Sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô / Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018) – 3/5

Nice elaboration on impermanence in this visually beautiful film that could have done with better focus here and there

„Sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô“ or „Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms“ or just „Maquia“ is a Japanese animated movie (i.e. An anime) from 2018, so this one will soon have its fifth anniversary, which means this is not a really new film anymore, but still relatively recent. The director is Mari Okada and this was her first full feature film after three short movies apparently. There seems to be a new upcoming project for her soon, but even if she has directed here and also has credits in the music department, her key profession will always be writing with over 60 credits already. Huge amount given the age. No shocker that she was also in charge of the screenplay here. I see that Christian La Monte had the task to come up with the English script adaptation and he is the one who was to some extent in charge of the pretty successful „Ma vie de courgette“ two years before this movie we have here. But today we will talk about this anime by Okada. I cannot really go a lot into detail about the voice actors, simply because I do not know them. The ones from the original version. I myself watched a German dub and I think the voice actors there did a fairly convincing job, but this is not exactly news as dubbed movies are on a really high level now most of the time, no matter if we are talking about live action films or animated movies. This one here is no exception. The film is pretty long, comes close to the two-hour mark which may not be to everybody’s liking, but for me it felt alright. I would not say it flew by, but also did not drag. There was really so much to it story-wise that the contents could also have made for a miniseries I suppose, so if we take that into account, then 115 minutes is still relatively short and not a lot at all. Just take a look at the first half hour and all we have there. We see the protagonist (or title character in the international version) and how she lives in a world of beauty with many others and they have the gift to stay young forever. Besides they have the gift of the most gorgeous blonde hair you have ever seen. Anyway, we get a little insight into their world, then we find out how these people are attacked by people who believe in weapons and technical progress and they decide to abduct these defenseless blonde women.

Next we see how the main character is lucky to get away through coincidence and also that a dragon plays a role in this circumstance. I do not even want to call it an escape. That’s not what it was. Then we see how the main character finds a little baby and decides to take care of it despite another character saying it would be okay to unite the baby with its mother, in other words let it die. And finally we see the young woman (she was indeed very young) and the baby how they reach a little village that seems to be more on the countryside and they are welcomed by its people and treated like one of their own and they know where the girl is originally from. So yeah, all of this is really from the first 30 minutes, so much action (in the sense of plot developments) there. The baby already turns into a young boy then and we see he has a very close connection with his „mother“. Her changing her hair color also fits in that it is a new chapter in her life. She does not deny her roots and origins, but with the red or brown then, she looks a lot more like the boy and you could mistake them for actual mother and child this way. That was her goal I suppose. Anyway, the idea of the initial attack and abduction is not forgotten either as we find out a bit more about that when the film progresses. Mostly we see how the main character meets other characters from her past again and there are emotional reunions at times. It is still defining for her, even if taking care of the boy is now her main priority and objective. The boy keeps growing and getting older and the woman does not, so soon they are pretty much the same age and some even mistake them for a couple when this is of course not the case. I would also not say that this is what the boy’s jealousies were linked to overall. He was just not happy when there are men in his mother’s life, just like a random boy also wouldn’t be perhaps, no matter if these men are new love interests or old relatives or friends from the days of the mother’s previous life you could call it.

The action takes place then away from the countryside too and in a town or city almost already that had very medieval looks. I liked it a lot, especially the houses and how the streets were looking there as well. Some really cool attention to detail we have here. The way this town looked also reminded me of one or two video games that had a similar design. I also remember the ashes/snow moment. So yeah, visually there is absolutely nothing wrong with this film and the music is also fairly decent. Sometimes it feels not even there and some say that this applies to the very best soundtracks. Maybe this is not one of those, but it is pretty convincing nonetheless. The character animation is also as good as you are used to it by now from modern anime films, so I am a bit surprised that this film did not exactly score a great deal of awards recognition at all. I mean it is not a masterpiece, but surely looks to me as if it went a lot more under the radar than it should have. Perhaps some were also a bit overwhelmed by the story. You can say that here and there the film tries to be too much for its own good. The main focus is of course most of the time on Maquia, but there is also here and there elaboration on another one of the girls, the one who was picked to stay at the castle and give birth to a child and that is what she does after her abduction and she is pretty much held as a prisoner at said castle. Her thoughts always lie with the people she lived with before this fateful abduction. She even threatens to kill her unborn child when the soldiers are about to chase down the title character to whom she still feels really close. When these two are united during this scene they reminded me a bit of Anna and Elsa from the Frozen universe, even if their characters were different, but the hair color connection made sense and also one being pretty much a prisoner, even if she did not decide to stay away from people herself here. On the contrary, when at the very end she has the chance to go, she takes it.

She also leaves her daughter behind. You could see there that because of the circumstances she also sees the young woman not really as someone she holds dear because there would have been no birth without the abduction and imprisonment, but she was also never allowed to see the daughter as a baby or infant, so she never really built an emotional connection with her. The other way around, it is not much different. When the daughter says something along the lines of how pretty her mother is, then it felt rather as if she was watching a celebrity, but not the person who brought her to this world. The idea how the mother then talks about memories vanishing over time in the end also shows that there will be no happy reunion, but they will probably forget about each other. Or never have a close connection. There is surely some irony to the situation how Maquia on the other hand is so close with a boy that she has not given birth to, but in the modern sense you could say it was an adoption, even without the legal papers. It was a matter of life and death anyway. Also look at Maquia’a constant worries that she may lack maternal instinct because he is not her biological kid. These were recurring, but to me never felt as effective as they were intended. The situation between her and her „son“ getting more complicated was dramatic, but a new female character there, who became the son’s love interest, traded some dramatic tension for harmony in this core relationship. Or the two simply did not see each other too often anymore as the mother had succeeded now in turning the young man into a respectable grown-up and he became a father himself then eventually. This was the closure for the mother-son relationship.

Another thing I must talk about here are the dragons: They seem to have immense strength and just look at how huge they are. Having four or five of them meant basically you are the one with all the power over the surrounding kingdoms because you could just violently attack them and they would have nothing to defend themselves with. Sounds harsh, but it is accurate. The dragons were basically what military strength is today. Like warships, tanks etc. They were no friends or living beings to the people ruling the kingdom. Just look at the metal they had to wear to look even more fear-inducing. Fittingly, the one dragon that is more at the center of the story than the others does not have to wear this when he in the end flies off with a female character. With her oh so bright blonde hair, this almost had an aura of Daenerys and I am saying this as somebody who was never big on Game of Thrones, even when everybody else loved it. But it did remind me of that. The dragons were of course also really nicely animated like everything else here, the nature landscapes, the houses, the human(?) characters etc. The reason why I do give this one only 3 stars out of 5 (or 6 out of 10) is also the story. I would say that while it had its good moments, there was enough in it for two movies or even more than that. I mentioned the possibility of a miniseries already early in my review. The way it turned out instead was good, but definitely a bit too packed at times. Comedy is almost not existent here, just briefly in-between like with the guy who falls off the ladder or (after the 30-minute mark) how mother and boy react to somebody else asking her if she just called him his son and how they are both a bit embarrassed. Or the belly rubbing was cute too. Overall, a decent watch that deserves to be seen if you like anime. I wonder if there will ever be a sequel.