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Cinema Trips - Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

A Review

By BoblobV2Published 6 years ago 3 min read
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This is a film that tells the sprawling epic story of an Iorph’s journey through a fantastical world that involves themes of race, politics, mortality, and parenthood. The Iorph being the titular Maquia.

From a technical standpoint, the film was breath taking, with beautiful landscapes filled with colour, and claustrophobic industrial cities feeling alive. The animation was quite fluid, and motion could also be seen throughout the film, which in itself is a rarity. The CGI work in the film was mostly done well, and at times added to the motion in the background, integrating well with the 2D animation. Most of the CGI was being used to animate the Dragon equivalent in this world. While it did feel out of place when the creatures were moving, it was used so sparingly that it was never long enough to break the immersion into the film as a whole.

The soundtrack for the most part was quite subtle through most of the film, though the way it comes alive at the climax of the film was impressive, driving the stakes higher, and making the sequence far more intense and exciting. Accompanied by some fantastic editing, the climax was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of the film.

What is interesting about this film is that while the film follows Maquia, and she is without a doubt the protagonist of the film, she is not the hero. She is another person living in the world, doing the best she can to support both herself and her son, Ariel. They are constantly needing to adapt to the world around them. This aspect made me root for them, even more as it presented the threat that things could get worse at any moment. Unlike many of the anime shounen protagonists, they would be powerless against it. What helps this is the fact that the world felt alive and lived in. It was a world that has a rich mythology, history and a clear political structure.

With all that said the film is not without faults. With the sprawling nature of the story, and the fact that it takes place over the course of a lifetime, there was no time for the film to breath. The time jumps were numerous and sudden which made the film feel jarring, jagged, and inconsistent. There was also far too many characters, which is to be expected of an epic. However when there is no time to breath, many of the characters personalities and in many cases their names fall by the wayside.

Thankfully though the character designs of many of the characters were unique and writing was well written to the point that even if they were missing for a majority of the film, when they returned you knew exactly who it was. This being said the same cannot be said for the Iorphs, who all have a similar character design and colour scheme for a majority of the film. It takes a moment for you to realize that it is in fact one character in a scene and not the other, if you notice at all.

While the characters for the most part are distinct, with the exception of Maquia and Ariel, there was no character development for the rest of the cast of characters, making their character progression meaningless. The most unfortunate victim of this is one of the antagonists, who ended up being similar to a stock anime villain in the vain of Biba from Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. Therefore, some of the story beats and character actions feel, at times, questionable at best.

The film touches on racism when Maquia has to constantly move after a certain amount of time so that people will not notice that she is an Iorph. It also touches on politics when the royal family decides to invade the Iorphs so that they could strengthen their bloodline and make their status among the kingdoms stronger. Love is forbidden and doomed to fail, as a result of an Iorph’s extremely long lifespan. It manages to explore the nature of mortality and outliving those that you love, very reminiscent of Connor Macleod in the original Highlander. Above all this is a film of women and, in particular, motherhood, showing, without reserve, the love for their children, and how far one would go to protect them.

Ultimately the film goes from strength to strength, building to a fantastic climax that felt earned. Simultaneously, beautiful, exciting, tense, and harrowing at the same time with a beautifully emotional end to the film.

Therefore if I were to recommend, I would say to wait till it is available on a streaming platform such as Netflix or Funimation, as I cannot recommend a purchase as a result of the films many shortcomings.

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About the Creator

BoblobV2

Writing about anime, and anything else I find interesting.

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