Pas une critique!

Vu sur ARTE, cycle cinéma japonais estival (Tôkyô J.O.2021).

A nice film about several aspects of family (as expected), with a slim coming of age for the newly appointed brother as its backbone, that lacks organization. The highlights are the humour and approach to family (parents would probably appreciate that part).
Closer to real life than than Hosoda's previous works, maybe more personal, it loses a good deal of its potential appeal by surprisingly making the fantasy explicitly real (something totally unnecessary in this kind of story, but making the writing far easier) and losing itself in a futile fantasy adventure toward the end, tacked on what was clearly a collection of "slice-of-life" vignettes. A pity that Hosoda didn't contain his needs for a fantasy show (or didn't trust the audience enough?).

The fact the true to reality young hero is 4 years old is quite easy to forget watching the film, wich is a plus since the director quickly forgot about it too. It's also helped by the small child's voice, never sounding like one.
(I'm baffled to read such strong reactions over his behaviour.)

Featuring simple character-designs you've come to expect from Studio Chizu, the anime is visually very pretty (I regret missing its cinema release) and offers quite an appealing setting with the architect house. But it suffers from a few attempts to provide depth to the panorama and from the computer-like style of several backgrounds (especially the house) and movement scenes, the vehicles (trains for example) too but CGI vehicles are now a mandatory part of japanese animation sadly. And Hosoda's typical "virtual world" style is even forcefully included for a few pictures.

Score: 6,5/10
Enjoyment: 4/5
A nice change to Hosoda's formula on his favourite themes, promising but requiring some polishing.
(A promise cancelled by his soon-to-be third "Digital World" movie).

Special mention to ARTE, that aired a copy very poorly encoded on the two scenes full of moving CGI objects (like the whirlpool one) ! I can understand it for their streaming videos, but not for their TV broadcast...