, is Shimonoseki.- History :...
, southwestern Japan. A nine-year-old girl named Shinko Aoki imagines she has a way of connecting to the world around her, a thousand years before. Then, an upper-class girl called Nagiko Kiyohara lived in this same land, at a time when the area was known as the province of Suō
Suo Province
was a province of Japan in the area that is today the eastern part of Yamaguchi Prefecture. It was sometimes called . Suō bordered on Aki, Iwami, and Nagato Provinces....
and its capital Kokuga. Shinko invites Kiiko Shimazu, a new student who has recently transferred to her school, to her magical time-travel, i.e. her vivid imaginings of the past. Despite the girls' quite different characters – Shinko is an outgoing, exuberant tomboy, while the shy and initially very reserved Kiiko still mourns her deceased mother – they get along surprisingly well and end up learning from each other's differences.
The family of Aoki farms the land. Like many of their neighbours in southern Japan around the mid-20th century, they cultivate durum wheat in spring, followed by a rice harvest in late summer/autumn. Shinko's and Kiiko's differences include Shinko living in a house without stairs, and like most of her classmates shez's going to school barefoot. At Kiiko's house there's a well-kept little garden, and her father is a doctor at the new factory in the area. Kiiko has seen television a couple of times, and at the house there's a gas-powered refrigerator, alien things to country-kid Shinko. What Shinko does have is an unruly cowlick
Cowlick
A cowlick is a section of hair that stands straight up or lies at an angle at odds with the style in which the rest of an individual's hair is worn. Cowlicks appear when the growth direction of the hair forms a spiral pattern. The term "cowlick" originates from the domestic bovine's habit of...
(which she calls "mai mai") in her forehead, which she believes makes her able to imagine things from the past. For that Kiiko is a bit jealous of Shinko.
Characters
- Shinko Aoki (voiced by Mayuko FukudaMayuko Fukuda, born on August 4, 1994 in Tokyo, Japan, is a Japanese child actress who made her debut in 1998. She is contracted to talent agency FLaMme.Her father, Kenji Fukuda, is a drummer in the band Kasutera.- Profile :*Nicknames: , *Interests: art...
)
- A 3rd grade girl with a strong will, imaginative and often unafraid of standing out through odd behaviour.
- Kiiko Shimazu (voiced by Nako Mizusawa)
- Reserved 3rd grade girl and new classmate to Shinko. She has moved to the area with her father (from Tokyo) and in the film starts out mourning the loss of her mother.
- (Shinko's grandfather)
- A major inspiration for Shinko with his stories about life in the past.
- Nagako Aoki (voiced by Manami Honjou)
- The mother of Shinko, often clueless about what to do with Shinko's often unpredictable behaviour.
- Mitsuko Aoki
- Little sister of Shinko, she is at times suffering from her big sister's restless handling of things. She has character herself, though, and likes cats.
- Tosuke Aoki
- Father of Shinko, working at University of Yamaguchi.
- Nagiko Kiyohara / Sei ShōnagonSei ShonagonSei Shōnagon , was a Japanese author and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Pillow Book .-Name:...
(voiced by Ei Morisako) - Kiyohara no MotosukeKiyohara no Motosukewas a Heian period waka poet and Japanese nobleman. His daughter was the Heian poet and author Sei Shōnagon, famous today for writing The Pillow Book. He is designated as a member of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals, and one of his poems is included in the famous Ogura Hyakunin Isshu...
- Nagiko Kiyohara / Sei Shōnagon
Production
In Lille, France in November 2007 Katabuchi showed extracts of the film without naming it. The film was announced by Madhouse at the 2008 Tokyo International Anime FairTokyo International Anime Fair
The Tokyo International Anime Fair also known as Tokyo International Animation Fair is one of the largest anime trade fairs in the world, held annually in Japan. The first event was held in 2002 as "Tokyo International Anime Fair 21". The event is held at Tokyo Big Sight, a convention and...
as a new project of director Sunao Katabuchi. While Katabuchi had served as a scriptwriter Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's Sherlock Hound
Sherlock Hound
is an anime television series based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series where almost all the characters are depicted as anthropomorphic dogs. The show featured regular appearances of Jules Verne-steampunk style technology, adding a 19th-century science-fiction atmosphere to the series...
