***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Mary and the Witch’s Flower. Reader discretion is advised.***
Film Synopsis
Mary Smith (voiced by Hana Sugisaki) has recently moved to her great-aunt’s house in the countryside. Although happy to be with her beloved aunt, Mary is finding it difficult to adjust to her new life. No matter what she does, she always seems to be in everyone’s way.
Then, Mary meets a pair of cats, Tib and Gib (voiced by Ikue Otani and Lynn), who lead her deep into the nearby forest. The two felines stop and hiss when they arrive at a mysterious blue flower. Being curious, Mary takes the plant and learns that it is called fly-by-night, or the witch’s flower.
The next day, one of the cats, Gib, goes missing. While searching, Mary discovers the true nature of the witch’s flower. The plant temporarily bestows onto Mary the power of a witch and resurrects a flying broomstick.
The broomstick takes Mary to the ancient school of magic known as Endor College. Although thinking the witch’s flower has given her the excitement she has been looking for, Mary soon realizes that many people wish to use its amazing power to complete their own nefarious goals.
Film Positives
One of the benefits of being an anime fan and living in Japan is having the opportunity to see all the newest Japanese animated films as they come out in theaters. And I took this very chance to watch Mary and the Witch’s Flower on the big screen back in July of 2017.
Unfortunately, I was unwilling to give this movie a full review then.
My Japanese ability is strong enough to enjoy a trip to the theater, but I am a long way away from being able to rely on my comprehension to properly critique a film or anime’s positive and negative attributes.I still must wait for the English subbed version before I feel comfortable doing a proper review.
If you only ever saw the trailer to Mary and the Witch’s Flower, I imagine you would be thinking: this looks an awful lot like a Studio Ghibli movie. There is a reason for this.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower was the theatrical debut of Studio Ponoc, and Ponoc’s founder, Yoshiaki Nishimura, is a former Studio Ghibli producer. Along with that, many other former Ghibli employees joined the production of this film, including Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the director of When Marnie Was There and The Secret World of Arrietty – both outstanding works from Ghibli, with the latter being one of my personal favorites to ever come out of the studio.
If you are a lover of Ghibli’s films, I’m willing to bet this would be exciting. I imagine as such because when I first learned of this, it excited me. Be that as it may, there are two things I need to say before going any further:
One, I enjoyed Mary and the Witch’s Flower.
Two, while Mary and the Witch’s Flower may look like Ghibli, it is not Ghibli. Like I mentioned, this was the theatrical debut of Studio Ponoc. If you go into this movie thinking you are going to get a Studio Ghibli film, you are going to be disappointed.
No one can deny the unparalleled reputation Ghibli has built for itself – both in quality of animation and storytelling. Few studios in the world have as impeccable a record as Ghibli, including the juggernaut known as Disney – I say as a Disney fan. Could an up-and-coming studio like Ponoc reach such a level? Absolutely, and I’m hoping they do. But that day is not here yet. One film does not instantly create a thirty-year legacy.
That notwithstanding, as a first production, Mary and the Witch’s Flower was a good start for Studio Ponoc. This was not a bad film. It was, undoubtedly, a flawed film, but not a bad one. If nothing else, I am excited to see how far this studio will go.
Although Mary and the Witch’s Flower didn’t quite match the storytelling prowess of Ghibli – and the questionable decisions in this film’s story we will save as a topic for later – there was one element to this movie that was very much Ghibli.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower was drop dead gorgeous. Wow, this film was beautiful.
The opening scene of this movie was outstanding, and from there, Mary and the Witch’s Flower was nothing except big and grand. When things got flashy and full of color, that was when this film was at its best.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower understood it was telling a story about an extremely powerful magical item, the fly-by-night flower, and as such, whenever that power got released, there should have been no questioning why there were so many people after it.
Also, in a world of magic and mysticism, a little imagination goes a long way. And imagination was something in abundance all throughout this film’s settings and locations.
Endor College was fantasy. It would have been all kinds of lame had there been anything standard or familiar here. Sure, there were a lot of impracticalities, and many of the school’s rooms were only weird for the sake of being weird, but to that, I say, “What of it?”
This over-the-top unusualness helped drive home the point of how out-of-her element Mary was. This style also made things that much more threatening when Mary had to go up against forces much bigger than her.
However, my favorite location from this film was the small witch’s cottage by the sea. This place was every bit as magical as Endor College, but at the same time, it was hauntingly comforting. Through this movie’s visuals, there was a sense of sadness and loss here.Without ever coming out and directly saying it, this tiny home was once a place of happiness, and yet, those days had long since past by the time Mary arrived. In its place, what was left was only resentment and disappointment.
