An adventure of a young boy and girl is started by a small coincidence or the divine intervention. They also learn something about themselves and one another as they are bonded by their powerful connection. This is a basic plot for numerous stories, which anime has embraced over the past few years. But rarely has the relationship between the two central characters seemed more inexplicable (or outright harmful) than it does in My Oni Girl.
However, none of this is her fault: an oni girl with a lone horn called Tsumugi, who leaves the safety of her home a hidden oni enclave known as The Hidden Village to find her mother at a Japanese shrine in human world. At times, Tsugumi may appear to have been ripped out of some more trite YA-leaning romantic comedy she’s the effortlessly cool object of longing for some relatably sensitive male protagonist but she easily eclipses everyone else in My Oni Girl. While somebody might be attracted to her (in sacred bond), she is not an object.
Therefore, it’s quite unfortunate that she has to team up with an utterly blank co-star in teenage boy Hiiragi who is one of the most unlikeable main characters ever created for any such magical-realist fantasy romance. (Comparing him to, say, Taki from Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name is like putting Dave Bautista in the ring against a sandwich.) It’s not that Hiiragi isn’t necessarily bad he possesses no redeeming qualities it would be more accurate to say he just fails to possess any attractive features at all. He doesn’t want anything, he doesn’t desire anything, he just doesn’t move first with anything because he never initiates anything himself: this defines his character completely. With no friends whatsoever, voluntarily doing his classmates’ assignments instead, early on in the movie he has one big argument with his father about why he’d rather spend more time at a terrible school where everyone walks all over him than get help from a tutor.
This is, of course, where the plot comes in and it doesn’t take long before Tsumugi explains that humans who repress their feelings for too long become oni. However, Hiiragi’s problem isn’t so much that he is unexpressive (a normal trait which an average person may find challenging), but he has nothing going on inside his head that requires expressing. Moreover, it is not even entirely clear why he has to flee home and follow her on this journey except for his father who also dares wish good things for Hiiaragi. (He is such a monster, right?). It almost seems like Tsugumi would have embarked on her quest in much the same way if she had never collided with Hiiragi. Minus Tsugumi, Hiiragi would simply be lying immobile in his room waiting desperately for someone to tell him when he needed to eat or sleep.
The road movie My Oni Girl is a bit more lively at times with Tsumugi and Hiiragi encountering individuals whose troubles lead to oni girl and stink boy’s awakenings. There’s a weird twist where there are a man and woman who for some reason cannot relate as they did when they were kids; there is a café owner making the place full of souvenirs from his trips round the world together with his wife who has just passed away. However none of these subplots fully serve to highlight the theme of the film as much as they could have been. In her journey, Tsumugi meets only other people, which (somehow) leads her to be closer to Hiiragi.
At least it is good looking if not exquisitely beautiful. The Animation Studio Colorido and Twin Engine (both also worked on A Whisker Away by director Tomotaka Shibayama) have done great work in terms of this aspect that resembles classic hand-drawn animation. At present time such animation products like most anime on Netflix are just cheap mass CG-based shows without any meaning behind them. The film does not have breathtaking visuals like Your Name, besides, it tells about two kids bonded by extraordinary circumstances in contemporary Japan, yet quietly sells the idea of its story. Besides, it does not hurt that Masafumi Yokota designed the characters for this animated feature but also worked on Weathering with You by Shinkai Makoto and Miyazaki Hayao’s Wind Rises – another couple of films where imaginations clash with everyday lives are miles better than My Oni Girl.
My Verdict
My Oni Girl is essentially an attempt by someone to communicate with their parents or at least what she thinks her parents should be like. Nevertheless, inclusion of a completely two-dimensional sidekick whose inner life remains as much an enigma to him as it does to us drags it down. Half a couple is worse than none at all, especially when the supposed “romance” is more about a deep friendship devoid of any real love.
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