Ikue Otani – Windows on Worlds

Now a sprawling multi-media franchise, Detective Conan began with Gosho Aoyama’s manga which published its first instalment in 1994 and is still going strong 30 years later. The series was released in the US in the 2000s under the name Case Closed and in a decision which was perhaps more common then than today anglicised all of the character’s names and settings (the Japanese publisher then began releasing its own English language translation of the manga maintaining all the original Japanese names and plot details). Meanwhile Detective Conan remains hugely popular across Asia and regularly tops the Japanese box office with the annual release of a feature film revolving around a major case for Conan in addition to the ongoing anime and manga.

Which is all to say it has a very well developed universe and vast cast of characters which weave in and out of Conan’s various adventures. The main thing to note about Conan himself, which is explained very briefly in a short introductory sequence to the movie, is that he’s actually a 17-year-old high school detective but his body was shrunk to the size of a small child when he was drugged by the mysterious Black Organisation after witnessing to of their agents getting up to something shady in a park. Only a handful of people know his true identity while he often works with the police solving crimes, and is common with Japanese crime fiction more often than not locked room mysteries.

The Million-Dollar Pentagram (名探偵コナン 100万ドルの五稜星, Meitantei Conan 100-man Dollar Michishirube), the 27th Conan movie, is somewhat different in this regard as it’s more of a treasure hunt in which Conan (voiced by Minami Takayama) and his associate Heiji (Ryo Horikawa) must attempt to figure out the mystery of some missing treasure which might have something to do with a pair of swords stolen by one of Conan’s arch nemeses, Kid the Phantom Thief (Kappei Yamaguchi). Like many of these kinds of stories, the mystery turns on historical detail in this case stemming back to the Meiji Restoration and legendary Shinsengumi boss Hijikata Toshizo, if by way of a long-dead industrialist who got rich quick during the pre-war goldrush in Hokkaido. Some of his estate apparently went missing after his death and now his grandson, who’s messed up the family business, wants to find it and so does Conan but for slightly different reasons. In any case, no one even knows what the treasure is and they may be disappointed when they find out especially as it might not show grandpa Onoe in a particularly good light.

There is undoubtedly quite a lot going on with a prominent subplot focusing on Heiji’s crush on love interest Kazuha (Yuko Miyamura) and his rivalry with Kid the Phantom Thief with his big plan to finally confess his feelings aligning with the climax of the mystery taking place on Mount Hakodate. A port town in Hokkaido, Hakodate has not often been well served by cinema often appearing in indie films such as And Your Bird Can Sing, Sketches of Kaitan City, and Over the Fence as a moribund post-industrial centre the protagonists can’t escape, but here seems pleasant and relaxed as a kind of Northern Kyoto rich in period history. The film’s success has apparently spiked a mini tourist boom in the area.

The filmmakers apparently did not want to destroy any of the town’s architecture even in animation, hoping to make the most of the city’s famous night scenes and beautiful scenery. Nevertheless, there are the usual series of impressive action sequences including one of Conan riding a jet-powered skateboard not to mention taking out a suspect with a football while Heiji fights another on the wings of a biplane. As for the mystery itself, it’s not the kind where the audience will be able to work it out seeing as it depends on very specific cultural knowledge that even Conan needs a hint to key into but eventually broadens into something more international involving arms dealers and corrupt businessmen. Long-standing fans of the franchise will want to stay put for a very interesting post-credits sequence and even newcomers will get a kick out of an unexpected punchline to the film’s closing moments. All in all another classic case for the Conan team peppering its key mystery with the humour and warmth the franchise is known for.

Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram opens in UK cinemas 27th September courtesy of CineAsia.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese & English subtitles)

When Studio Ghibli announced that it would be ceasing production, it couldn’t help but feel like the end of an era. The studio which had made Japanese animation an internationally beloved art form was no more. Into the void stepped a brand new animation studio which vowed to pick up the Ghibli gauntlet – Studio Ponoc was formed by former Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura who enlisted a host of other ex-Ghibli talent including Arrietty director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (メアリと魔女の花, Mary to Majo no Hana), Ponoc’s first feature is, like Yonebayashi’s When Marnie was There, an adaptation of a classic British children’s novel. Part of the ‘70s children’s literature boom, Mary Stewart’s The Little Broomstick was more or less forgotten until the film, paradoxically, brought it back into print. Like many post-war children’s novels, The Little Broomstick is the story of a clever and kind little girl who thinks she doesn’t quite fit in. Mary and the Witch’s Flower is no different in this regard, even in updating the tale (seemingly) to the present day as its spiky heroine finds herself taking on mad scientists and crazed witches in a strange fantasy realm all while trying to get used to the comparatively gentle rhythms of country life.

Mary Smith (Hana Sugisaki) is bored. She hates her frizzy red hair which a horrible local boy, Peter (Ryunosuke Kamiki), uses as justification to describe her as a “red haired monkey”, and fears that the rest of her life will merely be a dull exercise in killing time until its inevitable conclusion. Mary has just moved in with her Great-Aunt Charlotte (Shinobu Otake) in the country while her parents are apparently working away and, as she still has a week left of summer holidays until school starts, she’s desperate for something to do. Unwisely following two cats into a misty forest, she chances upon a mysterious flower – the “Fly By Night” which blooms only once every seven years. With no respect for nature, Mary picks herself some of the pretty bulbs to take back to the gardener but unwittingly opens up a portal to another world. Taking hold of an abandoned broomstick, she finds herself swooped off to Endor College – an elite institution of witchcraft and wizardry where she dazzles all with her magical skills. Thinking she’s finally found her place, Mary is content to go along with everyone’s assumption that she is the new student they’ve been waiting for but on closer inspection, Endor College is not quite all it seems.

Mary’s initial dissatisfaction with herself is somewhat sidelined by the narrative but there’s something particularly poignant about her loathing of her red hair. In British culture at least, those with red hair often face a strange kind of “acceptable” prejudice, bullied and ostracised even into adulthood. Thus when Peter calls Mary a “red haired monkey” it isn’t cute or funny it’s just mean and she’s probably heard something similar every day of her life. When she rocks up at Endor and they tell her that her red hair makes her special and is the sign of high magic potential, it’s music to her ears but it’s also, perhaps, reinforcing the idea that simply having red hair makes her different from everyone else.

Feeling different from everyone else perhaps allows her to look a little deeper into the world of Endor than she might otherwise have done. Despite her conviction that she doesn’t fit in and is of no use to anyone, Mary is never seriously tempted by the promises of Endor which include untold power as well as a clear offer of acceptance and even respect. When she realises that the couple who run the school – a witch and a scientist, have been abusing their powers by committing heinous acts of experimentation on innocent “test subjects”, Mary learns to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves even if she couldn’t have done it for herself.

Messages about the seductive power of authoritarian regimes exploiting feelings of disconnection, the scant difference between magic and science, and the need for respect of scientific ethics in the pursuit of knowledge, all get somewhat lost amid Mary’s meandering adventures, as does Mary herself as her gradual progress towards realising that she possessed her own “magic” all along ticks away quietly in the background. Yet the biggest problem Mary and the Witch’s Flower faces is also its greatest strength – its ties to Studio Ghibli. With echoes of Yonebayashi’s previous adaptations of classic British literature, Mary and the Witch’s Flower also indulges in a number of obvious Ghibli homages from the Ponyo-esque flying fish and Laputa influenced design of Endor to the overt shot of Mary riding a deer on a rocky path, and the unavoidable girl+broomstick echoes of Kiki’s Delivery Service. Even if Mary and the Witch’s Flower cannot free itself from the burden of its legacy, it does perhaps fill the void it was intended to, if in unspectacular fashion.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower will be released in UK cinemas courtesy of Altitude Films in May 2018.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Tag: Ikue Otani

Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram (名探偵コナン 100万ドルの五稜星, Chika Nagaoka, 2024)

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (メアリと魔女の花, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2017)