There were plenty of moments during Mary and the Witch’s Flower that captured excitement, wonder, and obsession without relying on words or exposition. Granted, there were also plenty of moments where the opposite was true, too.
Before moving on to my next point, there was something else about Mary and the Witch’s Flower that also tapped into Ghibli’s legacy. Paired with this film stunning animation, the musical score was outstanding. If I happen to come across this movie’s soundtrack, I would be compelled to pick it up.
This was all great stuff.
Solid animation and exciting music do make for fun movie experiences. But if there is no story for these two elements to complement, then what is the point? How did Mary and the Witch’s Flower fair in this area? This film got the job done much in the same way a well-meaning new hire gets the job done on their first day. There were no disasters, but one or two things did get broken.
Despite the stumbles here and there, there was one major element to Mary and the Witch’s Flower that managed to support the film all the way through to the end.
Mary
From the time I saw Mary and the Witch’s Flower in the theater, I have since had a high opinion of Mary. However, it wasn’t until I sat down to watch the film again for this review did I realize how much of a change she underwent in this movie.
At the start of this film, Mary was a lot more generic than the image of her I had in my head. She was like countless other characters in countless other stories. She had recently moved to a new city. She didn’t have any friends. She was self-conscious about her appearance; she didn’t like her red hair. She was bored, and thus, wanted to be helpful around the house. Too bad whenever she tried doing anything, she proved to be nothing more than a massive klutz.
How many of these initial traits ended up coming into play in the rest of the film? I will save that answer for later.
The point I’m trying to make is, in the beginning, Mary was a little boring. Fortunately, this did not last long. Mary went from unremarkable to the best part of this movie. She became the standout character I remembered her being.
Mary’s story started picking up when she found the witch’s flower. Suddenly, there was something unique – comparatively at least – to her situation. As this film went on, Mary’s more enduring qualities came out: bravery, self-sufficiency, being quick on one’s feet. You know, the kind of traits that make for an interesting character.
One of my favorite Mary bits was watching her reactions as she took the tour of Endor College with the school’s Headmaster, Madame Mumblechook (voiced by Yuki Amami). Along with being awestruck with all the magical activities going on around her, Mary was more than happy to soak up the praise the Headmaster was piling onto her. What made this even funnier was how blatant Mary’s cluelessness was. The only thing that saved her was luck.
For the cherry on top of this sundae, once Mary returned home from Endor College, that was when we got to see a bit of her mischievous side. Though the misplaced praise she received at the school did go to her head, Mary’s ego was at an all-time high when she thought she had successfully fooled the Headmaster.
Seeing Mary get like this was ten-times more engaging than the forced-fed, moping-around attitude she had at the beginning of this film. Having failed to pull it off after ten minutes of standard – not to mention heavy-handed – development, a quick bit of silliness made Mary’s character a lot more robust.
It was a good thing Mary hit this point when she did, too, because as this was going on, the film’s main obstacle was about to reveal itself. Had Mary stayed as the person she was at the start, this movie would have gone about its business by playing it safe and relying on paint-by-numbers storytelling.
Had nothing changed, Mary and the Witch’s Flower would have simply gone through the motions, and this film would have let an unremarkable main character solve the big problem in a predictable way.
I’m not going to say the last part of that previous statement didn’t happen. But rather than having a dime-a-dozen protagonist face off against a by-the-book dilemma, it became Mary facing off a by-the-book dilemma.
I will admit, this is not the most glowing bit of praise I have ever given in a review. However, Mary did make this her movie. And since her name is in the title, that’s a great thing.
Film Negatives
The story of Mary and the Witch’s Flower was fine. It wasn’t confusing, it was satisfying, it did what it set out to do. Along with that, there was excitement. There was intensity. There were also a handful of moments that were heartfelt. This movie worked, and there was plenty of enjoyment to be had.
However, this film began to run into problems whenever it attempted to make its story something more. I’m not saying Mary and the Witch’s Flower had no business trying to be bigger. In fact, one of the most disappointing things about this movie was that it could have been much bigger. What prevented that from happening was this film not quite knowing where to add its extra layers.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower had a details-problem. There were elements in this story that should have had a lot of attention, yet didn’t. Then there were other aspects that were utterly unnecessary, but got way too much screen time. The only thing this film did a good job at balancing was Mary herself -- and even that came with some issues.
