Mirai Of The Future Review

Anime fans finally I can bring you a review of a movie that i've been dieing to see for months now and yesterday it finally came online. This is a movie that has been high on my watch list for months now mostly because of the director but also because the film looks really good and it deserves it's OSCAR nomination so here we go with my review of Mirai Of The Future.

The plot of the movie is Kun is a four year old kid who's life is turned upside down with the arrival of his baby sister and now Kun must learn not only how to be big brother but also to be kind to his family. The plot to this movie to me really works because it's something that alot of older siblings can very easily relate to but I do wish that there was more of a storyline since the film does feel like a bunch of random scenes just thrown together.

The voice cast for this film is Haru Kuroki as Mirai , Moka Kamishiraishi as Kun , Gen Hoshino as Father , Kōji Yakusho as Grandfather , Kumiko Asou as Mother , Mitsuo Yoshihara as Mysterious Man and Yoshiko Miyazaki as Grandmother. Now even tho i'm reviewing the subbed version of this movie I have to talk about the dub cast for a second because they got some really talented people to star in the dub with the likes of John Cho , Rebecca Hall and Daniel Dae Kim all doing voices like i'm actually excited to see this dubbed.

As for the acting in the subbed version of the film it's honestly really freaking good and that's not a surprise given how good the script is. I really do wish I could say who my favourite actor in the whole film is but the fact is there's all so good so it would be impossible for me to name just one and that's a rare thing for me to say so that should tell you how good the acting in this film truly is.

This is the third film by Studio Chizu with so far all of there films being directed by Mamoru Hosoda and I have to say that even tho i'm yet to check out the studios other three films the animation in this film is simply fantastic. That's not something I say lightly and honestly in my opinion the opening to this movie is perhaps the best animated scene in the whole movie and that's coming from a movie that's got great animation in it so that's really saying something.

Like most of Hosodas work the main theme of this film is about the coming together of family in this case it's brother and sister. I can very easily see this theme getting old very quick since in the other films i've seen that he's directed  he uses the exact same theme but it works because it's something that alot of us can relate to but my god do I wish that the guy mix it up every once in a while using that same old theme can get old pretty quick.

This film confirms something that i've long suspected and that's that this guy has his own style because Summer Wars , The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and this film all visually look the exact same. There's nothing wrong with it infact Studio Ghibli have proven that you can have a set style and still make great and unique films however there films also have something that separates them visually where as with the films i've just mentioned there's nothing.

I have to take a minuet and talk about the character of Kun to put it simply even tho he's four years old and is meant to be annoying I honestly liked his parents more then him and that's not a good thing because he's our lead character all he does is complain about everything honestly i'd make a Donald Trump joke but Kun isn't that bad but tho you'd have thought that a little bit more effort would have gone into making him a more likeable character but they didn't.

This film contains what I think are meant to be elements of time travel which i'm fine with since they do kind of set up some rules like it can only happen when Kun is distressed about something which is cool. However they don't go into detail about why this can happen it's just there for no reason other then ti advance the plot and if this was a bad film i'd be happy with that but this is an actually good film so we need some kind of explanation.

We do get some kind of explanation about this kind of time travel thing at the end of the movie and it does tie into the movie's theme really well however we're still left with a lot of questions. Like for example why is it that Kun can only see the family members that he's heard about and can anyone outside of Kun and Mirai use it or is it just limited to those characters because there the only human characters we see activity use this time travel so you have to wonder if anyone else in there family use it.

People have said that this is a sad movie and on the one hand I do see where there coming from but on the other hand I myself didn't cry once. That's not to say there isn't emotional moments in the film far from it infact but to me those moments didn't get me crying if anything they felt like the movie was just going through the motions and i'm not quite sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing or not but it's something that I think you should be aware of.

Overall while this is indeed a great film and it does deserve it's OSCAR nomination (which lets be honest here it won't win) it's still a flawed film and it's those flaws that are going to keep it from being a perfect ten in my eyes so the film scores an 8.5 out of 10 from me.