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I found it curious that a movie about the love parents have for their children would start off with a promise that such love would inevitably be lost. Maquia is very insistent on this. It is written into the premise of the movie, about how an immortal, elf-like woman tries to raise her non-immortal, very human son. This promise is repeated throughout the movie, so much so that you’d think it really was only a matter of time before she would be separated from her son. And yet, somehow, this movie is not a tragedy. Though it is mired by its frequent narrative missteps, Maquia ... is perhaps one of the most profound reflections on parenthood and responsibility I have ever seen.

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Mari Okada’s directorial debut, follows Maquia, a mythical, ageless being, after she rescues a baby, Ariel, and raises him as her own. It chronicles their lives as Maquia adjusts to the outside world and learns how to provide for her newborn son. Much (honestly, all) of the draw of this movie involves Maquia and Ariel’s journey across foreign lands, their bond together as mother and son, and what we can learn from how it changes over time and circumstance.

And to its credit, Maquia’s chronicle of parenthood is told with surprising acuity. Maquia’s early days of raising a baby on a farm are replete with the simple joys of parenting itself. Seeing Ariel walk for the first time, or being there to hear his first words—to Maquia the movie, these are joys worth sharing, milestones in parenthood that feel like their own reward. But parenting is not just some babysitting here and there. Maquia the movie does not shy away from the uncomfortable realities of being a working parent and its newfound emotional and economic toll. A forced relocation turns into a financial disaster, with Maquia struggling to make ends meet. At home, Ariel is uncooperative, and lacks the maturity and understanding to support his mother when she’s down. Maquia the movie shows an incisiveness to parenting that feels as if it was drawn from Mari Okada’s own experience with motherhood herself, and it is certainly all the more convincing for it.

Adding to Maquia’s strengths is how it sells itself as a powerful and moving film, and everything from the sophistication of its production to its loving journey of a mother and her son would speak as such. This is because Maquia is adept at keeping the “texture” of its drama intact. In its big moments, everything feels the way it should. Its ideas of parenthood and love are (supposedly) universal. Its animation is fluid, and the various subtleties of each character’s emotional states are expressed in thoroughly convincing detail. The soundtrack that plays during key moments between Maquia and her son may be one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

And that, on a basic level, is about where the strengths of this story end. Maquia the movie prides itself on being an important, heartfelt drama, but much of this drama either doesn’t land, doesn’t make sense, or both. The things these characters are saying are just too unnatural, too out of touch, too focused on some heightened dramatic reality where children swearing they will grow up to “protect” their parents (from… what, exactly?) makes those parents break down in tears. And it’s telling how blunt some of the drama is that I was rarely left with the sense that anything substantial was actually said during what should have been key moments of catharsis.

Then there are the pacing issues. The frequent timeskips create tonal disconnects where characters we thought we knew spontaneously change, some for seemingly no reason. It takes active effort, as a viewer, to readjust to people behaving in ways that seem incongruent with how we have seen them only moments prior, even if the movie has some ostensible reason to do so to reflect how people change through the passage of time. One minute we see Ariel reconciling with Maquia after the stress of being a parent becomes too much for her to bear. The next minute, he’s… avoiding her? With no explanation? And then it happens again, a few scenes later? Where is the movie going with this? And what’s a Hibiol, again?

And yet, this is still a movie worth applauding. Maquia is not just a drama about the trials a mother goes through in raising her son. If that’s all this movie had going for it, I would not be writing this review. Because Maquia does not just chronicle the relationship between a mother and her child. Maquia charts Ariel’s growth over his entire lifespan, from early childhood to teenage development to independence in his adult years. Suddenly, Ariel is leaving the house, he’s getting married, he’s expecting his own baby. And suddenly, you realise Maquia isn’t just about someone figuring out how to be a parent—it’s about the nature of parenting itself.

