Fun and simple stories are always welcomed. Children’s fantasy as a genre fits these two things correctly. We’ve all grown up with these timeless tales that transformed us at the early stage of our development. There was once a time in anime, specifically in the 70s, when studios adapted old children’s literature from the late 19th to early 20th century. Mary and the Witch’s Flower gives off these vibes from my experience viewing it.

This is the first animated feature by Studio Ponoco, a studio founded by former Studio Ghibli lead producer Yoshiaki Nishimura and several staffers that joined him after Ghibli decided to pause all production for re-evaluation. Mary and the Witch’s Flower shows the real intention of Studio Ponoco to continue the legacy of the Ghibli style of animation in case Ghibli decides to go belly up, at least that is my interpretation. They know that if Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata are gone, Ghibli is done for. With all of the talent they brought from Ghibli to make this film, did they succeed in capturing the essence of a great Ghibli film? In the briefest answer I can give: they mimic the technical aspects of a Ghibli film 100%, but not its spirit.

When people think of a Ghibli film, they think of how beautiful the animation is and how memorable the characters are, and how its story grabs you through the end. Mary and the Witch’s Flower get half of it right. It isn’t very reassuring to think about this as this is their debut. However, I would not mean that the story and characters are awful. They do not reach that higher echelon that many people would expect out of the people formerly from Studio Ghibli.

It is one of the most beautiful animated films I’ve seen in many years and the entire Ghibli film library. From the opening scene, I was hooked by how tremendous the fluidity of the character movements looked and the colors from the magical spells. Seeing a character fly their broomstick was riveting to experience. It almost felt like I was flying with them. It still has a lot of fun Ghibli tropes we love, like messy hair and how characters react to any situation. The creativity of the spells and the creatures are always cool to see and show that they have not skipped a beat in making these weird, strange anomalies that made Ghibli unique.

I saw this in a movie theater where they showed it with the English dubbing. To its credit, the dubbing is pretty good. It was cool to listen to characters with English accents in an anime film, especially one based on a story written in England. Ruby Barnhill as Mary is excellent, Ewen Bremmer is hilarious as Flanagan, and Kate Winslet is nearly unrecognizable as Madame Mumblechook.

Despite my previous remark on the flawed characters, I thought Mary was a fine heroine. She was funny whenever she acted like a tough girl, annoyed at all the frivolous things that you would expect a little girl to do. Her clumsiness was always fun to see as well. It gave some bit of charm to her that made me smile throughout. Now how they write her storywise is a whole other situation.

Unfortunately, the rest of the characters do not come off as very memorable. The villains are probably the most forgettable in any Ghibli film. Their motivations for their actions are not explored very well, except that they want to create an abomination based on magic flowers for god knows what reason. It just came off as a lazy way of creating a conflict for our heroes. It is common for many children’s stories to have villains with half-baked intentions for their evil actions, but that should not be a reason to defend poor writing. I am not asking for anything incredibly deep. Give me a little more to care about their intent, but the film failed to do so.

David is the male “co-star” of the film, and I use air quotes because he is not given much for us to care about him. One of the film’s biggest flaws is the relationship between him and Mary. At first, Mary does not like David because he pokes fun at her by calling her a red monkey because of her messy red hair, and they always argue. It was funny to see, I will admit that, but then later on (without spoiling anything), when something happens to David, all of a sudden Mary acts all worried and wants to save him as if he was her best friend. The way it was paced, it seemed as though the writers did not bother to build up a rekindled bond between Mary and David mid-way through the story. This problem would have been remedied had the film taken at least fifteen minutes to develop. Not to mention David constitutes only about 1/3rd of the entire movie, so we are not given enough room to care about him at the end of it.

The simple nature of the story might seem like a positive or a negative depending on how you view children’s stories. I am part of the half that believes children can handle some depth to whatever entertainment or story is given to them. If they had just given a little more development to the characters and paced better, this could have been a tremendous debut for Studio Ponoc. But no, all we have is a film that is only good but not great.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower might be a disappointment, but I don’t think it needed to be anything groundbreaking in hindsight. This was merely a film that Studio Ponoc was required to make to get their feet wet so that they could construct themselves into a powerhouse studio like Ghibli. The technical aspects of it are there. All they need is a better story and pace it slower so that the characters can have some breathing room to develop. This is one step from Studio Ponoc to achieve greater things, and this film is at least a good/decent display of what is to come in the future. Whatever disappointment there is to the movie for me, it is only minor.

Grade: B-