Mirai (Hosoda, 2018) is streaming on Funimation
On this day in 2019, filling in for Simon Morris on RNZ’s At the Movies, I was lucky enough to review this little animé gem which is now one of the films near the top of my “most fond of” list.
Mirai is about childhood (as so many of my favourites are):
Four-year-old Kun is the apple of his family’s eye until Mum and Dad come home with new sister Mirai. Kun takes this quite hard, as children that age often do. What’s so lovely about Mirai is that it is so sensitively told from the little boy’s perspective, even framed at his eye level and vividly entering his imagination when he’s at play.
This might be the best representation of what it’s like to be a child that age that I’ve seen.
Of course, being Japanese animation, we have to have a bit of magical realism and fantasy to spice up the story. Kun discovers that his little courtyard garden – by the way, the Tokyo architecture and streetscapes are beautifully observed – is magical and it allows him to meet the grown-up Mirai who teaches him what it means to have a little sister.
One final reason for watching Mirai: two soundtrack songs by Tatsuro Yamashita
I bought them both and they never fail to bring a smile to my face when shuffle presents them to me. Up to now, I have demurred from adding YouTube to these posts but today I find it irresistible:
Mirai is streaming on Crunchyroll’s streaming service called Funimation. It’s an international service but available to NZ subscribers ad-free for only $12.49 a month. They have apps for iOS including Apple TV. I’ll be writing up a deeper dive into the offerings from Funimation for RNZ at a later date.
If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, Mirai is also available as a digital rental from Apple, or as physical media.
