L'Enfant du mois de Kamiari

8/10 Solid. To the team who out this together - thank you! Great story. Heart-warming, original, beautiful in multiple ways, I highly recommend this! The mere idea of a story focussed on running while time stops is wonderful!

A cheap imitation of a Ghibli anime, this features all the typical clichés, but without eliciting any real emotion. You have the young spirited girl, the magical world she discovers, the strong emotions generated by her fridged mother, the cute companions, the important quest that for some reason depends on her efforts only and the dark villain. But at almost any level the main character is unsympathetic, her friends are pointlessly obtuse and without any credible reasoning for their actions, the villain is a shapeless blob that does absolutely nothing than lurk around and the quest is mired in feudal godly bureaucracy and small island mythology.

Bottom line: remove the fake Miyazaki veneer and all you have is a unlikeable girl running around because she enjoys it, but can't get herself to admit it because her mother died.

This is the 39th anime I've watched in less than a month. There were really great works, but there were less good films among them. But this film is the weakest. It is little more than a number revue. It actually contains all the weaknesses that the mostly not particularly successful anime series have, which the films of the last few years actually seemed to have largely overcome.

But most TV series, even if they consist of boring, redundant episodes, usually have an interesting framework. This is completely missing here. It's also interesting that although there is a universal message delivered in this film, it is delivered in a very Japanese way. The production seems to have been aimed at a more international audience, because more than most other Japanese anime, which are still much easier for Western viewers. This means that the film also fails to combine the two.

Although the film tries in an almost penetrating way to create emotions and trigger emotions in the viewer, it fails in this regard. Contrived, incomprehensible feelings in a (poorly) well-composed plot without real depth simply does not create a good film. The fact that a film about running of all things fails so badly in animation due to the visual representation of running is fatal for the film. This even surpasses the boring, downright embarrassing dialogues.

What a wonderful, beautiful film. Absolutely gorgeous animation and the story was so touching and moving that I found myself crying throughout. The film handles grief and moving forward so perfectly and it really hit home with me. I loved this so much that I almost gave it a 9. Please watch for yourself and do not let the haters sway you. This movie is fantastic.

The fantastical elements of 'Child Of Kamiari Month (2021)' don't come into play for quite a while and the flick includes no hint of them prior to their inclusion. When the plot takes a turn for the otherworldly, it just unloads a tidal wave of exhausting exposition on you and honestly feels like some sort of lesson. In fact, you may even mistake it as thinly veiled edutainment for a short while; it genuinely feels like something you'd show Japanese children if you wanted to educate them on the Gods. Thankfully, once its lesson is out of its system, it settles back into itself and returns to telling its narrative in a much more relaxed way. The picture isn't especially interesting even at its most assured, although it does feature a few enjoyable set-pieces and is visually pleasing in places. It kind of feels a little cheap overall, both in terms of its production and in terms of its narrative (its emotional underpinning feels rather forced). The flick's structure is also kind of strange in that it provides hints of an antagonist but only really makes that antagonist prevalent for a single scene near the 'all is lost' moment, completely robbing this element of all its potential power. Thankfully, the conflict of the story is mostly internal and mostly convincing. Despite its few fairly significant flaws (that exposition dump is honestly almost fatal), the film is ultimately a decent effort overall. It has some charm to it and is entertaining enough for what it is. It isn't great and it isn't memorable (at all), but I'd consider it a decent animated adventure. 5/10.