Mary’s entire starting personality – bored, self-conscious, and inept – none of it came into play later in the movie. Mary wasn’t bad at making friends, there were just no other kids around to play with. Mary didn’t like her hair color, but no one ever said anything awful to her because of her hair. And Mary was only unable to do things that had zero bearing on the plot. 
Mary never had to learn a lesson or make up for a personal flaw. She wasn’t a perfect, goodie-two-shoes character, but she wasn’t a troublemaker either. She wasn’t remarkable enough to warrant her being the necessary hero, and she wasn’t unremarkable enough to be the unlikely hero.
I will maintain that Mary is a strong character because her reactions to whatever this movie threw at her made sense. Unfortunately, there was very little rhyme or reason for the things this movie did throw at her.
I think we’ll start with the details Mary and the Witch’s Flower could have skipped.
For starters, although Endor College was an interesting location, did we really need to know the full inner workings of how the school operated? Any one of the classes that we got a glimpse of could have ended up being a crucial component of this movie. Instead, none of them were, and the actual hey-you-need-to-know-this detail came in the form of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line.
It wasn’t until after the entire campus tour did this story make it clear where it was going. And then once that moment came, the role of Endor College nearly dropped off the face of the Earth.
Next, there was the staff employed at Mary’s great-aunt’s manor who I forgot were part of this movie by the end. I’m specifically referring to the gardener, Zebedee (voiced by Kenichi Endo), whose primary role was “helping” demonstrate to the audience how little Mary could do. That and he was the person who identified the witch’s flower to Mary. After he served his purpose, what was his name again?
Going back to Endor College, there was Flanagan (voiced by Jiro Sato), the broom stable keeper. What a pointless character. The only reason he was in this movie was so he could provide an easy out for Mary whenever she was in a pinch. That would have been bad enough on its own, except this story added one tiny detail. Flanagan said he was once the head broom riding instructor…and that was it.
Why did you feel it necessary to tell us that movie? This film never explained why Flanagan was no longer the broom riding instructor. Was he fired? Was he demoted? Did he change positions under his own free will? Would any answer to any of these questions have resulted in a point?
If I had to guess, characters like Zebedee and Flanagan were in this movie because they had much more prominent roles in the book Mary and the Witch’s Flower was based on – The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart.
I have never read The Little Broomstick, so I could be wrong, but why else would a movie adaptation feel it was crucial enough to include these characters? The thing is, if a character, even an important one, is not necessary for an adaptation, I would argue it is more insulting to try forcing them into said adaptation instead of electing to leave them out.
Moving on, let’s now focus on the details Mary and the Witch’s Flower chose to ignore for some reason.
The biggest culprit of this – or perhaps, the biggest victim – was Peter (voiced by Ryunosuke Kamiki). Who was he, and why was he in this movie?
Peter was this film’s version of the damsel in distress trope. Sure, this time it was the girl saving the guy – progress – but a fundamental annoyance of this trope was still around. Peter’s sole purpose in this story was to get rescued. And to make matters worse, he didn’t get captured once. He got captured twice, and the second time this happened completely undid a solid twenty minutes of this movie.
Much like it was with Flanagan, a one-off line by Peter indicated there was more to his character.
For Peter, he said he needed to be there for his mother…and that was it. Same as before, why did you think it was important for me to know this, movie? Unlike Flanagan, though, Peter, supposedly, had a part to play in this story. And had Mary and the Witch’s Flower not spent a ton of time focusing on fluff that went nowhere, perhaps this film could have focused more time on giving one of its main characters a backstory.
I feel it is vital for me to repeat myself: I did like this movie. However, there were times where it got a bit frustrating.
Final Thoughts
This film did not get outlandish, and that was a huge help. Sure, there were a ton of unnecessary moments throughout this story. But I never said these moments were void of anything interesting. And I think that best sums up this movie.
This was a film with a lot of good ideas that came to life through the use of breathtaking animation. However, if we were to take the animation away, only a handful of those good ideas became something worthwhile on their own. Luckily, one of the main ones, and the thing that ended up making this movie a ton of fun, despite its problems, was the character of Mary.
I said it earlier. For a first movie, this was not a bad start for Studio Ponoc. I believe there is still a promising future for Japanese animated films.
This was not a perfect movie, but it is one I’m happy I got the chance to see in theaters. Mary and the Witch’s Flower earns a recommendation.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Have you seen this film? What would be your advice concerning Mary and the Witch’s Flower? Leave a comment down below because I would love to hear what you have to say.
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I’m LofZOdyssey, and I’ll see you next time.
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