Before I watched Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo) I had pretty low expectations, but also had hope that it’d at least be a fun and pretty fantasy story. I’d heard many people describe this as being Shinkai’s attempt to create a Ghibli/Miyazaki-style movie and sadly that may have put an unfair bias in my head by the time I viewed it, especially since I’m kind of “over” my old love for Miyazaki’s work. But I did my best to go in with as open of a mind as I could and this movie still came out as my least favorite of Shinkai’s major works. Maybe even my least favorite of ALL of his works. I mean, at least his animated commercials are over quickly.
But before I go too far here, let’s get into my category breakouts:
-----Story - 4 out of 10-----
What is there to say about the story? Well, I was rather bored throughout most of it. The setting is modern Japan maybe around the 1980s? There is also a fantasy world that is under the surface. A girl meets a boy from that world after encountering a fantastical beast and falls in love pretty quick. This eventually triggers a journey for her within the fantasy world below with her substitute teacher at her side. They meet some people and bad creatures along the way to reach a particular goal dealing with bringing the dead back to life. And that’s mostly it. It’s a rather basic story that is stretched out over a nearly 2-hour runtime and I could really feel it. The pacing of the story was mostly decent for what it was, but it didn’t have much momentum or feel like there was much meaning or feeling behind what was going on. Unlike Shinkai’s other work, I didn’t feel any personal weight behind the relationships between the characters or their feelings overall which is really odd. The theming and connection between scenes just felt off during the entire movie. There was also some integration with real-world history (such as Hitler) which felt very awkward. By the end I just didn’t care and there wasn’t any kind of payoff to tie everything together. I just couldn’t get into this.
-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
The main shining light of this movie. At least it was pretty overall. However, this is when the blatant similarities between this and Miyazaki films begins. The movie largely looks like it’s trying to emulate an older more classic style with its art and designs. I’ll get more into this in the “Characters” section, but most of the characters and creatures can be seen as nearly direct analogs to those in Miyazaki works. And while the art and animation is overall pretty, it honestly feels a little flat compared to Shinkai’s past work as well the works he seemed to have been inspired by.
-----Sound - 5 out of 10-----
For the most part, things just felt serviceable in the sound department. The voice acting was good overall and the music sounded alright. However, while the score sounded fine on its own, it also felt very intrusive at times. Whenever there was a big artistic shot of a landscape, a big epic booming yet generic-sounding section of the score would call out almost like a laugh track in a sitcom, like it was yelling at you saying, “Hey! This scenery is meant to be awe-inspiring! Be in awe!!” But unfortunately, it just didn’t have the desired effect with me. As mentioned in the “Art” section, while the visuals were pretty, they also felt a bit flat and I didn’t ever really feel that “awe” and the score seemed to try too hard to force the effect. While Tenmon’s music worked well for Shinkai’s previous movies, I felt like he was a bit over his head in scoring an epic tale and I’m kind of glad that Shinkai’s subsequent works used different people for the music.
-----Characters - 5 out of 10-----
In general the characters feel a bit empty. I rarely cared about them, although there were a few genuinely decent moments of emotional manipulation. But when it comes to the characters, this was the most obvious homage(?) to Miyazaki works. So here’s a quick rundown of characters from this movie as Miyazaki character analogs: Asuna was essentially a copy of Satsuki from Totoro with a touch of Nausicaa. Shun was business-casual Howl. Mimi was a total rip-off of Teto from Nausicaa. Pretty much all of the other creatures felt derivative in some way to things from Princess Mononoke. Shin was mostly a copy of Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke. And Morisaki-sensei was pretty much a combination of Jigen and Zenigata from Lupin III. I could probably draw more comparisons, but there are a few Miyazaki films that I haven’t watched, probably the most relevant being Castle in the Sky (I tried to watch it once but fell asleep, sorry). But yeah, while the characters had a few nice moments, they were very few and far between and drawing comparisons to Miyazaki characters is probably the most fun thing about them.
-----Enjoyment - 6 out of 10-----
So my personal enjoyment score (what I put on my actual anime list) ended up being a 6. I was originally going to give it a 7, but after thinking about it for a bit, that felt far too generous. Hell, even a 6 here feels a little generous. Again, while the visuals were rather pretty in general and there were some good moments, I was mostly bored throughout the movie. I didn’t get much of an emotional connection to the story or the characters and I really felt the time that I stent watching this movie. I still have some appreciation for what Shinkai did here and the fact that he tried something very different from his usual stuff, but it didn’t really stick the landing.
-----Overall - 5 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
That brings me to the final overall score of a resounding “Meh.” While this is an interesting piece of work at times and it is indeed pretty (I’m really milking that aspect of this film), it just doesn’t make for much of a cohesive or interesting story overall and doesn’t have strong enough characters to carry it either. Again, I still appreciate this for being a piece with which Shinkai is trying something different and I think it helped him grow as an artist, but as an isolated work there just isn’t much here to love. It is easily my least favorite of his films and I am glad that he went back to something simpler and to his strengths when he made The Garden of Words. Maybe someone who is a bigger fan of Miyazaki works can appreciate this more, or maybe they would dislike it just as much because they’d see it as derivative? But if you’re a fan of Shinkai’s other works, I’d personally say this can be one that you skip unless you’re a completionist.
