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This Week in Anime
Why You Should Watch Mai Mai Miracle Right Now

by Jean-Karlo Lemus & Monique Thomas,

Before his acclaimed film In This Corner of the World, director Sunao Katabuchi helmed Mai Mai Miracle. Set in a rural town in the 1950s, the film takes an honest look at the emotionally-charged childhoods of a group of children and the darker world of adults just beneath the surface.

This movie streamed for a limited time on Crunchyroll

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.


@Lossthief @mouse_inhouse @NickyEnchilada @vestenet

Nicky
Hey there Jean-Karlo, can you guess what season it is? The time where black cats frequently cross your path. The time that the cold winds howls through the night, and spirits reign while children go from door to door asking to Be Treated or Be Tricked?
Jean-Karlo
You mean that thing running around in the river out back is a kid? They come in transparent now? Cripes.

Better hide the booze. And the candy. And the booze-candy.
While we could've arrange for something Spoopy™ for All Hallows Eve, some of us are still lingering for the sweet taste of summer as we transition into fall. And by "some people", I mean me. I hate the cold! I'm currently a blanket golem trying to fill my head with warm pleasant thoughts. So for those who are like me and still want to cherish your remaining memories of summer fun just like when you were a kid, today's movie Mai Mai Miracle is for you!

A big reason for doing this now is that Crunchyroll put this up as part of their movie club, but only for this month, and it's a film I've been trying to get a hold of for a good couple years. I guess the real scary story is the limited availability of anime streaming licenses! Oooooo
These kind of wistful movies are a challenge for me, because as folks know there are three things I hate: vampires, bad dads, and old man Miyazaki's stranglehold on the anime film industry. That so many films try to be a Miyazaki film in tone or appearance really irks me when they could be anything else. Mai Mai Miracle was a very pleasant surprise: it's not just a lavishly-animated ode to rustic lifestyles while someone slaps me in the face with their animation-dick, droning on over how this is how they used to make animation back in their day while walking to school uphill both ways in the snow.
That's funny cuz director and writer Sunao Katabuchi is actually one of Miyazaki's colleagues, having worked as an assistant director on Kiki's Delivery Service, and even writing a few episodes of Sherlock Hound. But eventually he left Ghibli to go work at Studio 4°C, where he would then produce Princess Arete, another cute and very enjoyable, yet nuanced film. Then, in 2016 he would make the masterpiece In This Corner of the World, which shares a lot of DNA with this film, including the equal focus on both historical and slice-of-life elements.

Oh and somewhere between all that he directed Black Lagoon, life is weird.

So the inevitable comparison of being a charming countryside exploration of early childhood to a Ghibli or a Miyazaki film isn't unwarranted. Personally, I find Katabuchi's work embodies some of my favorite things about the other director at Ghibli, Isao Takahata, who definitely had a similar keen eye for the lives of everyday people but also their struggles and joys. For one of our main characters, the nine-year-old Shinko, that struggle is a cowlick that sticks up from her head. Her Mai Mai, as she calls it.

Shinko is an imaginative little girl, living in rural post-war Japan. Her grandfather was an educator, and he's taught her all about the ancient feudal people that used to live in her part of the country. She spends her days being an irascible tomboy and imagining the life and times of a princess from 1,000 years ago.
She's got real moxie and I love her for that.

The film is largely split between her fantasies and her real life where she befriends another little girl, Kiiko, who just moved to town from the city. They quickly have fun imagining the 1,000-year history of the town together.
Kiiko is a lot less worldly and a lot less comfortable with the rural city. The differences between her and the other kids is stark. Once she's with them in a group, they all look significantly unwashed—which they are. Again: 1950s rural Japan. These kids have bulletproof calluses on the soles of their feet.
One of the first things I noticed is that, in school, Kiiko the only one who has nice western-style shoes while all the other kids remain barefoot inside the classroom. They don't have the school shoes you'd typically see in anime yet, likely because the schools are likely too poor to provide them. The other kids immediately take note of her dress, her perfume (which they don't like), and especially the nice, clearly expensive professional-grade colored pencils she uses for a coloring assignment.

