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[allanahaha]

A reaction essay for the film, Maboroshi.

“My feeling of love is so similar to hate,” Masamune said. I believe that love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Where love is intimately connected to hate, even when seemingly unrelated. 

Maboroshi is an animated film that was published in the year 2023. Written and directed by Mari Okada, who also wrote its original novel Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Kojo. Previously, Mari Okada, alongside A-1 Pictures, released the animated film Anohana: The Flowers We Saw That Day. Like Anohana, Maboroshi was a film that moved people to tears. Mari Okada is known for her emotionally charged works, and I can say for sure that Maboroshi is one of them.

Maboroshi started on a normal note. Four teenagers sat around a table who were doing their homework. As they joked around, one of them passed gas, which sent them all into a chaotic frenzy because of the stanch. When Masamune pushed the sliding window open, the lights went out, and an explosion was heard. The other boys scrambled to their feet and ran to check what happened through the window. The steel factory exploded, and it sent their world into a timeless freeze. 

Throughout the entire movie, I experienced an array of emotions. This film left me in a state of tears; it felt bittersweet despite the happy ending. I was only disappointed in the person I was when I began watching the movie.

The beginning of the anime felt normal yet odd. Four teenagers sat around a table, doing their homework and conversing with each other. While I expected something more complicated out of them, they were just your typical fourteen-year-old boys. One of them even made explicit jokes, which I responded poorly to. It was a little strange at first, watching them act their age and make explicit jokes about the opposite sex. I could only hope that it would fade as the movie went on since it made me feel uncomfortable.

After the explosion of the steel factory, it almost seemed like time was reversed, back to the start of the show. Seeing the characters again, it was almost like they knew what had happened caused something to shift in their world. Masamune, one of the main characters of this show, noticed this and even pointed it out in his inner monologue. At first, the timeline moving backward confused me. I asked myself if this movie was going to be on the premise of a time loop. However, when Masamune said that this place felt different, I immediately knew it wasn’t a time loop; rather, it seemed to be a different timeline. Or, as past me said, did they jump worlds? Of course, that was from when I lacked further information on the story.

Seeing as the feeling of the world around them has changed, the 4 boys, including Masamune, run out of Masamune’s house to go see the explosion again. The explosion happened, and these teal, luminescent cracks scattered over the sky, creating an otherworldly scene. My initial reaction to this was both shock and bafflement and that only increased when I saw figures form out of the smoke from the steel factory; the dust formed akin to that of wolves. Those dust wolves dove straight into cracks in the sky, and it looked like they were closing it. These strange occurrences raised questions. What caused this? Was this because of the explosion that caused the timeline jump or some otherworldly alteration of reality? 

From there, their lives continued as normal. Masamune and his friends attended school as usual, and they played games that seemed a little too dangerous for them. One scene showed that they were playing a game where they choke each other until the other faints, and that baffled me even more. In one of Masamune’s inner monologues, he mentioned that they were playing games that seemed to hurt or sting them. His tone sounded confused at first, but instead of confusion, I think it was resignation. 

At one point in the movie, Masamune claims that he hates Mutsumi Sagami, who is another main character in the story. Later on, that same Mutsumi takes him to the steel factory. There, Mutsumi leads Masamune to a chamber within the factory, where it houses a girl. A girl that looked to be held captive in that place. While she seemed to be about the age of fifteen, her behavior seemed to be that of a 5-year-old. 

Seeing that fifteen-year-old girl behave like a five-year-old left me speculating. It was infuriating to see. The poor girl showed no signs of physical abuse, thankfully. The little girl bounced around; I’m not sure if it was because there was a new person—Masamune, for this matter—or not, but she hopped around regardless. Seeing the fifteen-year-old girl act so much like a 5-year-old had me worried. 

Mutsumi mentioned that she was put in charge of taking care of her. She chose Masamune to help take care of the girl because he looked like a girl and she needed the help of a boy. There could be so many reasons why she did that, maybe because the girl might be averse to boys or maybe the fact that having a boy who actually looked like a boy could cause complications. But she explained that it was getting a little too difficult to take care of the girl by herself.

Mutsumi mentioned that Masamune didn’t react as strongly as she thought he would, and Masamune replied that he was too shocked to even react, all while cleaning out the urinal. Honestly, I would have replied with the same thing he said if I were in his shoes.

He then asked about who the girl was, but she never gave a clear answer nor did she give him a name. After a while, Mutsumi told him to come by on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Understandably, Masamune was confused and outright complained about it. To this, I burst out in laughter. How could someone you have just had a proper conversation with, I assume, a few hours ago, help take care of a girl who evidently should not even be where she was and should be back where her parents were? 

It was funny to find out that over the next few days, Masamune ended up doing what Mutsumi had asked of him and taking care of her on the specified days. Masamune soon finds out that the girl can talk. While talking one day, he offers to give her a name. So he gives her the name Itsumi. But the girl, Itsumi, keeps mistaking it for Mutsumi and repeatedly mentions Mutsumi, which I believe probably meant that she didn’t understand what Masamune told her. That was until she took off and exited the chamber and towards the back of the steel factory.

Masamune chases after her in an attempt to get her back to the chamber; he finally catches up with her at the end of a train, where she stands. Itsumi stood there, stepping on an elevated part of the train floor with one foot and the other flat on the ground. The sun illuminated her, and she played with the light by covering her eyes and moving them away repeatedly as if to play peek-a-boo with the sun. Her childlike innocence was highlighted, and Masamune was struck by inspiration and immediately took out his sketchbook and began sketching. That was until steel factory workers came by in search of Itsumi. 

