Name: A visually good animation, but tries to mimic Miyazaki's style in some parts. (Spoilers-free with TL;DR)
Item: Children who Chase Lost Voices
Rating: 65
Author: elitera

Waifra

A visually good animation, but tries to mimic Miyazaki's style in some parts. (Spoilers-free with TL;DR) · Waifora

Children Who Chase Lost Voices is an okay-ish movie. The art is amazing, all the animations are smooth and pleasant to watch, the characters' and monsters' designs are good and there was a lot of attention paid to small details. While the eating scenes cannot be compared to those animated by Studio Ghibli, they have good art and animation. If my score for this movie was based solely on these points, it would be an easy eight or nine out of ten.

The world building is great, but it isn't one of the best of Makoto Shinkai works in this aspect and it lacks some more originality when compared to similar stories in the fantasy genre. However, it is really captivating and interesting. I honestly liked a bit more the fantasy in the world of Suzume and how it was developed.

Spoiler, click to view

Quick tangent: Did they really needed to include Hitler and Stalin in that scene with the explanation about the past of Agartha and it's relation with the external world? In my opinion, the scene would be able to pass the message "humans suck and are selfish" yadda yadda without needing to add this visual "aid". It was really unnecessary, every other element in that scene was already enough to convey that message.

Even being a overall visually good movie, it lacks a good sense of story progression somewhere between the beginning of the second half and the third quarter of the movie, and a bit later in the story, where the "plot" starts to feel kind of rushed, like the script is begging to get to the ending faster. Also, in my opinion some of the connections made in the last quarter or so were kind of "forced", or I just wasn't able to understand it.I was expecting a better ending with more impact, but I think it was too cliche for me in some aspects. While it's still a good ending, it felt kind of blend.

Spoiler, click to view

While the scene with Shun and Mimiwas kind of nice, we could've seen a bit more of it than just a glimpse when Asuna's soul was already leaving to go back to her body. A longer interaction between her, Shun and Mimi would make that scene a bit better and aggregate to the viewer's experience.

In the end, Children Who Chase Lost Voices feels like an attempt to make a movie similar to some of the stories written/directed by Hayao Miyazaki: a story of an extraordinary world where magic forces reign and are the foundation of the place in some way, but are kept hidden for some reason unknown by the protagonist. Sometimes it really felt weirdly similar to something directed by Miyazaki, but it didn't keep the similarities for too long, and this feeling kind of came back and forth quite some times throughout the movie.

TL;DR: The movie has good animation, art and attention to small details. However, the world building could've been more original, the plot could've been more developed and the end is a bit too cliche.