For those of you who might not know much about the cost of art supplies, getting good pigmentation often involves harvesting raw and expensive materials. Even today, in the age of cost-effective brands like Crayola, a quality set is still quite pricey. A set like this today would likely cost over 80 bucks USD! Definitely not something you'd want your kid taking to an elementary school classroom. Other kids would immediately start feeling insecure about their own wealth-gap. Which is exactly what happens in the film, landing another one of Kiiko's poorer classmate in trouble.
Sure enough, we soon find out those were never really Kiiko's colored pencils. When Shinko follows Kiiko to her house on the other side of the train tracks, as it were, she learns that the colored pencils belonged to her belated mother.
The perfume she wore was also her mother's, it seems like by using her stuff Kiiko was trying her best to emulate the lady-like image of her mother in her head, though clumsily, being only a little girl.

She also seemed to be quite the talented artist! Surely, that's hard to live up to.

It's also fun seeing Shinko enamored with Kiiko's new house as a regular country bumpkin. She gets quickly taken in by the refrigerator, her room, and even the stairs!
Kiiko, as a child, is very, very lost. It's one thing to be uprooted from the urban world she's used to and have to get used to being out in the sticks. It's another to have lost her mother at such a young age. Traumatic events like that tend to end people's childhood early. In Kiiko's case, this leads to her not having quite the active imagination that Shinko has. Kiiko, innocent as she is, chalks it up to not having Shinko's Mai Mai instead of, y'know, trauma.
Also a quick visual shout-out to the intentional reference to Heidi, which got adapted into a popular TV series by Isao Takahata.

Kiiko also comes off as immediately withdrawn, scared and incredibly isolated. Her father is a doctor who is never home, her mother is gone, and she has no friends her age. She's even afraid of the dog who lives next door. Shinko on the other hand is very outgoing, rash, and deeply inquisitive. It's her good nature that helps break Kiiko's shell immediately and opens up the world for her.

The dog's name is Bear BTW.
Thanks to Shinko, it doesn't take long for Kiiko to ingratiate herself to the other rapscallions in town. Soon enough, they're playing in the river and everyone's having fun together, even Kiiko.

Though, the first thing Kiiko does is get her, Shinko, and Shinko's 5-year-old sister completely shitfaced (via chocolate, by accident).

While a little distressing, it totally seems like a totally relatable kid thing that they can all laugh about much later! hahahaha.
Some serious "But her aim is gettin' better!"-energy there.
I really enjoy how Kiiko goes from trying to pretend to be a baby-adult to experiencing what it's like to be an actual kid with children her age. She even gets her nice clothes get muddy. They manage to rope the resident 2cool4school kid, Tatsuyoshi into the mix. Which was another win for Shinko's friendly personality.
Tatsuyoshi's the kind of character that, in about 20 years, would have been a total yankee, picking fights with rival high schoolers, and maybe taking flights down to Egypt to fight vampires. For now, he's just the biggest kid in the gang that everyone knows they can ask if they need some muscle. He's also the son of the town's police officer—this is important for later.

For the most part, however, their entire relationship is summed up by this scene where Tatsuyoshi takes his father's bokken without his permission. Again, we'll have to put a pin into the hows and whys—but let's just say personal experiences made the vibes in this scene between Tatsuyoshi and his father feel extremely familiar in a foreboding way.

Tatsuyoshi is probably what I'd describe as the third most important character after Shinko and Kiiko, and also the boy with the most focus. What actually surprised me is how much of the movie was focused on the adults in the kids' lives and the way that they tend to view adulthood. The bokken is one of them, representing Tatsuyoshi's father's masculine pride and honor. A symbol of the ideal paternal protector.

As for feminine figures, the kids zone-in on their beautiful young teacher Miss Hizuru who they all decide to name their goldfish after. She's even smart enough to inform the girls of the name of the young princess who once lived in Suo 1,000 years ago.
If Tatsuyoshi's dad and his bokken are the ultimate male role model, Hizuru kind of represents the idealized adult female role model for Shinko and Kiiko. All of the children love her, but in the brief time we spend with Hizuru it's quite clear that the girls especially love her. And oddly enough, the fish named after her is still a bit more important than she is.

