#hunter kovacs

Mai Mai Miracle Blu-ray Anime Review

A beautiful little slice of young life.

Nozomi Entertainment Brings 'Mai Mai Miracle' Blu-ray Anime To North America

A strong friendship soon grows between the two girls as Shinko helps Kiiko come out of her shell and deal with her loss – all thanks to their adventures, both imagined and real.

Mai Mai Miracle UK Anime DVD Review

The power of Kickstarter in full effect brings this classic to the UK… What They Say: From Sunao Katabuchi (director of In This Corner of the World, Assistant Director of Kiki’s Delivery Service and director of Black Lagoon) and animation production by Madhouse (One Punch Man, Perfect B...

Anime Limited Sets 'Mai Mai Miracle' Retail Edition Release

While it took a couple of years to get made as part of the Kickstarter program as a lot went into its creation, Anime Limited is now moving to bring out Mai Mai Miracle as a general release edition. The film is being set for a June 12th, 2017 release as a DVD/BD combo with more details to come ...

Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter Edition Blu-ray Anime Review

A beautiful little slice of young life.

What They Say: Shinko, is a third grade elementary school student with a magically active imagination. She spends a lot of her time listening to her grandfather’s history lessons, imagining what her town was like 1,000 years earlier. One day, a sad and sombre girl called Kiiko transfers to Shinko’s school from Tokyo. A strong friendship soon grows between the two girls as Shinko helps Kiiko come out of her shell and deal with her loss – all thanks to their adventures, both imagined and real. The Review: Audio: The audio presentation for this feature brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with a newly produced English language dub, both of which are done in the uncompressed PCM format. The feature is one that is certainly about the mood and atmosphere as there isn’t a lot in the way of really expressive moments for the mix to work with, but the subtle areas of the design work well with the sound of the wind, the little pieces of life that sneak into smaller areas, and some well placed dialogue in numerous scenes to make it feel engaging. The score is a very good one that swells as much as it should in the big moments but largely captures the mood and feeling of everything in the right way. The encoding is solid as there are no problems to be had here as it’s a clean and clear encoding throughout.

Video: Originally in theaters in 2009, the transfer for this film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. Animated by Madhouse, the encoding captures the quality of the animation beautifully as there are so many lush visuals with the backgrounds to take in that it’s exciting to see what comes next. The little details in the nature scenes are great and it’s complemented by how much is put into the set design for the houses, school, and other areas in past and present. There’s a really welcome smoothness to the animation that helps the languid feeling of the story to keep it moving and engaging without coming across as rushed. The end result is a crisply beautiful encoding that really brings to life the quality of what the animation team poured of themselves into it.

Packaging: The packaging design for this release is pretty nice all around as they certainly went the distance to make it seem worthwhile for the long way. The set comes in a heavy chipboard box with an o-card that mirrors the front of the box, which is the pleasing image of Shinko and Kiiko together playing in the field that really showcases the colors of it well – more so on the box than the o-card. The back of the box has more of the field itself sans characters while the o-card has a nice breakdown of the show along the right with its pedigree and technical aspects. The bulk of what we get is along the left with the shots from the film that show off a lot of green and the main characters, which is nicely done. The o-card also has a cute little “funded with Kickstarter” piece to it. Within the box we get a nice digipak piece that holds the DVD and Blu–ray editions of the film while behind it are the character designs for the main group done as green on white. The front and back cover of the digipak has Shinko running down the road amid the feel as night falls and it’s simply hauntingly beautiful with the way the darkness falls.

While we also get four nice little illustration postcards, the other big inclusion here is a 52-page book that breaks down the characters, the way the production came together, some really solid interviews, and a lot of details of the story and its own origins. It’s definitely a great read after watching the film as it expands your view of the work as a whole.

Menu: The menu for this release is kept simple as it has a nice static image that has the lead girls along the left enjoying being out in the field while the background is the beautifully lush green of the field and the soft and appealing blues of the sky. The logo is the same as the cover with all its color, which makes sense in-film, while below it we get a solid navigation strip of blue with white text that has all the standard selections. It works well as both the main menu and the pop-up menu during playback with easy to read text and quick response time.

