Trailer available here

If you are a romantic/wholesome anime lover or a fan of Studio Ghibli type productions then you have probably heard of Tomotaka Shibayama’s My Oni Girl releasing on Netflix earlier this year.

From the ex-Studio Ghibli employee and creator of A Whisker Away, also well worth a watch if you haven’t gotten around to it, My Oni Girl focusses around a school-aged boy trying to fit with peers whilst living up to family expectations at the cost of his own happiness and desires. This leads him to trying desperately to assist a girl, by appearances of a similar age, that is trying to take a bus ride.

From there they become friends and embark on a mission together to find what she is seeking, seemingly her mother who just disappeared one day, and he tries to help as many people along the way as he can. But you can see all this pressure inside of him, all the things he feels like he should be doing in society to be liked and respected and it isn’t until a certain point in this journey that somebody asks him what it is that he wants to do.

We learn more about the girl, her family and how she ended up with a horn on her head. There is also reference to a myth/legend of gods, that seem to be chasing after her and/or Hiiragi, and in many ways this is the bit of movie that stopped me in my tracks. I had already been enjoying the style, the plot line and the development as we had been going along but when there is successful consumption by one of these gods and the way to freedom seems to be the realisation of what it is that they themselves actually want/need/desire and why they feel that way it hit hard.

It suddenly became obvious that the god, this thing going around consuming people, was basically resembling social pressures, anxiety and suppressing ourselves to just try to fit in and do right by everybody else. It serves as a reminder that the best way to be able to do that is to be true to ourselves, to live our lives in a way that means we do not care about the perceptions of others and that we have to share and acknowledge our needs/wants/emotions with people that surround us to get the most out of our lives.

I don’t cry at a lot of cultural things because I know they are supposed to make us think and feel certain types of ways and usually they are the types of emotions or thoughts that are suppressed deep into my brain but this got me and there I was sniffling away because it hit hard enough to push through all of those barriers. So if you are one of those more emotionally reactive types that doesn’t do the whole analyzing things in your head as you are watching them to be able to identify the language and plot and aren’t ready for what it is that is about to hit you then you should probably get the tissues at the ready.