The promises of parenthood are never what we expect. There is no guidebook, no instructions, no steps on parenting that teach us how to treat our children right. Being a mother is something Maquia learns only as she does it, where she has to both realise what her mistakes are and fix them, all on her own. We are constantly reminded of the lingering doubt in her mind if she has actually been a good parent at all. And as Ariel matures, new problems arise. As he grows older, he is no longer the naïve, dependent child he once used to be. But Maquia continues treating him as such, her good will getting in the way of being a good mother because she is parenting in the only way she knows how.

Which was why I found it so curious this movie would insist that Maquia losing Ariel was all but inevitable. Because it’s true. Maquia does not stay with Ariel forever. This movie makes it a point to show Ariel beginning his own life as an adult, now as a husband, and a soon-to-be father of his own. The childhood innocence Maquia once saw in Ariel is lost as he grows older, and in its place is the same sense of maturity and responsibility Maquia had to learn as she was raising him. People grow, and people change, and Maquia the movie posits that, sometimes, that change is irreconcilable with the past. The idea that familial love is unconditional and forever is incompatible with this movie, where Ariel’s relationship with Maquia grows ever more strained as he matures into adulthood and becomes increasingly independent, and as he comes to terms with his own unique responsibilities that arise from it. Instead, Maquia the movie is about accepting how our children will one day grow beyond us, and how they will come to value the efforts and sacrifices they made for their children as we did for them.

I don’t know if this is a good movie, but I do know it is ahead of its time. The script itself feels amateurish, and what should have been powerful and moving drama was let down by characters talking in ways that meant nothing of substance and carried little meaningful dramatic weight. It has pacing issues, tonal issues, and is full of confusing narrative ideas—some which work, and some that absolutely do not. And yet, I have never seen a movie that makes such profound statements on the nature of parenthood, and the courage of those who undertake it. Maquia is a movie that cares deeply about what being a parent really means, a movie that understands how our children will not always stay with us, and how they will grow up and learn to take on the same mantle we took on for them. As a character drama, this movie is riddled with missteps and questionable narrative choices. But as a reflection of parenthood? As an affirmation of everything that makes parenting worthwhile? It is a triumph. Sometimes, being a parent is about being there for them when it matters, and to love and nurture them all the while. And sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is to let them go.

I don’t know about you, but my high school years were… not very exciting. I spent a lot of time by myself, reading in the corner of the classroom or somewhere quiet in the library at lunch. I had a group of friends, yeah, but there were only a few that I’d ever really talk to. Even then, I’d always decline if they ever asked me to go out somewhere, telling them about how busy I was or how I “had other plans”.

I never said much. I remember a few of my classmates sometimes asking why I was so quiet all the time, why ... I only tried to just sit there and read. I never knew how to answer. That was just how I was, I guess – I didn’t like talking, and I wasn’t very comfortable around most people. Why? I’d tell you I was shy, but I wouldn’t be saying very much. And it’s not like I was bullied or anything – no one picked on me or hated me in particular. I might’ve preferred being by myself, sure, but I still had a few friends – it wasn’t like I hated being around people. I think someone called me mute once.

It’s been almost a year since I graduated and I’ve… moved on… since then, but I’d be lying if I said it’s all just in the past. When we graduated, that was that – some of us went to the same university, some didn’t. I ended up cutting ties with most of those who didn’t, and I still don’t find myself talking a whole lot with those who did. But, hey, at the very least I’ve come to realise how silly I used to be, trying to stay away from people like the plague – it’s all just a natural part of growing up, and only now did I get the chance to finally join the club.

OreGairu understands this. All of it. Everything. You see it in the slight furrow of Hikigaya’s brow as his head rests on his palm, eyes brooding over to the noisiest parts of the classroom. You see it in the droop of his shoulders, hands finding solace where his trouser pockets were, as his bag bounces in perfect rhythm to each of his slow, dreary steps. OreGairu knows what it’s like to sit in that corner of the classroom, by yourself, never talking, with you finding your mouth a little stale when it’s time to leave because it’s been closed for so long. It’s just that OreGairu… does not think these things are silly.

