[OBLIVION ISLAND: HARUKA AND THE MAGIC MIRROR is now available on home video.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
One of the comments recently on this
blog enthused about the CGI feature PARANORMAN; the poster
hoped it would be in a similar league as CORALINE. Okay, you
want a CORALINE imitation? I'll give you a CORALINE
imitation: OBLIVION ISLAND. Actually, it's even more so a
lookalike of Neil Gaiman's rather lesser-known script MIRRORMASK
- and any number of
little-girl-goes-to-enchanted-alternate-universe-and-gets-chased-by-weird-things,
right back to the first celluloid adaptations of Lewis Carroll's
Alice and her Wonderland.
So see how the Cleveland Movie Blog
delivers to its users? Please recommend us to all your friends. We're
also just about the last made-in-the-USA business, too. Wish I could
say the same about the movies. OBLIVION ISLAND: HARUKA AND THE
MAGIC MIRROR, in fact, is a 2009 CGI Japanese "anime"
theatrical feature. It's a standalone too, written specifically for
the screen, not just one of an endless "Pokemon" series or
an adaptation of some 51-part "manga" Japanese comic book.
It was made, in fact, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fuji TV.
And I have to say, the honor-the-Emperor care shows in dazzling
visual originality and splendor. It's a pity that outside of maybe a
few East Coast/West Coast/film-fest venues, most viewers will never
get to enjoy OBLIVION ISLAND on the big screen.
Having said that, the outstanding eye
candy far outdistances a terribly derivative "Through the
Looking-Glass" premise. In a riff on real-life extant Japanese
folklore and children's fairytales, little girl Haruka is told
by her invalid mother that Japan's misplaced or neglected objects get
hoarded by supernatural "fox-spirits," taken away to an
amazing netherworld. A year later, Haruka's young mother is dead, and
teen-schoolgirl Haruka is neglected by her caring-but-workaholic
salaryman dad (any of you honestly didn't see that one coming?).
Hanging around a local shrine, lonely Haruka follows a strange
invisible presence through a mystic pool and finds herself in the
heart of fox-spirit territory, a place called Oblivion Island -
fashioned out of mountains of unwanted or forgotten things.
Haruka, guided by a friendly fox-spirit
and disguised to conceal her human nature, reunites with her
long-lost stuffed-animal toy of bygone days. But soon she's on a
quest for a second, vital property she lost - a hand-mirror, a
memento of her late mother. But it just so happens that mirrors are
the most sought-after Earth artifacts in this phantasmagoria. The
requisite uninteresting boss-villain, an evil masked "Baron"
(who kinda looks like one of those V for Vendetta/`Occupy' Guy Fawkes
faces, whassupwidat?), who has a flying-dirigible lair, also wants
Haruka's lost mirror, for all the usual conquer-the-universe
motivations. Result: Haruka spends most of the rest of the movie
being chased by weird things - when there aren't manipulative
character deaths (or seeming deaths) and threats of zombification.
Exquisite photo-realist digital
animation holds the attention throughout, even as filmmaker Shinsuke
Sato’s narrative goes down predictable and formulaic paths. I still
found it hard to tear my gaze away, and I guess small kids who
haven't been exposed to this plotline umpteen times, could really get
transfixed (though Neil Gaiman writes better dialogue, I must say).
OBLIVION ISLAND does possess the
elusive quality of being on a G-rated level, something one hardly
finds in American movies anymore, even Disney ones, let alone
schoolgirl-fetishizing anime from the Land of the Rising Skirt- Sun,
I mean. Want an insight into the elegant intricacies of the Japanese
mind? Do a web search under "panty flash" or "fan
service." Just don't click on the "image" option if
the supervisor or your parents are walking by the monitor...But I
digress. OBLIVION ISLAND isn't one of the pervier Nippon
imports, and it can provide your CORALINE-methadone fix for
the week. (2 1/2 out of 4 stars)
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