Lu Over the Wall

Lu is a rare twin-tailed mermaid who loves music; when middle schoolers Kai, Yuho and Kunio secretly practice their indie-pop music on Merfolk Island, a pile of rocks near the fishing village of Hinashi, Lu cannot help but dance! Her tails turn into legs and she becomes a swirling dervish of movement. She also wants to be friends with everyone, but the people of Hinashi have many old tales about the merfolk, including that they eat people, and Lu may be in danger from those humans if the teenagers can't save her…. This is a lovely animated film, very colourful and with a mostly upbeat story line that young children would probably enjoy very much. All that, plus J-pop music too; a real winner!

For a movie that begs a comparison to Ponyo, it barely squeaks past it in terms of it's creative presentation, but stumbles at style consistancy and plot coherency.

While nothing in the movie *doesn't* make sense, a lot of it is hard to follow due to weird pacing decisions during important events, and visual decisuons that hamper communication in favor of leaning into Yuasa's presentation style.

The music is just OK for a movie about music, and the few scenes of high energy have a peculiar disconnect from the rest of the film.

Ultimately this movie feels like it started with good intentions, but ran out of creative steam somewhere in development. If you're a big Masaki Yuasa fan, there are things here for you, but it's otherwise OK to miss.

Go watch Mind Game instead if you wanna know what this director is about.

This was a fun movie, with infectious music. It taps in to what seems to be a running theme of modern industrailzied Japan making war on its traditional spirits, kind of like in Summer Days with Coo. It also features mermaids, who have an exuberance like Ponyo, but less child-like, and more adolescent-angsty.

This was cute and nice to look at, the style was innovative. However it often felt like a direct rip on Miyazaki's 'Ponyo'. Many of the plot points and visual concepts in the details all are too similar to those in Ponyo. From the broken english Lu has, coming from the ocean, obsessed with boy on land, loves food after discovering it, etc. it's a little too blatant. But to be fair, Miyazaki set the bar pretty high and many anime that come out these days are clearly inspired by his work, but there were just too many coincidences to not make one notice the similarities in this film. Even with that said, it was still enjoyable, sweet, and cute.

Lou and the Siren Island piqued my interest as soon as i saw the trailer. I'm far from being an anime or animation expert but I can say that I've watched a fair amount of Japanese anime, films or series. The overall style of the anime is certainly quite different from what I'm used to and that felt refreshing.

What I liked - The music worked really well with the anime and different scenes. I'm actually a tiny bit disappointed that they didn't exploit that aspect a bit more. The character design was simple, a bit hazy at times but it worked very well with the animation style that I enjoyed very much. The film also dares to do interesting things with animation, colours, visuals in general and that is very welcome. There are good vibrations in this film and overall it made me feel good. They also manage to make Lou, the siren, a very likable character, at least that's how I experienced it. Finally the whole mystery/mythology/mystic aspect of the Siren felt captivating to me at times and certainly entertaining.

What I liked less - I once again have a problem with character development as I didn't relate enough to the main character. He still had his moments but I needed a bit more from him for this film to have a significant emotional impact on me. The second thing that kinda disturbed me is how random some parts of this movies felt to me. Like it lacked some kind adhesive substance to make it all stick together in a more coherent form. Finally, the way the the main stakes of the movie are handled and ultimately resolved didn't really feel satisfactory to me. That last issue may come from the fact that the audience targeted could be a very young one (I'm 30) but it felt a bit "easy" and oversimplified to me. The way people react to the Sirens was also not realistic at all given that it's taking place in a similar world than ours. Then again, if the movie was intended for a very young audience that could explain that problem.

In the end it was a good experience and I'd recommend it for young kids or if you want to watch a rather simple story with interesting elements and good vibrations!

Verdict : 7.4/10. This rating isn't an attempt to evaluate the actual objective value of the film but merely reflects my own enjoyment of the work.