As with all Hosoda-movies, this one is very well crafted as well. Beautiful animation and backgrounds, perfect image composition and a somewhat arthouse story. It was a pleasure to watch. While I watched it I thought it had some lenghty passages, but after I went out of the film I had no regrets whatsoever, the movie grows on you and it shows once again, who is, imho, the new hope of japanese animation. Way better than "Your Name" in my opinion. That one was somehow cold and manipulating. Hosoda, on the other side, manages to always have a warm, friendly baseline and doesn´t have to hammer in the emotional points he wants to show, they come naturally, a fine understatement-way of filmmaking. Truly beautiful.
The only thing that really annoyed me was the japanese voice actress who played Kun, the main character. This voice was a complete miscast. I get it that you can´t (or at least would have to make a giant effort) cast a real child for a part as demanding as this one, but the voice was simply bad and took very much from the experience. Especially incomprehensible with Japan´s giant stock of good voice actresses specialised on playing child-characters (not that I could name any...). More than a mild annoyance.
But overall, very well again, Hosoda!
Review of Mirai
