Anime Castle Review
Some stories must be told, especially to those caring enough to understand them, lest they eventually destroy the teller. Such is the theme of Keichi Hara’s 2022 anime,
. (Henceforth “Castle” for the purpose of this review). Adapted from a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura, The story concerns seven middle-school students who are summoned to what appears to be an elaborate extradimensional castle isolated on a tiny island entirely surrounded by water. Once they arrive through their bedroom mirrors, which have become magical portals, they are met by a mysterious young girl wearing a wolf mask.
The students seem to have no connection to each other but have been collected to play a game: If, in one year, any one of them can find a key hidden in the castle, the winner can use it to unlock a hidden “wishing room” and have their most fervent wish granted. There are only two rules: First, while they may travel back and forth between the “real world” and the castle through their mirrors, they can only do so from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. Second, anyone who stays even a tick past 5 will not only be devoured by a savage wolf, but the other six will suffer the same fate. Such a deal.
Lonely Castle In The Mirror Releases On Blu Ray And Digital This September
But wait—aren’t the kids in school during the day? It is revealed that they are not playing hooky. All of them have suffered trauma, resulting in an emotional inability to face school. We have our main character, Kokoro, a dark-haired waif who had been the subject of merciless bullying by seemingly squads of female classmates and lost her only friend to their ranks. (It is noted that bullying appears to be a real problem in Japanese schools). Much the same goes for Ureshino, a pudgy romantic who, at one point, is so brutalized by bullies that he is swathed in bandages. Fuuka is a cute young moppet in round glasses who has crumbled under the verbal abuse of parents demanding that she become an award-winning pianist.
Masamune has been given unlimited video games but no parental attention or love. Rion is a friendless, unappreciated soccer player. Sensitive and lonely Subaru has lost his sister to cancer and has never recovered from her death. Then there is Aki, a tall, lanky young rebel who cannot forget her near-rape at the hands of her nasty stepfather. These kids have no good reason to trust each other, never mind the unfathomable Wolf Queen, but as time goes by…
As time goes by, most of what you would expect eventually happens, except in slow motion, and that is a significant problem for an anime that runs 116 minutes. Until the climax, about 20 minutes of the total running time, Castle reads like a cross between a depressed version of The Breakfast Club and a year-long group therapy session. It takes most of the year before we even see a search for the key, which turns out to be a McGuffin; although the key does exist, it does not take a sophisticated viewer very long to figure out that the kids are collectively the key. Although the kids have more than sufficient time to reveal more of their damaged personalities, we don’t truly learn anything until quite late in the film. And then there is a time-traveling science fiction twist just before the climax that does the viewers no favors and throws an unnecessary wrinkle into a skinny plot.
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Some serious questions arise: Why should the group believe or trust in the Wolf Queen? With her cold, sharp demeanor, obtuse refusal to respond to inquiries, and unsettling mask that serves as a reminder of the kids’ fates for breaking a rule, isn’t she as emotionally abusive as the bullies or adults who plague the kids? It appears that the answer to the students remaining perpetually absent from school is not therapy (at least not the form that the putative therapist in the movie provides). It is also not intervention by the schools. Rather than address the problem of endemic bullying, transferring the student to a different school, an “alternative” school, or letting the student remain at home indefinitely is more expedient. I get that the film wants to make the students the therapists for each other, but can Japanese schools address any problems at all?
In one scene, Ureshino has been beaten so severely that he comes to the castle with arms, hands, and face bandaged. In another scene, Kokoro is trapped in her house by a gang of bullying girls, cowering behind locked doors to attempt to gain illegal entry to harm her. This takes place in a populous neighborhood, and no one seems to notice; did the bullies skip school en masse to attack Kokoro, or did they do this in plain sight of the adults who would be home after school? What happened to Ureshino and Kokoro, bodily harm and attempted home invasion, are actionable by any law enforcement standards. Group therapy for ongoing abuse requires a very experienced therapist; neither the kids nor the Wolf Queen qualify.
Part of me feels regret at sniping at this film. Most adults will readily tell you that middle school was the worst experience of their educations, rife with cliques, bullying, cruelty, and sometimes embarrassing hormonal influences. It is a challenging phase of development to navigate, and if the reports are accurate, Japan has a concerning problem with bullies disrupting schools. Perhaps the most salient point
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Makes is that some sections of pre-teen children are not psychologically built to take what the world dishes out. Such individuals need help, empathy, and understanding. In poor Aki’s case, even more is required. Still, it was beyond the scope of this film to address these issues, especially when we barely get to know the characters.
