Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Maboroshi’ on Netflix, A Fantasy Adventure Channeling the Same Trepidation Brought On By COVID-19

Japanese animation studio Mappa has been a roll with series like Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen. While handling those shows and more, the animators also took on duties for the Netflix animated film maboroshi. This fantasy adventure is the newest to hit the streamer, with a more realistic setting and characters juxtaposed with the strangeness of a town-wide event that forces those who live there to remain mired in place.

Written by Mari Okada, known for her work on series and films like Toradora!, Anohana, and O Maidens in Your Savage Season, this latest feature is an intriguing exercise in watching the real world and the fanciful one collide as a group of friends realize life may never be the same for them after witnessing an accident in town one fateful night. Is it worth watching, though? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

MABOROSHI : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Masamune Kikuiri (Max Mittleman) is a 14-year-old student who, while hanging out with a group of friends, witnesses an explosion at a steel factory one fateful night. The sky becomes cracked, with smoke-like “dragons” rising out of the mill to seemingly patch said cracks. Eventually, every exit is sealed off from the town. That means no one is allowed in or out at any time.

At first, Masamune and his friends are hopeful that things will eventually go back to normal. Unfortunately, that bright-eyed hope eventually fades into a tired resignation, forcing most to accept that nothing will ever change, nor will anyone be leaving the town. Bizarrely, no one ages or changes in any way anymore, either. Perhaps the weirdest of all is the fact that there are no answers, there is no comfort to bury oneself in, and no apparent way out to escape this new development.

One day, however, all of this changes when Masamune and friend Mutsumi Sagami (Jeannie Tirado) happen upon a young girl who seems to be aging in a town where no one has the ability to change any longer. It’s obvious she might have some answers in terms of what’s going on, leaving Masamune and Mutsumi to figure out her link to the mysterious event that befell their town.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: maboroshi feels very much like a film that wouldn’t be out of place in director Makoto Shinkai’s oeuvre. A never-changing town feels much like the magical elements in movies like Your Name or Weathering With You, but the movie also shares elements with Tetsuro Araki and Gen Urobuchi’s Bubble, which also happens to center around a mysterious girl.

Performance Worth Watching: Mutsumi (Tirado) isn’t your average female lead in an anime film, with a personality that’s just as magnetic as Masamune. Tirado brings a spark to her performance to this one as she does to just about every other one she appears in when it comes to the anime world, and she makes watching maboroshi, which begins as a male-centered film with Masamune and his friends, a much more balanced one.

Memorable Dialogue: “Masamune Kikuiri hates Mutsumi Sagami,” Masamune says to himself while filling out a self-assessment form that’s part of his homework. It’s immediately arresting near the beginning of the film, because given his connection with Mutsumi later in the movie, it’s easy to wonder why this young man harbors hatred for Mutsumi in particular.

Sex and Skin: No visual sex or skin, but there is a bit of playful groping between the teens that joke around with each other, and a bit of raunchy talk between them. Nothing you wouldn’t hear from real teens (namely, a group of teen boys) talking about their crushes.

Our Take: maboroshi isn’t just an animated fantasy about a town that ceases to change or age. It’s also a study on life before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps indirectly (or perhaps not on purpose), but even a few years out as businesses refuse to go back to their original practices and the world struggles with recalling the past few years, it feels like a very similar allegory.

Beyond that very obvious comparison, this fantasy is a bit more mature and more difficult to digest immediately than some of its contemporaries. It doesn’t immediately come out and explain itself nor exactly what’s going on, and doesn’t hold your hand. For that alone it should be praised given the difficulty so many filmmakers have with keeping things mysterious when they should be for at least a little while when debuting new movies.

It’s gorgeous, it forces you to take inventory of what’s happening in every scene, and does so with biting realism and wit, with writing that actually sounds like real teenagers instead of the trite conversations between people in anime films of late. It goes to great lengths to build up an exciting payoff and conclusion that’s also quite bittersweet, and is well worth the watch with all that in mind.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s been a bit since we’ve been graced with a more mature fantasy film with such excellent animation, and maboroshi will scratch that Makoto Shinkai itch nicely. It’s got an intriguing setup, it looks beautiful, and the payoff is well worth it by the end. It’s going to inevitably be buried in Netflix’s infinite laundry list of new content, but if you happen upon it, you should absolutely watch it and digest it. It’s a special couple of hours.

Brittany Vincent (@MolotovCupcake) has been covering video games and tech for over a decade for publications like G4, Popular Science, Playboy, Variety, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, GameSpot, and more. When she’s not writing or gaming, she’s collecting retro consoles and tech.