At first glance, The Imaginary might look like it has come right out of Japan's legendary Studio Ghibli. The reality is that the movie is similar in style but comes from a rival studio, Studio Ponoc – and has managed to be a massive hit. Think Disney and back-in-the-day Pixar.
What does span both animation studio greats is one director, Yoshiaki Nishimura, who famously directed Ghibli's Spirited Away hit. He appears to have a magic touch as, once again, he has given us a movie that has Rotten Tomatoes' tomatometer pulsing: its rare 91 per cent score is complemented by an equally impressive 90 per cent audience score.
Intrigued? It's now available to watch on Netflix.
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An instant hit
Released in December 2023 in Japan, The Imaginary has now landed on Netflix after grossing over half a million dollars in its opening weekend release. The movie premiered on Netflix on 5th July, but how long it remains there is another matter. Netflix currently has the streaming rights, but these tend to change hands so the studio can make more money and other services can also offer the movie.
Based on the 2014 novel by A.F. Harrold, this is the studio's first full-length movie since 2017's Mary and the Witch's Flower which also did critically well with an 89 per cent tomatometer score.
The movie is also animated by many Studio Ghibli-trained artists, meaning hand-drawn characters with fantastic attention to detail. Their movements and lifelike existence alone are marvels that make this film enthralling.
While the original Japanese voice cast is impressive, with the likes of Kokoro Terada of Fullmetal Alchemist fame and Sakura Ando from Monster leading the charge, the English voices also have some famous names – Hayley Atwell, aka Marvel's Agent Peggy Carter, for one.
The story
In line with the novel, The Imaginary goes beyond gorgeous eye-friendly animation and carries you through a compelling story about Rudger, a boy imagined by a girl called Amanda. He can't be seen by anyone but her, only he arrives alone in the town of The Imaginaries. Here, in a land for forgotten imagined creations, he must find work and face a mysterious threat.
The idea is to capture the freedom of a child's imagination and this movie does a great job not only of thinking about and reflecting on that concept but also taking viewers back to that state. As you might imagine, that means heart-warming – sometimes heart-wrenching – beauty in this dazzling fantasy adventure.
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