REVIEW: ‘Maboroshi’ Is Bittersweet And Beautiful

After a sudden explosion at a local steelworks factory causes a landslide sealing off a small mining town from the outside world, time stops flowing for the residents inside. Cracks also appear in the sky, causing concern as no one knows what they mean. One day, 14-year-old Masamune Kikuiri (Junya Enoki, Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions) and Mutsumi Sagami (Reina Ueda, My Happy Marriage) discover a young girl who is aging. They’re soon drawn into a mystery that will test their convictions in Maboroshi (Arisu to Therese no Maboroshi Kôjô, also translated as Alice and Therese’s Illusory Factory), directed and written by Mari Okada and animated by MAPPA. A romance anime about a quickly collapsing reality in a timeless freeze after a steel factory explosion

Focused on the middle school student Masamune and the residents of the town’s gloomy everyday lives,  everyone feels stuck at some point. We wonder what the point of getting up is. That everything is always the same, day in and day out. Maboroshi takes this feeling one step further when it traps its cast in a place where literally nothing changes. It is perpetual winter. No one ever graduates from their current grade or gets to celebrate a birthday. It’s just the same old thing every day. Just as in real life, some take it better than others. In other cases, many choices end in pain, and people are hurt, though it doesn’t last.

While the fantastical elements of Maboroshi’s tale cause the characters to come to their conclusions about life’s worth, it’s how the film delivers these revelations that make it fantastic. As the movie slowly unravels its story, it takes plenty of time to fully develop its characters, ensuring that the audience knows exactly why each comes to the conclusion that they do—the script throughout the movie crafts each moment with delicate skill. The Japanese voice cast delivers performances that offer a mountain’s worth of emotion, demanding the audience feel the characters’ plights. But while the potency of the raw emotion is easy to appreciate, subtler elements further enhance the story.

The narrative’s pitch-perfect tone balance is the most prominent of these secondary elements. Joy flows into sorrow, which melds with hope, which goes into fear, and so on. It doesn’t front-load the story with good things, just to devastate the viewer with sadness in the back half. Instead, by threading these emotions together, Maboroshi further imparts the reality of life into its fantastic situation. The world is rarely all good or all bad. Happiness and sadness blend, depending on how we perceive the world.

So many of life’s struggles are addressed at one point or another that many will likely argue about what the central theme actually is. This is perhaps its greatest triumph. Maboroshi harmoniously weaves deep, personal moments together that what a viewer brings with them into the film is likely to decide what element shines the brightest on them. It is a perfect mixture of emotions and themes that is rare to experience in a story.

The biggest choices are of course reserved for Masamune and Mutsumi. Beyond facing the general despair that everyone else does, they find their worlds becoming intertwined with the strange exception to the time freeze. How the film connects the pair to the young girl is brilliant. Even more so is the bittersweet conclusion to their time together. They make choices that will cause viewers to smile and cry simultaneously as the narrative speeds towards its ending.

The skillful animators at MAPPA bring these emotions to expressive life. The grand elements of fantasy are brought to life with stunning vibrancy. Giant monsters and the ever-shattering sky are breathtaking when they take center stage. Emotional moments are just as skillfully rendered. MAPPA manages to convey the sentiment of each scene with masterful implementation. The flow of hair in the wind, tears sliding down a cheek, and the gentle touch of a hand are all imbued with a subtle elegance that amplifies the smaller moments so they stand as equals with the biggest narrative moments.

The only failing this film will have for some is it’s ending which is deliberately ambiguous. Some big questions are left unanswered. This lack of closure will lead some to feel less than satisfied with the story’s ending.

Maboroshi is a fantastic film that uses the fantastical to explore relatable elements of everyday life. Its answers are complicated, often mixing the good with the bad. Brought to life through gorgeous animation and skillful voice work, this film is a must-see for those who love emotionally powerful animation.

Maboroshi is streaming now on Netflix.