It infuriated me to find out that she had been confined in the blast chamber on purpose because she was supposedly the “woman of the gods” and that she was not supposed to fall in love with a boy. They acted as if Itsumi was a sacrifice to the gods to appease their anger and free them from their time-frozen timeline. The fact their reasoning was religious only served to infuriate me further, because on what grounds was what they were doing justified?

Now, a friend of Masamune's has disappeared, named Sonobe. She confessed to him while they were doing a test of courage in a tunnel and ran out of the tunnel after being teased by her peers. She ran out, so embarrassed. They all ran after her and stopped once they were outside, seeing that the sky was littered with luminescent teal cracks. Sonobe mentioned how she wanted to escape—their world, I assume—yet they played instead; she had felt so embarrassed when everyone laughed at how she felt. Not even a moment passed when Sonobe too was littered with the teal cracks. Yet another scene that shocked me—people could have cracks on them too. Then, the dust wolves took form again from the factory and took Sonobe away, who was littered with cracks. It felt so upsetting to see Masamune blame himself for Sonobe’s disappearance. He thought that it was his fault, all because he liked another girl, Mutsumi.

He continued his life as usual, going to school and visiting Itsumi on his schedule to take care of her. During those times, he was so conflicted. Masamune mentions again how he and his friends played games that hurt them, and this was because they never felt pain. He then stated that he feels that the way he feels, love is akin to hate. That line absolutely tore me apart—to see him so conflicted, to see him long for something yet it hurt him at the same time. I believe that love is two sides of the same coin. Even if they seem to be unrelated, they are closely connected. 

Soon, people began finding out the truth from the man named Sagami. Sagami was the person who locked up Itsumi; he was the person who, in my opinion, had ridiculous religious ideals; he was the person who I thought to have acted so full of himself all because everyone believed him at a time when they needed an explanation as to why everything was happening. Their world, or town rather, is obsessed over the idea that no one should change as a person. It was then revealed by Sagami that this world was not reality but an anti-reality dimension created by the sacred machine, which is the steel factory. Sagami as a character infuriates me; he has caused so much pain to everyone around him. To me, he seemed like a lunatic. Even when his words did ring true sometimes, like how Itsumi’s emotions could shake up their entire reality.

People, the ones who wished to leave their world that was stuck in a perpetual loop of winter, disappeared left and right. The ones who wished for change disappeared, swept away by the dust wolves. With everyone leaving, those who were left lived their days doing what they wanted. Even then, no chaos ensued. It was soon found out that reality could be seen through the cracks that formed all over their world.

Masamune and Mutsumi have now taken Itsumi out of the blast chamber, taking her to his home so that she could be taken better care of by Masamune’s mom. Then, they find out that Itsumi is from a different reality, not from their timeline, and she could cause great havoc in their timeline whenever her emotions are shaken up. So, their lives continued as typically as they could with the worsening condition of their world. Cracks had begun to appear more often now, and their reality seemed to be at risk of collapse. 

To my growing detriment, I discovered that Itsumi was the child of Masamune and Mutsumi in reality, who were essentially their future selves. While the fact that Itsumi seemed to have developed a crush on who essentially was the younger version of her dad left a bad taste in my mouth, it may as well have been a child crush, a crush that a child claims to be when young. It could also be attributed to the fact that she could have felt safe due to the familial smell he would have given off, and this can be backed up by that one scene where Itsumi was cuddling up to Masamune’s jacket and shown to be sniffing it a little.

In a later scene, Masamune confessed to Mutsumi, explaining what I understood to be that no matter how dire their circumstances were, he discovered what it was like to live through Itsumi and her and what it had meant to be alive. This was all witnessed by Itsumi, and unfortunately, she seemed to have taken a liking to Masamune, and she began crying, saying that it hurt and that she felt left out. Cracks then scattered all over the place, growing as bad as they could get, referencing back to the fact that Itsumi could cause chaos to their world if her emotions were shaken up.

The situation seemed to take a turn for the better, to my relief; now Masamune wanted to send Itsumi back to reality. She didn’t belong in their timeline; if she had stayed any longer, she would disappear along with them, and that notion took me from zero to one hundred, in terms of tears. Their timeline began to crumble at the seams with every passing day, and they created a plan to send her back to reality after finding out that the train behind the steel factory was a train to reality, the train to a different timeline, where time moved forward. They were met with certain difficulties, but thankfully, they managed to get Itsumi back to reality, even if Mutsumi almost risked her existence doing so and how Itsumi refused at first, telling Mutsumi that she hated her by the end.

Maboroshi left me in tears, despite the happy ending. It felt more bittersweet to me than happy, honestly. Nothing made sense at first, but as the story progressed, the bits and pieces all began falling into place. Each unexplained fact is backed up by an explanation later on. Take, for example, when Masamune said that he and his friends played games that hurt them in the beginning; in the middle of the movie, he explained that it was because they felt no pain. From the confusing themes at the beginning to the heartbreaking themes at the end.

This film, to me, explained that no matter where you are or your circumstances, live in the moment. Do what you want. But this movie also held a second meaning, and this was experienced by Itsumi, who had to leave everything behind to continue growing. Both literally and figuratively. While leaving had left her hurt, it was also for the better. For both her and the two main leads. The future was hers to behold, leaving the two main leads in the timeline where time had stopped flowing long ago.