I honestly didn't think I'd get a chance to see Maquia until 2019. But after a whirlwind eleven days in China featuring 3 missed trains, 1 missed flight, and an undisclosed number of punched walls, I found myself sitting on an American Airlines flight from Beijing about to watch an anime movie released that season. What is the world coming to? By the way, not only does American somehow have Maquia on their in-flight systems, they had complimentary alcohol too because of our missed flight. Seriously, what is the world coming to!?
That question will be revisited over and over throughout this little thought piece. If you enjoyed the movie, by all means go ahead and enjoy it, but I have specific things to say about its quality and effectiveness that go beyond the individual production and look towards the anime industry as a whole. First things foremost, though: I have absolutely nothing against Mari Okada or her work on this project. She has her fair share of haters and her style is not always my thing, but she does a fantastic job with what she is given on this project. Maquia sports a visual flavor and pace that the shows she wrote just never had, and it allows Okada to try her hand at a larger scope than she's ever dealt with.
My first, second, and third problems with this movie can be boiled down to a single word: time. There's just not enough. I'm sorry, you cannot spin this huge generation-spanning epic starring an ageless lead, dissecting her relationship with the humans around her who age and die before her eyes, and then cram it into barely 100 minutes. This needed likely a full cour to really get the meat out of the story - and get this! If this had been in the form of a 1 or 2-cour TV anime, I probably would have fucking loved it. Drum up the art and animation quality a bit, sink your teeth in more to Maquia's narrative, and tell the whole story so you can actually feel the time pass. That way the audience can actually invest in the characters, most of all Maquia herself, and you can pursue some semblance of a resolution. Without time, you have nothing with which to hammer home your main themes, and everything you've built falls apart.
Again: there are legitimate moments of pure inspiration here. 15 year old Maquia sobbing trying to figure out breastfeeding was probably the most moving moment of the whole film, and the final scene was something else (though should the climax of a movie this big have been better? Who knows). Okada plays with her motifs in a refreshingly powerful way, and there is clearly thought behind the development of theme ideas as the movie progresses. Maquia just doesn’t have the space to take them all the way.
Immediately after watching Maquia (well, not immediately after. I had such a bad taste in my mouth I decided to get drunk off the complimentary drinks and try to nap) I decided to finish a movie I had started on a plane back in January: Creed. Now the two wouldn't be at all comparable under normal circumstances, but when you take into account what the producers set out to do, you see a pattern. P.A. Works, or Mari Okada herself, or whoever, made the (wrong) decision that this story was best told in movie format and attempted to recount over ninety years in under two hours. Yes, a large chunk of that time is tacked on in the epilogue, but the main plot covers over two decades of time - still not enough, but way too much to be squished into the total runtime of Space Patrol Luluco. Creed, on the other hand, tells the story of Adonis Creed's entire life while only needing about a year for the actual plot of the movie - a much more doable timeframe. As such not only is it much better paced, Ryan Coogler is able to pack meaning into every single shot and create a satisfying and concise climax that neatly ties a ribbon around every subplot and theme idea.
It's reeally unfair to compare Creed and Maquia. One is a high budget franchise film starring one of the best black actors today and shaped by my favorite young director in Hollywood, the other is an anime movie. Need I really say more? Creed is one of my top 5 favorite films of all time, and Maquia is a strong 4 light 5 in my book. But that's no excuse. There's no reason for a story with potential like Maquia to be squished into a movie.
Y'all have seen "We Have Accepted Mediocrity" right? (If you haven't, you should, but it's gone, so if you know me hit me up and I can show you.) In any event, it goes like this: with yen-eyed distributors chasing bottom lines at every turn, risk-taking becomes disincentivized from the top down as every show starts to look and feel like the exact same slosh with the exact same recycled tropes and storyboards. Since 2006ish when distributors realized how much more cost-effective films are than TV - as streaming and pirating began their inevitable assault on TV ratings - anime movies have been largely seen as safe bets financially. Just look at the sheer preponderance of recap films! But as Jason Mendoza might tell you: safe, isn't always safe. Steadfastly refusing to take risks may be an admirable approach when it comes to running a war campaign, or running a country. But this is art. You don't move hearts by only ever doing things that have made you money in the past.
Did ya have to make Maquia a movie? What is the world coming to?
If this were a TV show with a little more effort put into it visually, that started airing now with even a standard development schedule, I guarantee people would watch it. There is so much slosh airing right now, seasonal charts are wide fucking open to anybody with a brain who wants to write a story that actually develops themes. And once you finish your 2-cour run, you can start selling more BDs, and I'm sure hordes of weebs would want Maquia figures and all that shit. From there, maybe even the game will build hype and then that's even more money and increased desire for sequels or spinoffs. THIS ISN'T HARD!
^ by the way, in case it's not clear, I hate SAO as much as the next guy. what I mean is that A-1 figured out how to take a property with glaring flaws, market the shit out of it, and turn it into a global phenomenon. there's no way Ordinal Scale should be pulling better box office numbers than something like Maquia.
Sigh. I guess it is too hard. I guess I'll just wait and save anime when I win the 1 billion dollar lottery jackpot
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