Mirai no Mirai - a child in time

The magic and nostalgia of childhood is one whose tug every adult can feel. Some with a smile, some with embarrassment, but most with fondness and nostalgia. J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, wrote of childhood that: "On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more." 

It is perhaps the feeling of irretrievability that lends so much art, whether writing, poetry, painting or music, to be devoted to the carefree whimsy and untainted innocence of infancy, a time when everything in the wild garden is a ceremony and the verdant paths to the future spreads in innumerable forks, all lit with the kaleidoscopic lights of infinite possibilities. 

Mirai no Mirai (Mirai of the future), is an 2018 animated film by Studio Chizu, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, that attempts with great success, to capture a vignette of childhood, and to remind adults not to become simply outdated children, but to retain some innocence, sense of wonder, and perhaps that illogical logic that is often spoiled by experience. 

The film tells the story of Kun, a little boy around 4, who undergoes something of a personal crisis when a new member, his little sister Mirai (Japanese for 'future') is added to the nucleus family of himself, his mom, his dad and their dachshund Yukko. The attention of his parents, now being occupied by the baby instead of him, soon sends Kun into tantrums. 

When escaping into the garden after a tiff, in the middle of a wonderfully designed multi-stepped house, Kun is transported in space and time through some sort of portal seemingly habituated by the tree. Through this portal, he meets various members of his family, such as his baby sister, as a high school girl from the future, who asks for his help to take down a shrine his preoccupied dad forgot to pack up after the Hinamatsuri festival, thereby endangering her future happiness; his mother as a young girl, who gets scolded for messing up the house (very much like Kun with his toy trains); and his great grandfather as a young man with a limp from the war, who teaches the young boy to look ahead when riding. 

These various fantastical episodes each teaches Kun some perspective about himself and his family. While they don't transform him, or stop his tantrums and tempers, each moves him on a little, opening the door a crack more to let the future in. 

The animation of Studio Chizu is sumptuous with a blend of traditional animation and CGI. All the backgrounds are meticulously rendered and almost every frame is a painting. The opening song, Mirai's Theme, by Tasuro Yamashita, which accompanied the opening credits and a pastiche of the mum and dad as they formed a family, recall the sweet and innocent hopefulness of 80's soft rock. The use of colours and angles are well controlled to lend to the film, especially through the fantasy elements, the Martianism quality of seeing familiar things transformed through the eyes of a young boy. 

More than simply a fantasy adventure, the heart of the film is on family, the sometimes intangible bond between the dead, the living and those yet to be born. The portal in the tree of the garden is the symbol of the family tree, that we are indebted to those whom we may have not met, through things passed onto us we may not even realise. And, in turn, it reminds us that our choices will alter the life of those who follow. 

Kun's adventures also flowed back to his parents, whose wonder at Kun's small but sudden and significant growth buttresses their own imperfect but happy partnership, giving them contentment with the present and the hope to look forward to the future. It perhaps reminded them of their own childhood, when days are as long as summers and dreams and reality are one and the same. 

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, 

      And with joy that is almost pain 

My heart goes back to wander there, 

And among the dreams of the days that were, 

      I find my lost youth again. 

            And the strange and beautiful song, 

            The groves are repeating it still: 

      "A boy's will is the wind's will, 

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

                                                  - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow