Studio Ghibli is functionally gone.
At first, I was debating whether I could make
this entire video without mentioning the old animation studio. However, when the first
thing out of anyone’s mouth upon seeing the poster for for the film
we are talking about today was something along the lines of:
"THIS LOOKS LIKE A GHIBLI CLONE!"
That makes it a topic that would be impossible for me not to broach.
So what do I mean when I say it's functionally gone? Well, the studio closed its doors back
in 2014 after the release of the film “When Marnie Was There”, and much of the talent
that worked at the legendary studio has since moved on.
Now there is still a film in production at the sort of reopened studio – what with
Miyazaki out of retirement again, because that man won’t stop working until he dies
– but by and large the Ghibli that we know and loved remains in spirit only.
In the physical world that we occupy, however, not all hope is lost. For those animated film fans
such as myself, there are many creators and studios to fill in the gap like Studio Ponoc,
and their first animated feature that we will be talking about today. Ladies, gentlemen, and
others, my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection we’re looking at:
Mary and the Witch's Flower
Let's Jam!
So what is this film really? Because it looks like
Ghibli, it acts like Ghibli, it feels like Ghibli, but is it a "rip-off" or something entirely
different? The similarities are not all that hard to understand when you look at the studio
helming the feature. Newly formed Studio Ponoc was created by a former Ghibli producer
which means they have a
lot to prove and a name to make for themselves. So how did they fair? Well, safe is a word
I would use, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a film based off of a 1971 children’s novel by writer
Mary Stewart called The Little Broomstick. It follows the story of a young red-headed
English girl named Mary who, through circumstance and luck, comes across a magic flower and
an old witch’s broom. After accidently absorbing the magic from the flower and activating said
broom, she is whisked away to a nearby magical college where she is thrown into a world of
magic and monsters and all things that you would expect from British literature about
magic written in the 1970’s. Or really, just British literature in all
honesty, as there are plenty of moments when you could pick out elements from other well-known
fantasy novels from that side of the pond. And hell, if someone told me that J. K. Rowling
was a fan of the original book when she was younger, I’d believe it. But it is a very
safe film and ultimately I think that it was the right move. It doesn’t have the same
amount of depth as many a Ghibli film from the past does, but it does give inklings about
a greater more fantastical world that the characters live in and it would love to show
it to you. But oh, look at the time, we need to wrap this up before the film gets too long, chop chop!
It might just be an issue with adapting the
original source material – which I will be honest enough to say that I haven’t read
– but I have seen how Ghibli adapted works in the past and how quite often the world
building gets partially sidelined and left underdeveloped in favor of the more important
story. The titular character of Mary easily fits
the role of the plucky audience surrogate. She is curious about the world, but has a
temper and sometimes lets it get the better of her. She gets angry at the boy she might
fancy, even when he’s largely nice to her. But ultimately though, when the chips are down,
she risks a heck of a lot to save the day. At the same time though she is quite the example
of a Mary Sue – or perhaps, considering the author’s name, a Mary Stew…art.
That said there is a bit of comfortable familiarity about her and her story. Watching this film is quite
like re-reading an old favourite book of which you’ve forgotten the details of. You know roughly
what’s going to happen and in what order, but there’s still the excitement in re-experiencing
the whole thing that makes it enjoyable. The one thing that I was thankfully relieved
with was that while I can pick out a variety of either influences from other “young girl
turned witch” stories (or perhaps precursors, considering the story’s origins), I was
thankful to see a distinct lack of influence from one such story. Kiki.
I fully expected a film about a young witch from a studio that labels itself as a spiritual successor
to Studio Ghibi to have some kind of homage to one of it's more famous films.
But really, aside from the obvious tropes that come along with having a young witch – like
the clothing, the broom, the black cat – there are very few visual references to Ghibli’s
former witch work. Although it does have many visual references for other Ghibli films instead,
but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Normally, I would start off this section by
talking about the animation, but because I think it’s been overlooked by virtually
everyone I’ve talked to who’s seen this film, I wanted to first bring attention to
the film’s soundtrack. Now whenever someone talks about the greatness of Hayao Miyazaki
and his films, you would be doing a disservice not to mention the breathtaking music of master
Joe Hisashi. Likewise, anyone who talks about this film and does not mention the music by
Takatsugu Muramatsu is doing it wrong. The music that he composed for this film fills
in so many gaps left open by other parts of production. It’s this music that adds that
extra little bit of wonder and magic to a film that would have been lacking otherwise.