People are weird. We say one thing when we mean the opposite, we’re quick to find flaws but we’re not quick to trust. We’re nasty for the sake of nastiness, and we’re still all sorts of vicious to others even when we don’t know it. People are complex and hard to understand, incredibly strange and all sorts of unpredictable – no one plays by exactly the same rules, and we will never reach a perfect understanding of each other no matter how hard we try. I’m with Hikigaya on this one: why do we still keep trying to get caught up in this mess when we know it’ll just cause us all sorts of problems later?

…Or that’s what I’d be saying a year ago, at least. Because to someone like Hikigaya – someone like me, in the past – we can’t explain why people find themselves inevitably drawn to each other anyway.

Because to OreGairu, you don’t need to.

It’s how when you strip away all of his self-defeating cynicism and hateful snark, Hikigaya is actually a pretty ordinary teenage boy, with all the same desire, jealousy, and fear as any other. We see it when he’s with Komachi: he’s not with the outside world anymore, he’s with someone he knows. He’s calm, he’s open, and she listens while he lets out all of his deepest wounds, all of his most buried secrets. It’s no surprise, of course, when they’re family – they’ve been there for each other for fifteen years, and they’ll be there for another fifteen more. Hikigaya says he lives the way he does because he has no other choice, but that’s not true – he lives the way he does because he doesn’t trust the world enough to share himself with it, to share the Hikigaya that banters so naturally and playfully with his little sister.

But it’s a slow process. OreGairu only manages to give us a vague eventuality, a “one day he’ll change” kind of thing, because it takes actually spending time with your closest friends to realise how far you’ve managed to distance yourself from them in the first place. Hikigaya’s finally starting to open himself up to the world, even if just a little, and through OreGairu we see how that can have profound effects on other people. Even then, he still doesn’t get anything more from those who aren’t close to him than a “you’ve kinda changed”, with them finding him only slightly less boring to look at. Because… that’s how it is. Because it’s the small things like that that show how, someday, maybe when he’s dusting off one of his old yearbooks he found in his garage, he’ll be able to look back on this moment as just an embarrassing memory – when he could say he was more open, honest, and true to himself than ever before.

My birthday’s coming up in a few weeks. I’ve never been to many parties, but maybe I’ll invite a few people to a movie or something. I know I won’t change in a week, and I certainly won’t change tomorrow, but in a year, maybe two, I might not be saying the same. OreGairu gave me a chance, and I’m not letting it go. But I can thank it later. For now, it’s time to turn OreGairu off – I have some old friends to catch up on.

The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is like the party of the most popular kid in class you get invited to even though you’ve never really talked to them before. When you arrive you realize, oh wait, you don’t actually know anyone there and everyone’s already talking to each other. So you start filling a plate with carefully picked food before walking over to lean on the wall that’s not too close yet not too far from the crowd to have people think you’re a loner while you begin slowly chewing away, trying to look busy.

As a big fan of the original iDOLM@STER who’s seen the ... original series and the movie twice and planning on a third time, you should’ve seen my face when they announced another season. It was still iDOLM@STER, even if only tangentially, and iDOLM@STER holds a special place in my heart. But this… this was just never quite what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t find the passion in it that drew me in to the original so quickly – it felt way more content with its character quirk busywork, and it never really lived up to its potential. And frankly, I’m not sure if it ever even wants to. It spent so much of its time trying to sell its characters to its rabid pre-existing fanbase, and what momentum it might try to build only ended up dithering away through its obsessive focus on keeping its one-note personalities as intact and samey as possible.

