By Andrew Osmond.

Keiichi Hara’s feature film Birthday Wonderland plays like a very traditional family fantasy, which seems to be part of its point. Given that the film tells the story of a Japanese girl travelling into a magic world, it inevitably raises thoughts of Spirited Away – which was, among other things, a plea for viewers to remember earlier ways of life, to not let the present swallow the past. That’s a theme in Birthday Wonderland too, and it’s stated very explicitly in the script. But Hara’s film also seems like a plea to remember earlier kinds of story.

In the two decades since Spirited Away, the “youngster goes to another world” story premise has become familiar in anime – all too familiar. If you follow new anime made for TV, you’ll know it’s one of the most overused formulae in Japanese media now. As long ago as 2016, a Japanese short story contest in Japan actually banned tales of characters travelling to alternate worlds. Continue Reading