Hogar a la deriva

A lovely visual treat with an inventive story idea.

I love that this was a contemplative movie with serious culture shots fired through it. From vintage snack treats, to the feeling of growing up and the old buildings and places you frequent then lose but the memories remain. The intro credits sequence of the buildings getting built as their lives continue across the process was very well done. Strong japanese city details from the views to the sounds. Very authentic and detailed.

It is a long movie and the last 1/4 where they're jumping into the ocean to save each other got repetitive and didn't really yield the payoff for the action it delivered.

The destination wasn't as deep or perfect as it could have been but I think we knew that was going to happen by the half way mark. This movie posed thoughts rather than delivered answers and it was as much about the journey as it was the destination.

It's great to have another movie with no baddies (antagonist) or violence in it that can still hold your attention and activate your mind. Western cinema has stagnated on that concept and can't seem to think it's way out of that cul de sac. It is to Japan's credit that they can.

When it comes to the fantasy genre, anime movies have a lot to offer. Which is why I was looking forward to this movie.

Drifting Home is a movie that could have been really good. But, it tries to be 2 things at once. I admire plenty of stuff about this movie. I think there's a really sweet friendship at the core of the movie, some good teenage drama (except for one character, who I thought was very annoying), a couple of good character stories, interesting supernatural entities and really good direction. There are many shots in this movie which are beautifully drawn. And it actually has some intense escape sequences which I didn't expect.

It's just that this movie can't decide what it is. If this was a 90 minute school drama, I might have really enjoyed this. If it was a supernatural mystery with some character building as well, I would have really enjoyed that as well, because the first hour was a great setup for a mystery. But it's neither of those things. It takes 2 hours of runtime trying to be both at once which didn't work for me. Since it sees itself as a drama it doesn't explain many of the supernatural stuff that happens convenient for the sake of the characters and the plot. And the drama in the middle of all the disastrous stuff happening, worked for once but it got really repetitive after a while. In the end it just dragged on and got a bit messy. I don't think it's bad at all. It's just that it could have been a lot more than it is.

The art is very beautiful and the environment is visually enjoyable to watch, I really loved the colors and the graphics. The story itself had a lot of potential, especially when it comes to the mystery character.

However, the story just doesn't go deep enough in my opinion, and has the focus on the wrong thing. Instead of exploring the real mystery about the situation, the whole focus story wise is on the two main characters and how they are "like siblings", except they are just not that interesting. These two don't develop at all, they stay exactly the same and you can predict exactly what they will do. They keep repeating the exact same story about their life by thinking about memories that keep repeating pretty much the same point, as barely anything really happened in their life to begin with. They keep arguing about the same childish things in the most unrealistic times, when there are clearly more important things for them to worry about. Everything about these two characters is just very repetitive through the whole movie, even though everything else about the movie could be way more interesting, and gets completely neglected by the script. Majority of the other characters are just there for the sake of saying there are more characters, and we barely learn anything at all about them.

There are so many great directions this could have gone if the story was actually about the drifting house and if they explored Noppo's backstory more, but sadly it ended up mostly as a drama story about two children who keep talking about how they use to live together, and argue for no reason in every situation that makes zero sense to argue on.

All that said, everything other than the story about these two characters is still nice to watch, it's just hard not to feel like there are so many easy ways that this movie could have been better.

Drifting Home is admirable for its patient commitment to unpacking the children's feelings about each other, the building, and other relics from their pasts, all as they learn how to carry their attachments and memories to new places.

Helmed by Studio Colorido (A Whisker Away, Penguin Highway), Drifting Home had good visuals, with a fantasical kinda storyline that relies upon relationships that are tough to let go. There's enough liveliness to Drifting Home that two hours in a single location against a minimal background doesn't actually feel like overkill. While the overall journey is smartly and sensitively realized, there are points where the movie does feel (appropriately!) a little lost at sea, as its characters wrestle between youthful impulses and empathy for their friends.

My Rating : 7/10.

This was another beautiful movie. I would say though that the whole thing with the complex being at sea made no sense. But does it really have to. The more I watched though I interpreted the film in a way of childhood innocence slipping away from these kids as the one thing they have always known may not be with them anymore. It was a very nice film and I enjoyed the character development we got with each of them, there were some intense scenes that were a little scared and at one point I thought it was all the head of the main character. Overall though yet another lovely anime. Its showing that netflix is getting better and better at making them.