Kagami no Kojou

“Lonely Castle in the Mirror” is what happens when You have a pretty nice idea with a twist and absolutely butcher the drama in it. At first glance You might think we will follow seven different characters on their journeys. That’s a negative. We see the plot and follow mostly one of them, our MC - Kokoro Anzai. One day, while avoiding school she is transported through the mirror into a castle in the middle of nowhere. There she meets six more young teenagers and a mysterious girl, clothed in a red dress and a wolf’s mask. They are given a challenge: Enter the room thatcannot be entered by finding a key. There will be granted one wish. They have about a year to do so. That’s the premise and I think it’s pretty solid. Mixing red riding hood with a little bit of Alice through the looking glass and The Wolf And The Seven Little Goats (which turned out to be a real story for kids. I did not know that. You learn something everyday) to create a world that needs little explanation apart from “Just roll with it”. I think that’s one of the most solid world buildings I’ve seen. You don’t need more. You know the rules of the real world and You know the rules of fairy tales and fables. That’s it. Thanks to that the movie can concentrate more on the plot itself. The plot… yeah… here’s where we start to stumble. Despite having seven characters that are pretty unique when it comes to background and reasons to avoid school the movie does jack shit with all but three. Kokoro, Aki and Rion are the only ones that are given at least some time to get to know. The rest are just there to fill space. Yes, we get to know each person’s reason but it’s done in such a half-assed way that You won’t get to care that much. Shame because I would love to know more about them. That said, Aki's trauma isn’t treated too well. It’s just used as a catalyst for the last act. Nothing more, nothing less. Due to the fact that her experience is pretty serious (more so than most others) I think it’s a disservice to the character and the situation itself. The only trauma that’s played… adequate (no way I’m calling it well written, it’s not) is Kokoro’s. I won’t spoil it but it gives a pretty nice view of her reasons to avoid school. The rest of the traumas are done in a very cheap way to make us give a damn. Some sob moments with sad music in the background. Lazy, unoriginal and done far too late in the movie to make me care. I think the movie's biggest problem is the size of the cast. There are too many characters for a 2 hour movie. There is no way the writers could do them justice. I get that it’s an adaptation of the book but making the cast smaller ( I would say, max 5) and giving all of them more time to shine would work wonders for the overall plot. As it stands the characters are too one dimensional (apart from our MC of course) and useless. Most don’t drive the plot forward or even help with world building. They are just there. Shame cause I think most of them had potential. Of course there are characters that were written to the story only to be token characters and You can tell from the start. Now for, probably, the best part of the movie - the mystery. There are actually two. One is the room of wishes, the other is related to the characters. I really have little to complain about any of them. There were clues to solve both. Some better than others and the most important one (referring to the character one) was given not by background but by framing. I actually appreciate that. What I didn't like is how the characters are basically morons. If they would just ask basic questions about each other, they could decipher one of the secrets before the halfway point. I get they all have their reasons to avoid talking about themselves but even at the halfway point, when they know each other for over 6 months now, they still barely know anything. Since it’s shown that they interact with each other on a pretty close basis I have a hard time believing no one spilled the beans about themselves sooner. The last problem I personally have with the script is the lack of tension for all but the third act. They have a deadline to achieve their goal. They all have a reason to do so (some better than others) and yet everything is framed like it’s a summer camp. There is only one scene when they are actively looking for the key and even that is killed by flirting. Tension is present in just one scene. One tiny scene at the start of the third act. That’s all. Even the events after it that should be nerve wrecking, given the situation, are pretty laid back. Now… after all that You might think that this movie is a waste of time. It’s not. It is a pretty solid, middle of the road story about troubled youths. Their struggles, fears and hopes. The interactions between the characters (at least the characters that were given some better material) are pretty enjoyable and worth the time. Even some scenes that are there just to show how close everyone became aren’t all that bad. Would I recommend this? Not with a clear conscience. It’s not bad, but there are so many better movies out there that this one is for people that don’t mind mediocrity in writing.

It's a good movie showing the consequences of bullying and it offers a path to recover from it. Each character has his own reason to drop school, even though it's hardly shown. The movie mainly focus on Kokoro's experience, how she feel and how she's dealing with it. I find it very accurate to reality. What I find quite new and interesting is how Kokoro's mother is reacting to events. She's extremely supportive, don't push her daughter and reassure her every time it's needed. It could be quite a lesson to parents whose child is being bullied. It's a shame that the pace is so slowat the beginning, it takes time to reach to the main part. Animation is amazing, music is great. I think the film is definitely worth watching.

