by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
In my ongoing quest to explore more anime offerings, Netflix’s newest anime film promising a fantastical time, Child of Kamiari Month, caught my attention.
Illuminating title, I know. So, what exactly does it mean?
The film follows a 12-year-old girl, Kanna, who, unbeknownst to her, is a descendant of the gods. She learns her family is tasked with delivering offerings of food from all over Japan. She fills in for her mother after she passes away in the hope of reuniting with her at the gods’ annual gathering. It is a production of Liden Films, whose filmography was unfamiliar to this relative anime noob at a quick glance. It makes its American debut after dropping in Japan last October.
Fantasy and animation are both passions of mine, and it’s why I’ve been pushing myself over the last number of years to dabble more in anime. It should be a match made in heaven. While there are occasionally some interesting moments as Kanna makes her odyssey across the country, the film never fully lives up to the promise of its premise.
The most striking animation moments are when the film abandons the traditional anime style for watercolor-like images during expositional moments. Each of the gods Kanna visits at their temples takes the form of various animals — as does her spirit guide. As she tries to complete her mission, she’s followed by a demon. As with the animation, the most interesting story moments are ones that are exposited to us. Kanna’s journey herself never really matches what’s described in the film’s backstory and it quickly becomes repetitive.
In addition to the fantastical elements, there’s a weight to the film, given the tragedy at the heart and the impact it’s having a year later on our main character. However, since I struggled in connecting with the overall narrative, those moments didn’t really have the impact the movie wanted them to. The facial expression I wore during the course of the movie was largely a mask of impassivity.
The score attempts to assist in setting the tone, but it too I found flawed. Over the course of 100 minutes, we bounce between the wonder of the fantastical and the more somber moments. Like a lot of film geeks, I have a film score playlist, and a good score can really boost an experience. For the most part, though, anime projects don’t tend to hook me with their scores, and this film falls into a familiar trap. The score is heavy on piano (though some strings are introduced later) and sap and it felt manipulative at times. The result is a score that I found more distracted from the experience than elevated it.
Overall, I found my feelings for this anime all too similarly mirrored my usual issue when it comes to offerings I have tried: it was an experience that for some reason doesn’t live up to a seemingly intriguing premise. Its TV-PG rating means that if you or your family do generally enjoy fantastical anime, it might be worth firing up. But if you’re looking to find a crossover anime hit as someone who generally doesn’t partake, this one probably isn’t going to do it for you.
Grade: C
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