Might have been better approached by Hara as an anime series of episodes so that audiences could focus on the characters as they changed over time as the results of their interactions. As a stand-alone movie, I think it misses the mark. When directors like Masaaki Yuasa turn out films like
Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Edinburgh airport car parking | Thanks to Luton airport car parking, Manchester airport car parking and Belfast airport car parkingPlaying games can be educational and otherwise beneficial. It is not necessarily about winning, whatever and however it might be, but more of something more long-term, even permanent, such as lessons learnt and friends made. And some, maybe even most of the in-game stuff, could be translated to the outer, real world that tends to be more cruel than the usual product of human imagination. That could serve as the point of Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel and Keiichi Hara’s animated feature “Lonely Castle in the Mirror”. The source novel achieved bestseller status in Japan, while the film entered distribution in the East Asian cinemas before its festival showing.
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Our protagonist Kokori lives a life of the middle school’s outsider and bottom-feeder. She is bullied by the clique of the school’s popular “alpha-bitch”, she does not have many friends and those that she has are also being seduced by her nemesis. Her father is more or less absent, while her mother cannot really reach her, so Kokori often fakes sickness to skip school.
Until one day the mirror in her room starts glowing and acting as a portal to a castle on a rock surrounded by endless sea where a girl in a wolf mask greets her. The wolf-mask-girl, referred only as the Wolf Queen, is a game master of sorts in a game where the participant, called Lost Red Riding Hood, has to find a key and a room so one of their wishes can be granted. Kokori is not the only one playing the game, since there are two more girls and four more boys about the same age as hers. That is not the only thing in common between them, and the game should serve more as a coping mechanism to the harsh school ecosystem than as a competition, until the key-finding and wish-making becomes a matter of life and death to one of the friends after one rule-breaking incident…
The novel touches some of the serious topics from daily life of the youth in Japan and basically everywhere in the fully developed world, such as bullying, peer pressure, distance or absence of parents and dealing with loss, while the film tries to do so as well, in an equally compelling fashion. The trouble is Miho Maruo’s adaptation of the source into the screenplay which is too literal in building up to and serving plot twists in the second half and stretched in order to provide all the characters with a convincing back story. In some cases, it succeeds, in others it does not, but the damage is done already with its runtime stretched from ideal 80 or so minutes to nearly 120.
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Hara’s directing is also in the “hit-and-miss” mode, while never seeming particularly inspired or subtle, which is strange for such a seasoned director of anime features.
Makes is that some sections of pre-teen children are not psychologically built to take what the world dishes out. Such individuals need help, empathy, and understanding. In poor Aki’s case, even more is required. Still, it was beyond the scope of this film to address these issues, especially when we barely get to know the characters.
Might have been better approached by Hara as an anime series of episodes so that audiences could focus on the characters as they changed over time as the results of their interactions. As a stand-alone movie, I think it misses the mark. When directors like Masaaki Yuasa turn out films like
Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Edinburgh airport car parking | Thanks to Luton airport car parking, Manchester airport car parking and Belfast airport car parkingPlaying games can be educational and otherwise beneficial. It is not necessarily about winning, whatever and however it might be, but more of something more long-term, even permanent, such as lessons learnt and friends made. And some, maybe even most of the in-game stuff, could be translated to the outer, real world that tends to be more cruel than the usual product of human imagination. That could serve as the point of Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel and Keiichi Hara’s animated feature “Lonely Castle in the Mirror”. The source novel achieved bestseller status in Japan, while the film entered distribution in the East Asian cinemas before its festival showing.
Anime Movie Review: Lupin Iii: The Castle Of Cagliostro (1979)
Our protagonist Kokori lives a life of the middle school’s outsider and bottom-feeder. She is bullied by the clique of the school’s popular “alpha-bitch”, she does not have many friends and those that she has are also being seduced by her nemesis. Her father is more or less absent, while her mother cannot really reach her, so Kokori often fakes sickness to skip school.
Until one day the mirror in her room starts glowing and acting as a portal to a castle on a rock surrounded by endless sea where a girl in a wolf mask greets her. The wolf-mask-girl, referred only as the Wolf Queen, is a game master of sorts in a game where the participant, called Lost Red Riding Hood, has to find a key and a room so one of their wishes can be granted. Kokori is not the only one playing the game, since there are two more girls and four more boys about the same age as hers. That is not the only thing in common between them, and the game should serve more as a coping mechanism to the harsh school ecosystem than as a competition, until the key-finding and wish-making becomes a matter of life and death to one of the friends after one rule-breaking incident…
The novel touches some of the serious topics from daily life of the youth in Japan and basically everywhere in the fully developed world, such as bullying, peer pressure, distance or absence of parents and dealing with loss, while the film tries to do so as well, in an equally compelling fashion. The trouble is Miho Maruo’s adaptation of the source into the screenplay which is too literal in building up to and serving plot twists in the second half and stretched in order to provide all the characters with a convincing back story. In some cases, it succeeds, in others it does not, but the damage is done already with its runtime stretched from ideal 80 or so minutes to nearly 120.
Howl's Moving Castle: Anime Review
Hara’s directing is also in the “hit-and-miss” mode, while never seeming particularly inspired or subtle, which is strange for such a seasoned director of anime features.
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