Mary and the Witch's Flower (Meari to majo no hana) [Sub: Eng]
Trailer
This animation story begins with a girl named Mary who lives with her aunt in the town. We live here a lot of exciting and strange events with marry, where she didn't know any friends or adventures in her life. But in on day, she decides to know a strange cat in the forest. The events may change after that, where she discovered the flower by night –it is a plant that thrives once every seven years. Finally, Marry decided learn the magic over the clouds in the school of Mumblechook and Dr. Dee.
Mary and the Witch's Flower shows that Yonebayashi knows, as Alfred Hitchcock would say, how to start a movie with an earthquake (in this case, an earthquake of sensations, pure kinetic energy and constant plastic invention). [Full Review in Spanish]
It's a very loose adaptation of the book, as was Howl's Moving Castle and Arrietty, but there's charm in the mix of English kid-lit tropes and the sort of wild imagination cultivated in Japanese animation.
With Mary and the Witch's Flower, [Studio Ponoc has] come both too close and not close enough, resulting in an adventure that can never climb out of the uncanny valley it digs for itself.
On its own merits, the film is an enchanting diversion, but director Hiromasa Yonebayashi... spends too much time reminding us of Ghibli's greatest hits instead of attempting to craft his own masterpiece.
An entertaining and friendly personal journey with classicism in precepts about personal worth, ambition and respect for nature. [Full Review in Spanish]