When it comes to fiction embedded in our world, with characters drawn into a fantasy realm, there used to be a different, more subtle approach emphasizing the fantastical. Nowadays, fantasy of this ilk tends to be about abusing a pretense of the incredible to mollycoddle characters who have some maladaptation that they resolve by accessing the unknown, which functions as a rite of passage, correcting their problems in the real world. The result is a dissipation of any sense of wonder because what might appear at first unknowable becomes tacitly knowable, rendered as a mere device for self-improvement. My takeaway is always to ask what aboutthose who don't get the privilege of having a fairy tale that resolves their problems conveniently? Doesn't it give the impression that we must resort to flights of fancy and nonsense to fix ourselves? What a perfect metaphor for psychiatry. Most decent fantasy features a character who is somehow changed by the fantasy world or otherwise develops, and these works often touch upon inner states. There's nothing wrong with a character resolving their problems in fantasy. Still, the most trite of these films present the fantasy component as more like therapy than anything else, which becomes embarrassing. Another fantasy film called Drifting Home suffers from a similar problem. For this paradigm of fantasy, I have to coin a term: "therapeutic fantasy" or "fantasy therapy." Would-be or "credentialed" therapists will seemingly spin anything into a process of healing, which leads to "art therapy," "pet therapy," and a whole bunch of bullshit. Yes, things we enjoy can reduce stress. Having a creative outlet is beneficial. Positive things have a potential to improve your quality of life. Nonetheless, therapatizing these things is a reductionist joke that fails to address the problems at hand and is no less escapist than anime. KnK lifts its fantasy gloss from fairy tales, namely, Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tales were, once upon a time, dark and troubling, and there is an undercurrent of that here, but the STOP BULLYING! PSA family-film tone spoils us from believing there might be a tragedy in the making. There's the suggestion of the castle's sinister potential, but it's a footnote until the end, when the atmosphere gets a tad darker. This aspect could have been doled out better; there's the concept of the "healing crisis," where you have to suffer through some pain to get better, and given that this is therapeutic fantasy, we would have benefited from earlier tonal shifts of this nature, as the characters' experience in relation to the castle is largely an easy-going iyashikei experience. Then, OH NO! Forced conflict, and FMC saves the day, pulling up her big-girl pants. All is well. Clap clap. By the end, numerous seemingly disconnected plot threads are tied together. One twist involves the mostly unexplained nature of the castle and the strange wolf-mask-wearing-loli host; the revelation of her identity leads me to believe we either needed to know more about the fantasy element or less, for knowing her identity adds nothing to the film other than mawkish gut rot, coming too late to feel organic. Furthermore, the fairy tale tie-in is weird when you realize who the "loli wolf" is in relation to one of the characters. While several of the plot twists range anywhere from maudlin to absurd, there's a great opportunity to explore further inter-generational connectivity through one of the revelations, but the idea is squandered. We don't get a chance to see any of these connections, except for the most important and obvious one. A person in the story helping the MC has the MC returning the favor via the fantasy component and without that, none of this would have happened. Had we been given a longer series, there could have been deeper threads woven amongst our seven main characters. Usually, the young cast is in a vacuum and only interacts with older characters as an occasional source of comfort, a plot device, or a wise man archetype, but what KnK does is a bit more interesting, albeit under-utilized and sloppily integrated. There's too much time spent on the mystery of the castle, the key, how the characters are connected, the experiences of the MC in the real world, and all of her interpersonal warts and tribulations. It looked like we would have a crybaby psychodrama involving group therapy with the seven characters, but it turned out the only one to boo hoo and tell it all was the MC, who is showered with sympathy as comforting cake is shoved into her face. One kid mentions getting beaten up because he's a fat ass who never stops eating Twinkies, but the rest are tight-lipped. We eventually learn why they needed therapeutic fantasy through consecutively delivered flashbacks at the end of the movie, leaving the characters underdeveloped and distant. They range from goofy to extreme: the former best represented by an elder being like, "LOOOL, grandson, don't dye your hair blonde, you look like a retard"; the latter is best represented by a scenario involving a familial rape attempt. There's no way you can reach the end and not realize the movie's flaws. Had they divulged this information throughout, focusing less on cupcakes, strawberry tea, board games, and wandering around, we could have explored what ailed them and perhaps had enough development to lead to a more impactful finale. While the film probably needed to be longer or expanded into a series, the slow pace and meandering scenes and dialogue could have been shaped even with the current running length into a more satisfactory film. By mere rearrangement, the film would probably be an easy seven. I'm not sure what to think about Keiichi Hara anymore. He's a talented director, but sometimes he embraces sentimentality to his detriment and has had many misfires. The crying scene with the MC had me laughing quite a bit, including the sappy music and the distraught expressions of the MC's companions, who licked her wounds. If the studio wanted to perfectly mirror the novel, they'd have to expand the length or episode number. If they wanted to make an effective movie, the best bet is either to cut or minimize certain scenes or to reduce the number of characters. There seemed to be some symbolic reason for there being 7 characters; however, the MC gets the bulk of attention; Aki and Rion have sufficient screen time or involvement, making them secondary; Fuuka and Ureshino are tertiary; the other two aren't even worth naming.

I was really disappointed with this adaptation from manga/book to anime. So many details were missing, even important ones. It's a shame because the book is really good. Watching it, you don't even get to know the main character properly. Of course, she doesn't talk much, but she has a lot of inner monologues that build up her character. The other characters have as much personality, which is a shame. Everything is so random, and the pacing is even worse because the movie is so rushed. Let's not talk about the animation. I wouldn't recommend this movie, and I'd rather suggest reading the book. Ihaven't read the manga, so I can't really say anything about it.

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