, as an assistant director on Kiki's Delivery Service
Kiki's Delivery Service
is a 1989 Japanese animated fantasy film produced, written, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It was the fourth theatrically released Studio Ghibli film.The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1989...
, and had directed his own film Princess Arete
Princess Arete
is a 2001 animated film released by Japanese animation studio Studio 4°C. The film is a non-traditional approach to the standard tales of fairy tale princesses, and it is known in Japan as one of the most successful animated feminist works.-Details:Princess Arete was released in theaters in 2001 by...
in 2001 at Studio 4°C
Studio 4°C
is a Japanese animation studio founded by Eiko Tanaka in 1986. The name comes from the temperature at which water is most dense.-History:STUDIO4°C has produced numerous feature films, OVAs, and shorts. Early film titles include; Memories , Spriggan and Princess Arete...
, 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
Metropolis (anime)
Metropolis is a 2001 [anime] film and loosely based on the 1949 Metropolis manga created by the late Osamu Tezuka, itself inspired by the 1927 German silent film of the same name, though the two do not share plot elements. The anime, however, does draw aspects of its storyline directly from the...
, 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.
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. Additionally, Avex Network also promoted the film through their YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
channel. A 31-second trailer
Trailer (film)
A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the...
was released on August 28, followed by a 100-second trailer on September 16.
The film debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival
Locarno International Film Festival
The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. After Cannes and Venice and together with Karlovy Vary, Locarno is the Film Festival with the longest history...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on August 15, 2009. It was released in Japan on November 21, and ultimately had a rare seven-month run at the cinemas. Following 2010, though, it ended up in the category of films receiving a box office receipt of less than 300 million ¥
Japanese yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...
.
The film opened on the December 11–13 weekend in South Korea, where it debuted in 13th place and grossed the equivalent of US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
61,370 on 39 screens.
Besides this, the films has had various international festival screenings, 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), and (during the summer of 2011) Melbourne, Australia.
Home media
The film has been released on DVD in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Germany (where the film is called Das Mädchen mit dem Zauberhaar) and France. In France, the film has also enjoyed a release on Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
So far, the only official release on home media containing English subtitles is the Region 3 DVD release in Hong Kong.
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 MiyazakiHayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's My Neighbor Totoro
My Neighbor Totoro
, is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan...
, enhanced by the animation by Madhouse (having collaborated on many Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli
is a Japanese animation and film studio founded in June 1985. The company's logo features the character Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro...
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 naïve 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."
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." Uyehara also pointed out one difference between Miyazaki's work (where "usually the spiritual or dream world is as real as the actual world") and that of Katabuchi (where there is more distinction between the two and "it's more about imagination than it is about mysticism").
Elisabeth Bartlett mentioned one reason Uyehara loved this movie was, the themes being explored in the film mirrored the things his own 7-year-old kid was experiencing. The realism in portraying the dynamics of childhood imagination was also noticed by Ronnie Scheib, who further on in his review for Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
pointed out that Katabuchi, "exploits deftly time facial expressions, judiciously chosen minutiae and complex cross-cutting to grant emotional depth and tonal resonance to a deceptively simple story of girlhood friendship."
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." 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 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," where the dark and complex parts of adult life opens up new discoveries for the kids in the form of "tragedy but also accommodation." And the children realise that "good and evil are not so comfortingly distinct." 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."
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." 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." 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" 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 FilmAsia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film
The winners and nominees of the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film are* 2007 5 Centimeters Per Second - Japan - Noritaka Kawaguchi...
.
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.
It also won the Best Animated Feature Film award in the Jury Prize categories at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal, Canada (July 2010).
The film won the Excellence Prize for Feature Length Animation at the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival (the 14th festival edition).