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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Kōjō Anime Film Review
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11621 |
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So...who are Alice and Therese? There don't seem to be any characters with those names. If Alice is a Wonderland reference, what is Therese?
Sounds like a film I'd very much like to see, but I guess I'll have to wait a few years for that to be possible. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2497 Location: United States |
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I watched Maboroshi this morning and...man, I wish I liked this movie more than I do, but if I'm being honest, I feel Maquia is way better.
Good: The animation was beautiful, the concept was interesting, the music is nice, and I actually did care about Itsumi's plight. Plus, I appreciate that the English dub actually cast a child actress to play Itsumi, because it makes her voice acting sound a lot more authentic and is much less forced and artificially squeaky compared to the Japanese. Yeah, still not a fan of Misaki Kuno's human squeak toy voice. Bad: I could have done without that pervy fat kid and his antics. Also, why did this movie feel the need to introduce the female lead by having her flash her undies at Masamune? The ensuing love triangles felt really out of place. Why is this movie trying to get me to care about this one girl who likes Masamune when she doesn't even have any character to her besides that spoiler[and just disappears in the middle of the movie?] Not only that, I can't fathom why Masamune would even like Mutsumi when a lot of their early interactions just involve taking care of Itsumi and Mutsumi busting his balls. They don't even interact much outside the main conflict, so there's no chemistry between them at all. Also, deep spoilers here: spoiler[Why does nobody bother to just TELL Itsumi that she's Masamune and Mutsumi's daughter from the future? Or that she somehow Doctor Who'd herself back into the past? Why did the movie feel the need to make Itsumi romantically jealous of the middle school versions of her parents??? And for that matter, what happens to the people who get cracks and disappear? Do they just...magically get transported into the future, or do they flat-out die? I want answers, movie!!] |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 649 Location: USA |
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There was a little too much spoiler[incest] going on that could easily have been avoided. I agree that Maquia was way better.
Kitana Turnbull is very young at 18, but I wouldn’t say she is a child actor. She definitely has the skill to do a realistic child’s voice. |
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merr
Posts: 488 |
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I gave up halfway through before the spoiler[incest] even began. Mari Okada stories come in two varieties: fantastic and insufferable. Maboroshi was the latter for me. It’s a shame, because I was really hoping for another masterpiece like Maquia.
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FireChick
Subscriber Posts: 2497 Location: United States |
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Oh, I didn't know she was 18. Still, good on her for doing Itsumi justice. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18498 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Just finished watching this. I wouldn't rank it ahead of Maquia, either, but that's setting an extremely high bar for comparison. It's still a very well-made movie, one at least on the level of The Boy and the Heron on technical merits, and certainly more naturalistic than most on the way characters act.
I can understand this reaction, but his behavior was also very realistic. I can remember peers acting like that when I was in middle school, and I won't rule out that I may have spouted garbage like that myself at that age.
The implication is that they had been doing the same things over and over for years at that point. Drastic action was needed to change things up, I guess? |
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Swissman
Posts: 798 Location: Switzerland |
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I saw Maboroshi in autumn in Japan and had a blast, albeit being a bit confused about the story because I couldn't fully understand it due to no subtitles. I really enjoyed the general oppressing & haunting yet beautiful atmosphere of the movie and its aesthetic look. The only scene which was really cringeworthy to me was the one with the super long spoiler[kiss] and the spoiler[jealousy of the witness.]
I'm in the minority here because I enjoyed Maboroshi more than Maquia. The later was a tad bit too sentimental for me and had the scene with spoiler[the protagonist's son fighting in a battle juxaposed to his mother helping a woman giving birth to a child] which I felt was too forced. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4161 |
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I just finally finished after two days of trying. Visually beautiful but the story is half baked at best. It's yet another interminable dome story like Rahxephon but without all the before and after material that at least make them a worthwhile single viewing.
Nothing in this story connects, even how the two leads fall in love doesn't relate from outside of time to inside the bubble. Instead of the feral child that... rapidly grew and learned in a world where time didn't flow...that it was the knowing teen who got stuck in that moment and the two strangers have to face the reality that this girl the same age as them is their daughter. Oh right, the incest was the point, oh dear... At the ending when spoiler[ someone says "you hear a baby crying?"... there's no reason for that, by the way... that shows Itsumi crying on the train... there's no reason for that either... and that ends on a POV of the train going through the tunnel? Yeah, that's no reason for a birthing metaphor this late in the movie for a character who's aged ten years in another world.] The movie missed that train by a fairly healthy margin. Parents can love each other and other adults while still loving their children? This movie is against that and I don't know why. Maybe it's just really poorly written as it has all love examples, from friend to family to lust to even God, but just doesn't separate them. spoiler["This is where I first had my heart broken"... by my dad] |
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j00095289754
Posts: 2 |
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I felt skeptical at the beginning, but the film carried me away as it went on, and I have rarely wept so much or so intensely at the end of a film. Not because of the plot per se, but because the film doesn't duck the painful reality we all spend our lives trying to forget. I understand some people's confusion, but ultimately it is a serious philosophical attempt to grapple with how we can all find ways to live in a world ultimately without meaning. It's even more uncompromising and steel eyed than Sonny Boy, an existentialist fable that Sartre would have approved of.
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The Scream Man
 Posts: 184 Location: Sydney, Australia |
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I just watched it. It was OK, but like a few have said it just left too many questions.
Though i DID take away a slightly different meaning at the end; spoiler[It didn't seem to be winter anymore, and there was no snow on the ground. WHen the kids say they hear a baby crying, i thought that meant the pregnant lady had given birth, meaning time had started moving again for them. ] But none of that answers the biggies for me: spoiler[ *How did a Steel mill explosion cause a multiversal disruption? *What happens to the kids who get cracks? Are they dead? I THOUGHT the answer was going to be they go "back" to the real world because reality had crashed in on them, but i guess not? *What happens to culty Mc Dumbface? He just seems to be gone after he see's Itsumi on the train; I wondered if he had gotten disappeared *What were the smoke dragons? Some universal mechanism keeping the realities separated? *I didn't quite get Matsume's family. There was him, his Mum and his Grandpa and... some guy in love with his Mum? Or was that his Dad? What had happened to his dad if that wasn't him? If he died, does that mean people in the Alt World COULD die? ] All in all it was a solid "Fine." It looked great and had some decent ideas, but I didn't get enough answers to what was going on for my liking. |
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 710 Location: New Zealand |
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Most of your questions are actually answered in the film. spoiler[1. The gods created the moment when the town was at its best. That was just before the steel mill explosion. 2. In essence everyone is a copy / image of reality. Some of the steel mill workers would have died in the mill explosion. They can’t go back to their original time. 3. How knows and who cares. He was a huge asshole! 4. A mechanism of the gods to maintain the replica? Its not clear. 5. Matsume family had his dad and uncle as well as mum and granddad. His dad got swallowed up by the cracks. His uncle (his dad’s brother) has a crush on his mum.] |
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The Scream Man
Posts: 184 Location: Sydney, Australia |
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That answers some, but not #2: spoiler[Im talking about the girl who had a crush on Matsume and his mate with the shaved head; both of them had cracks appear on/in them and then they disappeared/got eaten by the dragons. I wondered what made THEM disappear. We never really got an answer.] |
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