Extras: The extras for this release are minimal but expected with what we get as there’s the original Japanese trailer, a clean version of the ending sequence, and a fun nearly twenty-minute video interview with Michael Sinterniklaas about what went into dubbing the film and the pieces that they pulled together to capture the intent of the original in the English language.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers) Originally launched back in early 2014 and arriving in my hands here at the start of 2017, it’s been a long road to get Mai Mai Miracle made. So much so that I kind of forgot about it for a while and when everything was finally finalized I was in that place of “why did I get this to begin with?” as it had been so long. The 93 minute theatrical feature from Sunao Katabuchi, who also wrote it, was the right kind of passion project that made its debut in Japan in 2009 with Madhouse producing the animation. The appeal initially was in the beautiful animation and designs and Anime Limited certainly upped the ante with their production values of the release overall with what’s included, as we touched upon above. After watching the film I’m sure there will be plenty that will say it was worth the wait while others may just be a bit frustrated that it simply took so long, no matter how much they enjoyed it.

The premise of the film really isn’t much more than just a slice of life story, albeit one that takes place in 1955 near Mitajiri in Yamaguchi Prefecture. It’s here that we’re introduced to Shinko, a third grade student who has a good bit of life and energy about her as she lives with her mother and her grandparents while her father is off elsewhere until later in the film. She’s not a full on dreamer type but she has her flights of fancy and is curious about a lot of things which gets her into trouble. What changes for her is the arrival of Kiiko, a newly transferred student from Tokyo that has come with her father as he’s working in the Residence nearby as a doctor. It’s also a period of transition for them as she’s still mourning the recent death of her mother and that has her in a different place than her new classmates, who are all curious but wary of the new student.

Those opening scenes are certainly interesting in how the film sets the tone and mood while making sure we have a good idea who both of these girls are while also making it clear that the area itself is a character in the film. Shinko doesn’t immediately approach Kiiko in school or even afterward, though the two obviously become close friends and we see their lives over the next few months in various spurts of adventure, education, and bonding. But those early bits in seeing how “other” Kiiko is with her clothes, lipstick, and just the kinds of colored pencils she has separates her so much. Enough so that even while she does become friends with Shinko it never feels like she’s a part of the community in the same way until the very end when it’s Shinko leaving and Kiiko now a full on member there.

The film is one that works well in exploring all of these things in a quiet kind of way, giving us a view into the lives of these girls and their extended friends and families during a period that’s covered often in live-action but rarely in anime. Which is a shame since they can do so much with it. The dialogue about the differences between the two girls in the worlds they’ve lived in is handled nicely with nods towards freezers and TVs – I still hear my own mother talking about ice deliveries like this – as well as just the differences in how homes are being built at that time compared to those that have been around a lot longer. Placed in context of being ten years after World War II as well and the way children and adults view everything so differently, it’s an approach that’s handled properly by not being the focus but rather just an undercurrent. And tying it with a look back a thousand years before through an archaeological dig that’s going on in the area and some dreaming flashbacks for Shinko about that time and you get to see some very different aspects to a culture that has withstood a lot of time throughout all those changes.

In Summary: Mai Mai Miracle is a film that has been a long time coming from Anime Limited and it’s also my first experience with one of their releases, since they’re obviously more UK-centric. I definitely like what they’ve done here in terms of production values and how everything came together from packaging to dub and extras. It’s simply unfortunate that through a range of things, often out of their control, that it took as many years to happen as it did. Mai Mai Miracle is an endearing and enjoyable little film that does a lot right but it’s also one that doesn’t feel like it was quite worth the wait and that’s probably coloring my view of it just a little bit. Fans of it will definitely enjoy it and one can hope for wider distribution of it as it’s something that’s worth checking out.

Please Note: This review is of the Kickstarter release; the general retail release won’t be until the summer 2017 at the earliest, due to commitments for Kickstarter Backers. That edition will be the standard edition combo release as the Collector’s Edition was a Kickstarter exclusive.

Features: Japanese 2.0 PCM Language, English 2.0 PCM Language, English Subtitles, Clean Ending, Japanese Trailer, ADR Director Interview

Content Grade: B Audio Grade: B+ Video Grade: A Packaging Grade: A- Menu Grade: B Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Anime Limited Release Date: December 2016 MSRP: Kickstarter Running Time: 93 Minutes Video Encoding: 1080p AVC Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen

Review Equipment: Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

'Mai Mai Miracle' Main Anime Dub Cast Revealed

Mai Mai Miracle Anime Limited has updated backers of its Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter that the authoring phase is in production and nearly complete, which means we’re getting closer to it being released. Ahead of that, however, they realized they never put out the full main cast. While...