While the directors of this and the original iDOLM@STER do have very different styles, it really did feel like there’s a certain energy that was missing here. And it’s not quite that it was less upbeat (although it certainly was less upbeat) and more that it was missing this extra layer of creator personality. It felt like it was just going by the motions – like it was just being iDOLM@STER – what with it spending so much time on giving each character quirk its dedicated screentime. And, sure, you could make an argument that the original iDOLM@STER also went by its motions, but it felt like this show really ramped up the optimisation for Maximum Screentime Efficiency. The original iDOLM@STER felt like it was directed by someone who likes The iDOLM@STER, while this felt like it was directed by someone who just really likes anime.

And with the less creator personality in this show it also apparently comes without any of the cynicism present in the original – this really is just much more content with its characters quirking it out and letting the fans do the rest of the engagement work. Something from the original that really caught me off by surprise was during the Gero-Gero Kitchen reality cooking show where they deliberately show these small visual asides like a cameraman focusing their camera on Haruka and Chihaya when they fell over, trying to frame their compromising situations with an enticing spin. The show wasn’t going to make its quirks Super Nuanced Characters but it was moments like this along with how it liked to revel in some of its obvious ridiculousness that I thought really gave it an extra breath of life.

I bring this up because there was a scene halfway through one of the earlier episodes with three idols posing in police uniforms when one of them suddenly bursts open, revealing part of her chest. They give it a close-up shot and play it completely straight, with no cameramen zooming in or even any remarks from the audience.

And I was like, “what?”

It’s a small scene, yeah, but it didn’t feel like something The iDOLM@STER would ever really do. It almost felt like a sort of cynicism in its own way, like the creators were sticking to their market data studies and concluded they needed to add something like this every once in a while between all the quirk screentime to maximise its fan appeal. But it didn’t stop there.

I thought the biggest offender of this show’s constrained, passionless core was when three other idols ended up on a variety show and they play out their quirks without missing a single beat. Having them go on a variety show was fine, but having them go on a variety show and just letting their one-note personalities do all the work felt pretty darn lazy. It put the focus on their inherent character, but since they’re pretty much entirely predefined entities there wasn’t a whole lot of personality to them in the first place. Of course, you could draw the immediate comparisons to the original iDOLM@STER’s Namassuka!? Sunday, but that episode felt far more playful and self-aware. The show never really gives most of its expansive cast any particular nuance and it’s especially exacerbated by the very passive, self-contained writing – all the small moments of self-seriousness kept piling and piling but refusing to burst, leaving the entire segment feeling even less passionate than some of its busiest of busywork.

And I think it’s really a shame because this show’s more organic dynamics could’ve really worked well with the things it tried to do, and it didn’t have to compromise any of its own integrity to do it. The performances, while not entirely common, were fantastic visual treats, and they were great to see how far this show could stretch its creative muscles. Its dramatics had visual subtlety in spades, and it imbued a whole wealth of personality to even the smallest of gestures – a small hand movement or a slight sideways glance – that spoke quiet volumes by themselves and helped keep everything firmly grounded in the personal. I don’t think we've ever really had anything like this in the original iDOLM@STER outside of dramatic setpieces like episodes 20 and 24, so there were parts of this that almost felt like a completely different show.

Because the more I keep looking at it, the more I can see its very obvious strengths. The genuine heart I could feel from Producer's final "You had a nice smile today" despite his usually stoic and uninvolved nature brought the biggest grin to my face from all the shows I've seen in the past month, and it was a perfect reflection of both the Producer's and idols' journeys while very smartly playing to this show's talents as an organic and natural product. It's something unique to this show you could've only barely found with the original iDOLM@STER, because that was rarely going to try to be as grounded as this. It's a high-profile, high-budget, and high-effort franchise blockbuster that could've done things few other shows would've ever even dreamed of. It’s not over yet, and there’s still a whole second cour to go, so maybe this is when things will actually start kicking in and this show can finally be the star it’s always wanted to be. But for now all I can think about is how the ballroom's been packed for hours, yet it's been dead quiet - the ball's halfway over, and no one's really tried to dance.