‘Mirai’ is a beautifully animated film about love, family and time

Posted on December 7, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

I was born the youngest of three children. My parents had me late in life, so by the time I was six or seven, my siblings had already left home, making me essentially an only child. The concept of having a younger brother or sister is utterly foreign to me, so I can’t really relate with having one.

That fact, however, did not keep me from being utterly enthralled by the beautiful new film, “Mirai,” the latest animated feature from Japanese writer/director Mamoru Hosoda, whose previous works include “Summer Wars,” “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,” “The Boy and the Beast” and “Wolf Children.”

Considered one of the best directors working in Japanese feature animation today, Mamoru is able to meld deeply personal and human stories with the fantastical, while finding beauty in the mundane along the way.

In “Mirai,” he tells the story of a 4-year-old boy, Kun-chan (voiced in the English dub by Jaden Waldman, “Pinkalicious & Peterrific”), who finds his simple life turned upside down with the arrival of his baby sister Mirai. Suddenly, his parents (John Cho, “Searching,” and Rebecca Hall, “Iron Man 3”) are to longer devoting their entire attention on him, and as you can imagine, that doesn’t sit well with the young boy, who lashes out at his overworked and tired parents.

Subscribe to our e-Edition and read the rest of the story. Already a subscriber? Click here to sign in.