It’s also, thankfully, available out on musical services like Spotify and the like,
so even if I can’t convince you to watch the film today, at the very least I would
I hope you check out the soundtrack. Trust me, it's worth it.
I’m very much looking forward to his future
work because, if it’s anything like this, then I will be musically satisfied for years
to come. Hell, I’ll go watch "Lu over the Wall" for his music alone, though I do have
some other reasons to go see that film, mostly because Masaaki Yuasa is a genius. But we’re
getting really off-track now, so back to the Ghibli references.
Considering the film was produced by many Ghibli alumni, it’s not hard to imagine
that they took all that they learned with them and the visual style of the film shows
that off. But it’s not only there in how the characters and the world were designed.
Many of the magical elements are very reminiscent of similar effects from Howl’s Moving Castle
and Ponyo, both of which had Mary’s director Hiromasa Yonebayashi as a key animator.
Those aren’t the only visual references though. Heck, I honestly thought for half
a moment as Mary got whisked away for the first time that the broom was taking her to
the forgotten city of Laputa surrounded by a massive hurricane. Visually, this film is
a massive homage to what has come before, and while I enjoyed the nostalgia of it, it
does make me curious about what is to come. Oh yeah, and there’s also a blob monster
that could either be passed off as a reference to No-Face or the God Warrior from
Nausicaa if you want to dig hard enough. Or maybe I was just really wanting to avoid mentioning
Spirited Away because honestly I’m not that big of a fan of that particular film personally,
but that’s a story for another day. Not today.
What Mary and the Witch’s Flower shows us
is that sometimes one of the best ways to tackle the future is to get a little help
from the past, both visually and narratively. While some might look at the similarities
between it and the films that made Ghibli famous and decide to call it a rip-off, I’m
a bit more understanding. It’s quite possible that had Ghibli not closed its doors, Mary
would indeed have BEEN a Ghibli film, even if the production took a few different turns
along the way. To me, it’s a Ghibli rip-off the same way that The Cat Returns is a Ghibli
rip-off. “But the Cat Returns IS a Ghibli film,” you might say. To which
I would respond, “Exactly.” The Cat Returns, for those who haven't seen it
LOOKS like a Ghibli film, ACTS like a Ghibli
film, and nobody cares that Miyazaki had little to do with it because it was released by Ghibli
themselves. From a production standpoint, Mary is very, very similar. Ghibli may have
gone in a different direction, but a lot of the newer talent learned from their time there,
have not disappeared, and are instead continuing to create magical worlds with which we can
entertain ourselves. Is it an amazing film? Not especially. But it is a very enjoyable film,
and as a starting point, I think that Ponoc is doing just fine. Hell, I’d rather re-watch
this than Summer Wars!
As such, I’d like to present Mary and the
Witch’s Flower with the recommendation to buy it. It’s recently been released by a film
distribution company called GKIDS who specialize in animation, who was nice enough to both provide a copy
of the film for me to view and sponsor this video’s creation alongside their partners at Universal Pictures
I’m glad they did too. While the film was on my radar, it probably would have taken me far
longer to have watched this movie otherwise and I would have been missing out.
I’m hopeful that GKIDS can fill a particular
gap that we’ve had in the western anime industry. Television anime get subtitled, and even dubbed
now, mere weeks after their Japanese airing if not immediately, but anime films on the
other hand take months if not years to come across the ocean. While licensers like Eleven
Arts have been taking up the mantle alongside Funimation’s own films division, I’m happy
that we have more companies stepping into the ring. Hopefully, this means we’ll have
more anime films brought to us legally in a much timelier manner, but time will tell.
If you’ve already seen Mary and the Witch’s Flower, well then I’ll start with the obvious
alternate recommendation of Kiki’s Delivery Service for you to check out. I say obvious
mostly because it’s on the short list of my favourite anime films ever and really you
should have already seen it before now. If not, go and do that thing. If you have
though, my second recommendation is for Little Witch Academia, another take on a witch’s
school that focuses far more on actually being a student at said school, something which
Mary was never given the chance to do. Between those two, you should find something to your liking.
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Until next time, ladies gentlemen and others,stay frosty!