Once the kids find out that Hizuru is possibly getting married, they make a very cute pool for their fish. It's a legitimately cute bit.


Alas, this is the turning point for the movie. The other kids have to lose their innocence somehow...
Her getting married also means that she has to leave.

And it really feels like they're more enamored with the idea of their teacher/the happiness of marriage, rather than the reality.
Well, they are children, so the reality of the situation would completely elude them. They don't really know what her story is—even we only get the barest hint for the longest time, seeing Hizuru dump a box of letters into the furnace.

Later we learn that she was instead simply trying to settle down after being brutally dumped by a married man.

And to top it off their fragile little goldfish died after Kiiko placed a perfume bottle in the little pond they had created, as if breaking the spell.

Not just any perfume, her mother's perfume! That part, tragic as it is, I love for the metaphor of it all. Kiiko actively made her situation worse because of how badly she can't let go of her past, even when her present was making her so happy.
To me it speaks to how the sorrows of adulthood spoil the carefree dreams and happiness of children, because it's silly to pretend that they aren't totally aware or immune to life's problems. They immediately try to hold a funeral for their pet but it doesn't work to console their heartbreak.
The kids are able to cling to hope when one of the gang claims they saw another goldfish in the river, and makes a vow on Tatsuyoshi's dad's bokken to find it. And uh... so, this is where the movie really takes a swerve...

The next thing we find out, Tatsuyoshi's father is dead. The exact circumstances are shady, but he took his own life and was possibly involved with yakuza. The children, all of whom had looked up to Tatsuyoshi's father, are crushed.
Yeah, so remember how I called Tatsuyoshi's dad the ideal masculine role model for the kids to look up to a few moments ago? And how those kind of idealistic views of adulthood are largely false, like with their teacher, or Kiiko's mother?

Shinko overhears this and is immediately crushed by how all of the adults around her believe that Tatsuyoshi's dad was troubled enough to do such a bad thing. It's a faith-shattering revelation.

To say nothing of how this means Tatsuyoshi would be leaving town immediately, and the gang swore an oath to meet the next day to find that goldfish. Shinko was very invested in keeping that magic alive for Kiiko, who never could imagine that princess for the whole film. So she grabs some rice in a bottle and a flashlight, and teams up with Tatsuyoshi to... hot-foot it to the bar that Tatsuyoshi's dad went to in order to get revenge. It's a plan only children could think up.
It's such a strange turn for the third act to watch the kids just run straight into the town's red light district and head up into real potential danger. It resolves in a way that was both a big relief and also surprisingly mature? The people at the bar are pretty much just as shocked about Tatsuyoshi's dad's death as they are. The woman they came to fight is immediately wracked with grief that Tatsuyoshi can't help but feel sorry for her. Not even able to give her a real punch. Despite their "tomorrow" being forcibly taken from them.
It's also where we get a glimpse into who Tatsuyoshi's father really was, which hit me extremely hard in a personal way. For such an outwardly moral, upstanding man, Tatsuyoshi's father had a closet full of skeletons (hence that bit earlier where Tatsuyoshi and his father don't even look at each other). Man, I felt this scene.


I don't know what else to say besides what I already said about Kiiko: some kids don't have the benefit of really enjoying their childhood before it's ended for them.

I suppose that's why this movie actually works for me while a lot of Miyazaki's don't. There's whimsy and beauty, but it doesn't speak down to me. It hurts to go through Tatsuyoshi's bumps in the road, but it doesn't ignore that there's a lot of ugly stuff in the world along with the pretty. As happy and beautiful as it is when the kids get to be together, the world of adults can and does affect them, just like Nicky said earlier. And you can't always solve it with it with a convenient peptalk that you can turn into a mood post on Instagram.

While Shinko and Tatsuyoshi storm the bar, Kiiko's struggling to make heads or tails of everything. All she can think about is how much Shinko has changed her life for the better.
At first, she feels sad because Shinko has become distant to her, but eventually she comes around and is able to see the Mai Mai Miracle for herself, without Shinko's help. And she imagines The Lonely Princess and the Pauper girl reuniting and playing together like she hopes to do with Shinko.


