Masamune Kikuriri always thought life was fairly boring. In fact, one day wasn’t ever much different than another, other than when his friend Susakura passed gas at the most inappropriate times.
But then, the local steel factory blew up!
Or did it? Frankly, it was a weird course of events.
Masamune and his buds were lazing around, doing nothing, and then an explosion happened. They threw open the window, watched the town’s lights blink off, and saw the factory erupt, the sky lighting up with strobing, cracking brilliance, and then …
Well, then they were back in Masamune’s room again, lazing around in the same positions as if nothing had ever happened. And Masamune couldn’t help but ask himself: Did anything happen?
Of course, even though no one in town talked about it, they all knew that something had definitely happened. And other weird things were taking place, too. Everyone stopped getting older, for one thing. It never stopped being winter, for another. And even when you fell or cut yourself, it didn’t hurt. Not really.
One guy in town, from the Shinto priesthood, started spouting crazy stuff about the town being cursed. And though Masamune didn’t ever think about such things, he wondered if the guy might be on to something. Because there were times when the night sky would light up in crackling shapes and ripped open slashes, and something like wolves made of smoke would rise up from the steel plant and gobble the ragged openings whole.
Then at one point, Atsumi Sagami, a girl that Masamune kinda really likes and kinda can’t stand, asks Masumune to follow her. She takes him to the fifth blast furnace of the steelworks factory, and there they meet an unusual girl who is wild like a wolf and who cannot talk.
It’s at that moment that Masumune realizes that everything in the winter-plagued town of Mifuse is sorta holding its breath: the sky, the people, the factory, the smoky wolves. For they all recognize that this young girl is the key to everything changing.
It will happen very soon. And it will be anything but boring.
For all of his teen angst and emotional struggles, Masumune tries repeatedly to do the right thing.
After meeting the wild girl, whom he names Itsumi, Masumune worries about why the strange girl is being kept at the steel factory. He feels protective of her, and he tries to help her escape. Masumune also worries about where Itsumi came from and eventually—after learning more about her multiverse origins and her connection to an otherworldly version of himself—he risks everything to return her to her own world and family.
Atsumi, on the other hand, isn’t always in favor of Masumune’s actions. In fact, she even works against him at times. But eventually, she joins forces with Masumune, and the two work together. The teens also fall in love.
On that front, Maboroshi, focuses on the concept of love and loss. Gradually, we see that part of what keeps the town’s frozen reality stable is its residents’ lack of emotion. When people become overly emotional, cracks begin showing up, giving them a glimpse into “reality.” And when someone begins to “feel” too much, even they can crack and then disappear. Despite that dynamic, some of the teens begin to talk about love and what it means. They also wrestle with the idea of loss and grief that they’ve seen. “Love is the feeling of wanting to be with a person, today and tomorrow and even when you become an old grandma,” one teen girl emotionally concludes. And she’s willing to love someone even if it means losing their time-frozen dimension.
[Spoiler Warning] The townspeople all eventually realize that their town has been sealed away in an alternate dimension without time. (A concept not fully explained.) Some will do almost anything to maintain that nearly immortal state, while others choose to do what’s right despite the world-shaking results. Masumune’s mom, for instance, falls in that latter category. She strives to protect her family and the memory of her deceased husband. When a man close to the family wants to have an affair with her in their crumbling reality, she denies him. “If everything is going to end,” she tells the man. “I want to end it while being a good mom.”
The whole concept of how the town of Mifuse is sealed off in another dimension is never fully explained.
Once the townspeople actually begin to admit that it happened, Atsumi’s father steps forward, claiming that the bizarre sci-fi phenomena is actually a spiritual curse of sorts. He declares that since the Shinto temple worships the very mountain that borders the town, the steel factory was, in essence, “chiseling into a god.” Therefore, the townspeople were struck with “divine punishment.”
Thereafter, Mr. Sagumi starts telling people what to do. He sets up a shrine in the factory’s inactive blast furnace. And he keeps Itsumi—whom we learn mysteriously came from the other “real” dimension—trapped there. He holds Shinto services. Some follow him, trying to keep their cursed world intact and hoping everything will return to normal, even as others think he’s a bit wacko.
The cracks that form between the dimensions are also considered part of the spiritual struggle. And that’s reinforced by wolf-like entities comprised of smoke emanating from the factory which attack the cracks. (Again, all ultimately left unexplained.)
Masumune’s friend Sasakure is often focused on sexual things. He gropes Masumune’s chest because he thinks Masumune’s long hair makes him look like a girl. He ogles schoolgirls in their gym outfits and crows about how erotic the back of their knees are. (The camera looks closely at the girl’s bare legs and shorts-clad backsides too.) And he talks jealously about how a friend gets to touch a girl’s breasts.
Masumune and Atsumi also wrestle with their attraction for each other. Eventually, though, they admit their love and kiss passionately. (We see through cracks in their reality that they are a married couple in the other real-world dimension.)
Atsumi washes Itsumi in a large tub. We see the young gir’s bare back and shoulders.
What actually happened at the steel factory is never quite clear. We see the beginning of a massive explosion before time resets. And at one point, Masumune glimpses the steel factory in the “reality” dimension and sees that it is a crumbled ruin. He states that the explosion must have resulted in masses of people dying. But we never find out who died. It is implied, however, that some people must have survived, and that life goes on in Mifuse.
There are also some fierce events tied into the smoky wolf creatures. Not only do they swirl about with large, sharp-edged teeth, the smoke beasts even gobble up some people who begin to crack during emotional moments.
Masumune also notes that he and his friends would do violent and normally painful things, such as jumping off high overpasses, because they no longer felt pain in their new reality.
During a chaotic scene, Masumune tries to chase down a train in the other dimension. He and other teens crash vehicles and smash scenery. Both he and Atsumi leap off high places to tumble to the ground. However, as the wall between the dimensions begins to crumble, they also begin to feel the pain of their leaps. Atsumi ends up with her forehead gashed and bleeding.
Masumune talks about the pain he fealt after losing his father in a steelworks accident. A couple grieve over the painful loss of their child.
We see one s-word and three uses of “h—” in the English subtitles of this Japanese movie.
Lots of the men smoke cigarettes. Masumune’s uncle smokes and regularly drinks glasses of booze, too. At one point, he appears fairly tipsy.
Masamune’s friend Sasakure is apt to pass gas on purpose to clear a room and to make rude comments at the drop of a hat. Masamune is called upon to wash out someone’s urinal and makes note of the distasteful smell. Masamune also states that his feelings of attraction or love for Atsumi are very similar to hate.
Maboroshi is made by the filmmakers behind popular anime such as Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen. As such, this pic is beautifully drawn and tightly crafted. On top of that, it presents a fantastical but mature story that blurs the genre lines between mystery, science fiction and romance. It asks viewers to think about the time they have in life and the way that they use that precious resource. The film also poignantly addresses topics of loss, grief and love.
With all of those positives front and center, however, I should also note that this film isn’t always easy to watch. Many viewers will make their way through a good portion of this twisting and cerebral anime before ever having a clue about what’s going on.
Some of that difficulty may be due to the film’s language barriers, since it’s presented in Japanese with English subtitles. However, it’s the structure and undefined nature of the story itself that can make the going tough. Sometimes the reasons behind this film’s multiverse activities just don’t add up.
And when you then blend in mild violence, drinking, smoking and sensual elements, Maboroshi ends up being a couple of notches more difficult than the average family audience might expect.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