In a way, she's able to rediscover her childlike self despite everything that's happened to her. And it's that point in the movie that you know Kiiko and Shinko will be able to become friends again.
We haven't talked about this much, but it's largely because the princess is mostly a twee background event tying into some events of the plot as opposed to a main part of the story. Which is another thing I appreciate; the moment we're introduced to Shinko and her imaginary friend Green Kojiro, I figured that this would just be pure whimsy and Shinko and Kiiko helping each other when Shinko's grandpa dies. Not so!

The princess largely deals with how lonely she is: she came to the town but whoever was meant to serve as her playmate possibly died before she arrived. As the princess amuses herself in her loneliness, a servant girl works in her midst.

Kiiko's own Mai Mai Miracle puts her into the shoes of the princess as she visits this servant girl's little hovel. She and her family have been sick because of some bad food, so the princess amuses the servant girl's younger siblings with the dolls she made on her own. It's enough to make a bad day better for them, which is a start.


Also, that bit with the flower up there is important—there's a very cute moment of magic as that one stray petal lands in Shinko's cup of soda while she and Tatsuyoshi are at the bar.

Which has a slight resemblance to the Princess' red paper, or their beloved goldfish, Hizuru.
With Kiiko's magic fulfilled, Shinko and Tatsuyoshi find themselves not quite having gained the closure they'd hoped they'd get by storming that bar. So, being children with little other recourse, they run off screaming into the night. Sometimes, screaming is all you can do to process things.
I think through that experience, Kiiko finally got a glimpse into the viewpoint of an adult, in that, they are not perfect, still go through the same feelings, and inside, they're really just all big children. We equally get overwhelmed by the things we can't comprehend like sadness and death, we're sometimes useless at problem solving, and inside we all hold a little bit of the same magic.

I'll note that this is where the time period is also very relevant as likely anyone who would've grown up in this era of the 50's is now, themselves a parent or grandparent. After their sustained emotional wailing, Tatsuyoshi swears to become the father his dad never was.

He bequeaths Shinko his father's sword and she tells him that the most important thing is to keep having fun in life.

Best of all, Shinko and Kiiko are able to find that goldfish! The miracle holds true, Shinko regains her faith in her imagination, and Kiiko regains her own imagination.

Best of all, Kiiko found a picture of her mother in one of her books, giving her a glimpse into who she was back when she was Kiiko's age. It's a very tender moment.
It's super lovely. It feels like Kiiko was able to see her mom for who she really was for the first time, not as a beautiful untouchable lady-like figure, but a girl who was once a child like her who had to go through her own period of growth and change.

Eventually, Shinko's dad comes to pick them up, and we see him for the first time in the film. This moment really surprised me because you'd expect him to be not-so-great having been absent with work the whole time. Turns out he's actually a researcher at the university, and you can really tell where Shinko gets it from. Seems like a pretty good dad. A very charitable view of an adult after going through a lot of less charitable ones.
And that's basically where the movie ends. Shinko and Kiiko keep being friends after Tatsuyoshi moves away. Shinko enjoys her beloved grandfather's company until he dies of asthma the following winter, at which point she moves away from the town. But it all works out, and we get to see that the princess also managed to make friends with the servant girl. Life goes on, friendship is eternal, and the wind rustles through the wheat fields forevermore.
Overall, it's a very relaxed but equally enthralling little film. It didn't compare to In This Corner of The World for me (very few films do), but still managed to tug on my heartstrings in a way only a good animated film could. Mai Mai Miracle is magical. Watch it on Crunchyroll on a rainy day before it leaves.
Yeah, it really is a tragedy that more people couldn't see this film before it leaves Crunchyroll, but there's a Blu-ray available from Nozomi. This was very much a delightful surprise for me, and I hope everyone watches it. Folks who love the Miyazaki oeuvre really owe it to themselves to check this out, it's got all those things you love about 'em and more.
Whether it's the summer, a rainy day, or even a cold day in October. This movie can be enjoyed at any time and I really hope that people do when they can! Now, hope you all had a good Halloween! We'll still have plenty of spooky fun ahead!
You guys will make me cry if you don't, I promise you.
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